Letters: Vaccinations, cartoon and tougher penalties

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivers a press conference in central Auckland announcing the delivery of the first batch of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine to arrive in the third week of February. Photo / Michael Craig

Opinion

LETTERS

It's time to speed up vaccinations

Call me ignorant, but surely it would make sense to speed up vaccinations in order to achieve herd immunity so New Zealand can open its borders to safe countries. This, surely, would help improve the economy.
Currently the rollout speed is excruciatingly slow, is there anyone that's competent enough to take charge? At the present speed it would take years to jab the whole country.
Why can't surgeries and pharmacies do it now?
Swee-In Blackeby, Auckland

Please explain

Ministers Chris Hipkins and Ayesha Verrall have admitted separately that the vaccination rate has been slowed to avoid running out of vaccines and having vaccinators doing nothing. Hipkins admitted this is already happening with 800 vaccinators trained with about 300,000 vaccines in the freezers.
This just doesn't make any sense to me. Perhaps there is something undiscovered, as in the laws of physics to explain?
Is it distribution chaos, a booking system shambles, a recording system with security holes?
Or a Pfizer/BioNTech delivery schedule causing delays or just a SNAFU in DHB vaccine distribution?
Steve Russell, Hillcrest

Poor taste

I found the "cartoon" by Emmerson in the Herald on Sunday (April 11) to be in very poor taste. Just sorry that you could not have printed something better.
Anne Parsons, Pakuranga

Tougher penalties

Minister Michael Wood announced the penalty will be increased for using a cellphone while driving — wonderful. It will be a fine of $150 — weak, (especially compared to Australia where using a cellphone while driving is now rare).
The only way to eliminate this dangerous practice is much tougher penalties including increased demerit points and a lot more policing by officers in unmarked cars. The 40,000 people issued with infringement notices in the last year is a drop in the bucket of drivers actually doing it.
Fiona McAllister, Mt Maunganui