Look at positive history of vaccines
Museums make history interesting and inform visitors. The Ocoee Massacre exhibit at the Orange County Historical Center, the replica of the house where Henry and Harriette Moore were killed by a bomb placed by the KKK in 1951 in Mims, and the “Americans and the Holocaust” exhibit recently at the Winter Park Library showed racism can be deadly.
With the recent announcement by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo to end vaccine mandates, maybe museums will have to inform visitors of the deadly diseases that were eradicated by vaccines. An exhibit using information from the Mayo Clinic website could show the history of infectious diseases and the development of vaccines. Another exhibit could highlight the 2019 measles outbreak that killed 83 people in Samoa after anti-vaxxers spread inaccurate vaccine information which lowered the vaccination rates.
Despite my museum visits and research, I still can’t understand Ladapo’s statement that vaccine mandates drip “with disdain and slavery.” Efforts to improve public health are not the same as slavery.
Patty Grant Winter Springs
Bianchi captured USF coach controversy
Mike Bianchi’s column about the tainted legacy of Jim Leavitt at USF (“USF putting Jim Leavitt into its Hall of Fame spits on Joel Miller’s memory,” Sept. 6) is some of the best sports writing that I have ever read. The world needs more direct and positive writing about matters such as this, which require taking a strong position which is patently correct.
I know that it is a cliche to say that societies erode due to moral lapses that grow from episodic to endemic. However, in today’s world and today’s times we cannot continually allow those who are or have been in leadership positions to be given cover (or in the case of a national “leader” that I can think of) deified while having a history of appalling immorality, uncaring display for those ruined in their egotistical path to “success” and untruthfulness.
Lonnie N. Groot Daytona Beach Shores
Parents must step up for disease prevention
Gaines County, Texas, had the measles outbreak this spring. Two children died. There are 21,600 people in Gaines County. The ratio of deaths is 0.0093%. That doesn’t sound like much but if you ratio this up to the population of Florida at 23.4 million, that is 2,166 dead people — many if not all of them children — per outbreak. Gov. DeSantis and Dr. Ladapo think personal freedom is more important than dead children. Parents, it is up to you to protect your children.
Ben Humphries Orange County
GOP ignores Christian teachings
In Bishop William R. Cavins’ letter “Keep fighting for human dignity” (Sept. 3), he makes an excellent and what should be a universal point:
“Let us remember that our advocacy is not rooted in politics alone, it is rooted in the sacred worth of every human being. We must continue to welcome the stranger, defend the vulnerable and challenge policies that treat people as problems rather than neighbors.”
This brought to mind two people: Donald Trump and Frances Perkins, Trump as the antithesis of what Jesus taught and Perkins, the implementer. Frances Perkins, Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor and the person responsible for our having Social Security, said: “The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life.”
And excerpted from the book of Matthew: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” So, what about our “Christian” Republican politicians who voted for Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that takes from “the least of these” and hands trillions of dollars to the ultra-wealthy? Here it is: “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
I don’t understand why Republicans in Congress who claim to be Christians have difficulty with this command.
Richard Sutherland Winter Haven
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