Prepare to stay home for months Cash support is thanks to capitalism

I spent most of any free time as a child in the mud and dirt building up my immune system.

Our current guidelines worry me with the amount of cleanliness I, and the other 1.5 million vulnerable people, are having to keep to.

As history has shown us, the most fatal wave of the Spanish Flu was during influenza season. In a normal year with no global health pandemic, the most vulnerable spend the year leaving their house, going to shops and mingling with family and friends, totally unaware of building our vital immune system to fight seasonal diseases. I for one have not been in close contact with anyone bar my wife for weeks, thus not building up any immunity to whatever lurks outside the boundaries of my garden. I think we shall see a sharp increase in seasonal flu hospitalisations and a Covid-19 second wave, if these current measures for the most vulnerable do not stay in place for months. The 1.5 million had better batten down the hatches and prepare for further months of not leaving the house.

Harry Mouland

With the greatest of respect to Cllr Teresa Murray (letters, April 30) she doesn’t seem to understand what is happening to our economy as a result of the virus pandemic. It is not, as she implies, that it has taken the unexpected appearance of a health crisis to show us the wickedness of free market capitalism and led the government to the path of righteousness in nationalising the railways, subsidising wages, putting up the homeless in hotels, etc.

What is actually happening here is that, all but the essential parts of our economy, have been deliberately closed down by government decree in order to save lives in an almost completely unprecedented situation. It is only right that the government should take responsibility for keeping the economy on life support until the danger has passed. Mercifully, our economy was in good shape before the virus hit