OPINION

Relying on law

Re: "City protest plan needs a few tweaks", (Opinion, July 4).

So indisputably true is it, Paritta Wangkiat's observation that the central government's "ongoing crackdown on protest leaders and participants as well as the use of excessive force to disperse street protests do not encourage public debates" seems a bit of an understatement.

The grant by Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt of somewhat sequestered spaces for only approved protest is a small step in the right direction, but what Thailand more desperately needs if the alternating excesses of the likes of Thaksin and coup committers is to be consigned to history is just law. Law, that is, that rather than suppressing democratic principle enshrines it in the place of highest honour, as justice and democratic principle should be, over all other things in the political realm.

Re: "True conservation", (PostBag, July 4).

"The increase in carbon emissions stemming directly from the decision to escalate the war is accelerating humanity and the world to an irreversible point of no return for the greenhouse effect", parrots ML Saksiri Kridakorn. Unfortunately he is neither a climate scientist nor someone who has looked deeply into the so-called greenhouse effect. Just as in the pandemic fraud germs are vilified when actually they are good for us, CO2 is also good for us -- it is essential for life.

If one simply removes the politics and monied interests from these two hoaxes the truth is easy to discern. CO2 is not a pollutant. A warmer CO2 rich atmosphere makes life easier on earth, just so, regular exposure to germs builds our immune systems.

Re: "Just google it", (PostBag, July 4).

Eric Barht accuses me of using misleading statistics but perhaps he should read the article he Googled more closely: it is referring to the CDC Covid Data Tracker, which I specifically did not cite. As per my letter, I cited CDC WONDER NCHS data where Covid was the underlying cause of death.

As the BMJ article states, "The [CDC Data] tracker is one of two sources used to report deaths from Covid-19 in the US. The other is the National Center for Health Statistics' [NCHS] website, which is also run by the CDC but relies on death certificates for its data. By mid-March the figures presented by the two sites differed substantially. For example, the Covid-19 Data Tracker put the number of deaths among infants and children aged 0-17 at 1700, while the statistics site stated 900." (My figure of 1088 deaths was at 1 May 2022).

However much we all wish Covid was a figment of our collective imaginations, I'm afraid that the cold hard facts show that it kills children.

Furthermore, vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness, but as few children are vaccinated, they are more likely to be hospitalised. England data from the Health Security Agency shows that hospitalisations in those under 4 are now 200% higher than the previous January 2021 peak, whereas for all age groups above 15, they remain below that peak.

As other Postbag correspondents have recently written, perhaps we could have a break from the barrage of anti-vax, Covid-denialist letters now?