Balance needed on Covid views

CAN I ask why, for the second day, you have published such a collection of ill-informed online comments from the public?

It’s one thing to include a cross-section of comments — including, perhaps, the less well thought out — but for the last two days almost every comment made my blood boil.

One person asks: “If there are so many sick people, why aren’t the (hospital) staff sick?” He clearly doesn’t understand that many doctors, nurses, cleaners and paramedics have had the virus.

Some have died, some have been very ill, others have taken the virus home to loved ones and many have had to quarantine.

But, yes, their PPI is better than what we wear and it’s worn with more care, too. And so great is the danger to them that they were among the first to be vaccinated.

Other comments imply that people brought to hospital with coronavirus caught it at the hospital — ignoring pictures of long lines of ambulances bringing Covid patients to the hospital with the virus and also ignoring the fact that most other wards are now closed, or well away from the main Covid wards.

Someone else says: “It’s a virus, they come every year.” Has that person watched the news? Have they not by now got to grips with the fact that it’s a pandemic? It’s maybe a virus, but so is HIV and smallpox — neither are things you want to get.

These comments need to be balanced with more sensible ones, or not included at all. We’re all anxious enough.

CHRISTINE WILSON Newtownabbey, Co Antrim