The People’s Letters Page

Here is this week’s People’s Letters Page…

Dear Editor,

Sunday it was confirmed that I have Covid-19. How I got it remains a mystery, as I always wear my mask, always use hand sanitiser and always keep my distance.

However, not eveyone around me does the same as me.

My symptoms are a very sore throat, coughing, sneezing, headaches, loss of taste, loss of smell, fatigue, cold, hot. I am in a room isolating to protect my wife and two daughters (10 & 11).

My wife is a medical professional. She is now out of work.

Our health service is now down another frontline worker.

Thankfully, I am in good hands. But these good hands do not belong here at such a critical time for our health service.

I am double vaccinated. I have a Covid Certificate. Not every café asks for it. So I just walk out. My wife had to insist that staff at a particluar café, look for and look at, her Covid Certificate and supporting identification.

So where do we go to from here? Into isolation just like me if this continues. We can all do better than this. We must insist that others do better.

I am at the early stages of Covid-19 and its symptoms and have become a statistic on the evening news.

And that’s if I was counted. I don’t want to become part of my “Let’s not forget to remember campaign”.

Not yet anyhow.

Are we all in this together? Well I can’t answer that for everyone.

Let’s not forget to remember every single person during this pandemic.

Before it is too late.

Darren Lalor

LLB. Barrister at Law,
The Law Library.
Criminal Courts of Justice.
Parkgate Street.

Sir,

The Covid – 19 Vaccine is a privilege that many other people don’t have.
Katy Sheridan’s article in the Irish Times on Dec 1st hit the nail on the head with her piece regarding complaints about vaccine queues being a sad reflection on the entitled, negative public.

There are people in other countries who wish they had the same opportunity to protect themselves from COVID-19.

The distribution of vaccines is about the Global North v’s the Global South.
It is about inequality. It is about rich countries hoarding vaccines while countries in the south suffer.

It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever not to vaccinate the globe as otherwise, we will have to live like this with ongoing disruptions, challenges and stress.
It is like what we did with the HIV pandemic – Africa got the ARVs last and was at least 10 years behind the Global North.

As a result, children lost their parents, families were decimated and we are still picking up the pieces.

But in Africa, it is not just about the vaccines, it is about the logistics of delivering the vaccines too – they don’t have the opportunity to complain about waiting in line for a vaccine as often there is no queue available to them.

The vaccines are in limited supply in the Global South whilst they expire unused in the Global North.

The impact of COVID-19 across communities in Kenya has been devastating.
There are no subsidies; no support.

Today is about the survival of the families Brighter Communities Worldwide work with, in Kenya where COVID-19 is far from over and the pandemic has had a devastating effect across the region.

This is about children missing school and returning to the fields to work. This is about young pregnant girls facing a challenging future; this is about the breadwinners being unable to work who have no government support.

We have the opportunity to act in solidarity across the world.
No one is safe until we are all safe.

Yours, etc

Maria Kidney

Co-Founder Brighter Communities Worldwide
Cork.

Dear Editor,
We’re approaching the season to be jolly, but unfortunately it won’t be such a happy time for the creatures of field and forest.

Far from getting a respite from man’s inhumanity over Christmas, hunt and coursing clubs will be stepping up their assault on our wildlife heritage.

They like to think of it as sport, but that concept normally implies fair competition, which is completely absent from blood sport.

Up to seventy hounds against one fox is about as fair as Kelly Harrington versus a punch bag.

And the high point of a hunt, the moment when a fox, having dropped down from exhaustion, is eviscerated by the pack, has more in common with the banned practices of dog fighting and badger baiting than with normal recreational activity.

The Irish Hare, though in notable decline for the past half century and vulnerable to the deadly RHD2 virus, will face an upsurge of coursing over Yuletide.

Heedless of its child-like screeching when netted or manhandled, and the fact that it easily succumbs to internal injuries when mauled or pummelled by the dogs; coursing clubs snatch thousands of the animals from our countryside to perform at venues nationwide.

The surveys that pointed to big majorities favouring a ban on coursing have been ignored by successive governments, presumably because hares can’t vote and coursing clubs are politically well-connected.

The multi-hued pheasant rises majestically from a tree or bush, enhancing any winter scene, only to be blasted to a bloody clump of feathers.

In so-called driven shoots it fares even worse. The hand-reared birds practically waddle up to the shooters, heedless of danger owing to their deliberately nurtured disconnect with the wild.

They have as much of a “sporting chance” against the ranks of shooters as farm-yard hens would have against an M-60 machine gun.

And then, in case you can’t kill or maim enough of the above mentioned fauna, there’s a long list of water fowl that can be legally targeted. Gentle creatures that pose no threat to humans and that can’t fight back.

You can relax by a river or lake side and watch them writhe in their last agony when you pump them full of lead.

Some day, hopefully before Climate Change erases humanity, these persecuted creatures will get to live their short humble lives in peace… free of this tyranny that shames our species.

Thanking you,

John Fitzgerald