Trump dangerous to public health
I am happy to see that the number of Donald Trump supporters is going down. I am not happy to hear that they are dying because of his lies. But if they gullible enough to still believe him, so be it.
The latest scientific evidence of this gullibility comes from a study in the prestigious journal, Nature, which shows that almost 17,000 people died from taking hydroxychloroquine in the mistaken belief that it would cure their COVID.
Where did they get this idea? In March of 2020, Trump repeatedly touted this drug even though his science advisers were saying there was no reason to believe that it would work. On April 5, 2020, Trump again encouraged people to take it, saying, “What do you have to lose?”
Well, now the families of these 17,000 people know what they had to lose.
Other examples of Trump killing off his supporters with COVID abound, from discouraging people from wearing masks in crowded indoor places, to spreading disinformation about vaccinations.
His policies of radical deregulation allowed the opioid crisis to worsen under his watch, and opioids have had proportionately more deadly effects in rural areas where Trump is popular. And four of his supporters died in the riot at the Capitol that he incited.
There should be a health warning stuck to Trump’s forehead: “Listening to me can be fatal.”
Matt Binder
Waimea
Good reminder that dogs need training
Your front-page story, “Dog bite reports on the rise” (West Hawaii Today, Jan. 7), brought some thoughts to mind.
Dogs can be trained to behave, but it seems many people aren’t aware or don’t care. It’s a serious problem when owners fail to keep a dog on their property and put others in danger, but so is barking, particularly when it is aggressive and frequent.
When you can’t walk to your mailbox without vicious barking from the adjacent property, or you need to close all of your doors and windows to escape repeated long-term barking, it can have a serious effect on your psyche.
I don’t have a solution except to hope that your article inspires dog owners to restrain their dogs and train them for the safety and peace of their neighbors.
Karen Cooper
Hilo