Letter: In this pandemic, listen to the minority voices

Posted 2/3/21

A thread of meaning to the whole coronavirus affair is overlooked. Some people perhaps think that the board members of Pfizer and Moderna and the CDC are angelic figures who always keep foremost in …

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Letter: In this pandemic, listen to the minority voices

Posted

A thread of meaning to the whole coronavirus affair is overlooked. Some people perhaps think that the board members of Pfizer and Moderna and the CDC are angelic figures who always keep foremost in mind the best interest of the public, and when they get in the board room, the billions of dollars of profits at hand do not influence their conduct.

However, I’m afraid we know this is not true.

With such a large amount of money involved, it is quite within the power of the pharmaceutical companies and other interested parties to shape public opinion. And they do.

Messages repeatedly heard and seen have an effect on everyone, whether physician, secretary, milkman or governor.

The common test for Covid-19 is a PCR test, in which tiny bits of viral genome are amplified through successive “cycles” to the point where they are measurable. Either too few or too many cycles gives no meaningful result.

In the country of India, the cut-off is 25 cycles. When the number is raised to 35 cycles, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the chances of an accurate positive result “are minuscule.” However, the CDC, FDA and WHo all have recommended 40 to 45 cycles. This is a recipe for very many false positives, which distorts the whole picture of the pandemic, as many scientists have pointed out.

Who benefits by this arrangement? It’s not the public.

Nor do we benefit from other areas of Covid response that are amplified. We’ve heard so often that we should wear masks and that masks are a protection, it is impossible not to absorb that message.

Repetition is a powerful tool. We are much more malleable than we like to think. But is the message about the masks accurate? It appears it is not.

Could it be that Dr. Fauci, Gov. Gina Raimondo and Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott are wrong? It is possible. A lot of the science mitigates against the masks.

When large amounts of money are involved, the narrative of science is all too readily manipulated. This is why we went so long believing that smoking was healthy, that CFCs were harmless, and that DDT could be sprayed with abandon over farm and field and us.

At present, science, industry and news media are more interconnected than ever before. This is why independent and minority views are so important. Remember Abraham Lincoln and his team of rivals? He didn’t simply consider one viewpoint. But, you might say, there are always some “nuts” among the minority. I agree that is true. But some of those “nuts” are people like Winston Churchill, Alexander Fleming and Rachel Carson.

Minority viewpoints should always be considered. Sometimes the truth is found there.

David Ellis
Portsmouth

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A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.