Jenny Smith
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
Sometimes when I glance through letters to the editor in the News Tribune, I see the name of the author and skip the letter. I know the letter will be gushing with breathless revelations of conspiracy theories, all of which can be quickly debunked with a few clicks in my browser. The government deep-state is always the bad guy and some mysterious huckster somewhere has the real truth.
A recent letter refers to Thomas Renz who reported that COVID vaccinations are more dangerous than COVID itself. He has been soundly debunked. Facebook barred him from posting his lies.
Dear reader, think for yourself. Do you personally know anyone who has died as a provable and direct cause of getting a COVID vaccination? I don't. I know hundreds of people who have gotten vaccinated, but no one I know has died after getting the vaccine. Do you personally know anyone who has died as a direct cause of getting COVID? I do. With our own observations, we can see that the vaccine is not killing masses of people. This is simply absurd and counters to everything we can personally observe. Why do some people persist in such nonsense?
I understand the News Tribune wants to respect free speech, but there is a danger to allowing the dispersal of such dangerous propaganda and misinformation. For one thing, people could die. It could discourage people from getting the vaccine. This is now the pandemic of the unvaccinated. They are the ones dying. For another thing, it stokes violent threats against our public health officials. Dr. Anthony Fauci has been swamped with death threats. Why? Because some deranged nuts choose to believe those hucksters' making up this crap.
President Ulysses S. Grant said in the aftermath of the Civil War, "If we are to have another contest in our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixons but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other."
That is exactly where we are at. The misinformation is rampant and dangerous. There are scores of conspiracy theorists spewing out this nonsense without any basis of fact and scores of gullible people who swallow their garbage. May God save us from these enemies among us.