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Tell us again how advanced Canada is

For years, we have heard that Canada has a great health care system. When Hillary Clinton was first lady, she proposed we change our health care system to be similar to Canada. Fast forward to today. Our pharmaceutical industry has created and produced millions of doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. Yet Canada is still in the testing phase, and its pharmaceutical industry is not sure it has the capacity to produce enough vaccines for their population.

According to the latest reports, Canada was to start getting its first Pfizer vaccine doses from the U.S. in early May.

Tell me again how we should change to a national health care system. I am just thankful that Hillary and the Democrats have not nationalized our system although they continue to push the idea.

Kris Riefler

Postal service woes are piling up

Last Tuesday at 7 p.m., after eating at a local restaurant, I went to drop a couple pieces of mail in the outside mailbox at the post office. The box was totally full. I tried to push the letters down, but it was stuffed. What is going on? The mail is supposed to be taken in at the end of the day. I can't believe if it was emptied at 4:30 it could be that full, especially with two other boxes sitting next to it.

No wonder we receive late notices on bills that we have paid and put in the mail. People depend on this service. Not everyone has a computer to pay bills, nor do we all want to. Some people get their medicines through the mail.

You can't depend on this critical service anymore. The election cannot be blamed now. Something needs to be done.

Karen Dale

Hixson

Old Trump tweet epitome of irony

It's a sound slap across the face when an old tweet resurfaces to haunt the writer, especially when it's one you wrote after you became president.

The message Trump published shortly after he was elected president in 2016 ratified a comment made by Vladimir Putin about Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

It reads: "Vladimir Putin said today about Hillary and Dems: 'In my opinion, it is humiliating. One must be able to lose with dignity.' So true!"

Nationwide, Biden led Trump by 7 million votes out of a record 158 million cast.

Wielding a wrecking ball to American democracy, Trump trudged away leaving bounteous disgrace in his wake.

Rod Killian

Press needs to put numbers in context

Day after day, news reporters have been citing India's rising and "staggering" 300,000 deaths from COVID-19 as the third highest in the world. In comparison, deaths are 589,893 in the U.S. and 449,068 in Brazil. But what do these numbers mean? There's no context for them.

For context, consider per-capita death rates per 100,000 people. It's 212 in Brazil, 179 in the U.S. and only 22 in India. Thus, if the U.S. had as low a death rate as India, it would have only 77,000 COVID-19 deaths instead of 500,000. Or, if India's per-capita death were as high as that of the U.S., India would be facing a truly staggering 2,360,000 deaths, not 300,000. In light of the math, it is misleading to say that COVID-19 deaths in India are third highest in the world.

Facts have meaning only in context. Unfortunately, far too much reporting ignores context and inconvenient facts in order to create false impressions of conditions and events. If that's how freedom of the free press works, who needs it?

Bob Miller

Signal Mountain

Why would Georgians host Greene, Gaetz?

I saw that Matt Gaetz and and Marjorie Taylor Greene were in Dalton. One of these (Greene) is a person Georgia chose to represent it. So this is who Georgians are? Aren't they embarrassed and want to kick this person out of office?

I have been in the state of Georgia one time since I moved to Cleveland 15 years ago. I am not going to give that state any of my money. Why do normal Americans always have to fight against power-hungry, corrupt and mentally ill people who make laws in this country? It is very clear that both of these people have mental issues.

If Georgians are no better than [hosting] these two people, we have our own enemies in our backyards. Maybe we will have to have that second Civil War if there are people in Georgia supporting these sickos.

Penny Furman

Cleveland, Tennessee

Consistency needed on transgender issue

A much needed spotlight of rationality on the growing tragedy of the politically correct issue of child abuse as it relates to so-called transgender children: Gender dysphoria is a recognized psychological disorder and as such should be treated with psychotherapy, antidepressants and antipsychotics as are other types of mental illness. Why then are physician-ordered puberty blockers, lifelong hormonal therapy, irreversible bodily mutilation, and further, requiring society to participate in this delusional charade, the only acceptable ways of handling of this solution?

Conversely, [columnist Leonard] Pitts has, in the past, written quite eloquently concerning the harm that health care professional-provided conversation therapy does to children confused about their sexuality. A little consistency on these issues by Mr. Pitts would be appreciated.

Gene Stevens

Tunnel Hill, Georgia

Time to rethink public ed spending

Alabama's governor makes decisions about 3rd grade reading requirements. Really? Tennessee's governor signs a well-intentioned bill seeking to govern what is actually taught in public school classrooms about the history of present-day race relations in America.

Does anyone actually believe that state governments can control what happens behind closed classroom doors? Only those who have never managed a classroom of real, live human beings could believe such nonsense. All of which points to the often-obscured reality that parents are most responsible for their children's education, and should they object to mismanagement or indoctrination in the public schools, they should not be required to subject their children to an educational system which violates their values. They should be able to take to a school of their choosing those thousands of local, state and federal dollars allocated to their child's education.

How are these decisions not a matter of justice in education? And what evidence is there that current attempts to manage from state capitals and Washington, D.C., what happens in the dynamic relationship between teachers and students are actually effective?

It's long past time to re-evaluate how we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the schooling of our children.

Gary Lindley

Lookout Mountain, Georgia

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Tell us again how advanced Canada is and more letters to the editors - Chattanooga Times Free Press