Dear Kooskia …
Regarding multiple letters about Moscow’s mask ordinance by Lucky Brandt of Kooskia:
Dear Kooskia,
Let’s let Moscow use its own judgment and logic and make its own decisions.
Thanks,
Moscow
Andrew Pierce
Moscow
Patriots resisting
I rarely wear a mask and stopped taking the coronavirus “pandemic” seriously back in May. It has become obvious to anyone of critical thought that mandates are more about controlling the masses than genuine concern for our health.
Lockdowns and mask wearing have proven worthless, as the coronavirus has continued to spread unabated regardless of the strictest mandates ordered by tyrannical blue state governors and city mayors.
Livelihoods have been lost, lives ruined and thousands of businesses permanently closed as political leaders continue to move the goal posts to what they deem necessary for a return to normal.
Many of these leaders from our own mayor, to governors, members of Congress and even White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx have been caught at multifamily gatherings, or sitting shoulder to shoulder in restaurants, getting their hair done, traveling and generally mixing it up while not wearing a mask or social distancing.
If these hypocritical, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do leaders don’t bother to take their own unconstitutional recommendations and mandates seriously, how can the rest of us? In the meantime fellow patriots continue to resist, peacefully.
Joe Long
Moscow
Executive Order 13957
On Oct. 21, President Trump issued an executive order that, for many federal employees, effectively overturned the civil service system that has existed in the United States since 1883.
By creating a new type of federal position, Schedule F, Executive Order 13957 empowers federal agencies to involuntarily move scores of career federal employees into positions for which statutory and constitutional job protections would be eliminated — putting them at risk of being fired at will.
Just as perniciously, the executive order allows agency heads to move current political appointees into these newly created Schedule F positions without competition and not based on merit — in essence, creating a new category of political appointee. The creation of Schedule F is nothing more than an attempt to gut the career civil service employees.
Kathy Graham
Moscow
Masks and science
Letter writer Lucky Brandt (Dec. 29) argues that face masks have pore sizes (300 to 2,000 nanometers) that are too large to stop SARS-CoV-2 (roughly 60-140 nanometers). That is, cloth masks’ pores may be 10 times larger than the virus, so how can this do any good?
If viruses were dust particles, Brandt’s argument might have merit, although barrier action would still reduce the distance that the particles are ejected if only because airflow is disrupted. Virus shed from people is, in fact, not the equivalent of dust particles. Virus is shed in water droplets that average 20 to 500 micrometers with normal speech (and larger for loud speech, coughing and laughing). One micrometer (um) is equivalent to 1,000 nanometers (nm). Thus, the minimum size of a speech droplet (20 um) is still 10 times larger than the largest pore size in a cloth mask (2 um).
Furthermore, masks absorb moisture, which traps virus on the mask surface, and SARS-CoV-2, like most viruses, has a charged surface that binds electrostatically to other charged surfaces (e.g., masks materials).
Are masks perfect? No. Air certainly moves around the edges, but masks will reduce the total number of viruses that can escape or enter the confined space. Reducing the number of viral particles, by definition, reduces the risk of transmitting an infectious dose to someone else. Numerous epidemiological studies have confirmed the efficacy of masks.
If Americans relied on the best science to guide our response to a dire pandemic instead of Brandt’s “own judgment and logic,” we wouldn’t need mask mandates. As Brandt says, “This is America,” but I ask instead why can’t we cooperate to ensure the safety of our families and communities until the pandemic passes? This isn’t asking for much, particularly in light of the sacrifices made by previous generations.
Douglas Call
Pullman
Begotten still begetting
Pieces of light … we can create light in many ways in many places. Most of us even know that all form is light. Physics tells us that if the rate of vibration of any form is fast enough, there is light. Agreed? Put another way, we light beings have to slow our vibration enough to become physical. So I look around at all forms here in my world and take the time to recognize each of us as light slowed down. Is it so hard to imagine that all these lights are one light? Can anyone divide light?
It is often mentioned that we are the body of God — all of us, all things, all creation. The physical universe is the form of God. Our essence, being light, is the spirit of God. It’s all about us. We are connected, the inner light is made manifest by each individual and their consciousness — fast vibration or slow, or somewhere in the scale of light, the divine.
OK. Let’s look again at the body of God, or Christ manifest as all things, including Jesus and Buddha and all spiritual masters — very high vibrations in the physical world. Thus, the manifest universe, or the only begotten “son” (expression) of light, everywhere present now, looks like everything of substance; everything you can see, touch, hear smell, walk on or get into.
This is the body of God, the Christ in expression. Meister Eckhart once said, There is only one begotten son, but the begotten is still begetting.
Now imagine the light of all things, behind their manifestations. It’s all one light, the oneness light we all talk about being as consciousness in form.
If all of us on the planet surrendered to this Truth, imagine such a beautiful, peaceful, authentic, honest, glorious world we would enjoy, in full awareness. Whenever I am in this oneness fragrance, somehow it radiates all around me. Everything is all right in my life. And also in yours.
Eleanor Richard
Moscow
