Watch for propaganda by columnists
I have no complaints when a columnist shares an opinion that differs from my own. But I am extremely bothered when, in a single paragraph tucked in toward the end of a rather bland column about "normalcy on school masks," Michael Barone feels obliged to repeat controversial claims that are misleading and without proof as if they were established fact.
His claim that the NIH and NIAID "started financing the manipulation" of viruses, and that Drs. Fauci and Collins "had something to cover up" are short on factual support and undermine the efforts of scientists trying to end the pandemic.
It is only after doing real research that an individual can understand the extremely tentative connection between NIH grants and the Wuhan labs and Mr. Barone knows that most people won't do the research or understand what really occurred.
He assumes the reader will simply take on face value his implied accusation that the people who have done everything they could to get us out of this pandemic somehow helped engineer it. In this he is simply echoing the cheap smears and misrepresentations of Tucker Carlson and Rand Paul and making a true return to normalcy - a time when citizens believed in science and worked together in a crisis - all that more elusive.
Why did the good editors at the Herald allow this? Frankly, I expect more from my daily newspaper.
James M. Wisniewski
Roselle