Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Lockdowns can be unlocked
I read Alex Claridge’s letter [‘Lockdowns are destructive acts’, Gazette, October 28] with interest and not a little bewilderment. It’s all well and good for Alex to tell us what he does not like – and he makes this abundantly clear – but it would have been helpful if he had told us what course of action he would look to in the fight against the pandemic that is sweeping the world.
The gist of his letter would suggest that he wants to do nothing, to allow nature to run its course and let the devil take the hindmost.
There is general agreement that were we to follow this course of non-action then infections would mushroom, health services would be overrun and death rates would multiply.
I find it difficult to believe that anyone would want to recommend this option. Lockdowns are certainly destructive but they can be unlocked and are not necessarily terminal.
Death is both destructive and terminal. I know which option I would go for.
Rather than the somewhat tedious Moby Dick I would recommend that Alex re-read Albert Camus’s La Peste (The Plague).
The town in Camus’s novel goes into lockdown, the fight against the plague is never abandoned and the battle is in the end won. There is in that fine book a lesson for us all.
Roger Clark
Whitstable Road, Canterbury Thank you for your report on how the Covid restrictions are affecting people's lives and your well-reasoned editorial. But no thanks for the diatribe from letter writer Alex Claridge attacking the medical profession. NHS workers have been putting their own lives on the line in just going to work. Many have died. They struggle to breathe through cumbersome PPE equipment and, often drenched in sweat, see half their critical care patients die. Then they have to break the news to families who could not even be present. Imagine the physical and mental anguish.
Twice now this government has failed to act in time to slow the infection rate and protect the economy. Once last March, which led to us hitting the highest death rate in Europe, and again three weeks ago when a two-week ‘circuit breaker’ over half-term might have prevented
the far worse health and economic outcomes we will now have to endure.
But what Mr Claridge, some Consrvative MPS and now Nigel Farage seem to miss is the effect of their views on our health service and, indeed on us. Of course, the nailbars and nightclubs, the poodle parlours and pubs employ a lot of people, but do we need them more than keeping people alive?
We spend less per head of population on healthcare than almost any other western nation. Our hospitals have been working virtually at capacity for months, if not years. More Covid cases will mean once more converting wards and theatres to Covid-only areas, delaying care for cancer patients or those in agony waiting for elective joint surgery. True, we now have the Nightingale hospitals, but where are the staff to man them to come from? I’m sure furloughed air stewardesses will be caring but will they have the skills of a highly trained nurse? And what about the doctors?
Yes, I have huge sympathy for those who have lost their jobs. Yes, I am appalled at the situation faced by so many young people seeking employment. Yes, I fear the financial reckoning which future generations will have to face from a government which has consistently been too slow and too late in its decisions. Poor decisions which mean our debt per capita will be the worst in Europe.
The alternative is to allow our hospitals to literally fill up. This would mean critically injured accident victims, those suffering heart attacks, or desperately ill Covid patients are just turned away to die. That is not a scenario befitting a civilised society, nor one I ever wish to see.
Cllr Nick Eden-green (Lib Dem) Wincheap Ward