New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern has shown Boris Johnson up over pandemic – Yorkshire Post Letters

WHILE one can only congratulate the NHS, councils and the many volunteers that have made the vaccination programme so successful, there is still the underlying number of deaths which causes great concern.

While the media as been the highlighting the 15 million vaccination figure and rightly so, what has slipped under the radar is, for example, that more than 5,000 people still died in a week from Covid and we have the worst death rate in Europe. Why such a high figure? One only has to look at the Government’s performance to see the mixed messages and the poor late decision-making.

Also the lack of enforcement for the various rules and laws that have been put in place over the 11 months, and the sizeable minority of people who either do not follow the rules or are suffering from lockdown fatigue.

Before anybody asks who could have done any better, I suggest they look to New Zealand and their leader Jacinda Ardern and how they have restricted their death toll from Covid to just 26. Now that tells its own story.

From: JD Clark, Burnsall, Skipton.

A MAJOR epidemic of smallpox results in mortality of about 30 per cent and Ebola about 50 per cent. However, 99 per cent of those who catch Covid survive.

Whilst being devastated on behalf of those who have lost loved ones, it needs to be said that the average age at which people die of Covid-19 is 82, close to the average age at which people die anyway.

Writing as one who is close to that age, I appeal to the Government, which has made so many moves that have been exemplary, to put our liberty at the forefront of its decisions.

From: Peter Cooper, Castle View, Wakefield.

FOR rank hypocrisy Jayne Dowle really takes the biscuit (The Yorkshire Post, February 18). She has the effrontery to write about people being kind to each other and concentrate on being positive. This after criticising everything the Government and Boris Johnson have done at every opportunity.

From: Geoffrey Brooking, Havant.

WELL done Boris Johnson for not giving in to Tory backbenchers for an early lifting of lockdown. The vaccination programme is clearly a game changer so it is only right that any lifting is based upon data rather than rebels.

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