Health care workers: Don’t reopen NC while more are coming into hospitals

Urging caution

We are nurses, doctors, and health workers caring for North Carolinians of all backgrounds, including over 23,000 who’ve tested positive for COVID-19. We’re deeply concerned about the Phase Two reopening. While the percentage of positive tests is fairly stable, both the absolute number of cases and hospitalizations over the last seven days continue to rise.

These worrisome figures foreshadow impending burdens to hospital services, including ERs and ICUs, without even capturing the full impact of Phase One given the lag between viral transmission and symptom onset.

Instead of prioritizing economics over public health, we urge Gov. Roy Cooper and the legislature to support N.C. residents in staying safely at home while ramping up contact tracing and testing. Concurrently, our leaders should expand Medicaid, support small businesses, and improve access to unemployment benefits.

Our state should act in solidarity with its residents so that they can protect their lives as well as their livelihoods.

Dr. Conny Morrison, Chapel Hill

Dr. Kaveh Ardalan, Durham,

and six other members of Health Workers Defend NC

Let me live

I am a veteran who served seven years in the U.S. Navy. I am also a senior citizen. To ReOpenNC I say: The Declaration of Independence says we have been endowed with “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The first being “life.” In a pandemic, or any time, I choose first the right to life as laid out in the Declaration. My government has an obligation first to let me live and not live in fear of those who feel their liberty is more important than my life.

Richard McCreery, Cary

Society’s decline

I will gladly let ReOpenNC protesters cut in front of me at the Pearly Gates. They have the right to manage their health, but not mine due to potential virus transmission. The disregard of our long-term health vs economic pressures defines our society’s decline in social values.

George Garcia, Rolesville

Cleaning crews

While we shower praise and thanks to medical, grocery and first response workers, let us not forget the housekeepers and janitors who have faithfully cleaned hospitals, nursing homes and retirement communities. They are entering rooms without knowing the risk. They have to be checked for COVID-19 every day, but the apartments and rooms they enter are not tested to see if the occupants are sick. I just want to express thanks for their hard work.

Debe Czerwiec, Raleigh

Riots, anarchy

Events in Minneapolis — an unfortunate death in police hands followed by rioting and looting — take me back to April 1992. I was visiting Los Angeles when the Rodney King riot ignited. The night air smelled like a campfire and TV showed numerous fires left untouched by first responders out of fear of harm. The next day strip malls had been torched to oblivion, now guarded by rifled National Guardsmen.

Anarchy permeated the air, wrought by righteous indignation of not feeling valued or treated fairly.

We tend to take civil order for granted, but it’s by no means a given. It is painstakingly achieved and seems more fragile every day. The more we can rightly make people feel equitably valued, the less likely the Rodney King riots will portend an apocalyptic future for us all. Trust me, we do not want to go there.

Dan Kaufer, Chapel Hill

ERA in limbo

Almost 100 years ago, the 19th Amendment passed, giving women the right to vote. Today, after years of struggle and the rebirth of the women’s movement, the Equal Rights Amendment continues to live in limbo without ratification.

All of us who grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s and perhaps participated in the fight at that time must continue to work to finish the job, bringing the younger generations with us. While it appears we will not have a woman as president in 2020, we can certainly work to elect the party and candidate who will give us the best chance of finally making the ERA the law of the land. What a fitting 100th anniversary celebration that will be!

Laura Stillman, Raleigh

Coach Tatum

The May 25 article on Jim Tatum repeated a common misreading of the Daily Tar Heel’s editorial blasting his 1956 advent as UNC head football coach, interpreting the phrase “parasitic monster of open professionalism” as personally descriptive of Tatum.

Rarely in the history of college journalism has a sentence been so often misread — perhaps deservedly so; it was awkward and inelegant. I am the definitive authority, as I wrote the piece. As my colleague Louis Kraar later said, the issue for us was a distortion of college sportsmanship, not a coach’s character.

As for Tatum, this should be remembered: When Kraar and I were targeted for removal in a student recall election, he spoke out vigorously for freedom of speech and press. Kraar and I won reaffirmation by a 2-1 margin.

Edwin M. Yoder Jr., Chapel Hill