Even with a course correction, COVID will remain a powerful foe
Even with a course correction, COVID will remain a powerful foe The Boston Globe
She was inspired to press town for gains on indoor air quality
I appreciated the necessary, sad realism of Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel’s op-ed ”Needed: A COVID course correction” (Opinion, Aug. 5) and his recommendations on public health measures to protect us from the ongoing pandemic emergency that no one seems to want to treat as an emergency anymore. “Policy makers,” he wrote, “need to pivot, instituting passive measures to blunt transmission and tailor interventions to public acceptance.”
One of those measures, he said, is to improve indoor air quality to reduce transmission of this airborne virus.
I immediately thought of the American Rescue Plan Act funding that municipalities have been, well, not spending. Emanuel’s op-ed spurred me to write to my Select Board and town manager and ask them to prioritize ARPA funding for improving air quality in public and private places — schools, the library, and other public buildings, obviously, but also restaurants, theaters, hair salons, and other venues where people congregate indoors. Using climate-friendly HVAC systems to do this would be a win-win.
Protecting our communities from the otherwise inevitable future damage of this pandemic seems like a wise use of this extraordinary funding.
Jeri Zeder
Lexington
For the sake of all at risk, we can’t lower our guard
As a bioethicist as well as a 75-year-old, I object to Ezekiel J. Emanuel’s statement, “The only sensible approach is to accept the public’s attitude and work with — or around — it. If the public won’t listen, the advice of public health experts — no matter how urgent, persistent, and loud — is not going to be effective.”
Advice may not be effective but laws often are. Mask mandates reduce COVID spread and protect the old and immunocompromised, who are at risk of serious illness and death from COVID.
Dr. Emanuel is on record as denying the value of life after 75 in a 2014 essay in The Atlantic titled, “Why I Hope to Die at 75.” Perhaps this way of thinking is making him cavalier about sacrificing the lives of the old for the convenience of the young.
Felicia Nimue Ackerman
Providence
The writer is a professor of philosophy at Brown University.
