‘Circuit-breaker’ needs test and trace support
I AM bothered by the use of the term “circuit breaker” as a means of controlling Covid-19.
As an ex-electrician I know a circuit breaker switch trips when there’s a fault in the system and you do not reset the switch until you have located the fault, and rectified it; otherwise the switch will trip again and you are back to square one.
Basically, a circuit breaker is no good without a test and trace system which efficiently and effectively locates the source of the problem. Keith Morgan Whitchurch, Cardiff
This project is not was was asked for
WE were interested in the letter from Plaid Cymru (“The wrong site for Velindre scheme”, Echo, October 9). We concur. The call for an independent, external, clinical review came from constituency MS and MP, clinicians and a petition to Senedd.
The Nuffield project doesn’t match this call. It’s not external or independent, because Velindre itself selected Nuffield, then negotiated the project for its own needs and presumably pays for it. Velindre alone also helps to select the clinical panel members.
From NHS Wales’ side, Nuffield is “independent” only in the narrow sense of having no previous stake in the controversy. But it does have obligations to one particular party more than to the others – its advice is owed only to Velindre.
Velindre also provides the entire administrative and logistical set-up for the engagement phase including for the interviewing of Velindre staff. How secure do we think that makes any possible whistle-blowers feel?
Not a review. If only. Nuffield
Trust wisely instead called it only “independent advice”. It knows that a review is a formal mechanism imposed by an accrediting authority to make accountable one of its member providers. It has no obligations to any other party.
This project is not remotely what politicians and many clinicians asked for.
Kate Prosser
Save the Northern Meadows group, Cardiff
Quarantine turned on its head
I AM disgusted that we have turned quarantine on its head.
In the past we took infected people out of the rest of population, now we are trying to take healthy people away from the sick. We take healthy people to hospital where they are more at risk of catching Covid. Every hospital seems to have a share of Covid patients so is it surprising that the virus is bridging the gap at some point.
We had a purpose-built hospital just for Covid at the Millenium Stadium and then chose not to use it as an isolation hospital.
This virus is destroying our NHS because we are ignoring the people waiting for treatment for other conditions.
Our leaders are telling us they are following the science but quarantine is to protect the healthy from the infected which means incarceration of the sick is sometime neccessary.
I think it’s obvious we are not tackling the virus as we should.
Today I talked to a neighbour who has young children. She says they no longer have their temperature checked when they go into school. The technology for thermometers makes them cheap and they give quick results so what excuse is there not to use one? We could use this for students coming into the city and also most employers would benefit from this. A half-hearted approach benefits no-one.
Bill Symons
Cardiff
City can’t delay this new cancer hospital
AS ONE of the 20,000+ members that support the building of the new Velindre Cancer Hospital, I was surprised to see the letter by Steffan Webb (“The wrong site for Velindre scheme”, Echo, October 9) calling to delay the project.
The letter, apparently at the behest of a small number of local people who wish to continue to enjoy access to the site for casual recreation, albeit with no entitlement to access on hospital ground, has little merit. He calls for it to built elsewhere but with 10 years in the planning all options have been examined.
He denigrates a yet-to-be published independent report and also neglects to mention more than half the land will still be available for public access.
To contribute to a delay would do a huge disservice to the people of Cardiff. It is a new cancer hospital not a McDonald’s.
P Regan
Pontyclun
Singing carols in isolation hospital
MANY years back I was a boy chorister at St Luke’s, Victoria Park, Cardiff. Hard to believe for those who think they know me, but...
Every Christmas a number of us would go around the wards of the then isolation hospital (later Lansdowne Hospital), moving from ward to ward, singing some carols, and wishing everyone (still awake) a Happy Christmas.
Our final stop was a large room. Unfortunately no one had forewarned us about that room. No beds, no chairs. Just an iron lung enclosing a polio victim. His sole view of anyone/anything when in that lung was via a mirror above his head.
To this day I do not know how we managed to sing some carols to him, but we did. Even harder was wishing him the customary Happy Christmas as we left.
Matron always provided refreshments after our vocal efforts. Somehow, after seeing that particular patient, they did not seem to taste as good as they actually were. Norman Rendle Rhiwbina, Cardiff
They do not care about lack of work
THE scourge of unemployment has been with us now off and on for 300 years.
The current recession shows no sign of abating, and Covid-19 is clearly going to make lack of work into a modern-day tragedy.
The Conservative administration clearly has no credible policy on this most central issue and neither any intention at all of solving it. They prioritise this not in the slightest and clearly just do not care.
You do not reset the switch until you have located the fault, and rectified it
Keith Morgan Whitchurch, Cardiff
I have noticed a consistent thread between the other political parties associated with supply side economics - building the foundations of the economy rather than giving tax breaks to the rich. Labour (with their working class tradition), Plaid Cymru (whose new programme on work is radical and incisive), Liberal Democrats (with the honoured Liberal tradition itself) and the Green Party (who clearly have all the environmental solutions for the coming Green Age – anti-nuclear, recyclable energy and climate change) all, upon analysis, have some sort of intention of solving this blight.
It is time for differences to be forgotten in aspiration to end unemployment once and for all, and unite, ideally with the strength of the TUC on board. With a united power of progress in Parliament and demonstration in the streets we could provide skilled work for all and save Wales.