Letters to the editor for the week of 4/1/20
Guidelines for letters
All letters must contain an address and phone number. Only one letter per week per person will be published; only one letter per person per month regarding the same topic will be published. Feather Publishing does not print third-party, anonymous or open letters. Letters must not exceed 300 words. Writers responding to previously published letters may not mention the author by name. The deadline is Friday at noon; deadlines may change due to holidays. Letters may be submitted at any of Feather Publishing’s offices, sent via fax to 283-3952 or emailed to [email protected]
Good neighbor
I was out taking a walk on a beautiful Sunday and noticed one of my neighbors, Tony DeMartini, out shoveling the snow berm from around a fire hydrant to clear it. I casually thanked him and he told me that he only just retired from the Quincy Fire Department. I looked him up and discovered that he was Quincy’s Firefighter of the year. So I looked up the article you did on him and was glad that I stopped to talk for a few minutes. I did take his picture, but my camera doesn’t like the snow for some reason and it didn’t come out. Thanks neighbor!
Sara VanPetten
Quincy
Great service
I was in a desperate need to repair my broken laptop as I am working remotely from my home. When I called Plumas PC, James informed me that the office is closed. He must have heard my desperate voice the need to repair my laptop, so he made a special effort to come that day to his office at 5:30 to help me out. James helped me resolve my issue and helped me install all my hardware and software on my new laptop, so I can work remotely.
My heartfelt thank you, James, for being such an excellent businessman. I so highly recommend him to everyone.
Arella Sedgwick
Quincy
Thanks
While I will miss my friends for morning breakfasts, we too shall return when it is safe. Thanks to the paper for keeping us updated on what is open in our area of Eastern Plumas. Thanks to those few restaurants that fed us at their doors.
Just a suggestion, after this virus is totally past … perhaps a big summer BBQ at the city park? We could celebrate our community, our health care workers and our road crews for snow removal. It might help bring us back “home” sooner.
Trent Saxton
Lake Davis
Nesting boxes from Audubon
On behalf of Plumas Audubon Society, I would like to thank several community supporters for making our recent bird and bat box building effort a success. FRC welcomed us as a Community Classroom weekend workshop, Quincy Junior-Senior High School made its wood shop available for the construction, and Sierra Pacific Industries generously donated the lumber without which we would not have been able to produce finished products to distribute without cost to Plumas County residents.
We were able to complete 80 units and about 65 are still available. Interested individuals may acquire one by simply contacting us, agreeing to mount it for use this year, and cleaning it out yearly.
The following are available: nesting boxes for wrens, nuthatches, tree swallows and bluebirds; nesting platforms for robins, doves, and barn swallows; and bat boxes. Basic placement and care instructions will be included with each unit.
If you are interested, contact me at piersandfaith
@gmail.com or 283-2604. Please know that PAS will observe state guidelines for citizen interaction in this time of Covid-19, which may delay the actual dispersal somewhat.
Thanks again to everyone who made it possible for us to be able to make this offering.
Piers Strailey
Plumas Audubon Society
Similar action?
I read the article regarding Dr. Satterfield’s recommendation that anyone who has traveled out of county, and in particular second-home owners who come here, self-quarantine. As a Graeagle resident I can vouch for the influx of second-home owners moving back in a lot earlier than usual. Under normal circumstances I understand their actions in this, they own their homes and are free to come and go as they please. However these are not normal circumstances.
I also understand if they want to escape the craziness of the Bay Area or Reno right now and isolate themselves in a less congested environment. But when I see them come in with their snow toys, coming and going out of their houses as if they are in an immune environment I wonder how seriously they are taking this and if they realize by coming here they are bringing in a larger germ pool to possibly affect those of us who are taking the precaution orders seriously. Down the road this could put a huge strain on our local medical resources.
The article notes that Trinity County has already enacted a two-week quarantine for a similar situation. At this point I wonder if it would really do any good for Plumas County to consider a similar action, in light of the fact that many of the returnees have been here for at least two weeks already, and if they are not taking it seriously in the first place, will it make any difference to them now.
Scott Lawson
Graeagle
Stay home
Dr. Kouba explains why Covid-19 is a bigger deal than seasonal flu. It has to do with RNA sequencing … i.e. genetics. Seasonal flu is an “all human virus.” The DNA/RNA chains that make up the virus are recognized by the human immune system. This means that your body has some immunity to it before it comes around each year … you get immunity two ways … through exposure to a virus or by getting a flu shot.
Novel viruses, come from animals … the WHO tracks novel viruses in animals,
(sometimes for years watching for mutations). Usually these viruses only transfer from animal to animal (pigs in the case of H1N1) (birds in the case of the Spanish flu). But once, one of these animal viruses mutates and starts to transfer from animal to humans … then it is a problem. Why? Because we have no natural immunity … The RNA sequencing of the genes inside the virus isn’t human and the human immune system doesn’t recognize it so, we can’t fight it oft.
