Dentists are an essential business

Why are health care professionals, specifically dentists, being asked to treat only emergency patients?

Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, Costco and Target, to name a few, all allow medically untrained, vulnerable workers to fill shelves and wait on customers, while dentists are unable to treat all patients.

Surely, dental office staff is better schooled in the knowledge of preventative care. In most dental offices, each patient is treated in a separate room. Ordinary protocol at many dental offices includes taking a patient’s temperature and blood pressure. Those tests alone go far beyond what happens at the aforementioned stores today.

In addition, dental medical staff is gowned, gloved and masked, and all instruments are sterilized.

Have we forgotten the value of preventative medicine? The value of an oral exam to detect an asymptomatic problem is preventative medicine. With our current instructions for washing and distancing, surely we know that preventive care is the best option.

A dental appointment is often scheduled six months out. If you are unable to make that appointment, you may have to wait a considerable time for a second one. While understanding the need for staying home and social distancing, we should also balance that with a need for preventative care.

Please, Gov. Lujan Grisham, allow all doctors and health care workers to decide when they should work. They are the experts. JOHN J. KING Santa Fe