After reading the letters on March 15 opinion page, I felt compelled to write. In 2021, I wrote an article published in the Star-Ledger with the headline “COVID ends a beautiful love story,” about how the disease killed my sister and her husband.
How quickly we forget how Covid affected our lives. It was devastating to so many families, but a mask-wearing, hand-washing nuisance to others. COVID-19 has killed 1.2 million Americans and continues to do so. Politicians, school administrators and parents all struggled with what the best course of action was. In hindsight, mistakes were made, including overdoing it with school and business closings.
During the pandemic, I lost my sister and her husband of 55 years. They died within 20 hours of each other in overloaded emergency wards in different Florida hospitals. They were both intelligent people with solid careers. One retired from a New Jersey town as a police officer, and the other volunteered for several charitable organizations.
Both refused to wear masks and take vaccines. They bought into former President Donald Trump’s initial lie that COVID-19 was a hoax. Both became avid supporters of Make America Great Again, attending rallies, waving flags, etc. I remember talking with my sister after watching Trump stand on the White House balcony after his own bout with Covid, pulling off his mask to demonstrate how tough he is and how Covid was no big deal. My response was: Do you believe a politician who has lied his entire life, or do you believe doctors?
What makes me sick to my stomach are those who continue to believe in conspiracy theories, not only about COVID-19, but also about the Sandy Hook, Connecticut, slaughter of children with assault weapons being “fake.”
We all owe a debt to the doctors, nurses and health care professionals who saved so many people — even after those who got sick refused to take simple safety steps. Each of these workers is a true American hero.
Chris Robinson, Ocean Township
Murphy, not Trump, brought Covid disaster
According to Neil Vincent Sheck’s recent letter, the disastrous COVID-19 response in New Jersey should be blamed on Donald Trump.
When Trump, as president, tried to close the Southern border and not let people in from China and other countries, he was called a racist, a tyrant dictator and a xenophobe.
Meanwhile, a state-commissioned report on New Jersey’s response took two years, cost $9 million in taxpayer money, and didn’t even tell us how many businesses permanently closed after lockdowns imposed by Gov. Phil Murphy.
Sheck’s letter neglected to tell us that, under Murphy and former Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli’s policies, New Jersey was the site of more than 9,100 COVID-19 deaths in nursing and veterans’ homes, among the nation’s highest totals.
Donald Trump didn’t mandate this. Phil Murphy did. He locked down the schools for so long that the kids in 5th grade can’t read on a third- grade level. Great job!
Jeff Plungis, South Plainfield
N.J. has accepted ballot-design rigging for decades
Both the Republican and Democratic parties have been “fixing” New Jersey primary ballots for 100 years, and it’s not confusing to see why.
Thanks to a legal challenge in the scramble to run for the U.S. Senate in the wake of Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption charges, the crooked ballot may finally be straightened out.
In a story about a hearing in the ballot-design case, NJ Advance Media’s Brent Johnson wrote, “Angelo Genova, a high-profile attorney representing numerous county clerks arguing in favor of the current system, called state Attorney General Matt Platkin’s letter a ‘litigation grenade’ and said it shouldn’t be considered” by the court. (Platkin wrote that he won’t defend the existing ballot design, as he considers it unconstitutional.)
While NJ Advance Media added an online graphic as an example of what such a disputed ballot looks like, I have a better example: Ocean County’s 2014 primary ballot.
The layout made it appear that only one person was running for Congress from each party, since just one name appeared below Sen. Cory Booker’s, for example. The names of two other Democrats and a second Republican running appeared far to the right, in their own individual columns, especially in the GOP layout.
I encourage any county clerk that hired Genova to be voted out of office as soon as possible, but that won’t happen unless the court rules in our favor and the current ballot design is thrown out.
After all they’ve hired a lawyer to keep voters confused and in the dark for a reason, and it’s just as corrupt as the charges against Menendez suggest.
George Humphris, Toms River
Two sham elections
This past week produced two sham elections: In Russia, Vladimir Putin won the presidency by beating his dead and imprisoned rivals.
In Camden County, Tammy Murphy won the Camden County Democrats’ U.S. Senate endorsement after barring entry at a meeting to two other candidates, Andy Kim and Patricia Campos-Medina.
Vladimir Putin and Tammy Murphy — the fetid stench of democracy.
Walter Miziuk, Hamilton
When you can’t afford not to fight
I have been reading Saul Griffith’s book “Electrify: An Optimists Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future.” It spells out the steps needed to satisfy our energy needs with electricity from renewable energy sources in order to eliminate the combustion of fossil fuels that is largely causing climate change.
On Page 124, Griffith writes the following: “You don’t fight a war because you can afford it — you fight a war because you can’t afford not to.”
Because it struck me that this applies to the war in Ukraine, as well as to the war against climate change, I felt compelled to share it with your readers.
John L. Roeder, West Windsor
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