Fear of catching Covid has been replaced by fear of the vaccines

Fear of COVID has turned to blind panic. We do not have thousands dropping dead in the streets as the plague doomsayers predicted. In fact, we are surviving pretty well despite the occasional outbreak. The fear of COVID has now been replaced by fear of vaccination.

The only way to get a rapid vaccination of a large population is by mass vaccination. That requires using huge halls, stadiums and so on with multiple lines of people. There is no way the GPs of Australia can do that within their practices.

I am a recently retired GP. Our waiting room held about 20 seated. Where would you seat hundreds to be injected? The routine patients would still come, so there would be no room. Those injected are required to wait at least 15 to 20 minutes. Some practices have enough space, but many do not. It took us about two months to do several hundred flu injections. These still need to be given, as well as COVID vaccines.

The foolishness of setting targets has been well demonstrated. You either go for a mass vaccination program or you don’t. We have chosen the latter and it will get done, albeit more slowly. Blind panic is no substitute for caution and care.

Alasdair Cameron, Woodend, Vic

I cannot fathom the logic of having the bureaucracy involved in the COVID vaccine rollout. This is not a health issue, it is a logistical exercise, and a very big one at that. To achieve a satisfactory result it needs to be run by someone who knows how to get stuff done.

Give the responsibility to someone such as Gerry Harvey or Twiggy Forrest. Neither of them would want the job, but they would do it as a duty to their country. One thing is certain, they would get it done as fast as possible, the sooner to finish with it. Compare that approach to the bureaucracy, which traditionally allows things to take as long as they take and gets involved in the fine detail of what will inevitably end up a complete shambles.

I have met with and dealt with a lot of powerful people, but Harvey is by far the best delegator of responsibility I have encountered. Someone of his calibre could run this exercise, going around the pettiness of the state health departments, and get the process on the ground working.

Dennis Morgan, Moy Pocket, Qld

Meat versus veganism

Nick Cater is absolutely right in his defence of carnivores (“My beef with vegans over meat production”, 14/4). He could have added two other observations. First, the pastoralists and the people in country towns who support pastoral industries play a big role in controlling bushfires on private and public land. On average in Australia, bushfires emit more emissions than all human activities. Imagine how much greater our emissions would be without rural volunteer firefighters.

Second, methane, the main emission gas produced by ruminants, breaks down in the atmosphere. With its 18 million sq km of surrounding ocean waters, Australia covers five per cent of the earth’s surface — more than enough to remove 0.2 per cent of global methane emissions. Eat our meat and save the world.

Alessandro Gardini, St Georges, SA

Professor Ron Milo of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science gives us another angle on how our diet shapes our world. Milo found that while humans represent only 0.01 per cent of the planet’s biomass, we have caused the loss of 83 per cent of all wild mammals and half of the plants. In the world we have shaped, 60 per cent of the mammals are livestock (mostly cattle and pigs), 36 per cent are humans and just four per cent of the living mammals on the planet are wild animals. Seventy per cent of all birds on Earth are farmed poultry.

Milo poignantly explains, “When I do a puzzle with my daughters, there is usually an elephant next to a giraffe next to a rhino. But if I was trying to give them a more realistic sense of the world, it would be a cow next to a cow next to a cow and then a chicken.”

Lesley Walker, Northcote, Vic

Soldiers let off steam

I was very disappointed with the thrust of your editorial “Rid armed forces of bad eggs but back good soldiers” (14/4). Like so much of the media you seem to have fallen into the trap of attributing absolute proof to the allegations contained in the Brereton report. The tone of your editorial clearly reflects this yet nothing has been tested in the legal system and the presumption of innocence seems to have been swept aside in a witch hunt.

While it may offend the sensibilities of those who have never been in harm’s way, tasteless behaviour in a boozer following operations in which soldiers risk their lives is not unusual. My Vietnam experience convinces me of this immutable fact and to conflate allegations of serious war crimes with such conduct is wrong on so many levels.

I would bet this has been a feature of all conflicts in which Australia has been involved.

Nick Mazzarol, Fernvale, Qld