Lowering our guard and ignoring Covid won’t make it go away - Yorkshire Post Letters

The GOVERNMENT walks a tightrope as it tries to open up the economy without surrendering to Covid-19.

Unfortunately, it is stuck in a pattern of spin and news-management and cannot be trusted to tell hard truths.

Its complex guidelines are baffling. A recent UCL survey showed that only 45 per cent of people think they understand them.

Just as bad, the guidelines seem arbitrary. In metropolitan Bradford I cannot enter my neighbour’s garden but I am encouraged to “eat out to help out” – as if it were my moral duty.

With these mixed messages it is tempting to cherry-pick the guidance and assume that the crisis has gone away. It has not. Here are some facts not mentioned by the Government or popular press:

For the last 120 days, the UK’s daily Covid-19 death rate (averaged over seven days) has been by far the highest in Europe.

For the last 50 days it has been more than three times greater than in any other European country.

Recent numbers show that the UK’s current seven-day average death rate exceeds the combined rates of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Hungary.

People die of Covid-19 a few weeks after contracting it. If our current death rate is the highest in Europe we must have had the highest infection rate a few weeks ago – precisely when lockdown was released.

Our daily detected infection rate (only the tip of the iceberg) is now starting to rise. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course we cannot remain in lockdown forever but if we lower our guard and ignore the disease, it will not ignore us.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing subscriptions@jpimedia.co.uk. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor