Letters: Readers discuss respecting public health, rethinking KCI and Patty Prewitt
Lessons learned?
Maybe by staying at home and getting bored, we can all learn to slow down and think things through for a change. As we “come out the other side,” let’s shed ourselves of breaking news, sound bites, instant reward and shallow behavior. Aren’t we really better than that?
- Gordon Kauffman, Overland Park
Rethink KCI
It is time for a reset on construction at Kansas City International Airport. It might now be prudent to spread the gates over a larger area — say, multiple terminals instead of one. This would also mean multiple entry points with smaller crowds than the mass of humanity that would gather in one large terminal.
Although this could discourage crowds gathering for shopping, dining and drinking, isn’t this now viewed as a net positive? Surely there must be a template available that we can copy before the construction reaches a critical stage.
- Steve Fetter, Overland Park
Show you care
I hope that when Kansas City businesses reopen, they demonstrate how much they care about the health of their customers and clients by providing employees masks and requiring their use. If they care about their employees’ health, they will also require customers to wear masks.
The purpose of my wearing a mask in public is to prevent me from spreading the virus if I am an asymptomatic carrier. So to me, it is simple: If people care about others, they will wear masks.
I hope businesses will demonstrate how much they care about my health. Perhaps a business without masked personnel doesn’t care.
- Stephen Williamson, Kansas City
Precautions a must
As a couple in our 70s, my wife and I are in the coronavirus crosshairs. However, we realize that life must go on.
I suggest the most reasonable way to proceed is a nationwide requirement that everyone wear a mask and groves when in public or at the workplace. This includes the president and vice president.
Restaurants and bars or any place where masks must be removed should enforce social distancing for their guests of groups of 10 or fewer. Violation of these rules of etiquette should result in serious fines.
- Edward Stine, Prairie Village
Wrong direction
Federal guidelines say that a state should not open nonessential businesses until there have been 14 days of decline in coronavirus cases. Neither Kansas nor Missouri has met those guidelines, so why are we moving to stage one?
If there is a rebound, which most health officials predict, it will be difficult to reinstate stricter stay-at-home orders. Will businesses open, then close, then open again? Will there be another set of Small Business Administration loans? Will unemployment benefits start and then stop again? Will people really follow social distancing and wear masks?
And what will happen in the fall, when another wave of COVID-19 cases is expected?
Would another round of stimulus checks, unemployment benefits and actual help for businesses and workers have worked instead of this push to restart things? And even if a business opens, will customers come? Demand drives supply, not the other way around.
The main question is, of course, where are the testing and contact tracing? The federal government issues vague guidelines and then retreats to see what happens.
This is no way to run this emergency or to repair the damage caused by the delay in taking it seriously.
- Stanley Stern, Mission
Bring her home
On April 29, 1986, my 36-year-old mother, Patty Prewitt, went to prison. She was forced to leave us five children behind. I was 16, and my youngest sibling was 8. We became orphans. Not only had our father been killed, but our poor mother was raped, dragged through the mud, wrongly convicted and then imprisoned. Her sentence was life with no parole for 50 years.
Here we are 34 years later. Unbelievably, through it all, Mom has made us proud. She has continued to mother us the best she could through phone calls, letters and visits. She’s helped countless women from behind bars.
Mom is 70, with high blood pressure, a heart condition and chronic bronchitis and with COVID-19 looming. She has been through enough.
It’s time for our family to heal. My husband and I have a bedroom ready for her in our home. We are prepared to quarantine with her to keep our community and family safe. We want our mother to be free.
This is our most fervent prayer: Please, Gov. Mike Parson, be our hero with a stroke of your pen and allow our family to be reunited.
- Jane Watkins, Greenwood, Missouri