Readers sound off on chronic illness, kill shelters and Ye’s anti-Semitism

Staten Island: Voicer Maria Sinclair bemoaned the piddling amount given to her for her serious illnesses from her time at Ground Zero. She’s not alone. It seems the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund prioritized payments for these exact same diseases to cops and firefighters while simply crapping on all others.

These diseases continue to plague me on a daily basis, along with my skin cancer now returning, yet the VCF discounts them as minor — in you and me, that is. I personally know firefighters who received four times what I was given for the exact same illnesses. The FDNY, to its everlasting credit, set up a great program for them with counseling, treatment and a push for fair payouts.

But why is one person’s illness somehow worth more than another’s? I showed up and started digging, eventually being the one guy willing to dump buckets into piles to be scooped up off West St. by front-end loaders. At one point, I had eleven buckets that had come down with a warning: “Body parts.”

We have been told we are now at risk of dementia. Despite me telling doctors for at least three years that I am experiencing alarming cognition issues, I have received no guidance, nor have I been approached about possible treatments. My lungs bled for three years, with me dragging a bucket around at work to spit fresh blood into daily. Guys at work called me disgusting. I got nothing for my lung scarring nor for the three years of bleeding.

How many others are going through this? Tom McGuire

Rockaway Park: I would like to congratulate Alexa D’Angelo on her well-written article describing the pitfalls of Medicare Advantage plans (”Millennials can save Medicare,” op-ed, Dec. 2). As a veteran of 37 years of primary care medicine in a small office setting, my staff and I had tons of experience dealing with these plans. Her analysis is spot-on. It is nothing short of criminal for NYC to keep trying to foist such inadequate medical coverage on its retirees, most of whom served the city with dignity and honor and who deserve better. Peter Galvin

Danbury, Conn.: You have plenty of issues with errors and sleep-walking editors not catching gaping errors in your paper that are far more egregious, so this may seem nitpicky compared to the rest, but in “He had a good heart” (Dec. 3), you referred to Frank Vallelonga as going to the Oscars the night “Green Book” won for best movie (it’s best picture), best screenplay (it’s best adapted screenplay) and “best actor” for Mahershala Ali, who actually won for best supporting actor. His co-star, Viggo Mortensen, was nominated for best actor and lost to Rami Malek for “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Michael Eddy

Fresh Meadows: In September, I visited Paris with my family. While there, we came across a storefront that made an appearance in the movie “Ratatouille.” Displayed in its windows are taxidermied dead rats in traps. I have a suggestion for the mayor: Being that he is making his rounds, researching and learning, he should visit this store in Paris. For sure, this sight would help scare the rats out of New York. Just saying. H. Manuel DaSilva

Manhattan: How stupid does Mayor Adams think we are? Rats are NYC’s “real enemy”? Has the mayor read the papers recently? It’s not rats that are robbing, assaulting, raping and tossing innocent citizens in front of trains, etc. It’s people, Mayor Adams. It’s criminals. Adams figures he’ll throw up a smokescreen to direct our attention elsewhere so we won’t notice how totally ineffective he’s been for making our streets safe to walk down and our subways safe to ride once again. Grace Luntz

Manhattan: It’s long past time to educate our leaders: Get cruelty off the table! Whether it’s rats, carriage horses or the thousands of innocent, abandoned but healthy/treatable/adoptable pets who are being killed by the taxpayer-supported Animal Care Centers of NYC, animal lovers, voters and taxpayers object! There is a total absence of vision, dedication and moral leadership in our broken and failed shelter system, where more and more lives are increasingly snuffed out each week. Animals are routinely killed for being fearful, withdrawn, “not thriving” (no surprise there) or falling ill. This is a blight on our city. Where is our mayor? He’s been trotting around in Greece for a mayors’ conference, and from there going to the World Cup in Qatar (on our dime?), while those sanctioned and unchallenged killings go on and horses drop dead on our streets. All this on his watch! Zelda Penzel

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Bronx: Finally, someone who recognizes the absurdity of the “school zone” camera at Veterans Park in Throggs Neck. Thank you, Voicer Bill Reddan. I got two $50 fines before I could even identify the school this camera was protecting. Bill is right, there is fencing and eight lanes of major highway with guardrails between the school and the camera zone. There isn’t even an overpass where students could easily cross to the opposite side of the road where the camera is located. I called 311 to get info about the location of this camera and I put in a complaint but, of course, no one could answer my questions or do anything to address this ripoff. This is just a money-making scam by our city. Carol Webb

Westwood, N.J.: To Mr. Ye: While you’re informing us of the positive values of Hitler and friends, here’s some more information: Around 300,000 American troops died fighting against these values that you defend. Try reading an actual history book before you disgrace real patriots. Robert Koch

Kearny, N.J.: TV anchors and reporters, please stop giving Ye double publicity by referring to him as Ye and then saying “formerly known as Kanye West.” He changed his name. He wants to be called Ye, let’s respect that — two more letters to go and hopefully he will disappear forever! Kevin Dale

Yorktown Heights, N.Y.: So Donald Trump has dinner with a deranged entertainer, a conservative gadfly and a 20-something wannabe Hitler and it’s portrayed as some modern-day Wannsee Conference (where the Nazis planned the Final Solution, for all you non-historians). President Biden eulogies Sen. Robert Byrd, the KKK’s exalted cyclops, but that doesn’t matter. Obama regularly had Father Michael Pfleger, a viciously anti-American priest, who has recently been stripped of his ministry for multiple child molestation charges, sitting in his Chicago parlor. Not to mention Louis Farrakhan, whose Jew-hating screeds make this punk Nick Fuentes seem rather innocuous by comparison. The hypocrisy is astounding. No one tells the Donald who to eat with or what to say. Everyone knows this. Gabriel Pompe

Beechhurst: Elon Musk’s sensational “Mr. Smith Goes to Twitter” story has been a tough slog all because he dared to flip over Twitter’s censorship apple cart. After officially taking over that popular social media public square platform, the imperturbable Musk boldly proceeded to extirpate all the superfluous flotsam responsible for turning Twitter into a veritable college censorship sorority club. To which I say: Hail to the “Chief Twit.” Of course, the White House and their Big Tech and Big Media allies (who have notoriously colluded together before) already have their long knives out to kill off that gentle Caesar for the sin of sticking up for free speech. Obviously, these power-hungry Big Brother types want the U.S.A. to look more like China. James Hyland

Bronx: Dear MTA: Could you please print updated bus maps with the new routes on them? Especially for the Bronx. Sharan Porper

Riverhead, L.I.: How many times a month do I read about how some mother is telling the Daily News what a wonderful child her son was and how he didn’t deserve to die for what he did. Yet for all those many times that comments by a child’s mother is printed most of the time there is not even one comment from the father. It’s almost as if the father doesn’t care or no one knows just who he is. Thomas W. Smith