How do we respond?
Dear editor:
COVID-19: Do we respond or do we treat it like the flu?
There are two clear avenues. 1) Yes, we respond with the full weight of the medical community and the power of government. 2) Yes, we treat it like the flu. We are comfortable with year after year deaths of tens of thousands by then, why should COVID-19 be any different? Why is COVID-19 worth selling our kid's futures down the road?
Let me ask a very basic question of each of you who feels this is similar to the flu and should be treated as such. Is the life of your grandparents, parents, spouse, children, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends something you are willing to sacrifice? Which one of them are you willing to bury? Which of the living are you willing to condemn to death? I'll answer for myself ... no one, no one at all. We are a nation of religious people, aren't we? Do you recall the old woman in the bible who gave her last cent to Christ? Is not our, your treasure worth saving your child?
I wish to say to my fellow Americans who support doing something that I am not happy with the $2.2 and potentially $6.2 trillion bill the president signed. I wish we had members of Congress and senators that took a stand against the pork and refused to vote "aye" until all of the pork was removed. Alas, we don't have such leaders resulting in a pork-filled rescue bill.
We must attack COVID-19 with everything we have for two key benefits. 1) We don't suffer the agonizing loss of tens of thousands of people. 2) We use lessons learned to result in fewer losses from the next flu season. I'm tired of having to find another seat at church because someone is coughing. Why do people go to the store with a cough/cold? It is my belief folks will be far more considerate during future flu seasons.
I am confident in President Trump and the team he assembled. I believe he will soon be opening up parts of the country. I'm grateful for the funds provided to businesses to pay employees. I'm especially happy the money to businesses is a loan unless they rehire the employees. That is a massive incentive to get folks back to work. I pray every one of you will reach out to your representatives and encourage them to get the country back to work as soon as possible and return as much of the money to the treasury as possible.
I'm happy most of the country are choosing to save their friends and family.
Ray Lehman
Hot Springs Village
Choppy waters
Dear editor:
I would like to think that Dr. Sternberg means well (guest columnist, March 27), like a leaky boat wallowing valiantly in choppy water, but, like that boat, he seems to be foundering, on the point of sinking as he drones on. I come across such statements as, " ... if the new treatment ... proves to be effective, the death rate from this virus will dramatically decrease. ... " Um ... yes, doctor. If the drug works, it will accomplish its goal. I guess, you don't recognize a circular argument when you create one.
Of course, you don't claim to be a logician, do you?
And earlier ... you suggest that since "flu disappears beginning around this time of year," COVID-19 is likely to do the same. No, no, doctor. February and March are high points of influenza, which tends to decrease in summer.
You remember summer, don't you? It starts June 21, and is preceded by April and May. And to assume that what is true of the flu will be true of the coronavirus is Trumpian inanity.
Dr. Sternberg, your long-winded discourse in paragraphs four through six is a straw man.
That China failed to admit its virus problem is irrelevant to our government's denial of the reality and intensity of the disease, our failure to engage immediately with its onset and its expected, its predicted, acceleration. I won't go into the epidemiologists' anticipations of a pandemic such as the one we are experiencing. You seem to have no interest in such matters, in the disbandment of a CDC program to deal with possible epidemic diseases.
Furthermore, you make the astonishing argument that the many yearly deaths from the flu mitigate the horror of this new plague with its lower death rate! Are you serious?
Certainly, we should not let the best be the enemy of the good, to paraphrase Voltaire. Nor should we allow the ignorant, the indifferent, and the inadequate be the enemy of ourselves, and of a world imperiled.
Stuart Jay Silverman
Hot Springs
Editorial on 03/31/2020