' I'm dying to get back to the pub but it is not worth dying for' - Readers' online comment

Five major hospitality trade bodies have urged the Scottish Government to alter its levels system of lockdown and mirror the planned easing of restrictions in England as closely as possible, in a move they argue would save over 60,000 jobs and contribute more than £1.2 billion to the economy in the short term. Here’s a selection of readers’ views...

Lesley Anthony: I’d rather continue to go slowly allowing the figures to guide us. Better that way than a third lockdown because we rushed things.

Dnomyar Yllek: I’m sure it’s been said before, but if you accelerate the relaxation of restrictions you risk undoing all the sacrifices made until now. The fact is the effects of relaxing restrictions isn’t seen until a few weeks later. Are the hospitality advocates saying that if their accelerated roadmap leads to a huge spike that we should see a rapid reversal into more stringent lockdown? We also need to see what level of spike has been caused by the football celebrations in Glasgow. I understand people getting impatient, but once you set in a course you need to stick to it. It is entirely possible that the effects of this plan coupled with the above incident could see us talking about “when can we relax lockdown” in Spring 2022.

Juli Harris: I’m sure they do. We all want to see an end to lockdown, but fortunately, most of us trust our Scottish Government to listen to the science, which has been proved right all along, and make sure it’s safe for us to do so.

Alastair Taylor: The issue with the hospitality industry calling for an accelerated route out of lockdown they are doing it for a purely economic reason. Before people start jumping down my throat bleating that there is no link to hospitality and the spread of Covid just explain how increasing the opportunity for groups of people to meet and mingle would not increase the opportunity for the virus to spread.

Eric Martin: Do the moaners want to risk Covid because you think a pint is more important? I'm dying to get back to the pub but it is not worth dying for.

Steve Ramsay: There is no point having a different timescale to England to open everything. If England is fully open and we are not, it’s inevitable that people will go to England (perhaps for a weekend) or people from England might come up to their holiday homes. We won’t be able to stop this as even at the moment we are not really enforcing these travelling rules Nicola Sturgeon would be better trying to put the opening dates together – at least that may stop people travelling and allow the economy to get moving here.

Esther Haig: We should not have to suffer because of Glasgow and Lanarkshire. Our numbers are much lower.

William Dow: Sturgeon needs to stop dithering with her "we are not there yet" message without even defining where "there" is!

Angela Mcdermott: We have to live with this virus. If you haven’t noticed, it’s going nowhere. Being vaccinated is helping. We need to build up our immunity as we’ve done all our lives to viruses.