Please Vaccinate
To the editor:
I implore my neighbors to get a Covid-19 vaccination as soon as one becomes available.
The reasons given to abstain range from “The pandemic is fake news” to “People my age don’t get sick from this virus” to “I don’t trust how fast the vaccine came out.”
To the first objection: 400,000 people in the U.S. have died in one year from this “fake news” — about the same number of Americans who died in six years of World War II. To the second objection, while fewer people under 50 without co-morbidities are dying of this virus, they — especially those with no symptoms whatsoever — are the ones most likely to spread it to those who will ultimately die from infection.
To the third objection, I say that, while I had little trust in the leaders of the previous anti-science administration, the rapid testing and evaluation of vaccines by experts has been impressive and convincing. With the virus able to mutate the longer it gets to move at will through our populace, the quicker we can vaccinate the most people, the better.
Refusing the vaccine is literally adding to the death toll of this virus. Neighbors, please vaccinate.
Chuck Madansky
Brewster
The writer holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and molecular genetics from Harvard Medical School.
Buck, Naked
To the editor:
It was surprising to read that, in the winter of 2021, a season marked by unprecedented isolation and anxiety around public health, the Wellfleet Select Board opted to clarify its definition of appropriate beach attire and fines for violations [Currents, Jan. 21, page 10].
It is not clear, even to the reporter, why this discussion was taken up, but what is clear was the absence of progressive voices who might advocate for updating “the Cape Cod definition” of beachside decency.
Are women’s breasts indecent? Is the naked body shameful? Is nudity dangerous? Many Cape Cod residents would, emphatically, cry “No.”
The freedom of shedding clothes, and with them social pressures and signifiers, can be enormously healing and grounding. This is something that we all need, now more than ever.
Nudity can promote acceptance of one’s self and of others. Nudity can promote well-being. Nudity can promote joy. Nudity can promote a connection to the natural environment and a liberating return to our natural state. For many of us, the benefits far outweigh the costs, of which there are literally none.
If the board’s discussion was a consequence of people bathing on Wellfleet’s extraordinary natural beaches “au naturel,” perhaps they should discuss how best to accommodate and encourage these people in a designated area that does not disturb those who prefer to bathe in clothes. There’s more than enough sand for everyone.
Mark Buck
Provincetown and Jackson Heights, N.Y.
City and Country
To the editor:
Maurice the Cockerel is well known in France. He’s an early riser whose wake-up call troubled the city people who had second homes in the rural area where he lives. They filed a complaint on the grounds that Maurice was a nuisance who disturbed their peace and quiet.
The case attracted wide attention because the Gallic cock is the unofficial symbol of France. “Today it’s the cockerel, but what will it be tomorrow?” said the town’s mayor. “Seagulls? The noise of the wind? Our accents?”
Similar lawsuits against rural noise have arisen in France regarding church bells, donkey braying, and the loud croaking of frogs in a manmade pond. Nearly all were thrown out by the courts.
In Truro, the most rural town on the Cape, a man complained some years ago that the ringing of the refurbished town hall bells was rattling the fillings in his teeth.
Having been both a city mouse and a country mouse, I sympathize with both sides of these stories. The city mice who build new homes here commonly install decorative lighting such that our rare, rural darkness at night has been overtaken by all-night illumination with that “look at me” quality. Some call it “light pollution.” Perhaps the city mice think their homes are the new lighthouses in town, blazing all night long.
These lights do not appear to violate Truro’s lighting regulations, which say nothing about how many lights you may install or at what time of night you must extinguish them.
Living in the countryside means accepting some wonderful nuisances. Darkness at night is one of them. In France, some rural communities are applying for heritage site designation to protect their rural sounds. I’d love to see some protection of our rare and beautiful Truro night sky, preferably by voluntary compliance.
Kathy Hull
Truro
Feel the Kindness
To the editor:
How are we going to reach out to each other to talk about differing viewpoints, as our wonderful new president implores us to do, when, even here on Cape Cod, neighbor excoriates neighbor, as Mr. Bernstein did his neighbor, Mr. Nickerson, in his letter to the editor last week?
Where is the kindness, the patience, the attempts to understand?
Mary Ann Larkin
Truro
