This is a pandemic, not a competition

JOHN Smith (Letters, 18 Feb) should look at the bigger picture before citing the vaccine roll-out as proof that our government is more capable than the European Commission.

I accept that the UK is doing an amazing job on vaccines, but this is a pandemic, not a competition and this government has made serious mistakes of its own.

Our policy on care homes was a failure, track and trace has cost a fortune and done very little and measures were introduced too slowly then relaxed too quickly.

As a result, our deaths per head of population remains worse than most EU countries and our economic decline and levels of debt are also not favourable.

Surely, these are final measures that history will judge us on and success now may not prove enough to counterbalance previous failures.

I hope we can recover some lost ground but we should not see this as a competition between nations – there are lessons to learn everywhere in Europe, including here.

The biggest risk we are facing now comes from the factions in the Conservative Party pushing to open up too quickly.

I hope Johnson can learn lessons from previous lockdowns and hold them off because he will find it even more difficult to reintroduce measures later.

Michael Carter

Exeter, Devon