Humanity needs more than prayer

Steve Jack writes he is sure “ … there will be those that will mock and ridicule …” his letter (SA, December 21) and he is surely right. But I think the strong temptation, though justifiable, would be a mistake because a major part of Steve’s letter is his affirmation that humans are useless before challenges we are faced with. All that’s left to us, he states, is prayer.

As an example, Steve claims there is a public record of the transformation of Columbia away from being the drugs capital of the World in the 1990s by the power of prayer.

But Columbia today is the source of around 70 per cent of the world's cocaine. Only last October we saw the arrest of another powerful drug lord with experts saying “it doesn’t represent a seismic shift in how the war on drugs is being waged and lost”.

Steve’s citation of Dunkirk as a divine miracle makes no more sense, particularly in the context of millions of deaths and a conclusion of that war which depended on the herculean efforts of millions of fighters. Mr Jacks’ God seems curiously picky given the nightmare experiences around Nazism and industrialised warfare.

But, for me, silliest is his declaration of defeat on behalf of humanity on the issue of Covid.

We simply have no answers and can’t stop it, let’s just pray, he says. But we have made significant advances in protecting and mitigating, through the vaccine programme and what we know about masking, social distancing and so on. And there will be more.

But wait, what if Steve had been commenting on smallpox before Jenner invented small pox vaccine, or on Polio before Jonas Salk developed that vaccine, or on diabetes before the isolation and use of insulin.

I write not to reject Steve’s belief in his God. Many believers have a much more sensible view of the world.

The real issue is that with all the issues facing humanity: from chronic economic crisis, environmental crises, including climate change, increasing imperial tensions threatening war, corporate profiteering, privatisations and underfunding of public services here, the removal of the right to effective protest and so on, the solution is the active collective involvement of masses of ordinary people.

Peter Smith

Woodside Avenue

Not so clever Covid app tech

The efforts of the frontline NHS staff are often let down by the administration and particularly by the computer programmers. Neither of our mobile 'phones can access the NHS covid pass so I applied online for printed copies.

Mine worked ok, but when I tried to order my wife's , the "clever" software by-passed the personal details and thwarted me. I had to use a different computer to do that: not everyone requesting printed letters will have access to two computers. We also tried to order lateral flow tests: this involves receiving a six digit by email and entering it; then it insists on sending another to my mobile 'phone which does not receive texts. Our land line will receive texts but the "clever" software says that is not a mobile number.

I may say that our original vaccinations involved driving to Bath racecourse past our local medical centre as the NHS central call centre did not know it was in use.

Bryan Simmons

Address supplied

Mask up for safety

Very angry that most of Swindon shops do not enforce people to wear masks. Even the Orbital & Greenbridge.

Do they not want to be safe?

Malcolm Lyons

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