It’s all about choices

If you favor keeping businesses closed, favor home isolation, favor public parks, etc., closed, then is your salary/paycheck guaranteed during this time? Are your health benefits guaranteed during this time? Are you able to work from home with no discernible dropoff in productivity? Is someone in your home receiving pay/benefits during this time?

If you favor opening restaurants, stores, businesses at a regulated, monitored level: Is your job dependent on this type of business being open? Are any benefits dependent on this type of business being open? Do you have a steady income of any kind provided by someone in your household which allows you to not work at this time?

Reopening the world is not about “whiners” wanting a haircut. It is about those people doing the cutting actually earning some money and getting their lives back. Reopening is not about “whiners” demanding anything, but getting people back to work instead of having to go to food banks, having to get utility assistance, having to make very hard choices every day.

Those who insist on the world staying closed, I know, believe they are right; otherwise they would not hold the opinions they do. Conversely, those who advocate for reopening believe they are right, for the same reason. People do not hold opinions they know to be wrong. If a store owner chooses to reopen, that is the choice of the store owner. No one is forced to go to that store. If a restaurant chooses to open, then no one is forced to go there. Choices.

Tough choices for all. However, there are many who simply cannot sit in homes and wait. They need to support families, buy food, pay bills. If Home Depot, Walmart, Lowe’s, and other big stores can be open, then so can the small business, the family store, the one-worker shop.

Choices.

DAVID KELLEY Louann