Vaccinate, mask up

The Arkansas Legislature passed a law forbidding the mandating of masks in public schools. Our hospitals in Arkansas are filling up and reaching capacity because of the covid pandemic surge in the unvaccinated. That is a crisis, to be sure.

However, most disturbing is the number of children who are being affected by the Delta covid-19 variant. Children’s hospitals in Arkansas and in other parts of the South are filling up with covid-19 victims. In several children’s hospitals, the numbers of children in the ICUs are at an all-time high, with multiple children on ventilators and some dying. School hasn’t even started for most.

We need to protect our children by mandating masks in school, practicing good handwashing, vaccinating the 12-year-olds and over, and vaccinating all adults who work in the schools around children.

If anyone doubts that vaccination, combined with masks and social distancing, prevents spread of airborne diseases like covid, look at what happened to influenza in the winter of 2020-21. Vaccination rates for influenza were at 55 percent and, because of covid-19, we practiced using masks, good handwashing and social distancing. And influenza virtually disappeared! Influenza, which every year affects millions of Americans and yearly kills anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000, almost vanished.

It’s conceivable that a similar thing could happen with covid-19 this coming winter if most of us got vaccinated, wore masks, washed our hands, and practiced sensible social distancing. Think about that!

GEORGE BENJAMIN

Siloam Springs