Date: 1/31/2023
In the January 19-25 issue of The Reminder, past editor G. Michael Dobbs makes a plea that Springfield’s MGM casino should reopen completely. Dobbs is dead wrong.
Mine is not an ad hominin attack. Though I’ve never met Mr. Dobbs, I admire him and doubt the publication in your hands would exist without his tireless efforts. I too yearn for the B.C. (Before COVID [-19]) days. We are not there yet. When Dobbs laments the closing of an entrance, the Lobby Bar, or the Indian Motorcycle shop he places desire over public health. He doesn’t claim that COVID [-19] is over, but what is inferred from phrases such as, “there is no mask requirement” or “vestiges of the coronavirus pandemic?” He worries that potential casino patrons might “assume there are still problems.”
They should! Removing mask mandates and the mad dash to B.C. normality does not equate to COVID [-19’s] disappearance. We are witnessing instead a failure on the part of policymakers who have surrendered to anti-vaccine/COVID [-19] deniers and those so weary of restrictions they have decided to take their chances. I hold no truck with the zealots of the first group, but I understand the second. Alas, both are dead wrong.
By the time this sees print, 2.2 million Americans will have died of COVID [-19]. If we stay within the commonwealth, how would you feel if the towns of Easthampton, Southampton and Westhampton were wiped from existence? That’s the equivalent number of Bay State residents lost to COVID [-19] Lest you think that’s ancient history, the current official rate of infection is nearly 11 percent. (The actual rate is higher as many spreaders have no symptoms and have not tested.) If you heard there was an 11 percent chance of winning the Mass. lottery, would you rush out to buy a ticket?
In the COVID [-19] lottery your odds are equally high, but you lose. I know; I lost that lottery. Despite four vaccine shots, I got sick in December – very sick. I was lucky only in that without the shots I surely would have been in a hospital and, perhaps, not around to type these words. I’ve no idea how I got it. I stopped going to crowded venues or hanging out with people who haven’t tested. Maybe it was the grocery store or the pharmacy. Perhaps it was an unfortunate chance encounter. Don’t kid yourself; the virus is airborne – not just droplets – and six-foot social distancing won’t protect you from exposure.
We may never see 100 percent immunity, but there can be no business as usual with an infection rate of 11 percent. With so many of us sick or dying, how do we justify the fate of entertainment options over people? Nothing matters unless we stay vigilant about reducing infection rates. Denial won’t get us there. To quote Mark Twain, “It ain’t so much the things that people don’t know that makes trouble in this world, as it is the things that people know that ain’t so.”
Rob Weir
Amherst
