To the Editor:

In the current pandemic disaster we are facing as a nation, it is of utmost importance to listen to information based on facts, particularly scientific evidence.

If we do not follow the health care experts guidance, we risk destroying our health care system and, therefore, destroying our economy.

There is plenty of nonsense promulgated about COVID-19, mostly by elected leaders seeking re-election. When these self-absorbed people expound on the pandemic while ignoring science, that is the time to tune them out.

One particularly destructive lie placed in and repeated in the public discourse goes like this: “Well, the reason we are having the number of cases of COVID-19 is because we are testing more.”

This statement about testing aforementioned is utterly ignorant and without merit. Any elected official who makes such an overtly stupid claim needs to fail at the next election.

The important metrics are the positivity percentage, the R number, the number of hospitalizations and the number of deaths, not the total of tests.

Saying the near-nationwide COVID-19 outbreak is because we are testing more and a solution actually offered by one of these unenlightened leaders was “we have to slow down the testing.”

This is like saying we have the solution to teenage pregnancy - don’t test the girls, then we won’t have cases.

If you say this or say the COVID-19 pandemic is because we are testing too much, you should be on a street corner in New York City yelling and hollering while holding up a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup. And, if an elected official at any level asserts the same, be prepared to vote them out of office.

Anyone with the ability to think knows the solution to solving the pandemic is to greatly expand testing and develop tests that will provide a result in as little as 15 minutes. Then, efficient contact tracing can be completed.

Wearing masks and social distancing are the other elements to control the virus. If we work together and engage these four elements combating the virus, we can make it to a vaccine sometime next year.

Do your part. Rely only on sound science as presented by our public health experts, like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx.

And when you meet anyone talking out of their left ear, saying too much testing is the problem, smile at them, cross your fingers behind your back and tell them the November election was changed to Nov. 4.

Bill Leiner Jr.

Coplay