Be realistic about vaccine rollout

Dear Editor

luxury end of the market and, at the price-conscious end, from budget hotel chains and the expanding self-catering sector.

While there are still opportunities in providing meals, a successful restaurant does not need to have a large hotel attached to it. Some hotel operators have tried to rebrand themselves largely as venues for weddings and other events, but the sheer volume of events required to maintain

Despite Dr Ian Richardson’s honeyed words (Letters, December 16), it is an unavoidable fact that no-one living in the community, old or otherwise, will receive a vaccine unless, or until, the Oxford vaccine is approved and comes on stream. That vaccine is portable, cheap and has been ordered in huge quantities but there is no sign of its becoming available yet.

The Scottish Government has decided, and Nicola Sturgeon has said, that, given the difficulties of storage, the logistics of roll-out of the Pfizer vaccine, especially to remote areas of Scotland, prevent its delivery to the community at large. In any event, it would take a miracle of Biblical proportions for the paltry 32,750 Pfizer double doses so far delivered to Scotland to cover all of its reputedly 36,000 care home residents, all the old people in long-term hospital care, the vaccinators (18,000 done already we hear) plus NHS, social care and care home staff.

In the light of these facts, it would only be honest for the situation to be accepted and, most particularly, for some National Health Service employees, past and present, to stop trying to peddle patently unrealistic propaganda - however comforting they may believe that propaganda to be.

Mary Maxwell-irving

Blairlogie