COVID hooey!: ignore the virus
You mention a series of lockdowns (RN&R, July 30). What are you talking about? There were no lockdowns in the United States. We were free to leave our homes, walk to the park, take a road trip, shop at grocery stores, visit a friend’s house, play tennis, go to an animal shelter to adopt a “pandemic puppy,” get a library book via curbside pickup, etc etc etc. What lockdowns? Were there armed guards outside your door? I didn’t see any in my neighborhood. Herd immunity?? Haven’t you been paying attention? Herd immunity is not achievable. It was a red herring. COVID will always be around. Always.
The vaccines were a total bust. They don’t work in preventing transmission or infection. They wear off. Look at Biden, vaccinated, boosted, and he still got it. If anything, vaccines are causing the new variants, it’s become an evolutionary arms race. We are training the virus to adapt and defeat the vaccines. Just like there are drug resistant bacteria. Influenza will always be around too. Masks don’t work either! What a joke. If you eat or drink at a crowded indoor venue, you’re exposed to the virus. And boy, are masks ugly, oppressive, dorky looking things. Hiding behind face diapers isn’t the answer.
The answer? Just ignore the virus. I caught COVID earlier this year. I’m not vaccinated. I had a bad sore throat and temporarily lost taste and smell sense but it wasn’t a serious case. The virus ran its course. Yes it sucked, but for the average immune system, there’s a 99% recovery rate. Most deaths were in folks with underlying conditions or really old. Also, hospital ventilators killed some people.
You can wear the face diaper and think about COVID every time you leave your house, but I’m enjoying the freedom to ignore it.
— April Pederson, Reno
Applause for Edison Garcia
I have to say that the review of Reno Little Theater’s “Putnam County” by Jennifer Santina (RN&R, July 23) was a bit skewed. I agreed with many of her comments but was totally upset by the fact that she left out the amazing singing and acting performance by Edison Garcia who played the part of Mitch Mahoney. Garcia’s singing was by far the best and most professional of the cast — no false notes and great vocalization. His acting of an ex-con in repentance mode, was hilarious and very well performed. Tsk. Tsk. to have overlooked such an important actor and singer in this play!
— Phyllis Beverly, Sparks
Readers debate rent control
Rent caps aren’t a solution
Rent control (RN&R, July 29) is only a short term cure to higher rents. In the medium and long term it stifles investment in new and existing rental units thereby eroded the quality and supply of the housing stock. The solution to higher rents is for the city to support the building of more rental units thorough streamlining the development process, reducing entitlement fees, increasing density and reducing parking requirements. Rent control has never worked in the long run.
— George Graham, Reno
Rent stabilization stops gouging
The only people that believe that rent control (RN&R, July 29) is useless are the folks that don’t need it. Drive by 5599 Quail Manor Court and ask the seniors in the community why they are getting 60 day notices to move. It certainly isn’t for not paying their rent every month for the last several (some 25+) years! Our complex was purchased by a California LLC. We were previously a 55+ community. The day they took over in March 2021, they stated that they didn’t know what the future plans of the community would be. The immediately changed our community from 55+, to come one and come all without advising the current residents and raised the rent for newbies exponentially. This past January we only saw a rent increase of $100 without renewing the lease. Starting in March, they handed out eviction notices. It wasn’t just to raise the rent, but clearly by design it was to remove the old and rent to the new. Sure, they said they were renovating the units. However, we all know better. In order to move back in, we would have to complete a rental application and “qualify” just like any new renter…oh, at a much higher rate.
Rent control/affordable housing is an absolute must until a long term solution is achieved and the City/State needs to put a stop to these evictions! Clearly this problem was made worse by Hillary and her gang singing the same old song “The city does not have the authority to do anything about rent control/stabilization…” She has been singing that song for years and isn’t the truth! Now that neither mayoral candidate is interested in rent control the situation is only going to get worse. The new affordable housing units under construction are too late for many. As I see many of my neighbors being kicked out of their apartments (many of them in their 80s and 90s) including one Purple Heart Veteran, we can only thank the Mayor and her City Council members for their inaction. Nana and PaPa living on the streets. It’s a damn shame.
Ted Green, Reno
Penalize greedy developers
I absolutely support chaining ratios (RN&R, July 29). Cost of living, median income, and the rate of inflation should dictate the price of housing. Having a place to sleep that is safe and sheltered from the elements is a basic human need – not a playground for investors who see tenants as eminently exploitable.
One way to regulate the (rental) market might be increasing tax rates on landlords where there are high vacancy rates and high homeless rates. It is nonsensical to see the huge numbers of people sleeping on the street in front of enormous and empty apartment towers. There should be a penalty for developers that build things no one can afford. Communities deserve to have a symbiotic relationship with developers, one that benefits everyone. And, any developer that doesn’t want to give back to the community in which they build, who doesn’t want to pay taxes and operate respectfully should be called what they really are: Parasites.
Andrea Daerice, Reno
Johns Hopkins University reports a 1.4% lethality rate for those who catch covid in Nevada. This supports April Pederson’s 99-ish% chance that people will survive (nevermind things like long covid). But the problem is that small percentages of large populations results in large numbers; the most glaring example being the over 1 million dead in our country, among which are 3 people I knew personally.
The claim that vaccines and other mitigation measures don’t work is simply bunk. It is the un-vaccinated who suffer the worst effects when they do catch it, including death. And the numbers are clear that show proper use of masks coupled with practices such as social distancing significantly reduces spread of not just covid, but things like flu.
Finally, advocating for blind acceptance of whatever happens ignores the effects on things like hospitals (local hospitals had to convert parking garages for bed space).
The bottom line is that a lot of people are not lucky enough to hit that 99-ish% lottery and would prefer not to have be negligently exposed by folks who can’t do math or who just don’t care in the first place.
mike rottmann from virginia city, nv
After living in Reno for 13 years and loving it, we had to leave because of gentrification. The rent on the two bedroom apartment where we lived in Huffaker Park has more than doubled since 2018, the year we left. We miss it and we aspire to return, but we live on a fixed income and it is economically impossible. We were fortunate that we could relocate to a community that we could afford, and it is very sad to read about how much worse the situation has become in Reno. Unfortunately, housing also is very tight in our new location, the “parasites” are hovering, and similar gentrification/exploitation is underway here.
Dear Editor:
A recent TV Political Ad supporting Catherine Cortez Masto stated ” Catherine Cortez Masto cares
about Nevadans” However, her performance as our State’s Attorney General belies that claim!
In 2004, Congress became aware that in the U. S., there were over 400,000 unprocessed Rape Kits
(Biological Evidence gathered by authorities in alleged rape cases for scientific processing)
sitting in local police jurisdictions, because there wasn’t enough money to process them so that victims
could prove their claims. Accordingly, Congress began a Grant Program in 2004 (Legislated in 2008)
which provided money to those States to filter on down to local jurisdictions for the purpose of rape
kit processing. However, despite the fact that Nevada was among those states with a critical backlog of
unprocessed rape kits, during her tenure, 2006-2014, as Nevada A/G, she never once requested available funds
for their processing. Before leaving office, when pressed on that subject by The Criminal Justice Committee
on Oct./2014 , she simply indicated she wasn’t aware of the issue. However, her successor as A/G
campaigned on the issue, and was able to secure 3.7 million dollars in Grants and have these funds
redirected to local jurisdictions for funding within a year of being elected to office; and justice began being served!
Coincidentally, her successor as A/G was Adam Laxalt, her current opponent for her Senate seat!!