Healthcare workers have a right to answers

Sir, – Western nations have had government for hundreds of years, funded by their populations.

During this time these governments have seen fit to spend untold billions on sending millions of men to kill complete strangers and on developing weapons of mass destruction.

In the meantime, like a voice crying in the wilderness, the scientific community has been warning from the sidelines that the biggest threat to humanity is not foreign invasions or nuclear war but the humble virus.

And so it has come to pass, despite governments having the resources and expertise to model all possible scenarios of disasters and create strategies for preventative and direct action ready to be enacted at the first sign of threats such as a pandemic.

Is this perhaps because such sensible precautions do not allow politicians to strut on the world stage so grandly as they do with their armies and weapons?

And even now as the deadly crisis is upon us, politicians are still making up their reactions on the hoof.

The prime minister announced three weeks ago that he would be writing to every household in the land, at a cost of millions, advising them of travel restrictions they already know about.

Not to be outdone, Nicola Sturgeon announced the same.

Apparently, it’s going to be done this week.

I haven’t received my letter. Have you?

This has been followed by the fatuous “commitment” by the government to be testing 100,000 people a day for the coronavirus within three weeks.

In the meantime, frontline workers in our hospitals are dying because of lack of protective equipment.

When all this is over, the survivors, particularly those who have lost loved ones, will deserve an accounting from the politicians who, through their failure to act swiftly and lack of contingency planning when the resources were available, brought this catastrophe upon us.

I trust they will be given one. George Dobbie. 51 Airlie Street, Alyth.