Letters to the Editor

Letter: What’s our goal?

Is hockey the goal, or opening our schools? With cases rising and community transmission rampant our children are not going to be allowed back in school anytime soon. Even seeing relatives during the holiday is becoming unlikely unless we take actions to reduce spread.

While visiting the Subway hockey rink recently, I realized why cases are rising quickly. While South Anchorage Hockey Association has a COVID-19 plan, it was not followed in numerous ways.

The check-in table was unsupervised and thus could not be used to help with contact tracing or assessing capacity. While waiting, I observed at least 50 people packed into the front area, with fewer than half wearing masks, including coaches wandering through the crowd talking to people.

Even though signs were posted about social distancing, this was not being observed and unsupervised children were running around wrestling and shoving, most unmasked. I asked a child why they didn’t have a mask on, and they replied, “Adults don’t wear masks.”

Adults are setting the example that we don’t need to follow rules or listen to health professionals like Dr. Anne Zink or Dr. Anthony Fauci. There is a disconnect between how personal actions affect other people. Just because you do not get sick does not mean you are not spreading the virus to people who could get sick and die.

In the past couple of weeks, I have known more people who are sick or know someone who is, which is not a good sign. People are choosing these types of social gatherings over kids going back to school or opening travel to and from rural Alaska. We need to think beyond ourselves and take responsibility. You may feel immune, that doesn’t make the rest of us immune. Mask up and social distance, and stick to COVID-19 plans, without it we will not see our loved ones at Christmas and kids will not be going back to school with the new year.

Jen Schmidt

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Anchorage

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