Prevent what may be

Charles Dickens writes in A Christmas Carol, “Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of the things that may be only?”

Stay with me while we examine Mr. Chevallier’s assertion that computer modelers got it wrong in the past, so why should we believe them about covid-19. Forecasters, using the best tools they have, attempt the impossible by trying to predict the future. Sometimes they fail. Those we may remember, while forgetting or even being unaware of the predictions that altered the future in some positive way.

Regarding covid-19, scientists, using computer modeling, alerted us to a dangerous reef ahead, much as radar might have done for a ship sailing through dark waters. We, mainly through the actions of the individual states, have steered in a way to avoid some, if not most, of the potential death the virus could have wrought. Now Mr. Chevallier wants us to believe the reef was never there.

One only has to look to New York and the surrounding area to see the blow our country has received. Does Mr. Chevallier think that the tens of thousands of hospitalizations in the New York area due to covid-19 are normal? That refrigerated trucks lined up to hold the bodies of the dead are normal? That New York usually opens mass graves to bury the dead? Does he think that somehow the people of New York are susceptible to the virus in a way that Arkansans are not?

Our numbers will likely be much lower because it is easier to practice social distancing in a state with population density of only 51.3 persons per square mile, compared to New York City’s density of 28,211 persons per square mile, but proportionally, we could easily suffer as much, and perhaps would have, if not for the quick actions of competent governance. We are lucky to have good governance at the state level, given the incompetence at the national level.

So let the Mr. Chevalliers of the world have their delusions of insight. Let the rest of us continue to do all we can to get through this with as little illness and death as possible.

ALLEN SEAY Fayetteville