Inadequate response to coronavirus threat

Sir, – Covid-19 “herd immunity” is the latest fashionable “liberal” political scapegoat.

What on earth is wrong with the greatest number of people being immune?

Is that not what mass vaccination achieves?

What they are really arguing about is the most effective way to achieve the “holy grail” of epidemiology while a vaccine is unavailable.

Test, trace and isolate are the methods used by the most successful countries which also have well-funded national health, social care and public health services together with sizeable, homegrown and controlled pharmaceutical, diagnostic, therapeutic and medical equipment industries instead of, as in Britain’s case, creaking, criminally and deliberately run-down services, starved of investment over decades in pursuit of privatisation and a fast buck.

China’s success resulted from its centralised planning system and commitment to early lockdown and social distancing.

South Korea’s success from its experience during the Mers epidemic and Germany’s success from its industrial capacity.

Britain’s slow response, given China’s gift to the world of eight weeks’ notice, was due to its unforgivable dithering between effective public health protection and concern about the pandemic’s effect on the national economy.

Government decisions were eventually taken but planning for workforce protection in health and social care, public transport and food distribution was woefully inadequate and current preventative measures among the wider public are so far behind the curve that a second wave of the disease still remains an extremely dangerous possibility for much of our population.

Demands to ease or end current lockdown and social distancing measures are driven by the interests of big business.

Having been denied their opportunities to realise surplus value from their workforce for almost six weeks they are now trembling at the reality of lost business and profit.

Raymond Mennie. 49 Ashbank Road, Dundee.