The maskless, clueless COVID-19 response in South Carolina | Letters
Coronavirus cases in South Carolina are increasing at an alarming rate.
Our utterly clueless governor won’t do anything about it except to say that it’s up to the individual to follow guidelines. That’s all well and good, but when people refuse to accept that responsibility, they put all of us at risk.
Moreover, a recent news article revealed that he ignored the advice of his own health officials regarding the opening of restaurants.
The president is so desperate for the adulation of his worshipers that he holds a rally in blatant defiance of his own administration’s guidelines, thereby endangering the health of thousands.
Silly me, I thought one of the primary functions of government was to keep its citizens safe.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, tourists are behaving just as irresponsibly as everyone knew they would, while many restaurants and other businesses won’t require their employees to wear masks.
When local officials encourage residents to wear masks in crowded venues, they are subject to major pushback from an array of ignoramuses who insist either that the whole pandemic is a hoax, or that the masks don’t work.
Those of us who are trying hard to be responsible and who are concerned about the welfare of others, can only do what we have been doing. We’ll keep washing our hands frequently, wearing masks in crowded and/or indoor situations, and maintaining social distancing.
Oh, and we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed, because it’s probably going to get a whole lot worse.
Kevin Kelso
Hilton Head Island
The economy can’t shut down
If you want to live like New York, you will have to live with the consequences – like the highest death rate in senior centers or care facilities in the country.
And ordering recuperating COVID-19 patients into senior centers when they tried to refuse them. And a governor who had hospitals set up by the federal government that he chose not to use, thank you, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
He also downplayed the epidemic when it was most virulent.
If you are 65 and above, with one or more comorbidity, you should stay home, not travel and use the systems in place to order food and items needed.
The economy and world cannot shut down for you. If it does, it will not be able to service you.
This should have been the way we waged “war” on this from the start. It would be over at far less the cost economically, and also with a lower death rate among seniors.
Philip Smith
Hilton Head Island
Hilton Head beach parking meters a danger zone
This is a cry for help to add safety from COVID-19 at the Town of Hilton Head Island beach parking meters.
Are they a lightning rod for COVID-19?
In 10 to 15 minutes, I witnessed no less than 20 people pressing and touching five or six areas/buttons on the parking meter at Folly Field ... no gloves, mostly without masks. Surely this begs a safety question for unsuspecting locals and visitors.
How many people have daily exposure to COVID-19 at this meter? Does all beach parking work similarly? Unfortunately, many of us “locals” in ZIP code 29926 are not entitled to buy the town beach pass. Just like visitors, we pay at the meters.
Touching exposure at the Folly Field parking meter includes:
1. Getting started.
2. Enter parking spot numbers.
3. Select amount of time.
4. Receipt receptacle.
5. Credit card payment.
6. Dollar bill payment.
7. Coin payment.
That’s a whole lot of touching and exposure going on at just one meter. Could gloves be made available, like at gas stations? Social distancing (people were lined up tightly) and touch protection signage/warning may help.
Also, I recommend “single-filing” and masks when possible on the boardwalks to the beach.
Irene Todd
Moss Creek
Praise too quick for Gov. McMaster
Not long ago the Gazette published an editorial congratulating Gov. Henry McMaster for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Today (June 19) our cases have more than tripled in two weeks. Also, the rate of positive infections went from 5.7% on June 4 to 14.4% on June 17. That is a critical number.
McMaster’s insistence on “individual responsibility” (and nothing but) does not seem to be working, does it?
McMaster did too little, too late, for too short a time.
While other states that took (and are taking) greater precautions are getting some relief, we are making national news for spikes in virus cases.
We can’t blame it all on the tourists. We have restaurant servers with no masks, patients in doctors’ offices with no masks.
So, the simple question is: “How long do we want this to go on?”
As long as our cases are going up, there will be no return to normal.
Your mask protects me, and my kids, and my grandkids, from you. I’ll return the favor.
And for those who insist on “individual freedom,” who do they think will take care of them and all the people they infect when they get sick? They are endangering our health care workers, EMTs, and police.
Palmira Brummett
Beaufort
Beaufort River summer concert an avoidable disaster
As a healthcare professional, I cannot support the concert on the Beaufort River sandbar planned for July.
Maybe it’s an eagerly anticipated, summer event, but this is not your usual summer! We are in a worldwide health crisis.
For many, the COVID-19 virus is deadly. Others experience a horrible illness for weeks, long recoveries, and lasting problems. The gamble? We do not know who will survive and who will not.
This event demonstrates a complete disregard for others. Health care professionals will be the ones coping with the fallout from this gathering, risking their lives caring for those who become ill.
South Carolina is a “Hot Spot” for rising cases. Already, many behave as if no pandemic exists – no masks or social distancing. I doubt that sandbar participants will follow the guidelines.
Attendees do not live in a bubble. They bring whatever they have been exposed to, spread whatever has been shared, and it will be evident in the spike of positive cases two weeks later.
We have a shortage of nurses. ICU beds are limited. Our ventilator inventory? How many fatalities will result? How will we know the ripple effect? Contact tracing will be impossible.
It’s an avoidable disaster.
Next summer may bring a vaccine, but this summer we must protect our fellow citizens.
