Inequality and a pandemic

Sir, – Senator Michael McDowell asserts that the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in "an economic crisis which challenges the poor, the middle class and the wealthy alike" ("Public will not endure another lockdown", Opinion & Analysis, September 2nd).

This must be a great comfort to the thousands of meat factory workers, hospital cleaners, catering, nursing home and retail staff who have contracted the virus in the course of their low-wage to minimum-wage work, to the thousands more in direct provision where Covid clusters have become a feature of daily life, and the hundreds of thousands of workers and families on ever-burgeoning hospital waiting lists who cannot afford to fast-track their delayed operations via private healthcare.

Then again, perhaps this is the type of “good” inequality that Senator McDowell once famously spoke of as acting as an “incentive” in our economy? – Yours, etc,

Senator PAUL GAVAN,

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Sinn Féin,

Castleconnell,

Co Limerick.