Make decisions based on health and science

I am a Scottish scientist, and after reading the various ideas put in by the people of Scotland, I am depressed. Most revolve around creating 'herd immunity' and 'getting life back to normal', but these people fail to see the science. Herd immunity will not happen, and all you will do is create a danger to many parts of society. The healthy and young can become severely unwell and we do not yet fully understand the true impact of 'long covid'.

What happened to compassion? Do we not care unless we are directly affected? We need to adapt to deal with this virus now, or else we will end up in an even larger mess than we are already in.

I ask for several things:

1. Shielding as protection within employment. This means that those who are clinically vulnerable should have a legal right to work at home. This is what shielding should be. No one is forced into this but employers have to comply and have to allow working from home for these individuals.

2. Quicker localised action. For example, Glasgow is an absolute mess right now and I do not understand why pubs and restaurants remain open. Faster action by the Scottish Government could have prevented this from happening. We need fast action within areas of high covid transmission.

3. Transparency of data and compliance with WHO standards. The WHO guidelines state that the virus is deemed 'out of control' within any country with a greater than 5% positivity rate for 2 weeks. This is Scotland. We have had greater than 5% for more than 2 weeks - for the last week this has been significantly above 10%. I implore the Scottish Government to look at the science and to stop sticking their heads in the sand.

4. An admission of the role of schools in community transmission. Since schools reopened in the middle of August, Scotland has had gradually increasing levels of the virus (starting 2-3 weeks after schools returned, in line with the incubation period of the virus). This has mostly been in the younger age groups, but you can see where the virus has potentially transmitted outside of under 25s and is now increasing in 25-44 year olds. These are likely parents of school age children. Student at university have had a lot of blame but schools are clearly making a huge impact (given their key community roles and large levels of pupils) and it is extremely irresponsible of the Scottish Government to ignore this clear trend.

5. Consideration to blended learning for schools. If this was implemented properly it could work. It would allow for continued education and the combination of in person and online would make for a much safer environment - likely driving down community spread.

We are at the stage where the virus is well and truly out of control. We need to stop it before it is too late. People will not stick to a national lockdown (which is clear given the other ideas on this forum) so we need to have full transparency of the science and data and full honesty from the government.

The population is generally unaware of the gravity of this situation, and I understand why this is. The key Scottish Government 'science' figures are not experts and they do not communicate important messages. Instead we hear about 'relaxing restrictions for football penalties' and dithering on an epic scale.

Get your act together ScotGov - before it's too late.

Need to act now to prevent a disaster. Too much dithering by the government and very clear agendas (for example, keeping schools open when they are clearly facilitating spread dramatically).

No protection for the vulnerable and no clear scientific advice for the Scottish people. As a scientist I know what should be done, but I understand why the Scottish people are turning against these measures. The government need to be more clear and need to be impartial.