Weighing up the real risks with AstraZeneca
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May 21, 2021 â 12.02am
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Credit:Illustration: Jim Pavlidis
To submit a letter to The Age, email letters@theage.com.au. Please include your home address and telephone number.
VACCINE HESITANCY
Weighing up the real risks with AstraZeneca
Twenty-nine per cent of adult Australians surveyed have reported they are unlikely to get the COVID-19 jab (The Age, 19/5). The sideeffects are the most commonly cited reason, but many people also believe there is no rush to be vaccinated. This is despite exhortations from experts who tell us that we are not done with COVID-19 yet and a level of herd immunity is essential for the safe opening of our borders.
This occupation dooms us to what we are seeing
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May 18, 2021 12.03am
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THE GAZA STRIP
This occupation dooms us to what we are seeing
The violent tragedy unfolding in Israel/Palestine is a vile stain on successive Israeli governments and the Palestinian Authority, compounded by Hamas, whose refusal to recognise the reality of Israel is an act of wilful, obsessive and destructive blindness.
Even in our local Jewish and Muslim communities, the pain, anger and fear we feel for our sisters and brothers in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, render us unable to empathise with the same emotions experienced by the other. This is not to equate the suffering on each side, simply to acknowledge it.
Dedicated care and love but with little reward
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May 14, 2021 12.02am
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Credit:Illustration: Jim Pavlidis
To submit a letter to The Age, email letters@theage.com.au. Please include your home address and telephone number.
AGED CARE
Dedicated care and love but with little reward
Last week my wife, who is in aged care, messed herself while trying to sit on the toilet. A carer was called and I watched as the young woman bagged the clothes, with kind words calmed my wife, washed her and then dressed her in clean clothes. The bathroom had to be washed down. Throughout this unpleasant job, the woman – from a foreign country and on the lowest pay – did her work cheerfully and with great compassion.
How many deaths are we prepared to risk?
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May 6, 2021 12.02am
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Credit:Illustration: Andrew Dyson
To submit a letter to The Age, email letters@theage.com.au. Please include your home address and telephone number.
INDIA TRAVEL BAN
How many deaths are we prepared to risk?
The travel ban is in place while COVID-19 is running rampant in India and while we do not have sufficient quarantine facilities in Australia. Our hotel quarantine barely copes with the current level of arrivals. We still see COVID-positive cases among the arrivals, even from countries with low rates of infection. We also see cases where COVID-19 is transmitted to quarantine workers. The real question is: How many collateral infections and deaths in Australia are acceptable if we allow travellers from India into this country?
Letters: Enforce emissions targets by law
Apr 27, 2021 – 1.03am
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Matthew Warren (″Summit hot air no carbon solution″, April 26) points out that announcing emissions reduction targets at President Joe Biden’s climate summit is effectively meaningless without also announcing how those targets will be reached – such as a carbon price.
Perhaps Mr Warren was thinking of the Gillard Labor government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme, which produced a significant reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions in just two years before it was repealed.
There is another imperative: emissions reduction targets must be legally binding. Several countries have legislated targets, including Sweden (net zero by 2045), the UK, France, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea (by 2050), and China (by 2060).