COVID-19 Perspective - No Time to Take A Risk

FLORIDA 
WEST COAST         

Opinion by:  
E. Eugene Webb PhD         

With just a little over two weeks to go until a new year, and what appears at this point to be a successful rollout of the coronavirus vaccines, you might think that we are over the hill on the virus. However, you would be mistaken.

Now is the absolute worst time for us to let down our guard. It's not time to go traveling; it's not time to go to grandmas for Christmas dinner nor time to get on an airplane and fly somewhere nor time to throw away all those masks.

Now is the time to be more diligent than ever.

Check out this editorial in the Tampa Bay Times, Tampa Bay right to crack down on masks | Editorial.

What I find so amazing about this editorial and what a lot of really good mayors and public officials are doing regarding cracking down on mask wearing, gatherings and especially business owners ignoring local ordinances, is the fact that it's even necessary at all.

It's just difficult to understand why somebody that is seemingly intelligent enough to start a business and make it successful would have such total disregard as to encourage gatherings, discourage mask wearing, and defend their actions by saying they're protecting their business.

In case you missed it, your business is just simply those people who walk through the door to patronize your establishment. Creating an environment that may kill them off seems counterproductive.  It's amazing to me how little respect some totally selfish bar and restaurant owners have regarding the health, safety and well-being of their customers.

By the same token, don't be lulled into a sense of security regarding the coronavirus with all the announcements of vaccines shipping around the United States. The national public health officials are indicating that it may be sometime in March before vaccinations become available to the general public. Even then if the current reluctance rate to take the vaccine, which is somewhere in the 40% to 45% area of the American public, continues to hold out, that means there are still going to be a lot of us running around that hasn't been vaccinated that can be infected and can in turn infect you if you have not been vaccinated.

This whole COVID-19 thing has brought out some of the best and a lot of the worst in our society. There was a time in our culture here in the United States where we put the benefit and the welfare of others above our own personal and selfish needs it seems that time has long since passed.

So, as I post this there are about 12 days or so until the new year.

Are we really looking forward to putting 2020 behind us?

Let's hope everybody gets on board with wearing masks, socially distancing, and staying out of gatherings with other than people you live with until we get enough people vaccinated that the case rate, the positivity rate, and the death rate start going down.

In the new year is it really too much to ask of you to stay out of the bar, stay out of the crowd, think twice before you go to a football, basketball, hockey or baseball game.

Maybe that would make a good New Year’s resolution.

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