Anti-vaxxers: Don’t return us to Victorian levels of child mortality The Hunting Act should be repealed

ONCE again proving that the ownership of a PhD confers no particular ability to use common sense, your letter writer, Richard House, continues his push back against mass vaccination.

He mentions the word “war” which is at least one thing we agree on.

Yes, it’s a war against the coronavirus, one that is well understood, if not complete with convenient solutions.

He takes his rampant campaign against large pharmaceutical companies (he resorts to the tired expression “Big Pharma”) to ridiculous levels in his diatribe.

I have to ask, what other organisations would be capable of producing any kind of vaccine in the quantities required?

Boots the Chemist are a fine group of people, but you won’t find solutions for a global problem on their shelves, never mind in your kitchen garden.

Just like the big supermarkets, you need large infrastructure to service and feed large numbers of people.

Likewise, Amazon have come in for some stick, but everybody is clearly using them!

Those of us distinct from Mr Houses’ ivory towers are heartily fed up with the current situation and urgently seek a solution.

Coming as I do, from a time when immunisation saved the lives of a great many of my contemporaries from the ills of smallpox, diptheria, polio and measles, I have no doubt that the amazing work carried out by the likes of Oxford University will benefit all.

I have no wish to return to Victorian levels of child mortality just because someone with a PhD has a bee in his bonnet about vaccinations.

The virus encircling the globe may turn out to be a presage of more to come, considering the increasing population combined with global connectivity. We may well need all the help we can get.

What we have here are raised voices from those with a political agenda, those who have vested interests of their own, and those who are just plain scared of needles.

If, back in the Second World War, we had someone writing to their local paper saying, “Maybe the Germans have a point,” there would have been hue and cry.

The insidious nature of unsubstantiated claims made by various crackpots and misanthropes serve only to blunt the success rate of the vaccines and condemn us all to much more of the current misery imposed on our lives. We have to work as one to defeat this.

I will not be troubling myself with “debate” with someone who offers no solutions.

I will be accepting the vaccine as soon as it becomes available and I urge every sensible person to do the same.

Alan Jeffery Littlehempston Devon

HAVING no natural predators, there can be no doubt that fox numbers need to be managed. They can be shot but not all of them will be killed, with inevitable results.

They can be trapped, which leads to the possibility of hours in a cage, or they can be poisoned or gassed; not good options.

Hunting gives a better than even chance of foxes getting away, so if you care about foxes, make sure the Hunting Act is repealed. What needs to be done about the scourge of disease-carrying urban foxes is another problem.