Now … sometimes, the mutation only allows transfer from animal to human, for years it’s only transmission is from an infected animal to human before it finally mutates so that it can now transfer human to human … once that happens we have a new contagion phase. And depending on the fashion of this new mutation, that’s what decides how contagious or how deadly it’s gonna be.
H1 N1 was deadly … but it did not mutate in a way that was deadly as the Spanish flu. It’s RNA was slower to mutate and it attacked its host differently, too.
Fast forward now, here comes this coronavirus. It existed in animals only, for nobody how long … but one day, at an animal market, in Wuhan China, in December 2019, it mutated and made the jump from animal to people. At first, only animals could give it to a person … But here is the scary part … in just two weeks it mutated again and gained the ability to jump from human-to- human. Scientist call this ability, “slippery.”
This Coronavirus, not being in any form a “human” virus (whereas we would all have some natural or acquired immunity). Took off like a rocket. And this was because, humans have no known immunity … doctors have no known medicine for it. And it just so happens that this particular mutated animal virus, changed itself in such a way that it causes great damage to human lungs.
That’s why coronavirus is different from seasonal flu, or H1N1 or any other type of influenza … this is one slippery AF. And it’s a lung eater … And, it’s already mutated again, so that we now have two strains to deal with, strain S and strain L, which makes it twice as hard to develop a vaccine.
We really have no tools in our shed, with this. History has shown that fast and immediate closing of public places has helped in the past pandemics. Philadelphia and Baltimore were reluctant to close events in 1918 and they were the hardest hit in the U.S. during the Spanish Flu … flatten the curve. Stay home.
Duane Vander Veen
Graeagle
Truly incompetent
Wow — Lucky me. President Donald Trump just wrote to me with his ‘Cornavirus Guidelines For America.’ I received this card on March 26 — the same day that the nation reached 1000 deaths from this scourge. Whoops, no, now it is 1100 deaths. Worldwide, also today, the confirmed coronavirus caseload has reached one half million. Also, just today the United States reached the most COVID-19 cases of any country in the world — We are Number One!
Today is two days after I watched the President say he wanted churches full on Easter Sunday. It is weeks after he said that an unspecified ‘miracle’ would make the coronavirus go away.Today is 15 days since the World Health Organization declared this coronavirus a worldwide emergency pandemic. And it is less than four weeks since President Trump called this virus a hoax and a Democratic plot. But in his card today he thankfully asked me to cover my cough.Oh, and wash my hands.
With Congressional inability to act, our thanks to the mayors and governors who step into leadership when it is needed. It has been clear for years that the President is incompetent and that his main interests are making money and high ratings — not the welfare of the American people. Owing to the number of deaths that we will see due to his biological ignorance and administrative bungling, he should be excoriated and banished.
Don Gasser
Quincy
An organism
Has “He” got your attention yet?
If someone had told you in December that t microscopic organism could bring the world to a stop you would not have believed. Well, scientists have been warning our leaders for years about this possibility.
Christians have inadvertently been asking for these events every time they parrot the words to the Lord’s Prayer, “Let your kingdom come to earth as it is in Heaven.” Think about it, a righteous kingdom can’t rule until the present governments are done away with.
I suggest everyone check out the last section of your owners manual
Frank Kortangian
Graeagle
On real depressions
In 1929, my dad had completed three years at Stanford’s engineering school. He had alternated a year of work with each year of school. My mother, brought up in a congregational parsonage, was an accomplished pianist. In 1930, she weighed only 90 pounds and was in perfect health. Then came the crash. Dad never did make his fourth year. Instead, with family to support, he took any job he could find, at $0.25 an hour. Years later, I learned that my folks had lived for six months on nothing but corn meal. I expect that caused some of the damage to her thyroid. Her first heart attack came in 1960, probably the same year her identical twin died. The next twenty years held an in-and-out series of strokes and convalescent homes.
I have total respect for both of my parents. Despite the physical and emotional pain they suffered, they never complained about its cause. By 1939, dad was a project engineer at the old San Francisco airport, at $0.85 an hour. The journeymen on his work crews (electricians, carpenters, plumbers) earned $0.45 to $0.65 an hour. I acquired my perspective on real depressions during those years. My perspective on today’s rejuvenated robber barons, its self-oriented Internet addicts, its ignorant politicians and its greed ridden corporate executives is undoubtedly tainted by my knowledge of the ‘great depression’. It seems odd that in a country that offers everything a society might want, or need, we are unable to accept that offer. We seem to be incapable of placing our nation’s health and integrity ahead of our own ultraconformity, greed, ignorance and insecurity. We prefer fantasy and wishful thinking to reality and progress. Perhaps it’s always been that way. But, should it be?
Wallace B. Eshleman
Quincy