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SIR – The Health Security Agency UK tells us some two million lateral flow and PCR tests are performed each day and just under 200,000 of these are positive for Covid. That’s 10 per cent of the tests undertaken.
Of people with positive tests, 2,200 (1.1 per cent) go to hospital and, (according to the latest weekly average on January 3) 156 (0.08 per cent) a day sadly die. This compares with approximately 1,600 of us dying each day from any cause. That’s just 10 per cent of daily deaths being with (not from) Covid, compared to 460 (29 per cent) for heart disease and 450 (28 per cent) for cancer.
The number actually dying from (rather than with) Covid is likely to be significantly less than 10 per cent. None the less, the three-fold higher daily deaths from heart disease and cancer receive far less government and media intervention.
Surely the cost/benefits of current thinking should be re-evaluated and we should get on with our lives.
Dr Alan Latham
Seaford, East Sussex
SIR – The NHS has told me that, as a vulnerable person, I may be given the new antiviral pills if I test positive for Covid, and has kindly sent me a home PCR test.
The return package is pre-addressed to “NHS Test and Trace Regional Lab” via Royal Mail Tracked 24 hour. In practice this could take two or three days (with rural last-posting times and pesky weekends). The NHS website states that the test result may take up to three days. Then there is waiting for a clinician to telephone and a wait to receive the pills. So I could very easily end up outside the maximum five-day window for the medication’s efficacy.
So, if I use the test, I’d like to arrange for a courier or taxi to deliver the pack to the lab instead of using Royal Mail. I will very gladly pay for this. However, it is difficult to find the actual lab address, and impossible to be sure of it.
If the “test and quickly medicate” process takes too long, I and others like me may become hospital patients, additional burdens for the NHS. This is something that we are paying millions of pounds to try to avoid.
Karen Sturtivant
Stopham, West Sussex
Prohibitive census
SIR – Millions of us have been waiting in anticipation for the 1921 Census to be published. Yesterday, Findmypast, the only supplier of online access, heralded its arrival.
I am dismayed to find that every name searched will cost £2.25 or £3.15. This makes the exercise totally uneconomical; like most people I have hundreds of names in my family trees.
Christopher Sabin
Purley, Surrey
The Colston jury
SIR – Much has been said about the jury decision to acquit in the trial about the toppling of Colston’s statue in Bristol. The verdict went against the judge’s explanation of the evidence and the law. A retired judge, His Honour Nic Madge (Letters, January 7), says that jury decisions are sacrosanct.
Each juror must have taken an oath to “faithfully try the defendant and give a true verdict according to the evidence”. The law was explained to them: that dislike of the statue was no justification for its damage. Is there no penalty for breaking this oath?
David Hawkins
Caerphilly, Glamorgan
SIR – Wouldn’t it have been better if the police had done their job and prevented the removal and damage of public property in the first place?
Jim Sproson
Stockton-on-Tees, Co Durham
SIR – My old Colston dishwasher is now deemed to be tainted by racism. So I plan to dispose of it in Bristol harbour and am looking for volunteers to help.
Refreshments will be served.
Peter Cheshire
Limpsfield, Surrey
Gambling risks
SIR – I co-founded the charity Gambling with Lives with other bereaved parents and partners to warn families about the dangerous forms of gambling – some with addiction and at-risk rates of up to 50 per cent – and the associated extreme risk of suicide. Every day in the UK someone takes their life due to gambling. Nobody warned us or the loved ones we lost.
Where is the freedom of young people bombarded with advertising and predatory so-called “free bet” bonuses? Where is the freedom of parents unaware that electronic gambling is a risk to life, about which to warn their children, alongside tobacco, drugs and alcohol?
The idea that bereaved families want to ban gambling is a distraction. It’s not on the agenda. We just want to raise awareness and stop the deaths.
Liz Ritchie
Gambling with Lives
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
Repairing churches
SIR – Sir Tony Baldry (Letters, January 5) rightly says that the maintenance of parish churches will “require the involvement of local communities … in helping to maintain a building of heritage importance”.
Parish councils are an obvious vehicle for such support. It is therefore anachronistic that Section 8 of the Local Government Act 1894 instead prohibits parish councils from funding repairs to churches (unless, of course, the church has been closed down ).
Matthew Wald
Liskeard, Cornwall
SIR – My parish church has certainly not ignored the old and infirm during the pandemic (Letters, January 6). Services have been streamed every Sunday. When care-home managers agreed it was safe, the Eucharist has been taken to residence. When pastoral visits were not appropriate because members of the congregation were isolating, regular phone calls have been made to check on their well-being and to have a chat.
A Christian all my life, I have yet to find a member of the clergy who treats their job as if it were any other.
Rosie Rushton
Weston Favell, Northamptonshire
Blacksmith’s car care
SIR – My first car in 1956 was a 1935 Morris 8. Like Karen Mullan’s Triumph Herald (Letters, January 5), it had a rotten chassis allowing the rear-hinged doors to open unexpectedly.
I found some old bed iron in my father’s workshop and our local blacksmith kindly welded it for me. No unsuspecting girlfriend was ever ejected.
When my son passed his test on a moped at 16 he was able to do two paper rounds instead of one. He then passed his test on our car and bought with his pocket money a Triumph Herald, in which he managed three paper rounds. However, the driver’s door opened on the first roundabout, but by then I was well experienced in fixing a rotten chassis.
Henry Harvey
Dittisham, Devon
SIR – When our son was born, my husband came to collect us from the maternity home, pulling up outside the entrance in our white convertible Triumph with its black hood down.
The matron who came out with me was horrified. “Put the top up immediately. You can’t take a baby home in that!”
He of course complied.
Sue Davies
Bromley, Kent
SIR – Though, at 43, my Triumph Spitfire 1500 is still going strong, many years ago on a steep downhill curve in Tuscany, a front wheel decided to come off.
Happily, the Spitfire simply halted on the spot, while the wheel continued downhill – finally toppling over in front of two oncoming Italian cars, whose drivers had paused to observe this curious English spectacle. But each had somewhere to get to and drove calmly on, carefully making their way past both wheel and wreck.
Michael Upton
Edinburgh
SIR – In 1971, my husband saw an old Morris Minor on a compost heap in a garden. He fetched his car battery, attached it and the Morris started.
It was my first car. Resprayed black and purple, it served for many years.
When our first child was born, we took out the front seat and the carry-cot sat on the floor. No safety rules in those days!
Patricia A Craig
Oakham, Rutland
SIR – In January 1969 I was invited on a first date. Theatre was followed by supper in a restaurant, after which I was escorted to my parked Morris 1000 only to find it refused to start, as the battery was flat.
Waving the starting handle around I fully expected my “date” to swing the car engine into action. No such luck! He had recently had his appendix removed.
Instead, he sat confidently and comfortably at the steering wheel, his foot delicately hovering over the accelerator, to rev it up as soon as the engine sprang into life from my energetic swinging of the starting handle. How romantic was that?
Happily, that “date” has been my husband for 53 years. But we no longer have cars with starting handles.
Trot Lavelle
London SE5
Political pronouns
SIR – Judith Woods quotes a friend asking: “Is it a big deal to type ‘she/her’ after the signature on her email?”
Those who feel pressurised to add such pronouns should simply point out that where she/her is already obvious from the first name (such as Judith), then it is making a political statement.
The reason we do not add political statements to our work email signatures is that it would upset many customers and fellow employees. Otherwise, I would be happy to add “Conservative”. But I know that this would be pounced upon by HR.
Jeffrey Sultoon
Cobham, Surrey
Memory returns for fingers on the piano
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