Demonstrate compassion - People wear masks to prevent COVID pandemic spread

Wearing a mask is unselfish

Echo opinion letter published in the Dodge City Daily Globe and the Topeka Capital-Journal, in Kansas. This letter was published in 2020, but the message continues to be urgent.  COVID-19 is not going away. Masks will protect the wearer and the public against becoming seriously ill with COVID and the Delta variant 

My brother, Danny Dougherty, passed away Oct. 27. He had underlying conditions and contracted COVID-19. He was on the COVID ICU floor of the Salina Regional Health Center for 16 days. The nurses, doctors and staff on that unit were fantastic — he got the best of care.

Danny knew the risk if he were to contract COVID. He went only a few places and wore a mask when he did. I have heard all the reasons people have for not wearing mask. Their “rights,” their “claustrophobia.” They “are young and therefore immune.”

There is no good reason for not wearing a mask. Perhaps you are asymptomatic and you pass someone like my brother in the grocery store (who is wearing a mask to protect you) and you are not wearing a mask. Perhaps you sneeze or cough on them and they get COIVD.

It is not that hard; just wear a mask. Do it because it’s the unselfish thing to do. Do it so the staff members of the ICUs are not overworked, exhausted and sick at heart because they have lost so many patients.

Do it so there is not an empty chair at someone’s next family gathering and a hole in their heart because someone they dearly loved died from COVID.

Bonnie Daley, Salina Kansas