Letters: KC readers discuss Missouri COVID, unjust pot laws and ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan
This is freedom?
This is an urgent dispatch from Middle America. First, some history.
On May 5, Dr. Rachel Orscheln, associate professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis cautioned Missouri public school districts against ending mask and distancing mandates. On June 4, the Columbia public school district decided masks would no longer be required indoors or on buses. Its summer school sessions began June 14, unmasked without social distancing. Within 17 days, children were testing COVID-19 positive.
I live in a state that cavalierly disregards common sense and dismisses simple precautionary measures that are proven effective because of an irrational political ideology and a misguided belief in what “personal freedom” means.
Even in a supposed bastion of liberalism, Columbia, a university town in the middle of red state Missouri, local authorities are so cowed by the prevalent propaganda as to avoid confrontation over basic safe practices — masking and distancing. Meanwhile, hospital intensive care units in rural and southwestern Missouri areas are filling with COVID-19 patients on ventilators with additional nurses and respiratory therapists needed but unavailable. (July 11, 1A, “Missouri’s lost month; How state officials squandered their chance to slow delta’s spread”)
And people die.
- Bill O’Neill, Columbia, Missouri
Drug pushers
I read about Sergio Medina-Perez, who received six years in jail for trimming plants as an employee at an illegal Missouri marijuana farm. (July 10, 3A, “Plant trimmer on $10M pot farm gets six years in prison”)
That’s quite a contrast to what happened to the Sackler family, who owned Purdue Pharma, which enabled the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and ruined millions of lives by pushing OxyContin for inappropriate use to make a few billion extra dollars. (March 17, 2A, “Sackler family to pay more to settle opioid suits”) They get to pay a fine for their deeds but keep billions of their blood money while our country will be dealing with effects of their greed for decades to come.
But at least we get to keep a nonviolent, lowest-level drug offender in jail for six years. Seems fair to me.
- William Kenney, Kansas City
Do him right
On July 17, 1938, Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan made history, of sorts. He flew a Curtiss Robin aircraft from New York to Dublin, Ireland — on his way to California. His aircraft was kind of a clunker he fixed up, adding some fuel tanks. He blamed poor visibility for flying east instead of west.
On Aug. 5, the New York Post printed its headline in big, mirror-image capital letters, “!NAGIRROC YAW GNORW LIAH,” celebrating Corrigan’s illegal tran-Atlantic flight.
It was a heck of a story, really — but not the “Top Gun” Hollywood razzmatazz. It was more of a Rocky Balboa, something-from-nothing tale.
In May 1927, Charles Lindbergh — with lots of flight time and financial backing — made history by flying from New York to Paris. Wrong Way was all on his own with a wing and a prayer. New York City gave both aviators ticker-tape parades. Wrong Way’s parade was bigger.
July 17 is coming up. Could you say a few good things about Corrigan on that day? He is gone now but should not be forgotten. There was a lot of American spirit in that heart.
- Robert William Terhune, Eudora, Kansas
This story was originally published July 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Letters: KC readers discuss Missouri COVID, unjust pot laws and ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan."