These days, people say things like, “I’m praying for
this to be over, so we can get out and go back to work.”
I reply, “Me, too. And I’m praying people won’t keep
getting sick and dying from the virus.”
Their reaction indicates they haven’t thought much
about that aspect of the crisis. I’m guessing Kim McGahey and Patrick
Augustine, judging from their April 28 letters to the editor, are in that
category.
We have now lost more than 60,000 fellow Americans to
coronavirus in three months — more than we lost in 20 tragic years of the
Vietnam War.
Yet complainers rant about state and local
restrictions designed by health professionals to protect all of us. One
protestor grumbled, “It’s not fair to the rest of us who don’t have
coronavirus.”
What kind of “fairness” do they want? The kind that
allows them to infect themselves and each other? If that were the only outcome,
we could say it’s fair. But when they’re also likely to infect the rest of us, that’s
where fairness ends.
We all sympathize with Americans who have lost jobs
during this crisis and businesses that have lost money. In no way do we
downplay their losses. But it seems painfully obvious, from public health
professionals who actually know what they’re talking about (unlike some of our
politicians), that our only way out of this – until a cure and vaccination are
found – remains social distancing and testing as much as possible.
Health professionals warn reopening everything too soon could allow COVID-19 to rebound, spreading rapidly and killing more Americans. Let’s prevent that by showing courage and compassion, staying the course together until this scourge is under control – according to those professionals, not politicians trying to score points by pandering to their base.