Letters to the editor: Powerball, COVID relief, wastewater testing
Powerball decision
House State Affairs Committee: You voted to end the Powerball lottery because the Multi-State Lottery Association wants to include Australia and the United Kingdom. Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, complains that Australia might use its proceeds to promote anti-gun measures. Incredibly enough, any state and any country may use its lottery proceeds as it sees fit. With a population of about 1.85 million, Idaho sells about $28 million in Powerball tickets per year, or about $15 per Idahoan, and nets about half that to go to schools. At that rate, Australia might sell over $380 million of lottery tickets to its population of well over 25 million, and may net half that for its uses. Does the MSLA care about Idaho more than Australia? Will Australia change how it uses any proceeds it gets because of any Idahoan’s opinion?
Rep. Bruce Skaug is concerned that the odds of an Idahoan winning will drop. Representative, do you understand how the persistent underfunding of Idaho education has crippled your ability to understand basic concepts such as probabilities of winning the lottery? Do you understand that by cutting a source of funding for education, you are crippling the education of future generations?
Randall French, Boise
COVID relief bill
Republican senators and congressmen voted against the COVID-19 relief bill in part because they said it was too expensive. (They didn’t seem concerned about the ballooning national debt under the previous non-administration.) Well, there’s a simple way to cut the cost of the relief package by half: All of those people who voted for these “representatives” can simply decline to take the money. After all, by voting for these people, they voted against the bill, even if they were in favor of it, which the polls show, most Americans were. So, either the Republican voters didn’t tell their representatives they favored the bill, or, if they did, their representatives disregarded them. Maybe the representatives felt that their constituents didn’t need or deserve the money: you know, the old Republican boot-strap-mantra. It never occurs to them that some people can’t afford or don’t have access to the boots. If the Republican voters are satisfied that their representatives voted to keep them from getting some relief, then by all means they should keep right on voting the same way, keeping in mind of course, that theirs is also the party that brought us the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Democracy.
David Cannamela, Boise
Wastewater testing
Your recent article on COVID-19 testing in wastewater missed the mark in a couple of areas. Your story emphasized the alarming fact that the latest results show a 100% increase over the low point in February. It failed to add the context that the current level is still 90% less than November’s high point.
The seven-day average of COVID-19 copies per litter peaked in early November at about 1 million. The number dropped steadily to 55,000 copies in mid February. The current average (through March 8) stands at a bit over 100,000. One thing that should be noted here is that the apparent level of community infection dropped through the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holidays. There was no apparent holiday surge in infections.
The peak in reported cases occurred about four weeks after the peak shown in the wastewater. The peak of virus shedding is within days of infection. The report of a positive case will typically be 1-2 weeks after infection. A surge in caseloads and holidays can easily widen this gap another two weeks or more.
Wastewater testing can provide early warning of new surges. The current numbers warrant caution and concern, not panic.
Kevin Johnson, Boise