I’d like to respond to the letter you published from John Simmons of Rehoboth wherein he accuses Sara Ford of being a “heartless political hack.” I’m surprised that you published what looks to be a personal attack on her character.
Much of his letter is his opinion of the effect of mask wearing, vaccination and government mandates in regard to controlling the present COVID pandemic. He accuses Ms. Ford of providing no evidence for her statements, yet he gives none for his.
I would like to offer two easy-to-understand scientific references that should help your readers to understand the masking information. The first is from Patient Care, Jan. 26, 2020 from Drs. Hong (infectious disease) and Rutherford (epidemiology) at the University of California - San Francisco that references studies that give hard evidence of the effectiveness of masking and references other scientific articles that one scientist used to predict how many lives would have been saved if 80 percent of our population had worn masks early in the pandemic.
The other reference is from Nature Oct. 6, 2020 that further discusses masking and the effectiveness of vaccination for prevention and mitigation of coronavirus infections. It also references how populations of various peoples have been affected by masking and not masking.
Lastly, I would like to note a recently published autopsy study that looked at the actual cause of death of patients from this virus. It has been assumed that the virus causes such damage to the lungs that pneumonia was the final blow. It wasn’t; there was little evidence of that, but the most significant finding was the extreme numbers of virus particles causing massive inflammation of lung tissue that caused their deaths.
Scientific studies have repeatedly shown masking (N95 masks) limits the numbers of virus particles one spreads by speaking, singing, or coughing and decreases the amount of virus possibly inhaled by the masked individual. Could, then, wearing a mask limit the number of virus particles a mask wearer would breathe in and possibly get into the lungs of these people, preventing a serious infection/hospitalization or even death? There is no study that shows this, but it seems like common sense.
Your readers should know that there is good scientific evidence that masking works to limit the spread of virus particles, and vaccination is effective in prevention of serious infections from this virus. Ms. Ford seems to want to spread that news and I don’t see her as limiting anyone’s rights by that.
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