David Huot: Okay for 80,000 people to die but we'll only admit to 50,000?

To The Daily Sun,

I sat and watched the evening news as Dr. Birx tied herself in a knot trying to explain how the death statistics were skewed to show more Covid-19 deaths than a different way of figuring them would. The results aren’t being properly reported. Really! The first whimper, after a considerable period of pooh-poohing by our president, who has spent a few weeks looking for people to blame, was followed by a concerted effort to discredit Dr. Fauci by him and a group of Fox News “analysts,” who think the government is run by the CDC.

The first time the blame game started was in January when Mr. Trump sought to pin the blame on the disease to “Chinah.” There followed a series of claims that everything was under control and that Covid-19 would just go away. When that failed, the death toll estimates started. Anybody remember what he said it would be in March? Then it went to 50,000 and now, when it’s reached over 80,000, all of a sudden it’s because THE STATES haven’t been counting them right! Who on earth told the states how to count them? To whom do the states report the numbers? Why did Dr. Birx and the bureaucrats at CDC suddenly decide we had to count them differently? So it’s okay if 80.000 die but we only count 50,000 of them?

We’ve heard from the beginning that we can’t test enough because there isn’t enough of this or that and God forbid that we should use the federal laws enacted EXACTLY for that reason to get it started. Then, of course, we heard the daily briefings, usually preceded by a campaign speech, that spoke of the millions of tests that would be happening “soon.” The estimates are now over five million but they won’t tell you how many have actually been received. New Hampshire only got to 1,375 daily tests last week!!

Our governor has done a creditable job with the conditions needed to try and tamp down the pandemic, and he deserves credit for that. But N.H. has received nearly a billion and a half of money from the three relief acts already passed by Congress, and aside from a bunch of bars on a chart, we can’t quite be sure where it went. Nobody’s stealing the money, but the assorted advisory committees the governor set up have no say in the matter and we can’t tell for sure on what all it’s being spent on. There are state laws that govern such things, but the governor is fighting tooth and nail to make sure the Legislative branch can’t use them.

Finally, I’ve been watching the news lately and have noticed that our president, with the cooperation of the Congress, is trying to kill the U.S. Postal Service. He claims it’s because he doesn’t like the way they’re treating Amazon, but Jared Kushner let the cat out of the bag this week when he opined about circumstances under which the November election might need to be “postponed.”

I grew up in Laconia, and I’m proud of how the people here don’t let anybody pull the wool over their eyes!

David Huot

State Representative

Laconia