I am an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse, and the Democratic candidate for South Carolina House District 124. I care about the Lowcountry. Let’s not be reckless dealing with this deadly virus.
Barb Nash
Beaufort
Criticism of school board chair Christina Gwozdz rings hollow
Dr. Christina Gwozdz is a smart, highly accomplished woman. She was elected chair of the Beaufort County Board of Education by the majority of her duly-elected school board peers.
Accusations of discourse and resignation demands coming from these constant anti-school activists ring hollow. They don’t support our school children and worked against the passage of the highly needed school bond referendum, and they will work to get more “same-thinkers” elected to the school board.
Dr. Gwozdz will be judged by her constituents (which none of these three are) and the newly elected and configured school board will carry on with its responsibilities after the November election.
I am so glad that she did not acquiesce to their intimidation tactics.
Lyn Piwko Bullard
Hilton Head Island
See the value of preschools in pandemic
Reliable and affordable childcare is a critical issue for returning our community to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic.
You likely have seen and heard reports saying that workers returning to jobs in South Carolina need childcare, but that industry is struggling too. This emphasizes the importance of good childcare options to a vibrant economy.
A recent article in the Charleston Post and Courier also pointed out how the COVID-19 pandemic has created “childcare deserts” in two-thirds of South Carolina.
Kudos to our Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce for recognizing the importance of childcare to reopening our local economy with its “Path Forward Readiness Plan.”
Unfortunately, many preschools and childcare centers have yet to open or have decreased the number of children they serve. Will Lowcountry families find themselves in a childcare desert?
Parents with children age birth to 5 understand the value of early childhood education, not only because it allows them to go to work, but also because their children need the social, emotional and cognitive skills that develop during these critical years. In children age 5 or younger, their brains are developing through everyday experiences. Ongoing developmental activities are necessary for success in their formal education years.
Our community must recognize the value of early childhood education and those employed in the industry. Our local preschools and childcare centers all need your support to help the children get a great start in life ... and let their parents go to work.
Jody L. Levitt
Executive director
The Children’s Center
Hilton Head Island
This racial treatment sadly not new
Targeting certain populations for dehumanization is the necessary first step in denying them their humanity. It normalizes human right abuses, atrocities, and even genocide as acceptable.
Hannah Arendt, German scholar of the Holocaust and authority on the rise of fascism, termed such moral depravity as “the banality of evil.”
In 2016, Donald Trump began using fascist rhetoric at campaign appearances, framing it as homegrown, and as American as apple pie.
Using a propaganda platform of dehumanization and humiliation, he singles out people along racial and religious lines, as less than human.
He has crossed the line from being a simple-minded bigot, into a fully flag-flying fascist.
In Charlottesville, angry men displaying Nazi and Confederate flags, marching through the streets chanting fascist slogans, are infected with Trump’s sickness.
The mass incarceration and murder of black men, and, the murder of black women, without accountability, without remorse, while accepting no white responsibility is not new.
George Floyd was thrown face down, hands cuffed behind his back, by the Minneapolis police. Pressing his knee into Mr. Floyd’s neck, officer Derek Chauvin’s face remained expressionless. Indifferent to the pleas of Mr. Floyd, the police continued the torture, even appearing bored by this treatment of a black man in broad daylight.
George Floyd’s life abruptly ended in less than 8 minutes and 46 seconds, unable to breathe, calling for his momma, and, dying as yet merely another black man, in the so called “land of the free and home of the brave.”
Dru Clements
Beaufort
The failures of liberalism
Hopefully the “social justice” warriors have spent their anger, and that rioting ends and citizens in the affected cities can rebuild their lives. But what have we learned?
If, as riot apologists claim, these outbreaks are the wages of America’s institutional racism, then liberalism is exposed for what it is: a hypocritical failure.
For 60 years, liberals have enacted program after program to defeat poverty and ameliorate the condition of black Americans. From affirmative action mandates, racial quotas, enormous welfare spending, to set-asides to ensure black Americans are afforded opportunity, liberals have imposed their misguided will on working people of all races. These actions put the lie to the claims of racism. The marks of liberal failure are burned stores, defaced property and the impoverishment or death of people of all races simply working to get ahead.
Most of the cities experiencing unrest driven by assertions of racism and inequality are governed by liberal Democrats, the self-proclaimed champions of equality. For decades, liberals have monopolized political power in Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and Seattle, and despite years of liberal virtue-signaling, their cities burn.
Police departments in most of the burning cities are led by Blacks, yet the departments are labeled racist.
George Floyd’s death is tragic, but so are the deaths of those victims of this insanity. So too the refusal to acknowledge where the fault rests.
Does anyone see the illogic of all this?
Francis Dunne Sr.
Hilton Head Island
Irish-American false equivalence
This first-generation Irish-American has spent time with my Black friends relearning American history, so can disagree with the recent letter from a fourth-generation Irish-American.
It is a false equivalency to compare immigrant discrimination with hundreds of years of slavery and its ongoing after-effects.
The Irish slaves myth is a pseudo-history that falsely conflates the penal transportation and indentured servitude of Irish people during the 17th and 18th centuries with the hereditary chattel slavery experience of Africans.
Jim Quirk
Bluffton
This story was originally published June 24, 2020 at 8:39 AM.