To the editor:

Thanks to Doctors Gerald Pees and Terrance Riordan for excellent COVID-19 letters. It is hard to believe that many still don’t believe it is a real and dangerous threat. 

Misinformation and wishful thinking have dogged our efforts at controlling this disease from the beginning.  We were told it would disappear.  When it didn’t and was raging, the slightest sign of relief was greeted with cries of victory and demands to return to business as usual. Premature celebrations set us back repeatedly. 

We got safe, effective vaccines, and an organized anti-vaccination campaign, whose motivations range from inexplicable to inexcusable was launched.  From Aug. 1, through Aug. 28, 2021, America lost 31,817 lives to COVID. That is roughly four and one-half times the number of the combined civilian and military lives lost in the 9/11 2001 attacks and the war in Afghanistan. This is not to diminish the pain and sacrifice of those two sad events, but to emphasize the seriousness of what we are up against.  We have only two weapons at our disposal: vaccines and masking/social-distancing.  Let us use them well.

Mike Devlin,

Lawrence