Re your report (‘Too little, too late’: damning report condemns UK’s Covid response, 20 November), shortly after lockdown began, my family lost an aunt and uncle within an hour of each other to Covid in different hospitals in Manchester. Their son was in a third in A&E, also with Covid, but survived. Six months later my father, who was in hospital recuperating from major surgery, was rushed out of the building late at night because of a fear of Covid on the ward. Within two weeks, he died of Covid. On the day he died, my mother tested positive and spent the next two weeks grieving in isolation. I could not visit as I lived 200 miles away and respected the travel ban.
At his funeral, we followed the rules, so a very small number of people could attend. My father was such a part of the local community that people lined the roads around the cemetery, everyone respecting social distancing. I could not hug my mother at the funeral because we were not in the same bubble.
His funeral was at the time Boris Johnson and his government were raising a glass to each other and partying in Whitehall. To say that they should be ashamed of themselves for their incompetence and the unnecessary deaths they caused would be an understatement. I hope they never show their faces in public again.
Prof Andrew Moran
Saffron Walden, Essex
• I shall never forget arriving at Gatwick on 19 March 2020, having been in Mexico since January. My wife and I expected to see and hear advice about avoiding Covid as soon as we arrived, but there was nothing – not even a poster. No social distancing and no face coverings. People were behaving as normal for London, pushing past to get on escalators. By contrast, in Tulum, social distancing had become the norm and hand-sanitising gel was prominently displayed in shops and restaurants. This should be an indictment of Britain, a country where too much power is concentrated in the hands of too few people in Westminster. Why are we so dependent on the actions (or inaction) of one flawed individual?
Bryan Pready
Ormskirk, Lancashire
• The nation is right to speculate how a more serious prime minister might have handled the Covid crisis in its early stages (Boris Johnson took four days off as NHS warned Covid could ‘overwhelm’ system, 22 November). Perhaps one answer might come from Damian McBride’s 2013 book Power Trip, about his time working as a special adviser to Gordon Brown. In it, the author recounts the story of Brown’s short-lived holiday to Weymouth in August 2007. Having just arrived at his holiday cottage, Brown was alerted to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. His reaction was to immediately call the chief vet and then Hilary Benn – then cabinet minister for farming and rural affairs – announcing that he’d be back at Downing Street the following morning to chair a Cobra meeting.
Having dealt with the press that evening, McBride notes how he returned to the cottage at 5am for the drive to London. Asking Brown whether he’d slept much, he replied, “No, I was reading all this stuff”, pointing to a 187-page report into the government’s handling of the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak and the Royal Society’s report into the science of that outbreak. Every page of both printouts, McBride recalls, was covered in scribbles. Brown also had 20 pages of notes consisting of an action plan for the next 24 hours.
The 2007 outbreak is little remembered, mostly because it was so decisively addressed. Brown may have had his faults, but riding around on motorbikes when he should have been attending to brewing national crises was not one of them. Fewer people would no doubt have died if a similar politician had been in charge during Covid.
Dr Paul Jackson
Charlbury, Oxfordshire
• Yet again I find myself writing to the Guardian about Boris Johnson and his actions during Covid. We all knew that he partied, broke his own rules and lied to the nation and parliament, later proved by the House of Commons privileges committee report in June 2023. Most of us knew during the pandemic that he was unprepared, chaotic and, except for the vaccine rollout, lacking in both capability and leadership requirements. Sadly, we didn’t know the half of it.
Baroness Hallett has laid out in devastating detail his ineptitude as a leader and prime minister. British prime minister. Her report is a long litany of Johnson’s incompetence, failings and lack of awareness of the chaos he was overseeing. He in particular, but also his leading support team of Matt Hancock, Dominic Cummings and Rishi Sunak, must surely have now lost the right to play any part in public life in this country. Johnson’s taxpayer-funded annual allowance should be withdrawn, as should any public honours or awards that he has received. Then, hopefully, there will be no need for anyone to write again to the Guardian about this pathetic, destructive man.
John Robinson
Lichfield, Staffordshire
• The Covid inquiry report confirms what many of us knew at the time of the pandemic, thanks in part to the Guardian’s assiduous reporting from professionals such as Anthony Costello of University College London, Devi Sridhar of the University of Edinburgh.
I am not a scientist, nor a senior civil servant, yet ordinary citizens like me saw a virus emerging from China from January 2020 – and the devastating impact, and World Health Organization warnings regarding its nature. We watched the warnings from Italy amid the decision to cut off part of the country to stop the spread. We saw people on ventilators fighting for their lives in such distressing conditions in Italian hospitals, and fear began to build.
Despite our anxieties, no action was taken in the UK. Our borders were open; our airports were welcoming visitors. Indeed, our prime minister, who had failed to attend Cobra meetings to discuss the pandemic, was on holiday at the government’s Chevening country retreat. The Cheltenham race meeting went ahead, with government spokespeople saying outdoor meetings were safe. To the contrary, ordinary citizens were thinking: “Were they not queueing at food stands? Or for indoor toilets? How could it be safe if people were mingling?” Similarly, the fateful Champions League football event in Liverpool, which saw Covid rates rise exponentially, went ahead.
Thousands of people, family members and neighbours died unnecessarily. It is important, therefore, that this report is not received as “new” information.
Lynne Caddick
Corscombe, Dorset
• I admire your leader’s aspiration (Editorial, 21 November) that we must learn the lessons from the exacting Covid inquiry to prepare better for the next “major crisis”, but we are doomed to disappointment. There was nothing we didn’t know in advance of the arrival of Covid. A virus would travel fast, care homes would bear the brunt, contingency plans must be stress-tested, PPE must be procured and stockpiled, accurate information must be provided to frontline workers and the rest of us and politicians should model good behaviour. Also, semi-independent government agencies should do their job of protecting the public from lying and incompetent politicians. It is hard to imagine Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings or Matt Hancock setting an example in self-abasement as a warning to their successors. So where is the sanction that will protect us better? I regret that I just don’t see it.
Dr John Beer
Vice-president, Hourglass
• Anyone who has read Johnson at 10: The Inside Story by Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell will not be at all surprised by anything that has come out of this latest report.
Eric Bush
Elche, Alicante, Spain
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