DESPITE most people accepting the fact that coronavirus restrictions are very necessary to help prevent the spread of this dreadful disease there has been a fair bit of moaning from a very vocal minority. Complaints have emerged from all sections of society and all age groups, but comments made by Finlay Scott ("Hands up, who would want to be young today?", the Herald, August 20) were utterly irresponsible and not befitting of a Herald columnist.

He refers to the “largely harmless coronavirus”. Harmless? Really? Tens of thousands in the UK have died. Some survivors have spent months in hospital and many who have had the virus are experiencing long-lasting debilitating effects.

He claims that “lockdown has hit us harsher than older generations”. Try telling that to someone living in a nursing home who until very recently was unable to have visitors. Tell that to people who have been shielding due to other serious health issues or elderly people living alone and unable to leave the house.

He writes: “Seriously, no music in pubs?” The reason for that is perfectly clear and the science is sound, so there is no need for me to elaborate.

It is a known fact that a significant minority of people, young people in particular, have been gathering illegally in large numbers without social distancing. We have seen it on television news. The cluster in Aberdeen involving more than 200 cases was linked to such behaviour. To deny this happens is simply disingenuous.

As for gap year travels, I left school on a Friday and started work the following Monday. I didn’t have a summer holiday, let alone a gap year.

The baby boomers are not responsible for the world’s ills, they are not responsible for coronavirus and it is not our fault that the young are having a tough time.

We have all made sacrifices.

David Clark, Tarbolton.

IT'S with a real sense of gloom and frustration that I read in The Herald that the SNP is calling for extension of furlough scheme ("SNP urges Chancellor to follow Germany’s lead and extend the furlough scheme", The Herald, August 20). For as long as Nicola Sturgeon refuses to accept that Covid is here to stay and refuses to have an adult conversation about the level of infection and death that should be deemed acceptable, then not only will furlough be needed indefinitely, but our economy will never recover.

The politicians have designed a Catch-22 situation with the false dichotomy of saving lives or genuinely restarting the economy. Politicians need to be honest and accept that Covid is a fact of life like cancer, heart disease, stroke and the many other illnesses that kill hundreds of Scots each week – for these we take proportionate measures to tackle them, but not measures that cause far more long-term harm than good.

The continued refusal of Ms Sturgeon to have a truly adult, if not difficult, conversation about our future shows she is not fit to lead us forward – that she is by design consigning tens of thousands of people to the unemployment scrap heap/ her party's call to extend furlough is a thinly veiled acceptance of that. By definition, every action by Ms Sturgeon to introduce local lockdown or worse directly harms our economy and the future of every person reading this, be that the lifetime earnings of a young person, the chances of ever being re-employed for someone older or the worth of a pension for someone retired.

Our politicians are causing more harm than good by refusing to make genuinely tough decisions. We don't need furlough - we need jobs to go back to and with every continued day of extreme measures from this Government, there are fewer jobs left.

Jamie Black, Largs.

IT’S distressing to read the Scottish Government’s three-times-weekly (not daily) Covid briefing described by Alastair Ross (Letters, August 20) as “the Nicola Sturgeon Show”: Ms Sturgeon is only doing her job as First Minister, and at this grim time in all our lives, it’s not a job to be envied.

No doubt she’d be the butt of equally mean-spirited criticism if she didn’t keep us all informed, or regularly sent a deputy to take the not-always-friendly questions.

I, for one, am glad of the regular briefings. And, of course, the option always remains for Mr Ross to switch his telly off.

Ailsa Ferguson, Glasgow G12.

I CAN empathise with Alastair Ross, who would like to know the cost of the daily Nicola Sturgeon bore. I have tried to establish the viewing figures for what has now become an ongoing, daily SNP political broadcast, but BBC Scotland has remained tight-lipped regarding my information requests, pointing me instead to a third party body to whom it supplies viewing figures.

Moreover, my initial e-mail to the Head of BBC Scotland outlining my information request, sent to an email address for the individual in question found on the BBC website, resulted in an automated reply saying this email address does not accept incoming mail.

For a public body, the BBC is far too secretive with non-commercial information, I suspect because it is only too aware – and maybe somewhere in the organisation somewhat embarrassed – that the cost per viewer for this daily bore is wholly unjustified.

Paul McPhail, Glasgow G43.

IT is wrong to allow obvious infectious disease spreaders such as foreign travel, pubs, schools, funfairs, and amusement arcades to resume. Pubs and schools are already regenerating Covid infection. Meanwhile, easily controlled essential medical contact – such as in opticians – is denied. Proof positive that the entire process is being managed on a crowd-pleaser basis.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinross.

OVER recent weeks I have noticed a marked increase in the number of individuals in supermarkets and shopping malls not wearing masks, some quite nonchalantly. Whilst I do not wish to impose unnecessary authoritarianism, the numbers failing to comply with the law is now getting out of hand, and pleas to use common sense are falling on deaf ears. Steps need to be taken to prevent people without good and verifiable cause for not wearing a mask from entering shops and malls.

I accept that this may be harder for small shops to apply, but at least supermarkets and shopping malls with security staff need to implement a no mask, no entry rule. To make things easier, free masks or masks at nominal cost could be available upon entry.

It only takes one individual to unwittingly cause a catastrophe. As far as claims this will impinge on individual rights are concerned, sorry, for the present we are living in times when individual rights must take second place to the overall common good. To deliberately believe otherwise is nothing short of selfish.

Tom Garrett, Bishopton.

IS it possible that retailers who allow non-exempt persons to enter their premises and make purchases without wearing personal protective equipment as required, currently, by the Scottish Government's edict, are also in breach of a mandatory order unless said retailers take action by refusing to serve said persons?

Patrick Garthwaite, Blairgowrie.

Read more: OK, boomers, would you want to be a young one today?