Here’s a response to two recent letters.
On July 30, Clem Bechard voiced the tiresome complaint that the CDC keeps changing its mind about masking and vaccinations. Of course it does. The virus and its variants keep mutating. The CDC responds with updated guidance. That’s what scientists do. They study the data (facts, not opinions) and react with one goal in mind — public health.
Some politicians change their minds all the time based on which way the wind is blowing with one goal in mind — getting reelected, even if that means toadying up to an ex-president who downplayed the threat of the virus last year.
How did we get to the point where so many of us ignore experts in epidemiology? Sadly, right-wing news outlets and cockamamie social media conspiracists have tapped into something ominous in our national makeup — an aversion to truth. Writes Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, “Thank God smallpox and flu vaccines came before all-knowing Dr. Google.”
On July 28, letter writer George Jones said America is not racist. Does he remember how Trump reacted to the 2017 battle in Charlottesville between white supremacists and their opponents by saying there were “good people” on both sides? Or if he knows that some 20 rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 who chanted obscene racist remarks at a Black police officer said they were following “my president’s orders?”
Jones also claims that schools are “indoctrinating our children into destructive Marxist ideologies.” Details, please. What classes? Which schools?
Dave Griffiths, Mechanic Falls
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