Letters to the Editor: Roll on with the vaccine roll-out

EDITOR – I have put pen to paper to voice my opinion in regards getting the preventative jab for Covid a while back.

Firstly, I must stress that I don’t have a doctorate or a letter of any kind after my name, but I’m still entitled to a common-sense opinion on the matter as it affects every single person around the globe, including me.

In a normal setting, 100% of people would be ecstatic when a preventative cure/s is discovered for a disease that deprives people from enjoying a few more years on this earth to see their children, nephews or nieces growing up. What is so abnormal about the vaccinations this time around is that there is a mixed-grill of minority voices applying megaphone diplomacy by spreading ridiculous rumours through social media platforms about how pharmaceutical companies are making mega-buck profits out of this pandemic.

Yet these same people pump up profits by buying their beauty, health/medicines/birth control and cigarette products that are mass produced by multinational companies the world over, and see nothing wrong with it!  Conflicting standards, if you ask me.

Covid-19 should be looked at in the same way as your car going for the NCT test. If it is not roadworthy, it fails, unless checked and gets the required bits and pieces to put more miles on the clock. Perhaps not the correct analogy to make, but there you go.

If you refuse to get the Covid jab, you fail the test, as you’re no longer roadworthy because you’re a danger to yourself, never mind all other family members, friends and neighbours.

It’s a simple analysis to clear muddy waters of un-solicited debris. I find it insulting that people who partake in unwarranted protests think it wholly acceptable to use the ‘tricolour’ as a beacon in justifying their opposition to restrictions that are deemed necessary on the advice of our country’s medical profession to prevent hospital wards being overwhelmed by patients suffering with the debilitating and life-threatening effects of Covid. The alternative to doing something is to do nothing which seems to be the airy-fairy cure that anti vaccination/covid believers are insisting on. Encapsulated into these marches are people who are ideologically opposed in every sense of the word, but yet it serves their narrow-minded purposes because many would feel just as comfortable holding a Brexit-union-jack or swastika aloft, never mind insulting the tricolour.

If distancing/mask wearing restrictions were not in place, all other medical procedures as bad as progress may be right now, wouldn’t have a hope in hell of seeing the light of day otherwise. It’s unfortunate that there are people who blindly choose to wear blinkers in regards this pandemic by being led up a blind alley by people with ulterior and selfish motives.

Roll on the rollout.

James Woods,

Gort an Choirce,

Dún na nGall.

We are finally on course

EDITOR – Over the past few weeks governments across Europe have been playing a confusing game approving and withdrawing the vaccine.

It has all made for a worrying situation, particularly for the elderly folk next in line for their jabs.

This is a prolonged period of misery and Ireland is finally on course to get the vaccine rollout on track at last.

But four million jabs in three months to cover the whole
population may not be enough, but it will make a massive difference  by protecting those most at risk.

As deaths and infections fall,  economic activity will rise and we will get back on track to having a functioning society, once more providing we use the right vaccine. Until that point, all we can do is work together and get as many vaccinated as possible, so as many needless deaths can be avoided.

Noel Harrington

Kinsale

We should give them a better life

EDITOR – A little-known fact is that over 100 million farmed animals are slaughtered in Ireland each year. That’s 275,000 every day, 12,000 every hour, three every second.

These are mind-boggling statistics. If we could see a visual image of these, all gathered together, it would be bewildering. It would be impossible to take in, such relentless killing of innocent animals who never did any of us any harm, who had the misfortune to be pliable, breedable, farmable, commodifiable.

These are sentient, social animals who have a capacity to suffer and to feel pain, who have deep-rooted behavioural needs and desires, and who can experience a wide range of emotions. The more we learn about them, the more troubled we should be about how we exploit them, how we abuse them, how we kill them.

Thankfully, there is at last a wakening up to the fact that the planet cannot sustain for much longer such a massive overproduction of farm animals (globally, 75 billion land animals are killed each year). We need to move away from eating animals. And if we can’t do that, we need at the very least to give those animals we continue to eat a life worth living. We bring these intelligent, social, emotionally-complex animals into the world for the sole purpose of killing them and eating them.

Are we not morally obliged to give them the best life we can, as opposed to making their short and miserable lives brutal and inhumane?

Gerry Boland

Keadue,

Co Roscommon

All we want is a level playing field

EDITOR – We are a small company that offers short breaks in our self-catering cottages and treehouses. In 2020 our treehouses were named as one of the Top 50 Places to Stay in Ireland – it’s just a shame nobody could stay.

As the country is currently under Level 5, we are obliged to remain closed (except for essential workers who need accommodation in pursuance of their essential duties).  We’ve been closed for 35 of the last 52 weeks. But it appears that the government is prepared to turn a blind eye when multinational companies, such as Airbnb, plough on regardless.

Yesterday I received an advert from Airbnb with the subject line ‘Cork: another weekend at home?’ Not exactly targeting essential workers! Whilst we remain closed, is it fair that I can book any one of more than 400 cottages in Cork and Kerry for a stay beginning today, April 13th, through Airbnb? Of course not. Failte Ireland tell me ‘we also remain in contact with the Airbnb platform, who have committed to ensuring compliance with the national legislation’. Really?

We are not looking to close down the Airbnb sector, but we do want a level playing field. We are urging the government to follow the UK model for self-catering which treats self-catering differently to hotels, guesthouses and B&Bs.

In the UK, where the seven day Covid-19 incidence rate is 55, the self-catering sector opened on April 12th with hotels to follow five weeks later, on May 17th. Their restrictions state that ‘self-catering accommodation for household lets of a single family only can resume on 12th April’. This makes perfect sense. In the LEAs of Skibbereen and Bantry the 14-day incidence rate at time of writing is zero. In Cork county as a whole it’s 48 – even less than the UK.

If people within Cork county can travel to West Cork, then an overnight stay where there is no interaction or congregation with other people is perfectly safe ¬– and a couple of nights in a treehouse with a hot-tub will probably do the world of good to someone’s physical and mental well-being.

Anna & Peter Warburton

Cottages for Couples

Grove House,

Skibbereen

What we need is clarity and transparency

EDITOR – I noted a news report in recent months in your paper, wherein a medic called the rollout of the vaccination process an ‘omnishambles’.

But that was long before the current cracks in the vaccine rollout even started to show. This week, we are hearing about issues with both the AstraZeneca and the Johnson and Johnson vaccines. Now I will be out my front door faster than you can say ‘needle’ as soon as they give me an appointment, but in the meantime, I just wish I could get some clarity and transparency on when that might be.

Sarah Crowe

Ballincollig