Letters: Covid 19 coronavirus - Untested people out of quarantine like 'loaded guns'

Director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield shows an example of a scan for the NZ Covid tracer app. Photo / File

Covid 'loaded guns'

Can somebody please explain to me why some people are able to be released from quarantine without being tested for the Covid-19 virus?

It is a bit like letting them roam around with a loaded gun.

The test should be part of the deal for allowing them back into the country.

Also why are they not tested and cleared before they even get on the plane? Perhaps the virus is nature's way of saying the planet is getting overpopulated.

Perhaps now we should concentrate on the automobile virus, as that is the real killer.

TONY McCOLL
Whanganui

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Gallery costs

David Hill (Letters, July 1) should be ashamed of himself for either underestimating the intelligence of Chronicle readers, overestimating his own, or both. Members of the Whanganui Ratepayers Association, on whose behalf he penned his nonsense about Sarjeant Gallery project costings, can decide for themselves how he rates their collective intellect.

In his eagerness to show off his calculator's multiplication skills and frighten the bejesus out of ratepayers, Hill cunningly tells us that the earthquake proofing and extension project cost escalation over the past five years amounts to $68,500 per week. He then multiplies that figure by the estimated 32 months' construction period and boo! Nek minit, he says, ratepayers are staring down the barrel of a $60 million bill.

Of course, he knows as well as we do – or would if he bothered to read the council press release announcing the contract that was let recently – that a massive amount of detailed earthquake protection design, along with other technological innovations required to protect the gallery's hugely valuable artworks, prefigured the latest costings.

What nonsense to airily ascribe the contract price, which incidentally includes $15.4 million of work for local firms, to weekly price escalation and project it forward on the same basis.

Your letters

As if that's not enough for one letter, he then tries to pull the wool over our eyes by claiming Whanganui is one of NZ's most indebted cities with higher than average annual rates. He's wrong on both counts. Our debt-to-income ratio is within acceptable limits and our average rates are about mid-range.

Incidentally, the economic impact assessment for the revitalised Sarjeant is projected to bring in an additional $11 million to the region through 22,000 additional visitors a year. I suggest he runs that through his calculator.

CAROL WEBB
Whanganui

Tie a yellow ribbon

Free Julian Assange - tie a yellow ribbon to something prominent on Friday, July 3.

Julian Assange is a journalist imprisoned in UK so he can be extradited to the USA for blowing the whistle on the murderous activities of the American forces in Iraq. If this is expedited no serious journalist will be safe.

ELAINE HAMPTON
Whanganui

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