Our cold indifference

Maltese society has lost its moral compass. The recent case of Lamin Jaiteh, left injured on the pavement by those who ought to have offered him assistance, is another case in point. This incidence turns the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10, 25-37) upside down.

What will it take to make us admit with shame that this latest anti-social and anti-moral episode indicates a much more pervasive ethical sickness that our society is suffering from?  Are these just single, separate incidences by coarse-conscience individuals?  In a sense, yes. But, in another sense, a society so set in promoting materialist and individualist mentality as the sole vehicle of modern progress must bear the burden of such an injustice.

Our civil and social consciences are intoxicated with cold indifference. We have thrown our moral principles to the dogs, to the detriment of our human and spiritual values.

Fr Vincent Magri SJ – Naxxar

Costs and benefits of masks in schools

Schoolchildren wearing masks. Photo: Shutterstock.com

It is disheartening to see the level of the discussion regarding masks in school. Health Superintendent Charmaine Gauci argues that we have to follow the science and that masks reduce the spread of the virus (September 29). Nobody, at least nobody serious, is contesting that.

However, the real question is whether the benefits of the masks outweigh their costs and it is time that Gauci does not get away with just focusing on one side of the equation. And science has clearly indicated that masks come with costs.

When local experts (Times of Malta, September 26) argue to the contrary, they fail to take into account recent evidence on adverse effects of masks on the quality of communication. Most masks deteriorate the speech signal and also take away visual cues for lip-reading that are helpful and often necessary even for normal-hearing children in noisy environments (and I have heard that classrooms are not always perfectly quiet).

Hence, it is no surprise when other studies found that memory for spoken material is seriously impaired when the speaker wears a mask. The additional effort in understanding what is being said right now interferes with the consolidation of what had been said before. That is, children will remember and learn less if taught with masks on.

In this context, it is especially disheartening when doctors say that we need to follow the science and everything else is opinion. Yes, we do not know what happens if children are forced to wear masks in schools for years to come because doing such a study outside the pandemic situation would have been ethically questionable  since it subjects participants to considerable risks.

So, all we have are projections based on the available evidence and these are not “just opinions” as some medical doctors would frame it. In fact, all of climate science works on exactly the same premise since there are no planets around on which we could experiment what happens if we inject CO2 into their atmospheres. Doing a cost-benefit analysis, we have to see that COVID-19 does not pose a high risk to children and their families can and should be vaccinated.

Therefore, reducing a few transmissions with obligatory masks (masks are effective but not all powerful) does not outweigh the costs of reduced learning for all children. A sober cost-benefit analysis would, hence, suggest that using masks during class is a bad idea (but masks while moving around indoors may be a good idea).

Holger Mitterer, Department of Cognitive Science, University of Malta, Msida

Man vs woman

It never ceases to surprise me when highly respected, sometimes retired, mostly male, doctors and dentists (Carmel Sciberras, September 28, Ivan Padovani, October 2) should completely miss the point of my question.

I repeat, if we criminalise women for having abortions, why not the men that impregnate them? If it were true that Malta’s total ban on abortion was designed to protect the life of the “unborn child”, oxymoron as that term is, then the sperm donor should be criminalised to an equal extent.

Since it is only women who pay the price, it should be obvious that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the foetus (enough with the “unborn child”) and everything to do with the reprobate, patriarchal regulation of the bodies of women and girls in Malta.  

Isabel Stabile, obo Doctors for Choice – St Julian’s

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