Letters to the Editor
Respect Life, Wear a Mask
To the Editor:
Unfortunately there are still way too many businesses and way too many customers in Fayette County, especially in small towns, who are failing to obey the mandatory order to wear masks in public. A simple sign at the business door posted by business owners that says “No Mask, No Entry” would help save lives.
More than 100 top medical experts now say that the World Health Organization (WHO) was wrong in submitting that the coronavirus is primarily transmitted by touching droplets containing the virus falling on surfaces and that WHO was wrong in submitting that these droplets of all sizes quickly fall to the floor making social distancing an adequate response. Those more than 100 noted experts say that droplets of all sizes may now hang in the air for hours especially in close quarters and so the coronavirus primarily spreads through the air borne transmission of these droplets containing the virus making the universal wearing of masks imperative to containing this pandemic.
Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment firms in the world and certainly not one with a liberal corporate culture, did an in-depth analysis and reported this past week that, if all Americans would wear masks in public nationwide, both lives and our economy would be saved, but if we fail to wear masks, then the U.S. could indeed lose what Trump’s own Trade Representative, Peter Navarro, warned him about in January, as more than a “million souls” and our Gross National Product would be significantly reduced and take years to regain.
Wearing a proper mask in public keeps those droplets, which contain those tiny far less than a micron size coronaviruses, from being transmitted into the air and left to hang around for hours to infect other human beings. Wearing a proper mask in public may very likely help us avoid having to “shelter in place” again. This is not about political science. It is not even rocket science. It is about basic logical medical science.
Endangering the lives and livelihood of others by refusing to wear a mask in public is NOT exercising one’s so-called “freedom” as an American. So, except for the rare instances of prescribed personal medical need or job safety, we should all act as mature rational human beings with concern for others and bear the inconvenience of wearing a mask in public as a showing of solidarity in the face of this greatest threat to America since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I have learned that one citizen who politely asked a local store owner why he and his customers were not wearing masks last Sunday morning after the Governor had issued an order to wear masks was later visited at his home by two deputy sheriffs. I wonder if any pair of law enforcement officers were sent to question that local store owner or any of his customers to issue warnings of the law they may have violated?
The purpose of our law enforcement officers is to serve and protect the people of Fayette County. I submit for the above reasons that their enforcing the law to its fullest extent making the wearing of masks in public mandatory to save lives and our economy should be one of their highest law enforcement priorities.
Please wear your mask in public to Respect Life and now, thanks to Texas Republican Governor Abbott, to Obey the Law.
John W. Mikus
Fayetteville
I Love a Parade, Just Not in a Pandemic
To the Editor:
I have attended or participated in the Round Top Fourth of July Parade for over 20 years. I love the excitement, the splashes of red, white, and blue, and riding on a float celebrating our country. I did not participate this year and was shocked that it was not canceled. I was confused by this decision, as the Antiques Show was canceled when COVID-19 cases weren’t so overwhelmingly high. We are now in a surge of COVID-19 positives & deaths, now one of the leading states in the spread, but Judge Weber is proud of the mayor of Round Top for not cancelling the parade.
The Governor gave an order for people to wear masks in all counties with over 20 cases. Fayette County falls in that category. Judge Weber said he was shocked over that order. I was shocked that anyone would attend the parade without a mask. The order went into effect on July 3, yet, from the pictures in the paper, it appeared that mask wearing was not a priority, not even by most speakers and officials.
Senator Kolkhorst also praised the parade and addressed the audience by saying, “we are here to celebrate what is good and right and just with our nation and to share those blessings with our children and grandchildren.” My worry is that a disease that kills the young and old was shared along the way. I pray not. Time will tell.
Patty Reid
La Grange
Fairness Cuts Both Ways in School Funding Debate
To the Editor:
Yesterday the Supreme Court, in a flash of unexpected but welcomed fairness, made it possible for states to fund private education. I don’t know where you stand on this decision, but I have read several national articles responding to it with vehement opposition. So, I thought we might think about this together as a community.
For starters, the people who are bleating about the decision viewing it as a collapse of the distinction between church and state need to pause and think a moment. Their reasoning is sound when they say that the government should not be force-funding with tax dollars any institution that presses ideologies that not everyone agrees upon. It isn’t fair, they say, if a classical Christian school, for example, who is committed to teaching a classical Christian worldview, receives tax dollars from citizens that do not hold to that worldview. On this, the cry goes round the down town square, “the Christian and the secularist agree!”
But where inconsistency becomes unforgivable hypocrisy is when they hold out that they have not been doing this to Christians for a very long time. News flash: The government school system has a worldview. And that worldview flies in the face of what all Christians who believe the Apostles Creed hold sacred … namely that Jesus is Lord. And yet, we have been paying millions of dollars a year to fund the propagation of this secularist worldview. We have had no choice. Millions have been homeschooling or building private Christian schools with whatever is left after taxes. But our tax dollars have gone to hire teachers, building buildings (looking at you La Grange ISD) and stadiums that do not believe what we believe or honor what we honor or teach what we think.
