Dishearteningly narrow perspective on COVID

Raymond J. Dansereau, in his letter (“Relying on mandates is a failure of leadership,” Sept. 17), blames former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and current Gov. Kathy Hochul for failing to persuade more people to voluntarily comply with COVID -19 protection exhortations and for then resorting to mandates, which Dansereau calls a “failure of leadership.” That’s quite a stretch.

If there is a failure of leadership, it rather lies at top levels, with the purveyors of misinformation, bad advice and uncritical thinking in our educational and religious institutions and in our social and other media. And, from the opposite perspective, it also lies with the many of us who have fallen into mindless addiction to, and agreement with, custom-filtered news and propaganda feeds.

What makes this letter disheartening to me is its total focus on COVID -19 as a personal threat requiring self-protection and

its blindness to the public health threat, which calls for near-universal, herdprotecting measures.

Dansereau bemoans the inconvenience of the current COVID -19 mandates, and he respects the illogical focus of many of the vaccine-hesitant on the low-probability, relatively minor risks associated with COVID -19 vaccines. What will we do to deal with the next pandemic, which could be much more imperiling to public health and which could demand much more inconveniencing protective action? Physicians and public health officials in some 14th-century European cities, trying to cope with the bubonic plague, mandated incoming travelers isolate themselves outside city gates for 30 days (trentino) or even 40 (quarantino). Now that’s inconvenience.

Al Cannistraro

Clifton Park