LETTER: Free of the EU, and outward looking, our future is bright
Now I’m not an epidemiologist or even a medical doctor but I can read and write and remember the skills I learned at school when we did ‘comprehension’ in English lessons.
I feel this puts me in an advantageous position when it comes to the current crisis as many seem to have made a virtue of not understanding.
These are the people who demanded to see the Government’s plan for easing lockdown on the basis that they should be treated as adults. Suddenly the simple instruction to stay alert, as restrictions eased, sent them into a frenzy of incomprehension.
The next stage, when the 2m distancing rule was modified to 2m if possible or 1m with face covering or other measure was just too much to grasp. I am reasonably sure that any normal person, not a celebrity or media hack, was more bemused by being told that they could not possibly understand this basic instruction than confused by the new guidelines.
The Labour party has done its best to take the “I told you so!” position; of course they didn’t and the actions they would have taken ‘sooner’ would have been done without the information or resources they would have needed.
The tragic care home deaths caused by trying to free up hospital beds by sending patients home was the result of ignorance of the nature of the virus. Whatever culpability there is for this is at the door of the NHS; this was not a Government decision. Obviously the politicians cannot point this out, but we in Telford have seen the tragic consequences when the NHS gets things wrong.
On care homes; privately run care homes do not normally get their gloves and aprons from the Government let alone advanced bio-secure PPE. The outcry about shortages and the care sector being forgotten are unreasonable.
Almost overnight the logistics of distribution and sourcing were put in place for some 10,000 new ‘customers’ and of course there were shortages, you can’t magic up millions of items in the face of world-wide competition. While the private care homes were Hoovering up their free PPE and choosing to pay their staff minimum wage the doleful media continued its mantra that the Government didn’t care.
This pandemic has been a tragedy across the world but, as long as we don’t let the BBC tell us what to think, this country will thrive; free of the EU, (we will not be paying into their Covid rescue fund) and outward looking, our future is bright.
Ron Collins, Telford
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