Context Is Important
To the editor:
I found the headline “Day-trippers Uninvited to Wellfleet Beaches” in your May 7 edition [page 5] misleading and hyperbolic.
I think context is important. Given the current climate — fear of the unknown, real and imagined financial anxieties, and in some cases downright traumatization — it’s incumbent upon media not to seed division.
Selectman DeVasto’s comment, “We can’t encourage people to day-trip” and your headline send distinctly different messages. The latter is hostile, in my opinion.
After reading posts on Facebook, something I’m loath to do, I was reminded how easily people are set to run to their corners and put up their fists, blaming out-of-towners, washashore and “others,” for their plight. It would have been factual and neutral to simply state “Wellfleet Select Board first on the Outer Cape to limit beach parking this year.”
David Polando
Provincetown
Transfer Station Questions
To the editor:
I’m wondering why there is a need to curtail transfer station operations. I don’t recall social distancing ever being a problem at these locations, especially the Provincetown dump. But they are accepting only brush. No metal pile, old tires, cardboard, wood, or swap shop are available.
In Truro, they are allowing trash and recycling hopper use only, with Jersey barriers blocking off everything else. Talk about overkill.
And the hysteria widens.
Channing Wilroy
Provincetown
Mobilizing to Fight Covid
To the editor:
I started the petition “Demand Tests and Tracing — The Only Safe Path to Restart the Economy” (at MoveOn.org) to counter the Trump tweets to “liberate” several states in defiance of his own guidelines. We know Covid-19 cannot be controlled unless we all follow the rules of staying at home, social distancing, and wearing masks in public spaces, while our governments test a sizable cross-section of the population (both with and without symptoms), trace their contacts, then test and trace again.
The Trump administration’s disastrous decisions in 2018 to cut C.D.C. funding and eliminate the pandemic response team led to broad systemic failures in the U.S. response. Squandering the lead time we had in January and February to get ahead of the highly contagious disease, and falsely telling the public “it’s under control” led to where we are today, the epicenter of sickness and death. Even now, the lack of testing materials denies doctors, nurses, and researchers their ability to save lives.
My petition calls for the federal government to do its job and mobilize a national task force to work in conjunction with the states to aggressively test and trace across the country. Currently unemployed personnel could be the core of this task force. People are eager to be part of the solution — to save lives and get back to living their own. Please sign it.
Fred Schilpp
Barnstable
Voting in the Age of Covid-19
To the editor:
Your May 7 column, “The News Is Not Good” [page 2], gave me pause to think about the power our government has to do good or to undermine people in favor of big business. It also made me think about the importance of the upcoming fall elections and how Covid-19 will affect our ability to safely cast our votes to elect officials who will represent the people’s interests.
We saw just how disastrous “business as usual” elections in the time of Covid-19 were when Wisconsin went ahead with the April 7 primaries. I’m thankful that the Mass. legislature passed an emergency bill that allowed municipalities to postpone spring elections and expand absentee balloting so that voters could participate from the safety of their own homes. This was a critical first step.
While our November general elections may feel a long way off, there is a real possibility that the current crisis will continue into the fall. The consequences of not acting now to prepare for that possibility are too great. Our legislature must act quickly to once again expand early voting so that physical distancing for in-person voting is easier to achieve and to greatly expand voting by mail in the commonwealth.
I hope that, come November, Covid-19 will be a distant memory. But when it comes to our election, we cannot take any risks. Our vote is our voice.
Tell our elected representatives, Rep. Sarah Peake and Sen. Julian Cyr, to act now to make our November elections safe and available to all.
Laura Gazzano
Wellfleet
