LETTERS: Face masks save lives

Save lives, wear your mask

EDITOR: Perhaps because I am an anesthesiologist, I have always been comfortable wearing a mask. Now many protesters are fighting use of masks in public spaces. No, a mask does not make you appear fearful or insufficiently manly, as our President apparently assumes. No, a mask is not to protect you if you are otherwise healthy. A mask is to protect others, a selfless act of public health.

Let me suggest a thought experiment. What if you were a patient about to undergo surgery. Before your anesthesiologist begins to put you to sleep, you look around the operating room as see that no one is masked. Neither your anesthesiologist, nor your surgeon, nor your scrub nurse, nor the circulating nurse, nor anyone else. Just to make this thought experiment even worse, one of them has a cough! You would totally freak out.

The operating room team is not wearing their masks to protect themselves (absent you having tuberculosis, measles, or other airborne illness), but to protect you. As to machismo, cardiac surgeons and orthopedic surgeons are often the most macho doctors. They too wear masks when caring for you.

Please, please think about this scenario before refusing to wear a mask in public. Not wearing one is selfish. Wearing one may save another’s life.

Daniel F. Dedrick, MD,Wilmington

Don’t destroy others property

EDITOR: Most certainly the police officer who knelt on the neck of the black man should be charged with murder. What’s more, there were other police officers there who could see the knee on the black man’s neck and made no effort to stop him so perhaps the whole lot of officers who were present should be charged with murder.

In the later videos showing the anger of the black community, I could see buildings burning. What right does anyone have choosing to burn someone else’s property to show anger at the police?

We have seen this response to police injustice again and again, but I have yet to hear officials make a strong statement about the grave injustice being done to the owners of those buildings. Those buildings have nothing to do with the police so why does the black community think it’s all right to cause the owners this pain?

What is worse, no one among the officials of the black community or any other community addresses this grievous unfairness to the owners of the property. It’s as though if the police do wrong, burning someone else’s property is okay.

Russell Shipp,Wilmington

Save humanity, wear PPE

EDITOR: I have a bad feeling about eradicating the coronavirus, and we will have nobody except ourselves to blame. We went to the local nursery to get a few outdoor plants. My husband and I had our masks, but as we pulled into the crowded parking lot, I noticed that we were the only ones with personal protection equipment (PPE). Not even the employees were properly outfitted for preventing the spread of the virus.

I sat in the car with the windows open while my husband shopped. From my perch in the car I could see that nobody was following social distancing guidelines either. This was a chatty bunch; I could hear their loud conversations from inside my car. To further my point, there wasn’t any sign of hand sanitizers. Neither staff nor shoppers were cleaning up after they had touched the plants, plant food, or shopping carts. And this was a very touchy-feely group of plant lovers.

I’m not an alarmist. But there’s this video that keeps playing in my mind. Years from now, a new species of beings inhabit our planet, and they’re sifting through our bones the way we excavate dinosaur remains. They’re playing detective, trying to figure out what led to our extinction. Imagine their shock when they conclude it was because mankind needed to open the world so badly, they were willing to eat hamburgers in restaurants that used poorly washed utensils and get haircuts in salons that allowed sick employees to treat customers. They risked their lives and the lives of others. Why?

I want to smell the roses as much as the next guy, but I’m willing to do it through a mask. Life is short. Don’t shorten it. PPE not only saves lives; it may be the only way to prevent mankind from extinction.

Let’s eradicate the virus, not humanity as we know it.

Elizabeth Gordon,Leland