Young people will be the biggest victims of virus crisis

WHAT happens when the very acceptable phrase ‘temporary layoffs’ becomes permanent layoffs for a great many employees languishing at home today, wondering how they’ll cope until, say, next Saturday?

Once the virus panic is over, we will still have the consequences of this gigantic economic crash to deal with. No amount of misplaced positivity and patriotism now will replace the fear of not just Covid-19, but of the long-lasting poverty to come, also.

Financial ruin is, for now, the horror we are scared to, understandably, even contemplate.

In the HSE winter flu update, issued in January this year, there were 28 deaths and over 2,000 people hospitalised from November last. All flu strains can be lethal, so it is important to place perspective where it fits and from where we can draw upon for reassurances at this time.

Good luck, everybody, as we try to follow the current rules. This pandemic will also pass.

Being of an older age, and not impacted as to my finances, I shudder at the thought of the financial destruction the young could well be facing, immediately and into the long term. ROBERT SULLIVAN,

Bantry, Co. Cork.

Terrifying times

ON Mother’s Day, I was resolutely set on keeping to the rules of behaviour now set down for us.

My son and grandson arrived with the goodies. From a distance we exchanged greetings.

The most essential goody of all was my Sunday Mail, and I settled down to a lovely peaceful read.

But peace was soon shattered in the most brutal way. The most terrifying thing I have ever read soon presented itself.

I refer to the eyewitness account of death from the virus by an anonymous doctor in a British hospital. There was talk of medics totally incapable of preventing people dying in total agony.

I would never normally feel euthanasia was a first port of call for a dying person, but reading what I was reading convinced me it was an absolute essential.

I can’t have been the only older reader who was utterly terrified by the information in that article and the reports that they have stopped putting the over-60s on ventilation in Italy. It made me very angry too, but we need to have that conversation and we need total lockdown now.

JOAN GRENNAN, Sligo.

Let’s keep our cool

THE pandemic is a serious threat and something none of us has ever had to deal with before. But what has happened to our common sense? To our sense of sharing, to our community spirit?

I understand it is frightening, but the scenes I have seen in supermarkets are nothing short of mind-boggling. Why are people panic buying? Do a two-week shop and if you need anything else, ask family or friends to help. You don’t need 40 tins of vegetables, 25 packs of dry pasta and eight bottles of hand wash. Don’t even get me started on toilet paper! Just buy what you need.

ALYSON HOWE, by email.

Do it by the book

AS THE author of four published novels, I know what it’s like to self-isolate. You lock yourself in a quiet room, sit down at a screen and head off to a fictional world 80,000 words away. Each book occupies well over a year.

It’s a good suggestion that self- isolating older people should write their memoirs. Why not have a stab at a short story or a novel?

The only drawback is when you tap out the words ‘the end’, say goodbye to the cast of new friends you’ve invented and return to the real world. But if your work gets into print, you’ll have the joy of introducing your characters to the rest of the world. With apologies to literary agents and publishers who will be buried under an avalanche of new material.

TONY EDWARDS, by email.