Unmasking misconceptions as we learn to live with Covid

From: John Riseley, Harrogate.

WE are at the anniversary of precautions against coronavirus ranging from the crippling expensive to the easily affordable.

With predictions for our continuing such measures extending from weeks through months and into years, it behoves us to focus on the cheaper end of that spectrum.

I wear a mask when required to out of respect for social convention rather than any conviction that doing otherwise is likely to cause harm.

I was not an early adopter of the mask, based on the opinion of my NHS contacts that the disposable kind is of negligible value in ordinary circumstances. The greater effectiveness of more sophisticated masks was understandably not emphasised for fear of diverting limited supplies from professional use to the wider populace. My friends may have been being pessimistic about the humble paper or cloth mask, but it does seem plausible that there are better options.

Having had more than a year for production to adapt, might we not revisit the idea of better fitting masks with more efficient filters for general use? They would be on sale everywhere, with special encouragement in some towns to serve as a trial.

They could be fitted with a microphone and speaker for ease of communication and provision for a drinking straw. As in Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, we would withdraw from company only to eat.

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield.

THE question I’d like to ask our leaders is “Why does India have to manufacture a vaccine created in England and why can’t we make it here?”

It does not really make sense when we have now put ourselves at the mercy of both India and the EU. Surely we have the skills to do so and the capacity should not be too hard to be organised?

From: Peter Rickaby, Selby.

MINISTERS with over egged egos, lacking the nous to match, always think they know what’s best for the rest of us. Struggling to justify a continuation of Covid powers is a case in point. Allowing personal choice, as well as introducing logic and common sense, would undermine their pseudo superiority.

From: Henry Cobden, Ilkley.

SIR Keir Starmer continues to be critical of all aspects of Covid policy (Tom Richmond, The Yorkshire Post, March 27). Is he suggesting that the UK’s vaccine programme would be more advanced if Jeremy Corbyn and Labour had prevailed in the 2019 general election? I don’t think so.