Am I alone in feeling anxious watching Covid infection rates and deaths rising?

Has this government learnt nothing?

In March 2020, many of us decided to take sensible precautions well before the government reluctantly imposed the first lockdown, to our great relief.

Now, nearly two years later, the same situation is unfolding, with the NHS issuing dire warnings and calling for restrictions. With horrible predictability, the response is a reluctance on the grounds that the economy will suffer.

This is announced, not by the health minister but by the business minister.

And where is the opposition party? Keir Starmer has a responsibility to hold the government to account, and should also be grabbing with both hands the opportunity to lambast Boris Johnson and his cronies for allowing the virus to spread again and to cause more deaths.

I’ve just come back from France, where I was struck by the universal wearing of masks in indoor venues and careful use of hand sanitiser. Simple measures, accepted by everyone. It felt very safe, which is something I haven’t felt in this country since the beginning of the pandemic.

Lynda Newbery

Bristol

We welcome the investment in more onshore, solar, and other flexible capacity. But there are regulatory issues and practical, on-the-ground barriers to planning, which create unnecessary delays. This means, at present, we are unable to roll out the required infrastructure quickly enough to take these ambitious plans from rhetoric to reality.

What we need now is for the government to relax planning policy and unify national and local policy aims. For this to happen there must be a fundamental shift in public perceptions and attitudes towards clean or low carbon energy projects, and an acceptance that these projects will be a feature of the UK’s future landscape.

Phil Thompson

Balance Power CEO and managing director

I read May Bulman’s column on universal credit claimants being asked to take photos of themselves with open-mouthed incredulity that these men and women, who are suffering enough with the loss of their uplift, should be subject to this.

This is the stuff of nightmares and for claimants having jump through so many obligatory hoops to clarify they are who they say they are is frankly mind-boggling. Of course, there will always be the inherent false and fraudulent claims, but this smacks as usual of a heavy-duty sledgehammer to crack a probably not serious nut.

What if people do not have the seemingly obligatory necessities of a smartphone, passport et al. This is indeed discrimination and should be called out before more vulnerable people summarily have their accounts closed and hurtled into destitution. It reminds me of that poem For Want of a Nail but this time it is for want of a plethora of items and indeed their claims may be lost and this is entirely shameful.

Judith A Daniels

Norfolk

Plastic pollution shows little sign of slowing down, with the amount of waste pumped into our oceans set to triple to 29 million metric tonnes per year by 2040.

The sheer volume of plastic means we are exposed to it every day, with tiny microplastic particles spreading far and wide as it breaks down. It enters our food chain, the air we breathe, and our bodies too.  

Knowing it’s in our bodies raises serious concerns, with scientists linking plastic and its toxic cocktail of chemicals to fertility problems, cancer, and diabetes. New research revealed at the Plastic Health Summit in Amsterdam this week is set to further highlight the extent of the plastic health crisis.   

Rising to the challenge of plastic pollution means we must tackle it from a humanitarian and human health perspective as well as an environmental one. That’s why today we’re calling on the World Health Organization to declare plastic waste a human health emergency, with a view to prompting urgent action which will reduce its impact across its entire lifecycle. 

Dr Joan Costa-Font 

Associate professor in Health Economics, Department of Health Policy, The London School of Economics and Political Science 

Professor Dr Dick Vethaak 

Deltares and VU University 

Terrence J Collins PhD

Teresa Heinz professor of Green Chemistry and director, Institute for Green Science, Department of Chemistry 

Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq 

Environmentalist and campaigner, IceWisdom  

Maria Westerbos 

Director, Plastic Soup Foundation 

It is unnerving to read that there are still people who either refuse or can’t be bothered to vaccinate against Covid-19 to safeguard themselves and their communities.

Should these people be protected by the Human Rights Act or should they be at risk in their communities of infection and therefore to others?

While people are allowed to travel to and from other countries to Britain various strains of Covid may enter an already delicate balancing act to contain the pandemic.

If all British people were vaccinated and boosted when necessary eventually Britain would be able to live with Covid as we do with flu epidemics. But what hope is there when a large minority fail to safeguard their neighbours and communities.

Our government seems to be once again ignoring the situation, is it hoping that it will cure itself and Covid will simply go away? As with the role-out of the inoculation system, feeding families etc. it will probably be those that know how to best help that will come to our rescue. Leaving the government red-faced yet again.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke

Whenever I hear the words “UK” and “net zero”, I feel like banging my head against the wall. Whatever we do in the UK is irrelevant given that the world’s major polluters such as China are continuing to increase their emissions and won’t even begin reducing them till some future date – yet to be determined! Add to that the very real damage being done right now to the UK in terms of energy security, fuel poverty and economic viability and it feels like the lunatics are running the asylum.

Andy Brown

Derby

With less than two weeks to the spending review and the latest NHS data showing a record number of people seeking mental health treatment, it is time our leaders put sufficient investment behind their warm words about mental health.

A £500m injection last winter was welcome as the pandemic peaked and the nation’s mental health further plummeted, but the key metrics show people are still reeling from what has been one of the most difficult periods in recent history, with young people and those severely affected by mental illness struggling most.

Yet there is no commitment from the government to increase the NHS mental health funding secured pre-pandemic. The need is greatest for overstretched services for under-18s. Funding a network of early support hubs for young people’s mental health is also vital. And with ever-increasing numbers of people reaching mental health crisis, the government must put money into its plans to reform the Mental Health Act, to make them a reality.

Mental health affects each area of daily life, which is why each government department should be working on a fully resourced cross-government plan, with clear targets: from public health to social care, from education to benefits, from housing to health. We must see all ministers making mental health their business.

Simon Blake

Chief executive, Mental Health First Aid England