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Laura Spinney offers a defense for the worst public health disaster in a hundred years, saying ‘scientists were in the dark’ (Covid lawsuits and investigations loom – but the blame will not prevent future pandemics, September 29).
In fact, part of the UK public health community had taken the deeply flawed approach to collective immunity and, along with the government, had flatly ignored evidence from abroad that the virus could be suppressed.
On February 28, 2020, the World Health Organization released detailed guidance on how to proceed based on the results of the joint WHO-China mission. It has been ignored here despite urgent appeals from experts such as Richard Horton in the Lancet. Countries that paid attention and intervened decisively with public health measures were able to protect their populations – such as New Zealand and Singapore, alone with around 100 deaths in total. In England, a laissez-faire government was happy to adopt a failed theory to justify a continually failing policy. And in this there is a lot of blame to be attributed.
Dr Greg Philo
Glasgow
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