facebook-pixel

Letter: Utah’s leaders have put the health of the economy ahead of the health of the people driving it

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Senate works in their final hours at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Friday, March 5, 2021, during the final day of the Utah Legislature’s 2021 general session.

Every day we make hundreds of choices and each choice we make has a consequence. You can tell if the choice is good if the consequence is good.

We elect officials to represent us well, those we think will make good decisions. What is happening now in Utah can be traced back to two legislators who made the decision to end the pandemic before the science said the pandemic was over — putting the health of the economy over the health of the people driving the economy.

That decision has:

• Tied our qualified health department’s hands...their scientific advice disrespected

• Put unmasked unvaccinated children in classrooms exposed and exposing peers, teachers, and faculty to a virus as viral as chicken pox then home to unvaccinated family members…causing wide community-spread.

• Lengthened the time of getting the pandemic under control.

• Extended our hospitals beyond capacity with no room for those needing care outside of the virus, not factoring in what would happen with a natural disaster or mass-casualty accident.

• Exhausted our healthcare workers frantically trying to keep people from dying from a preventable virus…abandoned by leaders they count on to support them by putting simple prevention strategies in place. Their pleas go ignored.

• Caused many people to needlessly suffer and die.

The consequences we are suffering can be traced back to a Legislature that shifted the power to make mandates away from our new governor.

The consequences tell us all that they aren’t qualified to make good decisions.

Holly McAllister, Salt Lake City

Submit a letter to the editor