THE EDITOR: Look at this picture: You have a small business losing money left, right and centre during the lockdown. You have the bank and your landlord hovering to pounce for money owed. How can you entertain the thought of being open-minded with any unemployed worker coming with nonsense talk about not wanting to be vaccinated? Are you expected to be blindingly sympathetic?

If indeed plain talk is not bad manners in TT, consider the following. I am not like the Prime Minister who is constrained to play nice and say it is a personal choice choosing not to be vaccinated. I personally want my business to recover. I want TT to achieve herd immunity. This calls for every citizen to come on board and be vaccinated for the good of the country.

Obviously there will be a few unfortunates who for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated. But when running a business where members of the public can give the employees covid19 and possibly a dangerous variant, you cannot encourage prospective employees endangering their own lives and others because of selfish negative behaviour.

Vaccine hesitancy can have the ultimate bad effect of restarting the pandemic on a more contagious path. Therefore, at this moment in time, and with so many unemployed, I am unable to consider people who refuse to be vaccinated.

Covid19 with its deadly variants will be part of our lives for some time. Some people, including the non-mask wearers, need to urgently think about what is considered sanctity of life.

LYNETTE JOSEPH

Diego Martin