It seems that a recent writer took umbrage that his “facts” are called into question … and well they should have been.

His original letter stated that only 6% of reported covid deaths were actually due to covid according the the CDC website, and claims that ‘the media’ has inflated the numbers. It is a familiar refrain these days. “Fake News!” “Lying Media.” “Hoax.”

If you go to the CDC website, directly to the CDC website, it says right there, as of Tuesday that there have been nearly 11 million cases of COVID-19 in this country. Directly underneath that it says that 245,000 deaths. By the time that you read this those numbers will undoubtedly be much higher.

A previous letter writer wants us to believe that the actual number is much lower, that only 6% of the COVID deaths are actually true COVID-19 deaths — that 94% of those people had underlying conditions. That one statement right there is the misinformation.

Nowhere on the CDC website does it say that 94% of the cases are not due to COVID. That is a manipulation of facts and figures to feed into the letter writer’s personal beliefs and biases.

He believes that COVID is a hoax and has found a media outlet that is putting out the figures that fit his narrative.

That is, by definition, “fake news,” the very news that the letter writer decries. The source is cited, but the figures cited have nothing to do with the CDC website. The numbers have been lifted from the site and recalculated. Yet the author of that letter seems to believe that the purveyors of ‘fake news’ are those media sources reporting the CDC case and death counts as taken directly from the CDC website.

We are living in interesting and strange times.

The plain fact of it is that if someone is living with cancer and contracts COVID-19 and dies, their death is due to covid just as surely as if a person living with cancer is struck by a car, they have died of injuries sustained by being hit by a car.

I hold to my original opinion: the “facts” in that letter were not at all factual, and it should not have been accepted for publication.

Debby Hornburg,

Warren