To the editor:

Thank you to our county commissioners and health officials who endured a barrage of insults and statements of misinformation before approving a health order requiring children ineligible for vaccination to wear masks while indoors.

I appreciate that these public servants listened to constituents on both sides of the issue, and then made a rational, though difficult, decision. Their approval of a science-based health order that helps to protect all citizens from serious illness, and that also contributes to preventing our community hospital and beleaguered health care workers from enduring the horrors that other hospitals are experiencing, was the right thing to do. Recent reports that Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City is at capacity and that the University of Kansas Health System is treating more COVID cases in the younger population, coupled with evidence that mask-wearing inhibits transmission of the virus, supports the health order requiring masks to slow the spread.

I empathize with parents who articulated the difficulty of keeping masks on young children, but it is a small price to pay to help those children, as well as the rest of us, survive to enjoy the better times that we all look forward to.

Dot Nary,

Lawrence