{"id":23070,"date":"2020-09-25T01:49:52","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T16:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/sep\/24\/we-wont-beat-covid-by-channelling-churchill"},"modified":"2020-09-25T01:49:52","modified_gmt":"2020-09-24T16:49:52","slug":"we-wont-beat-covid-by-channelling-churchill-letters-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=23070","title":{"rendered":"We won&#8217;t beat Covid by channelling Churchill | Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Boris Johnson\u2019s Churchillian language does not impress <strong>Richard Teverson<\/strong>, while <strong>Katherine Arnott<\/strong> dismisses the prime minister\u2019s appeal to people\u2019s common sense. Plus letters from <strong>Patrick Cosgrove<\/strong> and <strong>David Boyd Haycock<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I, like so many others, am slack-jawed at the incompetence of this government\u2019s response to Covid. Our death rate is terrible and the continued mixed messages from \u201cgo to work as you are less likely to be sacked if you are in the office\/don\u2019t go to work\u201d and \u201ceat out to help out\/don\u2019t eat out, certainly not after 10pm\u201d have exhausted the public and make compliance more unlikely.<\/p>\n<p>And now Boris Johnson insinuates that we have a worse death rate than many countries in Europe because we are \u201cfreedom loving\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/sep\/22\/johnson-refuses-to-rule-out-second-covid-19-lockdown-amid-new-restrictions\">Follow new Covid restrictions, or risk a second lockdown, Johnson warns<\/a>, 22 September). I would be so grateful if he could stop this faux Churchillian tub-thumping with pernicious Brexit undertones, hinting that we are better than all of Europe because we love freedom more (the inference being that that is why we have voted to leave all those rule adherents behind). Let\u2019s see how \u201cfreedom loving\u201d the prime minister thinks we all are when there are queues of 7,000 trucks in Kent in January as Michael Gove now warns.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/sep\/24\/we-wont-beat-covid-by-channelling-churchill\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boris Johnson\u2019s Churchillian language does not impress Richard Teverson, while Katherine Arnott dismisses the prime minister\u2019s appeal to people\u2019s common sense. Plus letters from Patrick Cosgrove and David Boyd HaycockI, like so many others, am slack-ja&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":269,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,43,918,531,528,1069,221,530,319,914,512,1161,916,56,4,299,52,1694,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-australia-news","category-biology","category-boris-johnson","category-brexit","category-coronavirus-outbreak","category-europe","category-european-union","category-foreign-policy","category-infectious-diseases","category-medical-research","category-michael-gove","category-microbiology","category-new-zealand","category-politics","category-science","category-uk-news","category-winston-churchill","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/269"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23070"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23072,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23070\/revisions\/23072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}