Dear Editor, great initiative from the police to step up the helmet laws.

At the same time, they should focus on noisy mufflers…these are illegal…and clearly against the Transport Act…why we continue to allow these clearly illegal vehicles to be on the road is quite ridiculous.

Police know who most of these rider/owners are…and you can hear them coming from miles down the road….so stop mucking around and act!

Smokie

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Police do respond to these complaints.   I lodged one myself the other day.  I took down the rego, which is what is helpful in following up.  Same with stunt drivers, two of whom were reported in Muri the other day.  Take down the number plate.

Police spokesman Trevor Pitt

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"No Jab, no job"

Serena Hunter in a letter to the editor (No jab, no job policy, Cook Islands News, December 11, 2021) has a rebuttal from Associate Professor John Dunn FRACS, Te Ara Moana Rangatira, Ngati Terei, Hon Medical Advisor to the PM published in Tuesday 14 Dec CINEWS in which he denigrates her view and makes a number of statements which need to be rebutted.

In his first sentence, he infers that she is anti-vax, and I can assure you she is nothing of the sort, only anti-Covid vax for compelling reasons. He then goes on to say that she draws conclusions from selective readings to support her prejudice and this is an emotional dismissive personal attack rather than focusing on why she is anti-Covid.

In the second sentence, Dunn says, "Scientific method is different. It involves critically examining reliable data and then forming a conclusion". As a medical professional he should know that the scientific method doesn't say that, it predicts that the outcome is always 100percentt replicable no matter the belief system, or faith, or experiment of the observer.  The fact that the vaccine is less than 100 percent effective shows that this belief in its efficacy is not scientific. It is at best wishful thinking and borders on pseudo-science masquerading as medical evidence. You can spin it any way you like, if I give all of the people all of the time the vaccine, some will be adversely affected for all sorts of biological and genetic variables. Hence to say that it (the vaccine) is scientifically proven, is to earn a fool's badge, because it cannot be proven to be 100 percent safe for all.

Statistics are open to interpretation and can be spun anyway one likes to support one's argument, and everyone does it, some are better at persuading, and making inferences sound foreboding. With the focus solely on Covid-19 related stats, Dunn like many others (millions) forget the stats for global deaths on an annual basis to push their responses. From December 2019 to December 2021 some 120 million people have died from all sorts of things, natural disasters, other diseases, heart, lung, liver, accidents, and the list goes on, 5 million or so deaths attributed to Covid-19 are just a blip on the stats horizon. As we speak in that same time period, 24 million babies were born.

Dunn then says that the vaccine is extremely safe, well tell the X percent who have died from complications and are still dying from the complications, and the adverse reactions to the vaccine. You will notice he does not say that it is 100 percent effective, interesting that considering his rebuttal.

Yes, mainstream medicine does not agree, and how many times have we heard this, thalidomide being an example. No wonder people don't trust the medical profession.

So Dunn, if you are going to write a rebuttal, just stick to the issue and leave out the emotional claptrap, and make sure your stats also are comparative to total global infection rates of other diseases, illnesses and other annual mortality stats so that people can compare to the Covid-19 hysteria that is being trotted out by mainstream and captured by gullible governments. We all have to die someday but spending a country's economy to save a few who would have died anyway smacks of financial mismanagement, generational debt, suspension of human rights, and politicking to garner political favour with the voting masses.

Te Tuhi Kelly

Progressive Party

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I agree with Te Tuhi that it’s important to remain unemotional. Being human, I can get emotional when observing avoidable death - like a misinformed unvaccinated patient succumbing to Covid-19. 

Cognitive bias is emotional. Proper statistical analysis is scientific. Medical science deals with biological systems which are not binary black/white or 0/100 percent. That’s where judgement comes in, on a daily basis, in the management of disease.

Without getting distracted by the multiple tangents Te Tuhi introduces to the debate, the one important question remains.

Is the vaccine or virus more dangerous? Answer: the virus.

Associate Professor John Dunn FRACS, Te Ara Moana Rangatira, Ngati Terei, Hon Medical Advisor to the PM