Please, please wear your masks

My wife and I are in our late 70s. Her Mom, who still lives on her own and for whom we are the caregivers, is 102. We are the faces of those who are at high risk for serious illness and death from Covid-19.

There are millions like us in Florida and across the country. The vast majority of us do not live in nursing homes or other such facilities. To protect ourselves, we stay at home and only go out for emergencies. We don’t want to transmit the virus to others and we don’t want others to infect us, so when we have to go to Publix or Walgreens for essential supplies, we wear masks, social distance and disinfect our hands. These are the simplest of safety measures that everyone can easily take to protect others and themselves, hardly what one would call an inconvenience, certainly not matters of individual freedom or liberty.

But they are life-and-death issues to my wife, her mother and me. Yet, when I have to get groceries or meds, there are many customers who do not wear masks. They pose a danger to my family and me, but they simply don’t care.

Still worse is the purposeful fanning of the flames of the pandemic by our elected officials at the federal, state and local level who have wasted months, refused to mandate masks and social distancing and to back it up with penalties. If the pandemic is a war, these officials have fled the battlefield. Even worse they conspire with the enemy to let the disease spiral out-of-control and then lie about what is happening and their role in it.

They are sacrificing us senior citizens and now they want to sacrifice our grandchildren and great grandchildren by requiring them to go back into classrooms when it is unsafe to do so. They should be pilloried!

—-Peter Bowers, Ocala