Coronavirus Spike
Dear Editor: I don’t love mandates: quite the opposite. But I do respect our elected and hired officials for using them. I believe that however over-reactive one may have thought the measures that our Sitka officials took to keep our population safe until a vaccine was available, it was probably the right call. Particularly based on the numbers from a year ago versus the crazy spike we have seen recently.
I am glad they had the power of their convictions a year ago. I wish many in power were not so cowed by the current backlash of political dis-information campaigns. There was the opportunity for the former president to take credit for the unprecedented rapid development of the C-19 vaccines, but instead he chose not to do so. Chose instead to make it a political wedge, while quietly getting the vaccine himself.
Fox News Channel personalities and some Republican leaders have been casting doubt on the vaccines since Biden took office, while safeguarding themselves with the vaccine. In addition, social media algorithms that skew information are clearly a concern.
Technology companies have enabled misinformation to poison our “news” environment with little accountability to their users.
To top it off, rumor has it that certain organizations in Sitka have been using their “pulpits” to further encourage anti-vaccine propaganda. Well done! Now our public safety and our economy are at risk, again. Thank you for that!
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC, called it “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Fully vaccinated individuals can still get COVID-19, but they are protected against the worst of it. They should not need hospitalization and will almost certainly not die. They are protected against the new Delta variant now sweeping the world, as well as against the older variants. Virtually all recent hospitalizations and deaths are among the unvaccinated.
We were getting our independence back because of the vaccines and now we are losing that freedom due to vaccine hesitancy. We have a petri dish of unvaccinated population in which to grow new variants, some of which may be virulent enough to outsmart our vaccines.
After penning this I notice that Sitka Chatters is full of references to newly minted fake websites that “prove” how wrong the CDC and the scientists are. Enough is enough! Go get vaccinated already!
M. Howard, Sitka
