Dial down on the scaremongering, this jab is crucial

■ The apparent consternation about the risks of the AstraZeneca vaccine is difficult to understand.

Of course, if there are detrimental effects people have a right to know. But what does all the very public speculation about blood clots do to people who have been locked down for months, their mental health hanging by a thread? Their one hope of a way out is the vaccine.

What do we all make of the EU nations, who one week are halting AstraZeneca vaccinations, and the next attacking the company and others for not supplying them with enough of the very same vaccine?

Rightly, the Oxford collaboration has been done on the basis of the common good of humanity, in that it’s being sold at cost. If the net effect of all this is an unjustifiable slowdown in vaccinations, resulting in more Covid deaths, then those responsible will not be easily forgiven.

Paul Donovan, Wanstead

The media panic over the OxfordAstraZeneca vaccine is a symptom of its Tory-bashing mentality. The leftist/ liberal media is so irritated by the government’s success with this aspect of the pandemic that it’s desperate to see it crash and burn, and is using every opportunity to sow the seeds for this.

Philip, Raynes Park

■ No one knows for how long the vaccine jab is effective. Vaccine passports will be useless after that period. Given the flu jab is given every winter, if a Covid jab follows a similar pattern then Covid passports would need stamping every year.

Les, Greater Manchester

■ Why don’t all these so-called ‘good citizens’ who have had their Covid vaccinations just sit back, relax, light another ciggie/spliff, open a can of cheap supermarket lager and eat another takeaway while slouching in front of Netflix, instead of berating people who have built up their immune system with a good diet and exercise?

I don’t want to sit next to a spacehogging obese person who smells of stale tobacco and is clearly drunk on the 7.30am to Malaga, let alone watch them pour down as much alcohol as possible at the hotel (because it’s all-inclusive, innit?) I’ll do what I’m doing now till the hysteria passes.

Colin, Manchester

■ With reference to Keith, who describes as a ‘joke’ the 8,000 tourists coming into the UK every day despite the threat of Covid variants abroad (MetroTalk, Wed).

I have said for ages that we should lock down the UK. Lorry trailers could be left on ferries and Le Shuttle and the Army could deliver the trailers to their destinations and then return them to whatever dock/station they came from.

No air travellers in or out – then we can have the next year free from Covid and UK residents can be free again!

Tony Woodhams, Harlow

■ Keith is absolutely right about the number of people coming into the UK every day, risking undoing all the hard work of the British public during lockdown.

Yet there’s no serious questioning of our porous borders. Are Keith and my family the only ones who see this as a problem?