I believe that Jesus is Lord. Therefore, studying history, math, science, literature or any other discipline apart from His Lordship is nothing short of rebellion against our rightful King. The Bible says “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge”…which means that a school who actively seeks to rid itself of the fear of the Lord has sentenced itself to the absence of knowledge in the very outset of things. I know I’m somewhat unique in this worldview, but literally millions of American Christians believe the same. And we have been seeing our hard earned money go to this rebellion for decades. The myth of a neutral secularist education system that is neither opposed to, nor in support of, the Christian worldview is clearly false…if you don’t believe me then watch this: Jesus is Lord. Did you hear an “amen” coming from fill-in-the-blank-ISD?
When public schools teach that we evolved from the primordial scum without the agency of God’s creation or that God didn’t mean anything by creating us male and female they are teaching those things supported by my tax dollars. As a Christian, I would want a Christian school to be freely funded by parents and friends who share my worldview. Atheists should NOT be forced to pay money to fund the propagation of what I think is true. But that truth cuts both ways. If the public school system in Texas teaches the antithesis of my worldview how is it fair that they can use my money to help them to do it?
Fairness requires either share-and-share-alike on tax dollars OR the government should bail on education all together and let parents and communities make their own decisions on how to educate our young … I’d be happy with either option and so should you be.
Will Martin
La Grange
What Happened to Regular Old Flu?
To the Editor:
So as of July 3, we had 94 (.37%) positive cases out of 25,176 estimated population in Fayette County. From that three deaths (3.2%), two of which had surpassed the great milestone to have lived into their 90s ... so maybe only 1%? 30 have recovered, 56 active along with five unknown ... not sure how that happens with as serious as this broad brush is painted. Only one (1.6%) of those in the hospital out of 61 remaining active.
Interesting to note that in the 2017-18 flu season (most recent one with data) we had 9,470 deaths in Texas and only 43% of the population chose to vaccinate. At the beginning of this week, Texas had 2,607 deaths attributed to COVID-19 flu. Strange no reporting at all about the seasonal flu this year even though it seems to be a much more dangerous risk to seniors each and every year.
Just makes me curious about the level of hysteria of this narrative versus the surrender of civil liberties and the cost to livelihoods and mental health.
Mike Kuhn Schulenburg
Schulenburg
Fear Lasts a Long Time
To the Editor:
Right off, I confess I am going against my own feeling about lengthy letters to the editor. As I have quoted before, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” I am sure I am now put on the risk of being called witless; nonetheless, I am elating my own experience with the public health service and my reasons for refusing to wear a face covering, though I realize there are some who would urge me to do so for cosmetic if not health reasons. First of all, I am not sick and not wearing a mask does not pose a health threat to anyone.
Years ago, in Natchez, Mississippi, during the time of WWII, my little sister was diagnosed with scarlet fever. At the time our family and the other families working with our father in the oil field lived in tiny one bedroom apartments laid out in the form of a “tourist court” with garages separating them one from another. The doctor was obligated to report the cases to the public health service, which immediately sent out nurses who posted a dire quarantine warning on our front door. They cautioned my mother there was likelihood my sister would not survive the illness, but if she did survive, she would probably permanently lose all her hair.
Just as today the health services and powers that be make all kinds of exceptions to the rules they have convinced us will save us, despite the quarantine my father was allowed to keep right on working and presumably spreading the sickness to anyone with whom he came in contact with. For about three weeks nurses treating my sister were taking cultures to assess her condition. That whole time she didn’t appear sick at all, my mother was the real victim. She was literally sick with fear that my sister would die at any time and she had already lost one child years before. The nurses had me panicked too. I was sure if my sister touched me I would die right along with her. There was no way to avoid her in that tiny place, although I was constantly trying to get away from her.
No one else in our family, the other families in the little apartments, or the men who worked with daddy got sick. For a long time, though, the episode did have a negative impact on how our neighbors viewed us and each other. My mother had borrowed an iron; it was wartime and things like that were not readily available. After the quarantine she tried to return it to the lender, who told her just to keep it. Knowing the scarcity of such items, mother insisted on returning it. The woman told her to leave it outside the steps.
Fear lasts a long time, so does separation, so does the feeling that experts do not always have the answers they would have us think they have. So many COVID-19 statistics and recommendations have changed so drastically and so often, so much desperately needed equipment has gone unused (think the Navy hospital ships, for one) so many opinions on what kinds of treatments work that, based on my own experience, I do not trust anything coming out of official health services. My feeling is they have improved medications and equipment, but they are using the same old, soft bullying tactics. This whole thing has been blown out of proportion. To hear the news media, politicians and public health officials, you would think you could hardly walk down the sidewalk for the number of bodies you have to step over.
Basically, I feel numbers of unscrupulous people have taken advantage of Americans’ desire to be helpful, good neighbors Their good deeds have an extremely damaging effect for the future, however. We are being conditioned to distance ourselves from each other, to be suspicious of each other and to accept as normal the stifling of human contact, all in the name of something that is probably not much more dangerous than the regular flu and a lot less dangerous than some other contagions, such as tuberculosis.
While we may be prevented from spitting on the floor of a restaurant, a lot of what we are permitted to do (what an awful expression for supposedly free people) can affect others. We are free, for instance to ski, but dangerous avalanches have been triggered by nothing more than skiers jumping from their chair rides. Shall we now prohibit skiing or at least using ski lifts?
My general feeling is, should Biden take the White House in November, we will suddenly unexplainably have an answer in the form of a cure or at least a vaccine to this worldwide pandemic. It will be a lot longer than that before we have an answer to being an emotionally and economically healthy society again.
Janice Barnett
La Grange