COVID FATIGUE
Dear editor,
Regarding the letter by E. Rowe (Coolum Advertiser 8 – 14 July), indeed “We are suffering from COVID fatigue”. However, this is more to do with all the mixed and confusing messages we are getting almost daily.
We are told the borders are closed. So how is it that the ABS reports that in May alone there were 115,600 arrivals, only 39 percent were Australian citizens, and 108,300 departures – while hotel quarantine has proved too leaky to stop the virus entering our country.
Last year the Prime Minister said we were at the front of the queue to get enough vaccines to inoculate the whole country. Now we are way at the back and have the lowest vaccinated rate in the OECD.
The vaccine rollout became a stroll-out. Many frontline workers and the most vulnerable are still waiting when they were supposed to have been vaccinated by the end of March.
This federal government failed to make the right call and didn’t spread the risk by ordering enough different vaccines as other major countries did.
In April, it was found that the AstraZeneca vaccine causes a very rare reaction in some people and no longer recommended for the under 60’s and then advice said under 50’s. Sowing more confusion, Mr Morrison said those under 40 should talk to their own doctor about getting the jab against recommendations from the medical experts.
We were told it was not a race, spreading complacency and hesitancy. It is now a race between the vaccines and the emerging variants.
What a shambles, no wonder we have COVID fatigue.
Robyn Deane,
Bli Bli.
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RIDDLING TIMES
Dear editor,
Biblical proportions of raging bushfires, droughts, floods, famine, plague, disease…..? Armageddon outa here but where to go?
Margaret Wilkie,
Peregian Beach.
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PLASTIC FREE
Dear editor,
July’s promotion reminds us that, for particularly the last half century, humans are responsible for environmental damage and significant loss of wildlife. Oil by-products are destroying our beautiful planet.
Older citizens remember a simpler time, when plastic didn’t exist. No “Gladwrap” to protect school lunches from ants; no “Tupperware” to store essentials; no turtles suffocating from single-use plastic bags; and the planet survived. There was no convenient “Maccas” substituting for meals. Takeaway fish and chips, wrapped in paper – was a rare treat. Cardboard, glass and paper usage made no environmental impact. You took your own bags to shop.
Fifty years on, the natural world is disintegrating, impacted by tonnes of throwaway plastic products caught in our waterways and landfill. Regardless, companies created cheap, popular, single-use disposable plastic products with fervor. The throwaway culture made life easier and convenient, so we thought! No need for washing up pots, plates and cutlery – they are all plastic and easily discarded. Shoppers welcomed free plastic bags, without contemplating the deadly threat to our sea-life.
It is thoughtless, selfish usage of oil-based plastic undermining planet health. Our world has become a massive garbage-tip, with man-made products littering our environment and waterways. Time is running out! There is no “Planet B”!
E. Rowe,
Marcoola.
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