Sounding off: What's the thinking on 'living our lives'?

Headlines in the Dec. 13 Trib included “Calls flood ambulance services” and “Hospitals plead for public’s help.” Excela Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Carol Fox describes staff holding the phone for a dying covid patient to hear a hymn sung by a pastor, and others holding the hands of patients as they die, alone. An EMT sees a “giant up-tick after the holiday of people not listening.”

While doctors plead for the public’s help, North Huntingdon taxpayer dollars employ a solicitor who says of a commissioners meeting, “I’d pack the place. I think the guy (Gov. Tom Wolf) is out of his mind” (“North Huntingdon says ‘no’ to Wolf’s limits on indoor crowds”).

The next day’s Trib reported that a restaurant owner declares, “I think we’re old enough to make our own decisions on how we live our lives,” so he will allow indoor dining (“Restaurants along Leechburg Road in Lower Burrell run the gamut of compliance with pandemic restrictions”).

If you knew you tested positive for covid-19 but had no symptoms, would you still decide to attend a meeting or go to work at a restaurant? Many people have no symptoms but if tested actually would be positive. Many with no symptoms are attending meetings, shopping and dining out, with no masks, and infecting others. Is this their thought-out decision “on how to live their lives”?

Vickie Oles, Ligonier Township

Restaurant owners’ ignorance

Thank you for the excellent article “Restaurants along Leechburg Road in Lower Burrell run the gamut of compliance with pandemic restrictions”. I was shocked to read that only a few restaurants are following restrictions and that so many owners seem to be willfully ignorant.

One restaurant has a packed parking lot every day. For those who believe it’s a risk worth taking in the short term to make money, don’t use front-line workers to fix you when you let your guard down.

One owner blames the governor. You wouldn’t be “told what to do” and “treated like a child” if you weren’t acting like one.

Another said, “We all know that 99% of the people who get this virus recover from it.” No — 98% do. Hypothetical: Sixty people eat at your restaurant without masks; three of them have the virus. Based on a 25% positivity rate, 15 people catch the virus. One could die from complications; one could become very sick, with millions of dollars in medical bills; one could be a long hauler.

The two Allegheny County sheriff’s deputies who did not wear masks while posing for a photo when they ate at the Crack’d Egg restaurant deserved to be put in quarantine and reassigned (“Crack’d Egg flouts shutdown as deputies quarantined for dining, taking photos with owner”). We have people on the internet and social media spreading false information and sowing political division over masks. Even the highest levels of the Justice Department can’t get it right.

Laurie Scheid, New Kensington

Business owners standing up to Gov. Tom Wolf are patriots

Regarding the article “Alle-Kiski Valley restaurants continue to defy governor’s order suspending indoor dining”: David’s Diner co-owner Lisa Speer is an example of a true patriot standing up against the tyrannical order of Gov. Tom Wolf to close down. This unconstitutional craziness is not going to end until the people rise up as Speer has done, and, per the Founding Fathers’ warnings, demonstrate civil disobedience against these “orders” which are not laws.

David’s Diner, like most other businesses, has followed the governor’s orders, and now the governor again seems to want to ruin their livelihood with threats of forceful closure.

I hope all business owners will stand up and be patriots like Speer and say no to the governor. We the people run the government; the government does not run us.

God bless all of our hardworking business owners and workers.

Shelia Hanlon, West Deer

People had the power on pandemic

We the people had the power on our own to prevent hospitalizations, deaths and state restrictions. Despite the fact that our leaders themselves stated that we the people had a personal and collective responsibility to curb the spread of covid-19 without the need of any state or local restrictions, we let ourselves down first and foremost and allowed Gov. Tom Wolf, Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine and others to make decisions for us.

Since people talk about having rights, that means that people have power. Yes, we have power, but there is a quote from Marvel Comics that applies to both reality and fiction: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

We the people had the power to determine our own destiny in the midst of the pandemic, and we dropped the ball, and now those in positions of power, like Wolf, are taking responsibility for us, making the lives of many people, both those who did nothing wrong and all the self-entitled irresponsible ones who contributed to community spread in the past two months, far more difficult. We the people are no better than any corrupt politicians, both Republican and Democrat, and we the people should be ashamed of ourselves.

Donald Scott, Clairton

Venting on vaccine, stimulus, career politicians

Thanks to the Tribune-Review for printing my 2020 opinions. Let me wrap up my 2020 venting with the following.

For months we were promised the vaccine would be given to health care providers and elderly in nursing homes first. Then I see politicians and their spouses (Jill Biden) receiving it. Come on, man! No malarky! Hypocrites!

I called my health care provider, which is owned by CVS (designated vaccine distributor), and asked what the protocol is for a 68-year-old with underlying conditions. They could not answer. WTH?

I contacted Rep. Guy Reschenthaler and Sens. Pat Toomey and Bob Casey about all this a week or so ago. Crickets!

I heard someone suggest LeBron James get the vaccine as a “role model.” Really?

Bureaucrats and the wealthy tell us to stay home and cancel holidays while they live unrestricted. Rules for thee but not for me!

New covid-19 relief “stimulus” looks more like elite rulers throwing scraps to the masses while pork goes to “the arts,” public education and Palestine, to mention a few. A pattern here? Outrageous!

And why do I feel I am being “ruled,” not governed? Socialism?

I’m not an H.L. Mencken fan, but as he said, “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.”

So what are we to do? Surround the capital with pitchforks and force them out? Voting does not seem to work and it seems to be more corrupt than ever as rulers keep designing ways to “hold the castle.”

Career politicians are ruining our America!

Michael J. Kardell, Murrysville

Why are legislators first in line for vaccines?

Move over hospital workers, step aside first responders, get out of the way old people, forget the nursing homes, because we have “very important” legislators who really need to get ahead of all of you.

The politicians — including Sens. Bob Casey and Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — are too important to wait in any line. Remember, they need to get back to work — unlike you! They’ve got to get to beauty shops, dinners at the French Laundry and San Francisco wine parties.

Do you sense that the swamp is still out there?

William R. Iski, Penn Township, Westmoreland County

Closing schools is not containing spread

Regarding the recent letters to the editor from the Pennsylvania Pediatric Health Network (“Mitigate to end pandemic”) and Dave Bonazelli (“Schools should be online”), and the article describing the Greensburg-Salem school district’s decision to shut down in-person schooling and athletics until Jan. 26 (“Greensburg Salem shuts down athletics until Jan. 26”): I cannot figure out why people think that closing schools and related activities is helpful or necessary to contain the spread of the virus. I don’t believe there is evidence to support this.

Ohio just completed a study showing that, “Overwhelmingly, children who are ‘close contacts’ have not become infected themselves … .” A recent study from Switzerland (one of many from multiple countries with the same results) concluded that, “Under a regimen of open schools with some preventive measures in place since August, clustering of seropositive cases occurred in very few classes and not across entire schools despite a clear increase in seropositive children during a period of high transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”

The Greensburg-­Salem article said, “This additional step is being advised by medical professionals … .” Which medical professionals are recommending this, and what information are they basing this advice on? Are they not aware of the multiple studies that have shown that opening schools does not increase community spread and that closing them does not decrease community spread?

Given all the negatives mentioned in the PPHN letter and the lack of evidence that doing so helps prevent community spread, why would any medical official recommend closing schools? All it does is harm students with no benefit to the community.

Michael Sierk, Hempfield