Enter: Robocop

Nicola Sturgeon has announced that mass gatherings should be cancelled because of coronavirus. The government should cancel the COP26 Glasgow international climate conference.

Why not do a virtual conference by video conferencing? They could call it ROBOCOP. They could just replay the videos of the last COP and nobody would notice.

The participants are always the same, the agenda is always the same, the outcomes are always the same: climate crisis, unspecified doom awaits us, vague promises to decarbonise at some point that’s far enough in the future that they won’t be the ones to have to actually do it.

GEOFF MOORE Braeface Park Alness, Highland

Through the fog of burning tyres, it was still encouraging to see the Scottish Government U-turn on their own advice that large events were safe from the coronavirus.

Not cancelling the Scotland and France rugby match was a grandiose faux pas as it welcomed 10,000 touchy feely people into the capital from the second most-infected country in Europe.

Not closing Edinburgh Airport to Italian flights, nor even quarantining the passengers, was another own goal; driven by the ever-fawning desire to be seen as good Europeans.

No surprise, then, that the Lothians is burning bright on Scotland’s coronavirus heat map. When the World Health Organisation spoke about the “alarming levels of inaction”, they no doubt had us in mind.

We are informed that “science” is behind the government’s response but where is the supporting evidence? Instead of impartial advice, we are being fed unsubstantiated opinion from academics who are financially aligned with the Scottish government’s spin machine.

The latest falsehood to emerge is that somehow the identified case curve can only be flattened if we delay closing schools and colleges.

The hard international lessons, from the ground war against the virus, make a mockery of our government’s lofty opinion: no country on earth is saying “blast, we closed our schools way too early”.

Those pushing for a further delay on social distancing, to make the curve of the graph more Arthur’s Seat than Ben Nevis, forget that the former was once a volcano.

Next week will herald the first big eruptions from the exponential growth of this virus, something which this government’s “scientific” advice has stoked.

CALUM MILLER Polwarth Terrace Prestonpans, East Lothian

The Budget money for the NHS to deal with coronavirus is too little too late as the UK has fewer hospital beds per 1,000 population than Italy or any of the independent Scandinavian nations.

England now has fewer doctors and nurses per head than almost any developed country. However, we in Scotland can take some comfort as we have almost twice as many hospital beds per head than in England, plus a higher ratio of nurses and doctors.

Although we are still in the pandemic early warning response system, Boris Johnson is not allowing the UK to remain in the European Centre for Disease Control, which allows for the sharing of data and information about the spread of the virus and development of medicines across European Union states, thus enabling them to work together.

MARY THOMAS Watson Crescent, Edinburgh