Whanganui letters: Know your enemy

Mary Stella Taylor writes that her father, who was a prisoner of war in Germany, would be proud of everyone who is overcoming their fear and getting a Covid vaccination. Photo / Lewis Gardner

My dad was a prisoner of war in Germany in 1944. He knew what the enemy looked like. He weighed 40kg when he was liberated.

All that a vaccine does is teach our body what an enemy looks like. Our body then knows how to defend itself if it catches a disease.

Viruses attack information systems. We put anti-viral software on our computers to defend against malware attacks which can trash our information.

A human body is just an information system, this time an organic one. "Long Covid" is proof that your immune system can be trashed too.

And if your mates are saying that you will lose their friendship if you "sell out to the establishment" by being vaccinated against Covid, then my dad would say, "With friends like that, who needs enemies?"

My dad died 20 years ago, but I know he would be proud of everyone who is overcoming fears and getting a jab. He would salute your bravery in trying to protect us all. Kia kaha.

MARY STELLA TAYLOR
Whanganui

Honour our freedom

In recent weeks we have read and heard various people of anti-vaccination ilk bringing forth the argument that millions died fighting World Wars for our freedom, and that the government is now taking our freedom away.

With November 11 approaching – the day on which we honour our War Dead – I think it is important to point out that men and women went to war to serve their countries and to save the world from a very real evil. They did not go from personal choice, or for some misplaced notion of their individual rights; they went to do whatever they could to make the world safe.

To suggest that the freedom they won was to please themselves is to seriously dishonour them.

Choosing not to be vaccinated against the current evil the world faces is a personal choice and, as Stan Hood writes (Letters, October 30), it is devoid of responsibility to everyone else. If that is how anti-vaxxers want to use the freedom our fathers and mothers fought for, they have only themselves to blame for the consequences.

ROBIN PEIRCE
Marton

Support local

So, if the government insists on its "no jab, no job" policy, who are they replacing those workers with? Given that they declare we have a low unemployment rate. Have they a plan to allow massive replacement of Kiwi workers by immigrant workers?

Support local, they cry, as too many imported workers fill jobs which should be given to our own. Is this part of what our government has signed away in these, so-called, "free trade agreements"? Seems so.

Support local, they bellow from the Beehive, whilst they grant government procurement contracts to international corporations (Wellington's Transmission Gully). Hang on, that demanded preferment is also is written into these trade pacts.

Support local, they stutter, as they feed many, many millions of dollars to the foreign banking interests. Support your own should be our demand - Kiwibank, Taranaki Savings Bank, The Co-operative Bank are all ours. If you must use that type of policy, why aren't you supporting your own? Why not use our sovereign Reserve Bank for the purposes which it was established to fund - our infrastructure? Why are you shackling my grandchildren and your own with huge debt? What have you signed which binds you to servicing the international financial system? Jacinda and co, you campaigned on total transparency among many other things, it's about time you practised it. [Abridged]

D LOCKETT
Whanganui