Trump might be right to temporarily ban immigration to tackle the virus

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

In “temporarily” banning all immigration, President Trump is obviously using the coronavirus pandemic for political gain.

But in health terms, might he be right? If a country isolates itself with appropriate internal measures, surely it can eventually eliminate homegrown transmission. Later it can ease up by permitting freedom of travel between countries that have done the same. Inbound travellers from other countries where infection still exists could be permitted on condition that they are tested on arrival and also self-isolate for two weeks in approved centres – both at their own expense. It’s draconian, and like Trump, others would use it for their unpleasant political ends, but could it work?

Patrick Cosgrove
Bucknell, Shropshire

Plant-based diet is not the answer

Whilst fully agreeing with Jeannette Schael’s letter about the risks and horrors inherent in wet markets and illegal wildlife trade, surely the answer to her question “Would such a global disaster on this unprecedented scale arise from cultivating plant food?” is “Yes”, due to famine.

Given our gross overpopulation of and damage to the Earth, is there not the potential for crop failures on a scale to dwarf historic incidents such as the Irish potato blight of the 19th century, or the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s? Drought, wildfire and flood in both hemispheres, reliance on vast monocultures, the spread of plant pests and diseases into areas with no resistance or immunity by inadvertent introductions through trade, or by misguided deliberate attempts at disease or pest control, or by the organism’s own quests for survival on the shifting fronts of climate change: for a subsistence farmer or a huge conglomerate reliant on chemical cocktails, the outcome of failure is basically the same: no crop to eat or sell.

The current spread of xylella fastidiosa laying waste to olive groves, a vital and healthy resource to so many for millennia, is surely one indicator of such fragility.

Nature always demonstrates its capability to redress imbalance, and the cost of feeding millions more mouths with ever diminishing resources, animal or vegetable, is one of the many aspects of this crisis that cannot be ignored when we emerge from this into a hopefully better world.

Rick Biddulph
Farnham, Surrey

A deathly perspective

The Independent’s reportage of the coronavirus pandemic, in common with other media, suggests that we are not comfortable with death and dying.

Pandemics come and go, but, unfortunately, whether it is common flu or Covid-19, people die. It has always been so and “time’s winged chariot” comes for all of us eventually – a 100 per cent certainty.

Of course, it is right to take sensible precautions, but the fear is exaggerated. If the figure for current UK deaths is measured against the total UK population then the risk of dying of coronavirus is around 0.013 per cent. An unprecedented lockdown for a small risk.

Curiously, our fear of death does not extend to a total ban on smoking, alcohol, excess sugar intake and junk diets, all of which are major causes of untimely deaths. Nor are we so concerned about migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, or Yemeni deaths caused by British armaments.

Perhaps our greatest fear is that the NHS, through years of underfunding and mismanagement, cannot cope with the grim reaper’s sudden purge. That is the core admission in the daily briefings from Downing Street.

Lyn Atterbury
Pila, Poland

I am not going anywhere

Why the clamour about lifting the current restrictions? There is no cure (yet) and the virus is still in our communities. Any decision about easing restrictions will be based on whether the hospitals would be likely to cope with the resultant number of ill people.

I submit that the reason the nation has obeyed the restrictions so well is not because of any fear of being fined. We are frightened of the consequences of being infected with Covid-19.

I do not intend to return to “normal” behaviour any time soon, whatever the government decrees. I am fortunate; I am retired. I feel sorry for those who may be coerced into returning to work, thereby increasing the risk to themselves.

John Doylend
Bungay, Suffolk

Rusty skillset

We are told many of our politicians studied PPE at university. So why are we having all these problems?

Andrew McLuskey​
Ashford, Middlesex

Action speaks louder than silence

In what way does this irresponsible Tory government imagine that supporting a minute’s silence for NHS workers who have died from Covid-19 excuses them for their total negligence in not providing these faithful citizens with the essential protection they needed in the first place?

Let us not mistake this posturing by the government as any substitute for the genuine care which it should have provided, which would have saved these and countless other lives. The government’s support for this is as empty a gesture as a Boris Johnson handshake, and insulting to those whose lives have been lost. Let the people of this country express our grief however we need, but please let it not be used to absolve the administration of their failures in this tragedy.

Too much time has been lost, and too many lives, to indulge this government with this charade.

Hilary Ruston​
Frome, Somerset