Recently, our governor used his leadership skills to tell us that our hospital emergency rooms are filling up and that we cannot expect to have the same level of care in the overwhelmed hospitals as we have had previously. He also suggested we might want to consider getting vaccinated for COVID-19.
As a constituent and elder Alaskan, this banter comes across as a watered-down effort to “do the right thing” without taking a risk and is not the hallmark of a leader. Leaders make tough decisions. It is interesting to me that Gov. Mike Dunleavy was able to make tough decisions early on in this pandemic, but now that people are tired, even though our hospitals are overflowing with unvaccinated patients, he is unable to face his constituents and make decisions that will save lives.
Make no mistake here, Dunleavy is the leader of this state and he has blood on his hands. Not just the blood of those people who are so adamant about their freedoms that they refuse to get vaccinated or to mask up, and then find themselves suffering from the disease, but for those innocent people who have cancer, a heart attack or a car accident and need emergency care but are unable to get the level of care they need because the emergency room is full and the hospital is short-staffed.
Being a leader means you have to put your big boy pants on and do the hard thing. It has been proven in this very community that wearing masks indoors will curb the spread of the virus, a simple mandate to require masks be worn indoors based on infection levels would be a very easy decision a real leader could make. Another would be to require masks until vaccination rates are at a particular percentage of the population. Unfortunately, our leaders are so afraid of the people who are anti-mask and anti-vaccinate that they are putting the rest of us — the majority — in danger.
— Judy Green
Anchorage
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