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Niagara Falls
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Letter: U.K. and Ford undeserving of praise for pandemic response

Dear editor:

I read with interest Dr. William Brown's April 15 column, “Our leaders have failed us too often in this pandemic.”

While I agree with some of his remarks, his praise for Boris Johnson and Premier Doug Ford is entirely misplaced.

Johnson was pitifully slow to lockdown the U.K., which resulted in the country in January 2021 having the highest per capita death rate in the world.

Since then, of course, it has been overtaken by countries that also have “populist” leaders, such as Brazil – and India is catching up.

To date the per million death rate in the U.K. is 1,900 while in Canada it is 628. Their case fatality rate, i.e. the chance of dying if you catch COVID, is double that of Canada's. So much for their two-tier private versus public National Health Service.

The huge number of cases in the U.K. also provided the perfect milieu for the development of variants, which has been their most successful export of all time – and is now ravaging Ontario.

Doug Ford is floundering with his confused, almost daily, contradictions and refusal to listen to his medical advisers.

Why doesn't he simply let the equivalent of Bonnie Henry in B.C. do the talking and shut up?

Dr. Richard James
NOTL

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