Letters: Protecting vulnerable | Facebook not at fault | Far-reaching effects | Good examples | Secure against fentanyl | Mislaid blame

Mercury News Letters to the Editor for Aug. 4, 2021

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Protect the vulnerable
from Big Tobacco

Thanks so much for the probing article and great community reporting on tobacco lobbying right under our noses (“Will San Jose ban flavored tobacco?” Page B1, July 25).

Without these efforts, ordinary citizens would have no idea, or perhaps would refuse to believe, that such local influence from Big Tobacco exists. San Jose, as the tenth-largest city in the country, is sure to get such attention. It will only be through the concerted efforts of San Jose residents to make their wishes known that our children, communities of color, LGBTQ+ and other populations who are heavily targeted will be protected.

Margo Sidener
Breathe California of the Bay Area, Golden Gate, and Central Coast
San Jose

Lack of common sense
isn’t Facebook’s fault

On July 22 the San Jose Mercury News printed an editorial entitled, “Facebook deserves its public scolding from the president.” (Page A6) No, it does not.

The writer states that Facebook should be accountable for “its ongoing failure to remove misinformation and disinformation from its platform.” Facebook gets criticized if it flags or otherwise “polices” speech, and it is also blamed if it doesn’t. Critics blame Facebook for Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election by spreading misinformation on Facebook. Maybe the problem isn’t so much the Russians as it is Americans making voting decisions based on Facebook posts. Similarly, nobody should be relying on Facebook for scientific information about vaccines (or anything else).

Facebook is not responsible for a lack of education, common sense, or critical thinking. There are reports estimating fifty percent of Americans get their news from Facebook. That is appalling. And that is not Mark Zuckerberg’s fault.

Paul Schmidt
Los Gatos

Not vaccinating has
far-reaching effects

Fox News and other media outlets continue to push the false narrative that vaccination is a purely personal choice that does not affect others and the idea that COVID is no worse than the normal flu.

Yes, percentage-wise the risk of serious consequences for any individual person is very low. Indeed most of the transmission happens via completely asymptomatic people. However, by choosing to be part of the chain of infection transmission, an unvaccinated person is quite likely to cause the death of somebody albeit maybe 5 or 6 disease transmission cycles removed from their own infection.

As long as a significant percentage of people remain unvaccinated, the virus will continue to circulate. A conservative value would certainly be to “defend America.” It is puzzling why this doesn’t translate into “defend your community.” Deciding to remain unvaccinated affects a much larger group than “me, myself and I.”

Marshall Thomas
Santa Clara

Better examples exist
than so-called leaders

What do Donald Trump, Dianne Feinstein and Stephen Breyer have in common? All three are selfish and don’t know when to hang it up. Hiding in plain sight and even more selfish are the anti-vaxxers who put their personal freedom ahead of community health.

On the flip side are examples that give us hope. First, the 1,600 communities in Japan that worked to collect 78,985 tons of waste to recycle and create the award medals and podiums for the Olympics. That is an environmental project with tangible results (not just words) that should inspire us in the United States to do more.

Second, Nancy Pelosi, who has steadfastly pushed forward the select committee to investigate the causes of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack. Her diligence to get to the truth via a bipartisan team shows it is possible.

These acts of giving and community are more worthy of emulating.

Tom Calderwood
Los Gatos

Fentanyl plague requires
securing our border

Deaths in the USA from fentanyl overdoses have now overtaken covid mortality, according to the analysis of the CDC, Thomas Homan, appointed head of Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2017, and other experts. Most of the fentanyl entering the country is made in China and is brought across the border by Mexican cartels.

Securing the southern border is thus important to interdiction of cartel drug trafficking and human trafficking, but has also become one of the nation’s greatest forms of mortality via fentanyl deaths. Let’s protect our border like most civilized countries.

C. MIchael Hogan
Carmel-by-the-Sea

Hanson mislays blame
for job outsourcing

Victor Davis Hanson continues to feed the hyperpolarization harming our country by characterizing Democrats (liberals) as “woke neo-Maoists.” (“What happened to party of Truman and Kennedy?” Page A7, July 23) Does this mean that Republicans (conservatives) are all “neo-Nazis”? I hope not.

There is much to unpack in his diatribe, but my jaw dropped when he basically blamed liberals for outsourcing and offshoring of jobs. Then I remembered conservative co-workers had insisted this was fueled by taxes. I simply saw it as a way to pay people substantially less, to reduce commitments to employees, and to take advantage of the fact that geography had become irrelevant for some employment.

In the last decade of my work life, we were not allowed to staff up in the U.S. or Europe where even nonunion employees are not easily shed. So we opened an office in India instead.

Kip Bryant
San Jose