Editor:
Re: “No monster under the bed,” Letters, June 26.
PJ Reece may not have found any monsters under the bed, but that doesn’t change the fact that COVID-19 is still a monster in our midst, no matter how many statistical misrepresentations, false equivalencies, or other distortions you throw at it.
Ironically, the same day Reece’s letter was published, the CTV News website led with an article titled “Perverse Logic: Don’t Compare the Flu to COVID-19” in which infectious disease experts explained – yet again – why the novel coronavirus is nothing like seasonal flu. The reasons will be familiar to any reality-based individual who’s been following legitimate news sources: higher death rates, more severe complications, no herd immunity, no vaccines/treatments, the potential to overwhelm health-care systems, the list goes on and on.
More importantly, the article also described a phenomenon demonstrated by Reece and others who minimize the pandemic, namely the “Prevention Paradox” – the fact that we tend not to appreciate preventative measures precisely because they’re so successful at preventing the worst possible outcomes. After reaping the benefits, people then complain that the preventative measures were overly damaging or unnecessary, never stopping to consider what would have happened if they had not been implemented.
In short, B.C. has experienced a relatively low rate of sickness and death not because COVID-19 was a false monster under the bed as Reece claims, but because we took the pandemic seriously from the start and responded with an effective, science-based strategy to limit the spread of infection. One only has to look at the slow-motion catastrophes unfolding in places like the U.S. and Brazil to understand what the alternative looks like.
So no, PJ, we didn’t overreact to a non-existent threat; we acted appropriately and did what many jurisdictions now wish they had done.
MJ Lord, Sechelt
