Letter to the Editor - It did not have to be like this

Editor,

A half-million dead. 500,000 lives lost — mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives and children, too. What does the loss of so many lives look like?

There are 525,600 minutes in a year. That is one COVID death per minute, for almost an entire year.

It would be like losing half of the residents of the entire state of Montana. Half of our neighbors, friends and families.

Or losing all our U.S. Postal Service workers.

A half-million would equal all the public-school teachers in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas and Oregon.

If measured in the skies, 500,000 is a hundred times more than all the stars visible to the naked eye.

It did not have to be this way. We argued about science and ignored or disputed the advice of experts. We complained about how wearing a mask was just too inconvenient, not necessary, or somehow compromised our personal freedom. We attacked the very agencies that are designed to protect our public health. We allowed the CDC, long recognized as the world’s most preeminent public health agency, to be compromised by a political agenda. We decided that our public health departments and all the people who work tirelessly to protect our communities were part of some insidious campaign to take away our rights. We ignored the truth and decided facts were just personal choices.

We knew what was needed to help protect ourselves, but we just decided not to do it, and now a half-million of us are dead.

Carolyn Anderson

Havre