WE can go the Falklands to fight a war. We can go to Iraq and topple Saddam. We can go to Afghanistan and fight the Taliban. We have been in two world wars. Where are the logistics to fight the virus? There have been none since day one.
We are making it up as we go along; meanwhile, probably upwards of 60,000 people have died in the last nine months. Would we have accepted this in these other conflicts?
We released people into care homes with the virus: it was not rocket science that it would spread. We have shut our elderly people away for nine months, unable to see and hold their families properly, and have allowed people to die alone in hospital. These are human rights issues.
With the lack of PPE and testing from the start, and now with Track and Trace, we have at all times been behind the curve.
We allowed children to go back to school and students to go back to university without any logistical plan to control the virus.That is shocking. Students were instructed to stay in their accommodation on the first weekend back then instructed that they could visit the pub the following weekend. What happened to the 14-day quarantine rule?
We had a full month in August of Eat Out to Help Out. The virus did not run out of control at that time. Hospitality went out of their way to make it safe for us. It ran out of control in October when the universities went back but I don’t blame students. Logistically they could have waited until after New Year to arrive on campus in a controlled manner.
Thousands of people are dying every day from cancer, heart and stroke, drugs, suicide and mental health problems, but every day we mourn the virus deaths. Are these other people irrelevant in our mourning? How many of the virus deaths had underlying health conditions? The Scottish and UK governments need to get their act together instead of punishing millions of people and businesses for their own incompetence in fighting the virus. Maybe it’s time to get the army in.
Margaret Sweeney, Howwood, Johnstone.
IF Michael Watson (letters, November 18) thinks that he is living in a police state because of Tier 4 fears, he should move quickly (before the travel restrictions come in) to North Korea for a taste of the real thing.
The very fact that he can get his facile views printed shows that the free press is alive and well. It seems to have escaped his attention that the measures introduced here and across much of the world are designed to save lives. Even Sweden has abandoned its previous relaxed policies as cases rise inexorably.
In Scotland, the measures are announced and debated in Parliament One man’s view might not seem to matter overmuch, but it’s sadly symptomatic of many others who apparently think this pandemic is a game, and flouting the safety measures is clever. To coin a phrase, we are all in this together.
Hamish McPherson, Giffnock.
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