SO York moves up to Tier 2 today - or should it be spelt tear? What did we expect would happen in York when so many visitors come down from Newcastle and 40,000 university students arrive who rightly want to live and not exist? Lockdowns do not work.

Boris Johnson needs to tell the country that his government has done everything possible but we must save the economy, businesses and jobs and live and work with the virus - as recommended by 35,000 scientists and doctors signed up to The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) and achieve herd immunity.

It’s time the Health Secretary Matt Hancock was sacked as on his watch it’s a total catalogue of failure with no preparation; the care-home and PPE scandal, Public Health England, test and trace fiasco, Serco receiving £1billion and useless doctors surgeries with 27 million lost appointments.

The NHS can only do their best and triage the Covid sick as military hospitals have to on the battlefield. People will die, sadly - but very few, 0.06 per cent - as our parents and grandparents had to accept in two world wars plus a flu pandemic that killed at least 60 million.

Five million unemployed and a devastated economy will be far worse.

Keith Massey,

Bishopthorpe, York