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Where is the routine testing?

I am an 89-year-old man who received his second Pfizer shot for COVID-19 over a week ago.

During the pandemic, I have avoided in-person examinations and testing by medical providers

because even with masking and other precautions a low probability of disease transmission

remained, and the consequences of contracting the disease for someone my age could be fatal. None of the medical appointments I avoided involved medical emergencies.

On Jan. 7, CDC scientists published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association on transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus by persons who have never had COVID–19 symptoms (presymptomatic and asymptomatic individuals) and concluded that such transmission accounted for over half of all transmission. This means that “… the identification and isolation of persons with symptomatic Covid–19 alone will not control the ongoing spread of SARS-CoV-2.”

For this reason, when I phoned my dentist’s, ophthalmologist’s, podiatrist’s and dermatologist’s offices this morning, I asked if they regularly test their staff for COVID-19 so they could furlough any positive pre- or asymptomatic members. In all cases, the answer was no. Also, I was told about a month ago by my family practitioner that her practice (a major one in the Bangor area) does not routinely carry out such testing. Why not?

Despite my having been vaccinated, I still don’t feel safe visiting these medical offices for overdue medical examinations and testing of a non-emergency nature.

Ronald B. Davis

Orono

We have bigger fish to fry

With all the trials and tribulations in this nation and world, it seems that we would better focus our complaints on more than the sight of a few dead fish on the ice at Sebago Lake, where, incidentally, the overwhelming majority were processed to supply meals for people in need.

Years prior, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife stocked togue in the lake to provide an additional fishing opportunity, but unknowingly it didn’t take long before their population exploded to threaten the native and nationally acclaimed brook trout and landlocked salmon fisheries. The solution then was to thin the togue population by removing/increasing bag limits resulting in a few fish left on the ice that provided nourishment for eagles, ravens, crows, gulls and four-footed creatures that venture out for a free meal. This is nothing more than a display of the natural food chain, which, incidentally we are all a necessary part of. Let’s get over it, folks.

Obviously, trash left on the ice by slob fishermen cannot be tolerated and demands a different conversation.

Joe Bertolaccini

Orrington

Worshiping a golden idol

Who would have supposed that any group of people who think of themselves as serious citizens could be at once so blatant and so oblivious?

Meeting to consider and plan a future course for a political party — a major party in a democratic nation — they fall down before an all-but-literal Golden Calf. A large portion of those gathered likely suppose themselves Christians, yet here they prostrate themselves, figuratively, before an idol, a graven image, a false god.

This abandonment of principle and more particularly of what America is meant to be was, we may recall, prefigured at the Republican National Convention last year, when the platform committee adjourned and, instead of publishing the grounds upon which it proposed to debate the opposing party, simply declared in effect, “His will be done.” Where “He,” whatever he may be, is no deity.

This is collective self-abasement, and it is an appalling display of primitivism.

Robert McHenry

Greenbush