A simple test
Re: “Airlines offering drive-thru tests”, (BP, Sept 28).
It’s an important step in the right direction for airlines to make Covid-19 testing requirements as simple for passengers as possible. Hopefully, if testing is still deemed relevant in the future, airlines will soon move to real-time, immediate-results tests that can be administered free-of-charge to passengers at boarding gates. It’s only when Covid-19 testing becomes as routine and simple as checking passengers’ temperatures that the industry will return to the glory days of pre-Covid travel.
SAMANEA SAMAN
Foetal position
Re: “Life is precious”, (PostBag, Oct 10).
And this is the flaw in Ye Olde Theologian’s primary argument. A human foetus is not a person. It is not the unqualified case that life is sacred. It is not even the case that human life that is sacred: being human means merely having the 46 chromosomes that chemically define a living being as member of our species. If the adjective “sacred” is to have any meaning beyond mere fantasy of the murkiest mystery, it is that there is something very special about being a person. If anything is, it is the lives of actual, living persons that are sacred.
No foetus ever has any characteristic that define a living being as a person: it cannot reason; it does not have social bonds; it does not decide things; it does not have preferences; nor does it reason or make plans. There can, therefore, be no moral grounds against abortion.
FELIX QUI
Moderna mystery
The Bangkok Post has recently run several reports on the delays in the delivery of the Moderna Covid vaccine to Thailand.
Three months ago I paid a deposit of 1,250 baht to a private hospital in Rayong for a booster Moderna jab promised for October. Now the hospital informs me that it will be at least late November before I can expect the jab, and given past performance, I will believe that when it happens.
Today, the latest news report in The New York Times dated Oct 9 might shed some light on why Thailand may be suffering this delay. According to the report: “Moderna has been supplying its vaccine almost exclusively to wealthy nations, keeping poorer countries waiting and earning billions in profit in the process”.
About a million Moderna doses have gone to countries that the World Bank classifies as low income, but by contrast 8.4 million Pfizer doses and about 25 million Johnson and Johnson doses have gone to those countries.
Alarmingly, the report states that of middle-income countries that have contracts to purchase Moderna, most have not yet received any.
Even more alarming, according to the NYT’s report, is that at least three countries, including Thailand, have had to pay more than the United States or European countries did.
DAVID BROWN
Blitz the ash trays
While it may be unpopular for the police to crack down on illegal alcohol selling, it is for health reasons and is the law. I hope the same energy can be put into stopping smoking in restaurants, which is another serious health hazard and also illegal. I suggest that any restaurant with ash trays on tables should be punished. Chiang Mai would be a good place to begin.
IAN CRUICKSHANK
