Letters to the Editor, December 10-16, 2020

The Editor:

As one who has lived his entire life in Whatcom County, I applaud the county’s decision to actively dismantle systemic racism through the allocation of taxpayer dollars and governmentally mandated policy decisions to be carried out in our county.

As Abraham Lincoln so famously stated in his message to Congress, December 1, 1861, “It is the primary duty of government bureaucrats to intrude themselves into the lives of private citizens that they may force them to comply to the societal morality as defined by their government for the greater good.”

I joke, but your article brought to mind a story told to me by a fellow I worked with for several years, of his own experience. This man had just graduated from college, and wanted to go back to the reservation to help his people. (This was a long, long time ago, when the world, and some of us, were a lot younger, and a lot less jaded.) So, he got a job in tribal government. But it wasn’t long before he ran afoul of the tribal council, and was fired.

Why, you may well ask, was an idealistic young man, who only wanted to use his education for the benefit of his people given the boot? Was he lazy? Didn’t do his job? No. Was he incompetent? Again, no. Then why would the tribal council fire such a person? He was fired because … he was too white. Don’t you just hate bigoted people?

So, according to our county agencies, “systemic racism” is bad, I guess. Unless it is practiced against minorities, or anybody, who is “too white?”

Mark Aaron Aamot

Custer

The Editor:

We arrived home, minus my purse, on a sunny morning after eating a takeout breakfast in the car at the Blaine marina. We drove back, praying that it had fallen out of the car and was still in the parking lot, but no such luck.

We returned home prepared to notify the bank and department of licensing and found a message light blinking on our phone. Hooray!

It was the police department with a message for us. An honest and thoughtful citizen of Blaine, who did not leave their name, had turned in my purse with all the contents intact. And the police notified us
immediately.

Thank you, honest citizen, and our police department employees.

Sandra Anderberg

Blaine

The Editor:

Do you suspect that Covid-19 data is being misrepresented to the public? Not having any medical background (other than dealing with life’s 80-year-old physical issues), I do not know.

I suspect so. Check it out for yourselves. Recently published Washington state Department of Health data, relative to influenza, for the past 48 weeks of this 2020 season, indicates: zero deaths total, and zero outbreaks in long-term care facilities. Sound strange? For 2019, per the same department’s published data, Washington state had 245 deaths, due to the same strain of influenza. There’s a lot more data in those reports, relative to 2020 and comparable past year-to-year occurrences and deaths, that, I suspect, should cause some head scratching.

There have also been serious declines in reported other morbidities this past year. Area total death data, unlike say election data, cannot be fabricated. The assignment of deaths to Covid-19 has apparently sucked up the opportunities for other deaths.

Covid-19 seems to have (tongue-in-cheek) cured many other previously lethal human ailments. Again – I’m no medical authority, however, I have some common sense (or at least there’s been occasional evidence of it). So, check it out for yourselves. Be safe, don’t be scared, and don’t be cowed.

Pete Werner

Blaine

(Ed. Note: The writer is comparing deaths from the entire flu season in 2018/2019 versus the flu season so far in 2020/2021. The DOH number weeks are according to the week in the year as opposed to sequential weeks. Each influenza season runs from week 40 of one year to week 39 of the next (roughly October to October). As of Week 48 (November 22-28, 2020), there have been no flu deaths in the state. The average number of deaths as of Week 48 for the past nine years is 2.4 with a range of 0 to five deaths. In the 2019/2020 flu season overall, there was a total of 113 deaths; in 2018/2019, there were 245.)