Vaccine strategy may yet prove to be an error
I, too, fear that the strategy of targeting covid-19 vaccinations at vulnerable people first may well turn out to have been the wrong decision, a possibility suggested in Michael Le Page’s report 13 March, p 9.
Even if we do get away with it and no new variants emerge that nullify all the vaccination efforts so far, it doesn’t mean this was a wise choice 鈥� just that we got lucky.
It was, of course, understandable that the short-term benefits of vaccinating vulnerable people took priority 鈥� partly for humanitarian reasons and partly, at least in the UK, due to the political imperative of protecting the NHS, the collapse of which would have had significant political repercussions for the government after a decade of austerity cuts.
We were late to vaccinate care workers and NHS staff, and haven’t prioritised workers in transport, supermarkets, schools and other frontline roles. This not only allows SARS-CoV-2 to spread and mutate, but also preserves a reservoir of the virus that can infect vulnerable people, who would also have benefited indirectly from a policy to protect these groups.
Pandemic could be a test of the hygiene hypothesis
One year into the pandemic, I welcome your article looking at the psychological and health impacts of repeated lockdowns on children 6 March, p 8. Perhaps now is also the time to consider another possible health implication.
I have always been a supporter of the hygiene hypothesis to explain the rise in the prevalence of autoimmune disorders. The supporting evidence suggests that the presence of older siblings 鈥� believed to bring in germs from school and the playground 鈥� and attendance at day care during the first six months of a child’s life lower the risk of many autoimmune diseases.
Those are exactly the circumstances denied to today’s babies and toddlers. This youngest generation may be an unwitting experiment to either prove or disprove the hygiene hypothesis once and for all. I hope for their sake that it will be proven wrong.
My vaccination didn't lead to a positive antibody test
Regarding the idea of covid-19 antibody tests as a means to see if vaccination has worked 13 March, p 10. I was invited for my first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on 13 February. I had already been tested for antibodies on 11 February. The result was negative. On 3 March, I took another antibody test, a different brand this time: it, too, was negative.
On 5 March, I took a third such test, also negative. The results form said: “Clinical Assessment: Based solely on the result of this test, there is no indication that you have developed antibodies against a COVID-19 infection.”
My doctor’s surgery has a low opinion of antibody tests because several people who work there have had covid-19 with symptoms and positive PCR tests, but now test negative for antibodies.
There seems to be a consensus of opinion that vaccines generate antibodies that aren’t identical to those generated by exposure to the virus and often don’t show up in antibody tests, and that such tests aren’t recommended to check whether a vaccine has worked. This begs the question: is there a test that is a good way of checking if a vaccine has worked?
Another trillion dollars that could be well spent
One megaproject not mentioned as a way to fix the world for a trillion dollars is (relatively) cheap: buy all the right-wing tabloid newspapers 27 February, p 38. Not a copy of each, but the entire businesses. Then either transform them completely or shut them down.
They are to blame for much of the prejudice and hatred, the misogyny, the anti-expert and anti-science attitudes that cause so much harm and suffering. These translate into actions or inactions that affect the entire world, be it towards climate change, refugee awareness or international aid.
I can't quite say farewell to the Tasmanian tiger
While I applaud Graham Lawton’s desire to expose extinction deniers, I don’t actually feel we should call time on the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, just yet 13 March, p 24.
Sure, over the years many people have sought to promote themselves by falsely claiming to have seen it, but the areas it may (or may not) inhabit are just unbelievably impenetrable. Lawton says it hasn’t appeared in roadkill, but there aren’t any roads in these places.
To take a comparable example, the night parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) was believed extinct from 1912 until the 1990s. It lives in remote areas, but not ones that are difficult to access.
Why hydrogen cars are probably non-starters
Further to the debate on the merits of a hydrogen economy 6 February, p 44. For cars, an electric vehicle getting renewable energy from the grid wins out.
There are energy losses from the electricity transmission and distribution systems (maybe 2 per cent for transmission and up to 10 per cent for distribution). Charging and discharging a battery is maybe 80 per cent efficient, while the electric car motor efficiency is probably 80 per cent. Overall, in round terms, an electric vehicle is 55 to 60 per cent efficient.
of electrolysis to produce hydrogen (maybe 70 per cent), of a hydrogen car’s fuel cells (about 50 per cent) and of its electric motor (around 80 per cent). That gives an overall efficiency of around 30 per cent.
Old rigs could be turned into havens to boost fish
To expand on Marc Smith-Evans’s point about using offshore wind turbine structures as reefs to aid fish stocks, structures associated with oil and gas production in the North Sea (and elsewhere) have long been seen as wildlife havens Letters, 6 March.
In other areas of the world, there have been very successful “rigs-to-reefs” programmes, where defunct platforms are either toppled in place or moved to an area close by. This practice , except in very specific circumstances.
However, there is a growing body of evidence that it would be more environmentally beneficial to leave a large part of many of the North Sea platforms coming up for decommissioning in place.