Covid in New Zealand
SIR – Zoe Strimpel (Features, January 30) is critical of New Zealand’s Jacinda Adern and her strategy for managing Covid.
It is true that, as in every country, the virus has created difficulties, and New Zealand is paying a price. How we will fare in the face of the omicron variant is at present uncertain.
However, to date, New Zealand has suffered just 52 deaths; the number in Britain now exceeds 150,000. Clearly it places a different value on human life. C Brian Smith
Wellington, New Zealand
SIR – Research by credible institutions in the United States and Scandinavia suggests that, in terms of lives saved, the benefits of lockdowns were minimal (report, February 3).
Of course, government mantras justifying them changed from “saving lives” to “saving the NHS” some time ago. The argument was that if Covid overwhelmed the NHS then patients might be denied treatment. So instead, during the lockdowns, GP surgeries became impregnable fortresses and many hospital departments were shut and clinics cancelled. The result? Patients were denied treatment.
This rather obvious consequence seems to have escaped the allegedly very clever Michael Gove, possibly the greatest proponent of lockdowns within the Cabinet.
Sally Grossart
Edinburgh her own input to a survey carried out by Lambeth Council, was withheld from her after she had requested it under the Freedom of Information Act.
When information is released in response to Freedom of Information requests, it is released to the public at large – not solely to the individual who has asked for it. Public authorities are, for example, entitled to publish any information that is released under the Act.
It was correct for the council to withhold the woman’s personal input to the survey, in the absence of her explicit consent for it to be made public, on the grounds of Data Protection.
However, the council could also have asked her if she wanted her request to be dealt with under the Data Protection Act, which is the appropriate route to obtaining one’s personal data from a public authority without giving access to the general public.
Andrew Tranham
Carshalton, Surrey