Dear Editor,
[RE: Different view questions mandated social distancing, May 31, The News online]
It seems that armchair experts on how to deal with the COVID-19 are showing up far too often in the community papers as of late.
Free speech is important, but not all opinions expressed by the public are the equal of solid medical and scientific advice on COVID-19.
Such opinions as expressed by writers, like Mr. Liguori, are prime examples of Monday morning quarterbacking at best, and the bread and butter of the conspiracy theories overrunning social media.
No one likes the restrictions being imposed by this virus. But it is a public health issue, not an individual rights issue. There are times when the common good must trump individual freedoms.
There is no evidence now that herd immunity works with COVID-19. It is not a flu as Mr. Noah Liguori seems to imply.
The science is still out on that question, although there seems no doubt that this virus is mutating making a vaccine more difficult to find. And for all those conspiracy addicts out there, this virus is most definitely a naturally occurring mutation because that is what viruses do, they mutate.
ANOTHER LIGUORI LETTER - COVID-19, like other viruses, just needs to run its course
This idea that Mr. Liguori puts forward that only those people at most risk should be self-isolating is a recipe for a flood of deaths.
Sweden has tried this approach and left the country open – both literally and figuratively – to an explosion of COVID cases compared to the suppression of the virus through social distancing and self-isolation – which Norway and Denmark adopted quickly.
Just like our government did to keep the infection rates down as much as possible.
Norway and Denmark have entered a bubble, where travel between those two countries is allowed again. Sweden was kept out because its brilliant idea of only isolating the most at risk has backfired on them.
Please leave the Monday morning quarterbacking to talk about sports, not to undercut our government’s sound policy of social distancing and self-isolation.
Jurisdictions reopening too quickly have seen upsurges in COVID cases.
Even in countries that seemed to have shut down the virus, like South Korea, they have gone back into lock-down because the virus has come back with a vengeance. The same thing will happen here if we reopen the province too quickly.
As someone who is 69 and has an underlying health condition, I don’t care to be considered disposable by those who might agree with Mr. Liguori.
Robert T. Rock, Mission
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