Boris Johnson's response to coronavirus risks overwhelming the NHS – we must change tack now

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The NHS on whose frontlines we work is an outlier in the international community. Unlike our colleagues across the world, we are being instructed to refuse World Health Organisation advice of strict social distancing and rigorous community testing. Instead, we are adopting a strategy with a disturbing lack of evidence behind or detail to it, one whose reckless pursuit will result in enormous and unnecessary loss of life.

The government’s “herd immunity” strategy takes no account of the finite capacity of our healthcare system. According to leaked documents, it presumes an 80 per cent infection rate, which would require ten times as many ventilators as we have, and at least double the beds. Nor is it scientifically validated: we do not know whether coronavirus infection can even confer immunity.

The NHS is not ready for the crisis the government is about to allow to occur. We must therefore buy time with aggressive containment measures, including banning mass gatherings, closing the schools, isolating the vulnerable and restricting travel.

With an incubation period of two weeks, any action we take now won’t have an effect for a fortnight. We need to act today – better yet, two weeks ago.

Dr Yige Huang Clinical Research Fellow, University of Oxford

Edwin Van Beek Chair of Clinical Radiology, University of Edinburgh

Emma Dugdale Consultant clinical oncologist

Dr A Pillai GP partner and Clinical Commissioning Group board member

Helen Roe Deputy ward manager, Nottingham

Jonathan Lanham-Cook Mental health nurse consultant

Monica Tedder Advanced clinical practitioner in emergency medicine

Dr Malcolm Ridgway Retired GP and clinical lead

Renata Chavda Head of Operations, Enfield Health Care Limited

Dr Clive Selwyn Medical director, Canopy Growth Corporation

For the full list of signatories, click here.

A selective strategy

In a letter yesterday, Edward Thomas asks what he would be expected to do in self-isolation. I too belong to the group about to be confined to barracks, along with most of my friends and neighbours of similar age. It seems to be forgotten that many of us are fit and active, and do much of the volunteering in our communities. Incarcerating us will cause a greater burden on everyone else, many of whom may be less fit, though younger.

It makes sense to self-isolate if you have the illness or are particularly vulnerable, whatever your age. But for the government to pick on septuagenarians could prove to be a foot-shooting exercise.

If there are too few people out there to bring us provisions, it might be that the answer to Mr Thomas’ question is that we shall simply starve!

Susan Alexander​
Frampton Cotterell​, South Gloucestershire

It is reported that Matt Hancock is proposing emergency police powers to arrest any over-70-year-old seen out of self-isolation. I am a very fit 70-year-old, walking my dog four to five miles a day. I am following advice on keeping my distance from others and undertake stringent hygiene measures. Yet I am to be treated as if I am some doddery OAP incapable of making her own decisions as to her health and, therefore, to be forced by threat of police intervention into a sedentary, isolated existence. Not to mention the effect on a very active dog.

Could it be that this knee-jerk measure is as a result of the realisation that the original plan of triaging to give the benefit of scarce medical resources to the younger, more productive patients will mean the potential deaths of the Tory (and Brexit leaning) core voters? I do not underestimate the seriousness of this pandemic but the over seventies will have lived to survive Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, Sars and the many other serious outbreaks over the last 70 years. We deserve, ironically, to be treated as adults.

I do hope, however, that should this proposed measure be introduced and enforced, The Independent will publish the photograph of me resisting arrest and being thrown into a police van by burly coppers for continuing to walk my dog.

Kate Hall
Leeds

Social engineering

Boris Johnson’s government remains unique in its strategy towards the coronavirus crisis in that its policy is to allow the contagion to run its course through the population in the hope that survivors will acquire a “herd immunity” to Covid-19 and future manifestations of the virus. This strategy is based on the expectation that some 53 million people in the UK will be infected.

Boris Johnson understands this approach risks the lives of the oldest and most vulnerable in society and has warned the public they should prepare to “lose loved ones before their time”.

Incidentally, Johnson is also unique in employing a number of advisers who have faith in the racist pseudo-science of eugenics.

Last month Andrew Sabisky resigned his position as a government adviser when his enthusiasm for forcing long-term contraception on working-class women to avoid the production of a “permanent underclass” came to light.

Boris Johnson’s senior aide Dominic Cummings has demonstrated eugenicist tendencies of his own, having previously argued in favour of the selective breeding of human beings.

Johnson’s government are letting Covid-19 rip through the population in the knowledge its victims will be the old and the weak.

These two phenomena are surely not unconnected.

Sasha Simic
Stamford Hill

Western unrest

The coronavirus outbreak has shed light on the multiple fault lines and shortcomings of European health systems that were unprepared for such colossal contagion. Countries like Jordan, Lebanon and even the occupied Palestinian territories, where the budget deficit runs into billions, have proven more resilient and resolute in responding to this outbreak than those such as Germany, Italy, France, Spain and even the UK, where Johnson et al have brazenly advocated for “herd community” – a callous scheme to wipe out the elderly and vulnerable.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob​
Northwest London