Sarcastic and wrong
In Friday’s letters to the editor (Your Views, Tribune-Herald), Vicki Vierra sarcastically proposes new lesson plans for returning students.
According to her, the lessons will prove masks aren’t necessary. There are so many half-truths and conspiracy theories in her letter I don’t want to waste anyone’s time debunking them one by one.
Masks don’t work? I suggest you Google: Missouri hair salon, masks, COVID.
You will find that two symptomatic hair stylists, infected with COVID-19, worked side by side for one week. They wore masks and none of their 139 clients were infected — 100% efficacy. I like those odds.
Supporting this it a study done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It can be found at www.news.mit.edu.
The opening paragraph reads, “Analysis shows requiring masks for pubic-facing U.S. business employees on April 1 would have saved tens of thousands of lives.”
Tens of thousands of lives saved. Ten of thousands Americans saved, if our leaders had led rather than practiced wishful thinking.
So, Vicki, in the future, if you or a loved one needs surgery, will you tell the surgeon and operating room personnel not to bother wearing masks because they don’t work? I doubt it.
By the way, one of the many organizations funding the CDC Foundation is the well-know doer of evil, AARP.
Candace Moore
Hilo
‘Wildly inaccurate’
Vicki Vierra’s letter to the editor suggesting that mask-wearing is useless is not true.
Respiratory exhalations do not include individual free-floating viruses. Any viruses sneezed, coughed, laughed or simply exhaled are suspended in droplets, big and small, that are trapped by cloth or surgical masks.
Normal respiratory exhalation produces droplets that range between 20 and 2000 micrometers. Sneezes and coughs produce droplets that are much larger.
The COVID-19 virus is approximately 100 nanometers in diameter. A micrometer is a thousand times larger than a nanometer. So, the exhalation of a 20-micrometer droplet (smallest) is 200 times bigger than a single COVID-19 virus.
Due to Brownian motion and electrostatic effects, these small exhaled droplets take indirect routes and are trapped by the three-dimensional weave of the fabric.
Her analogy that the virus being trapped by a mask is like a gnat being trapped by a chain-link fence is wildly inaccurate.
So, the claim that masks can’t stop COVID-19 because the virus is too small is just another assertion that can be characterized as male bovine fecal matter.
Jay Kelley
Hilo
Regarding Honua Ola
Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
The CIA director stated in the “The Bourne Ultimatum (2007): “My number one rule is hope for the best, plan for the worst.”
“Industry in jeopardy” by Guy Cellier (Your Views, Tribune-Herald, Aug. 12) hit the nail on the head.
Life of the Land wholeheartedly agrees. The proposed Honua Ola (Hu Honua) project needs to be seen through a larger agricultural frame.
We have stressed the need to look at the “big picture” and to evaluate all of the positive and negative financial, agricultural, community and environmental impacts collectively.
Honua Ola has refused. At the Public Utilities Commission, they have stated that issues involving growing trees, chopping down trees and other agricultural issues are off the table.
Honua Ola isn’t in the agricultural business. Rather, affiliated companies in a hidden corporate structure, with hidden finances and hidden contracts, will allegedly handle the agroforestry aspects.
Hamakua Energy noted that Honua Ola has been involved in more than two dozen lawsuits against landowners, managers, labor, financial institutions, utilities and everyone who gets in their way.
Isn’t it time for all of the necessary and reasonable facts, instead of fake news and smear campaigns?
Henry Curtis
Executive director,
Life of the Land