Letters to the Editor

Shop locally and help out our businesses

We all need to pitch in. Buy your groceries, gardening supplies, and take-outs here in our towns to help out our hard-working businesses and families. It’s vital for our communities’ well-being. And when this virus subsides, our town will be able to get back on their feet again. Let’s do more to support our local economy: get your car washed, buy a newspaper, support the drugstore....shop local.

Marsha Smith

Ritzville

Quarantines have been used to saved lives

Publisher Roger Harnack’s column “Restore Constitutional Rights” is both infuriating and frightening.

Infuriating because the alleged “facts” were dead wrong. Just enter the words “quarantine constitutional” into any search engine and you will get a long list of pages — from sources covering the political spectrum — that lay out clearly the Constitutional principles validating quarantines, principles dating back to the earliest days of the Republic.

For example, from the libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation: “Our Founding Fathers saw mass death due to the mosquito-borne Yellow Fever on a nearly year-in, year-out basis in the 1790s and the decades that followed... And so they quarantined.

In 1798, conditions became so bad the governor of Pennsylvania banned travel between Philadelphia and New York.” Read any of those pages.

The frightening part is Mr. Harnack’s knowledge of healthcare is also roughly nil.

Washington state is being praised across the nation for the foresight and intelligence with which it has met the situation. Though we were the entry point for the virus, our rates of coronavirus deaths are well below the national average.

And it is the isolation edicts that have been that have held down the severity here. To say or even imply that we should ignore medical advice and at once resume mixing in public is indeed frightening.

So, the facts: observing the necessary restrictions saves lives; ignoring them would cost lives. Please, Mr. Harnack, before you let off steam again, try taking a quick dip into reality.

As another wise man said, “There is no harm in being a fool; harm lies in being a fool at the top of your lungs.”

Eric Walker

Ritzville

Please, donate to the local food bank

I would like to suggest that everyone who has a job and a steady paycheck but still received the stimulus check, donate a portion of that money to the food bank who is feeding so many people without a job.

Tina Saint John

Ritzville