Letters to the editor for Nov. 26
Thank you to the Good Samaritans
Thank you to the two runners who made sure I was OK after I crashed my bike on Deschutes Parkway the morning of Nov. 19.
I know it can be a bit scary to approach a total stranger, much less in a pandemic when we’re supposed to stay separated, but it meant a lot. You are a good example for us all.
Thank you.
Phil Goff, Olympia
Who should be tested?
A medical test is most useful when the result leads to a decision to do something. If you have a scan that shows cancer, you take out the cancer and live a longer life. If you have already decided against surgery, the test might offer information, but it will not actually change anything.
If you have COVID-19 symptoms, you should stay home and isolate unless you are sick enough to be in a hospital. If there is drive-through testing that has enough space, get tested, otherwise stay home. If your roommate tests positive for COVID-19, then you should isolate because you might get it and spread it without knowing.
If you have no symptoms, and no exposure, and you are going to go to a Thanksgiving dinner with your grandparents in the next city, that is when you should be tested. If you are positive, you will not go see your grandparents. That will make a difference and might save a life.
The testing sites in Olympia will allow you to be tested if you have symptoms or if you have been exposed to a COVID-19 positive person. But they will turn you away for the more useful pre-Thanksgiving test, the maybe-symptoms test, or the grocery-worker test.
It is politically impossible to have a testing site and not test people with symptoms. And it is still beneficial to test as many as possible. But the practice of rationing the tests to block those that are most useful is not wise.
Paul Bunge, M.D., Olympia
Eyman was right to bring I-976
In rebuttal to Mr. Stewart’s Nov. 5 letter regarding the car tabs: Had the original initiative been honestly written with all the correct information in the wording, it might never have passed. When it did pass, and the $30 car tabs went up to in some cases $250, most people were shocked!
Kudos to Mr. Eyman for I-976.
When it was voted on, it overwhelmingly passed! But after this passage our Attorney General, Mr. Ferguson, did nothing to aid the people of King County in the courts. The courts deemed it unconstitutional. At least, Mr. Eyman had the courage to question the system and support the hard-working person.
Mr. Eyman’s personal life is the not matter In question.
R.A. Caputo, Olympia
Trump deserves our derision, not gratitude
Jay Ambrose, in his opinion column “Trump deserves our gratitude: Believe it or not,” chides us for not giving Donald Trump credit for the ultra-fast development of a COVID-19 vaccine. It is true that the vaccine was developed in an amazingly short period of time, but it was at a great cost funded at the expense of the American taxpayer.
I wonder if we would have been better served, and our money more wisely spent, had Trump simply supported the medical experts by encouraging mask wearing and social distancing. A vaccine might not have been needed and taxpayer money could have been saved had these simple, relatively inexpensive measures been encouraged instead of scoffed at.
So I say to you, Jay Ambrose: Trump deserves not our gratitude, but our derision.
Karl Kohlstaedt, Olympia