My friend David Tanner told me the other day that he gets lots of criticism on Facebook. 

David publishes MidlandsDaily.com which serves Christian business people.

Like me, he has questioned some of what epidemiologists tell us to do.

I understand. It’s why I don’t use Facebook any more. A few sour apples try their best to sour the rest of us.

Not everyone who disagrees with me is a sour apple.

Here’s a well-meant example from a reader in Lexington who said he was writing not for publication but to let me know how he and others feel.

He disagrees with what he calls my approach to reporting on covid-19.

Each week, he writes, I seem to “scratch desperately” for something positive to say.

He’s wrong about ‘desperate’ but if you watch TV or read other newspapers, you know how overwhelming is their emphasis on doom and gloom. All our lives are at risk if we don’t hide under our beds.

Medical experts have raised serious questions about the scientific basis of what some public officials and epidemiologists prescribe for the rest of us to swallow.
 I have found much positive news about covid-19 to report. I also recognize my responsibility to report the bad news, too.
This reader accused me of trying to make people feel less concern.

“The truth is, people should be more concerned,” he wrote.
“The truth is it is a horrendous disaster. People are dying, at this writing over 147,000 in this country and over 1,300 in South Carolina. Lexington County is among the worst,” he wrote.

No, we are not among the worst. We average about what researchers say, 1.5% to 1.6% of the population has died. That means 98.4% to 98.5% did not. 

Our reader further writes that “You seem to be trying desperately to paste a smiley face on the grim reaper.  It won’t work.  
“I suppose if you were reporting about the sinking of the USS Arizona, your headline would be ‘350 Survive the Sinking of the USS Arizona’ while failing to mention the 1,700 killed.”  He can turn a phrase.

What he apparently did not know is that we took DHEC to task for reporting how many were infected and/or died without  reporting how many tested negative and how many recovered from the disease.
Since he did not want me to publish his letter, I did what seemed to be the right thing. I thanked him for his letter and said we welcome opposing positions.

It’s true we find positives as well as report negatives in all of the news.

The letter writer is welcome to his opinions but he is wrong in questioning our motives.

We want our readers to see the good and the bad.

That’s unlike what they get from other media.

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