Letters for Feb. 25, 2022

Again with the ‘experts’

In Rob Leach’s letter of Feb. 16 he dutifully repeats what he’s been told claiming the “experts” were dead wrong about pretty much everything surrounding COVID. It’s his apparent “expert,” disgraced former President Trump, that wrongly suggested it would miraculously disappear with warm weather and also that you wouldn’t hear about it after the election. Or that maybe bleach could cure it. Then Leach wonders how many deaths could be attributed to the expert’s actions. Well, according to Trump’s own former White House Coronavirus Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, “More than 130,000 lives could’ve been saved with swifter action and better coordinated public health messages.”

Leach also says America needs to look at how COVID was handled by our government and say “never again.” America did, by electing Joe Biden with 7 million more votes than Trump. President Bush (second) awarded the right’s new boogeyman, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Can he have another?

Kevin Quaid

Spokane Valley

God bless America

Thank you Michael O’Dea of Spokane for the wonderful letter explaining what “real Republicans” are (“We have the right to know,” Feb. 17). It made me so happy to read. So everyone out there, please don’t put “all” Republicans in one basket. There are two of us. The “real Republicans” and the “Trump Republicans.”

I voted for Trump in 2016, but my opinion of him and his policies began to wane early in his presidency and after Jan. 6 my opinion died completely. I firmly believe there are more of us in this country than them. So as I said before, don’t put all Republicans in one basket. I admire Liz Cheney for standing up to Trump.

Real Republicans want to work with our present government to make America strong and healthy again.

Janet Launhardt

Coeur d’Alene

Inslee the fear-mongerer

Gov. Jay Inslee is the real spreader of fear, versus us of being afraid to change. This is the wrong kind of change. Inslee doesn’t like hearing it, but the economy of the U.S. and the world doesn’t run on windmills, electric vehicles (where overwhelming demand doesn’t exist), and solar panels. It runs on the free flow of oil at market prices.

Further, climate change is at the bottom of every poll which measures what issues are most important to Americans. Inflation, crime, and control of the border are the top three. These issues Democrats have no answers for, nor do they seem to care.

I would love to see an honest debate between Gov. Inslee, the Al Gore wannabe, and someone who disagrees with him and is willing to take him on and present him with real facts. But he won’t, because in his mind, climate change is “settled science.” No thanks, Jay, we don’t want your Green New Deal.

Mark Duclos

Spokane Valley

More Madsen misinformation

It is very unfortunate that this paper continues to print the backward-thinking, right-wing misinformation of Sue Lani Madsen. Her latest anti-Inslee submission (“Inslee puts affordable housing at risk with focus on climate,” Feb. 17) has little truth and is more in line with the anti-science faction that lives in the Fox propaganda network.

First off, let’s be clear: Climate change is real, it is not alarmist. There is no disagreement among legitimate climate scientists (those not on the payroll of fossil fuel or Republican operatives) as to the magnitude, causation or correlation of the human pollution of our atmosphere with green house gases and the destruction of our environment. Maybe she was not here last summer during our heat dome event that the World Meteorological Organization reported was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.

Her bemoaning of the cost of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in new buildings is disingenuous at best. The Building Industry Association of Washington has little interest in producing low-income starter homes. They are more interested in high-profit McMansions for the wealthy.

She refuses to admit that the longer we put off significant actions to reduce our climate destruction, the more it will cost in the very near future. If she was really interested in helping the low-income people of our community, she should focus her attention on changing the regressive tax structure of our state, which favors the rich moocher class, and on rezoning laws to increase the density inside the city limits.

David Randall

Spokane

Aaron Rodgers

People who don’t know what they don’t know can be dangerous.

So Aaron Rodgers, the NFL MVP, felt OK about deceiving his peers and the public at large since he was “immunized” in his own mind. Furthermore, taking ivermectin and self-diagnosing an allergy to an mRNA vaccine were consistent with his version of “critical thinking,” based on whatever he gleaned from his “team” of alternative practitioners. There has been essentially no accountability for any of this.

See why we need “real doctors” helping us make personal and public health medical decisions? Are you getting the message, Al French? (Somehow the term “conniving” keeps coming to mind.) Yes, we can benefit from diverse representation on our Board of Health, but people with the greatest expertise of relevance are indispensable.

As a retired psychologist who worked with health care providers with varied backgrounds in medical settings over the course of my career, I think we all have an obligation to understand that the “evidence” for the efficacy of interventions varies greatly in quality. This becomes all the more important the higher the stakes, and the stakes at present could not be higher. Dr. DeWitt’s guest opinion (Feb. 13) on behalf of the Spokane County Medical Society deserves immediate consideration.

Ron Doyen, PhD

Spokane