By Joan Prather, Stevensville
Rights are like a privilege, abuse them and you lose them. At least that is what I was taught and it is a rule that has served me well and how a great many of us raised our families. I am blown away by all of the people using the line “I have a right to not wear a mask” or follow the protocol requested by the CDC, United States Government or the medical industry. I have been told I do not know my rights and I should look into it! So let me ask, do I have a right to drive recklessly, possibly causing injury to others? Your answer is probably no. Then let me ask, what makes you think you have a right to go without a recommended mask to prevent spread of disease that can cause death, maiming, destruction of lung tissue, thus injures others and spreads like wildfire!
We are being asked to join forces to stop this. We have been given simple requests to do so and that have been proven to help. It’s not like we are being asked to do something extremely difficult. If it were an all-out war with ammunition running low and all Americans were being asked to save metal, donate bullets and make bullets, would this be more acceptable to people? It’s the same thing, America needs your help, our children deserve to grow up in a proactive country that they can feel safe in. Do we have the right to ignore a call to action to protect our children, grandparents and economy? To think it won’t happen to you is like thinking cancer won’t happen to you. If they said we can prevent some cancer or lower the number of cases by doing the following for 6 weeks or 2 months, would you jump on board to help your children, parents, grandparents, yourself? Cancer is a deadly disease and so is Covid!
I don’t want to hear about your rights or mine, it’s called doing what is “RIGHT.” Let our children in school see that we ALL are trying to do what is right. Give them a sense of leadership so they don’t have to worry that adults can’t even come together to try to protect them. When the infection rate drops and the smoke clears and we can tell them the fight is over, we can say we did our part and we have been cleared to no longer require masks, we can play football, enjoy a dance, have social outings, enjoy all the great things we had before. Then we will see that our efforts paid off. Hopefully, everyone will retain the lessons learned and how many simple things we missed and to continue to remember the lessons learned regarding how important washing hands, coughing properly and extending respect to others’ space is.
We need to take a personal evaluation of our thoughts, respect for others, how we approach things, what is decent behavior, our actions, are they supportive or not, how can we make things better to improve the situation, for our children, their children and future of all and how we want the world to be. We need to cooperate for the benefit of all. Do we deserve all of these rights we feel we are endowed with if we are not willing to respect and care for our fellow man?
When my grandchild gets up in the morning comes down the hall rubbing his beautiful eyes and says “Gramma, is covid over?” My heart breaks to have to say, “No hon, not yet.” So folks, please for the sake of the little ones in your lives and the loved ones in your heart and our neighbors and fellow humanity, get on board to protect America. This isn’t about rights, it’s about being a decent, considerate human being.
We have asked a lot of the school aged children in our society, they did not have traditional graduations, proms, basketball games, football games, etc. Today they need to go to school with supplies of disinfectants, hand sanitizer, masks, pod study groups and we are asking a lot of them. As parents and grandparents, we hope this pandemic will end soon. Right now the only tool we have is to follow the protocols our kids are being asked to follow and that we are being asked by the medical community to follow. Are we willing to do all we can to bring an end to this, prevent additional deaths and help the medical advisors to get a handle on this?
Please be supportive by following the recommendations made.