Not all COVID measures were unnecessary

I read Jean Karl Soler’s opinion piece ‘From COVID-19 to monkeypox: avoid repeating the mistakes’ (June 18) with interest. I am no doctor or medical practitioner but I am taken aback by his premise that all COVID measures were a waste of time and unnecessary.

The impact vaccines have had in reducing hospitalisation and death was underplayed. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

He seems to conveniently forget that the earliest variants were considerably more lethal than the current Omicron strains and the authorities really did not know what they were dealing with, so ultra caution was the only approach.

He also underplays the impact that vaccines have had in reducing hospitalisation and death (although not necessarily infection). But what really astonished me, coming from a medical practitioner, is his reference to mortalities ‘over their life expectancy’. Who is he, a doctor committed to the hippocratic oath, to determine when an individual has superseded their individual life expectancy.

Our elders are not merely statistics who may or may not exceed the life expectancy for their cohort in age and gender, they are human beings with families and friends who play a vital role in the rich fabric of life.

How dare he condemn them for going against a statistical norm or having underlying conditions? The fact remains that some of those who died may have had ‘underlying conditions’ but those underlying conditions would have been perfectly manageable had COVID not killed them.

Janet Wojtkow – St Julian’s

Who had it been?

Those of us who viewed the programme Passato e Presente, conducted by journalist and historian Paolo Mieli on Rai Storia recently, must have been, like me, somewhat taken aback. The programme featured Italy’s declaration of war announced rather histrionically by the Duce from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia on the side of the Axis on that fateful evening of June 10, 1940.

Among the numerous placards identifying the various regions sourcing the mammoth crowd was one bearing the name ‘Malta’. At the time, our island was considered by the fascists as Terra Irredenta. I wonder who could possibly have been the person carrying this placard: could he have been Carmelo Borg Pisani? I would think that professor Carlo Mallia was not likely to get involved in such a rowdy demonstration; or was it just a fake minor feature staged by Ciano’s foreign ministry, even though Ciano personally was against Italy’s war intervention?

Besides Mallia and Borg Pisani, a number of Maltese were still in Italy at that time, some of whom were accused of high treason and unanimously acquitted by our courts immediately after the war.

Amabile Galea – Balzan