WE are only two weeks into the lockdown and already I dread venturing outside.

When we go for our weekly shop I am amazed at the number of people who appear to have no concept of two metres’ distance. And what about the group of people who appear to have great difficulty understanding the purpose of the directional arrows on the supermarket aisle floors?

During our walk in the park this morning I heard the slap of fast approaching feet. A jogger, peching and panting, grunting and groaning with assorted bodily fluids flying, walloped by us. With his earbuds in, he seemed totally oblivious to everyone else.

As well as introducing Covid-19 testing, how about introducing a basic common sense/courtesy test that people must pass before being allowed out of doors?

Jim Coley, Glasgow G73.

CLICK and Collect (a new experience, thanks to Covid-19) is like Christmas, but it conceals a menace. You don’t get some of what you asked for. You get some things you didn’t ask for. Some of them are more welcome than others. It’s Christmas!

The menace: this morning I asked the smiling young mum who wheeled out our patchwork grocery order what the Great British Public were like at this time. She shocked us with her response: "Awful."

We are so lucky. Most of the world are starved of food, soap and healthy water; hand sanitiser is just science fiction.

They say Lent involves self-denial, Easter new life. That worker’s answer made me wonder if we could use this month to deny ourselves grumbling and give those who serve us a new life of nothing-but-appreciation. 2020 could be the year Scotland had simultaneous Lent, Easter and Christmas for three months.

C Peter White, Torrance.

THERE are several books and films about Florence Nightingale, and now, several hospitals are being named in her honour, so it seems fitting that the Glasgow hospital should be named in honour of another brave and selfless nurse, Louisa Jordan, who was born only a couple of miles from the hospital which will bear her name (Letters, April 3).

As the people of Serbia honour her and her colleagues every year, the real question we should be asking is: why has her courage and sacrifice been largely ignored in the country of her birth? I think Jeane Freeman has made a wise choice in recognising Sister Jordan, and it is appalling that in these terrible times the name of a hospital should be used for political point-scoring by a few mean-spirited people.

Frankly, it insults the memory of both Florence Nightingale and Louisa Jordan. Surely the only thing we all should be concentrating on is following Government guidelines and doing what we can to help, in the hope that none of these planned hospitals, whether in Scotland or the rest of the UK, will need to be used.

Ruth Marr, Stirling.

WOULD Douglas Alexander have demurred had the temporary hospital built in Glasgow commemorated one Dr John Sutherland rather than Louisa Jordan?

The Edinburgh-born physician, after all, was Florence Nightingale's medical mentor and collaborator both in the Crimea and subsequently back in Britain.

Brian Scott, Lenzie.

WE see many Covid-19 statistics published on a daily basis regarding the relentless march of this grim disease.

It is important to see the number of cases and deaths but as important is the number of patients admitted to hospital and then discharged well.

In my medical career, like many others, when you have done all you can the last remaining vestige of care is HOPE.

As the crisis deepens this statistic may help improve the battered morale of the hard-pressed health care workers and give them hope that this can and will be beaten.

Dr AB Stuart, Bridge of Allan.

WE should be very grateful to Sweden for taking a different, much more restrained approach to dealing with Covid-19, regardless of whether its approach turns out to be wise or not. Because of the Swedish government’s very different strategy we will, in a couple of months, be able to answer the question whether the lockdowns in Britain and elsewhere were justified.

In effect Sweden is providing a control and thus enabling us to take a scientific approach to judging the lockdown. On the one hand no new medication is licensed without undergoing extensive testing involving a control group and double blind testing. On the other hand, our Government has taken economy-crashing action on the basis of a computer model, albeit one created by epidemiologists.

The damage to our economy is so extensive that we simply cannot move on without knowing whether the experts' advice and the Government’s actions were appropriate. A comparison with Sweden will allow us to do this.

Otto Inglis, Crossgates, Fife.

I THINK we would all like to find out who caused the coronavirus. Surely there is a guilty party who could be prosecuted and jailed. The guilty ones are the wildlife traffickers who caught the wild animals and sent them to a fresh meat or wet market in Wuhan. These animals, of all kinds, are caught and sent to market in the most awful, disgustingly cruel conditions, jammed into small crates, which are piled on top of one another. They are then slaughtered in unhygienic conditions, thus causing infections to spread from animal to human hosts

But we have criminals that we can catch and jail, and thus stop this dangerous trade. Stop the traffickers and stop the spread of these viruses.

As long we are prepared to treat the sentient creatures we share the planet with so disrespectfully, we are going to continue to suffer from these pandemics. The answer is in our hands.

Margaret Forbes, Kilmacolm.

IN his recent article about staying at home ("Sadly, staying at home doing nothing is harder than it looks", The Herald, March 31), Andrew McKie name-checked in one column three distinguished French writers. A pity that his erudition did not extend to including another “aperçu” about the wisdom of staying quietly and peacefully in one’s home in the famous last sentence in Voltaire’s Candide: “Il faut cultiver notre jardin”.

Ian Boyes, Stirling.

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