WITH regard to issues such as mask-wearing, social distancing etc, the Westminster government is moving “from relying on legal curbs to control people’s behaviour to letting individuals make their own decisions.”
You might have heard of the man who bought an old American left-hand-drive car and announced that he was going to drive it up the A9 as “it was meant to be driven”, on the right hand side of the road! A road traffic expert pointed out to him that this would be dangerous and he could be killed. “Don’t care,” he replied. “I’m a sensible person and I can make my own decisions.”
READ MORE: Boris Johnson: Covid rules including masks to be lifted in England by July 19
The road traffic expert then explained that he could kill other people who were still following the normal “drive in the left” rule. “Don’t care,” he replied. “I will still make my own decisions” This story is crazy of course; it could never happen and in fact I made it up – sorry!
Allowing people to ignore all anti-Covid mask-wearing type advice is possibly equally crazy but unfortunately that is not drawn from my over-fertile imagination. It is the way the Westminster government is going.
Will we have to wait for a few weeks for a U-turn, hoping for non-disastrous interim damage?
Alex Leggatt
Edinburgh
IN response to the letter from Michael Follon (July 5), I would point out that the virus does not know the difference between herd immunity and community immunity. In fact there is no difference. The term herd immunity is now generally well recognised by the public.
Splitting hairs on the actual terms is a pointless exercise. Clearly government policy in all four nations has changed, regardless of Covid numbers. With infections rising and restrictions being reduced, economics appears to taking precedence over medical facts.
READ MORE: Spiraling Covid numbers do not prove there's a 'herd immunity' policy
Scotland has the highest Covid rates in Europe. Six Scottish health boards are among the top 10 worst-hit regions in Europe according to World Health Organisation figures. NHS Tayside has the highest rate, with 1,146 cases per 100,000 people. Lothian, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Fife Lanarkshire and Ayrshire and Arran health boards are also in the top 10, along with north-east and north-west England. The only areas outside the UK are Nur-Sultan City in Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation’s capital, Moscow.
Currently only half the adult population of Scotland has received two vaccine doses. What about the other half? The Delta variant has caused the current increase in case numbers. Increased vaccine numbers will help to counter Covid. If there was no vaccine the situation would be horrendous.
I now have friends who have received two vaccine doses but are currently testing positive and are suffering flu-like Covid symptoms. They may hopefully not end up in hospital but we as yet have no idea as to the effects of long Covid.
Glenda Burns
Glasgow
I WOULD defend Glenda Burns in her use of the term “herd immunity” , and refute any suggestion in Mr Follon’s letter that the word “herd” is derogatory. As a retired veterinary surgeon I can assure Michael that the term “herd immunity” is used by both medical and veterinary epidemiologists and immunologists and in no way demeans his social status; maybe simply that for once the vets were ahead of the medics in all of this virus business!
Dave Finlay
Falkirk
SURELY the third in line to the throne attending a church service to celebrate the work of staff in the NHS raises the monarchy to a new level of hypocrisy.
Never seen to be church-goer while living in Scotland in a small town, where he would have been easily seen had he ever attended, his family are well-known patrons of private medical services. His grandmother’s hoarded wealth could make a serious dent in any underfunding of the health service but all she has seen fit to give is a George Cross. In the circumstances does she not understand that this is more an insult than an honour?
Ni Holmes
St Andrews
THE Scottish Labour Party are in opposition and as such, one would think their opposition remarks were based on some kind of factual evidence.
In this instance, I am referring to Covid-19 and to the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sawar’s response in The National and Jackie Baillie’s comments on today’s Good Morning Scotland (Sarwar calls for jag doses gap to be cut as Covid it ‘out of control’, Jul 5). Both had similar comments concerning a slowdown in the vaccination output. Sawar goes on to suggest reducing the gap between vaccination from eight weeks to four weeks.
In both cases I would hope that all their suggestions would have been based on scientific information. Which then begs the question, why are the Labour Party’s scientific advisors at such great odds with the SNP government scientific advisers?
READ MORE: Anas Sarwar calls for jag doses gap to be cut as Covid is ‘out of control’
Jason Leitch, the SNP government scientific advisor, in my opinion gave a satisfactory set of reasons in reply to why there had been, according to Ms Baillie, a slowdown in vaccinations. One was a reduction in the Pfizer vaccine distribution and the other the eight-week waiting time between vaccines one and two not being taken into account.
Surely something is fundamentally wrong with the opposition’s comments concerning something important as the Covid-19 pandemic – which, by the way, has not and is not going away.
Are they making it up as they go along, taking a leaf out of the Westminster book of government behaviour, or is their source of information so fundamentally different to that of the government’s source of information?
Alan Magnus-Bennett
Fife
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