‘To prevent the transmission of viruses, we need to vaccinate as many people as possible’

• BY now I hope even the most ignorant anti-vaxxer will know the rapid spread of the Covid-19 virus around the whole world was the same as would happen if most people didn’t get vaccinated against known diseases, (Vaccines do carry risk of injury, July 9).

So I hope your letter-writer VC Collier now realises that vaccinations cannot be made voluntary: to prevent the transmission of viruses, we need to vaccinate as many people as possible.

And Collier cannot be allowed to claim they know the risks and can make their own decision. We aren’t talking about the risk to Collier alone, but the risk to everybody else, especially older and younger people or others who might be more vulnerable if most of the people around are not vaccinated.

When this anti-vaccine nonsense started – as a result of discredited research by Dr Andrew Wakefield at the Royal Free Hospital – many parents failed to take their children to be vaccinated, so we had a spike in measles which killed and severely injured hundreds of young people in the UK.

Globally, over 142,000 died from measles in 2018, according to estimates from the World Health Organisation.

And Collier is also wrong to assert that “overcrowded and inadequate living and working conditions” cause ill health: it’s infections that cause the illnesses, the conditions just make them more damaging, as, again, we are seeing with Covid-19 where deaths are higher among the millions of people living in poverty in Britain, supposedly the fifth richest country in the world.

But, on a more positive note: I agree with Collier that action on these deep inequalities is long overdue, but I doubt the Tories under Boris Johnson will do much about that. With Brexit they are about to make our country even poorer.

DAVID REED,
NW3