I NOTE with interest Guy Stenhouse's latest article ("Question is about damage caused by two-metre rule", Herald Business, June 22). It is astonishing that we hear praise accorded to Nicola Sturgeon and her regime for their heavy-handed imposition of her rules which are daily stifling our economy and blasting the hopes of households and enterprises and young people of earning an honest living over the summer and for years to come.

When do we hear this blind bureaucracy telling us about the devastation of hopes and careers that obsessive policies are perpetrating on our deceived public? We have the most oppressive restrictions of any country in Europe, yet large tracts of our land are Covid-free.

In the real world people have to cope with a level of risk. If we don't, the rest of the world will pass us by and mock our self-inflicted impoverishment.

David S Fraser, Stornoway.

SCHOOLS in Scotland go back on August 11, in England and Northern Ireland schools do not return until September. Despite this, travel for leisure in Scotland is still stuck at five kilometres. In these other parts of the UK this limit has already been scrapped. By the time Nicola "cautious" Sturgeon ends the limit here we might, if we are lucky, have a week of our school holidays left to get to a beach in Scotland

Michael Carr, Glasgow G40.

THE pandemic has highlighted the limits of “the science” and the misplaced hubris of the political class. On whatever measure you choose – deaths, infections, rate of transmission – the epidemiological models that drove governments to take a sledgehammer to their economies have proved scandalously pessimistic and out by orders of magnitude.

The virus’s spread was supposed to be “exponential”; it wasn’t. The infection fatality rate would be one per cent; it’s about 0.2%, akin to severe flu. Lifting lockdowns early would see cases surge; they didn’t. We are all vulnerable; most aren’t (median age of death well over 80). Lockdown and the two-metre safety zone were imposed because "something must be done".

The global death toll is around that of the 1950/60s flu pandemics in spite of the fact that the world population has doubled. Future historians will struggle to see the impact of Covid-19 except for the disastrous response. Sadly, the next blip may cause the same hysterics, as humans have a tendency to focus on extremes – the “negativity bias”.

Dr John Cameron, St Andrews.