North Pond Hermit advice?
I would like to suggest that the Maine hermit go on a speaking tour of Maine talking about self-isolating.
Robb Cook
Lubec
Threats to our country
We have all heard politicians say that immigrants and refugees at the southern U.S. border will bring diseases and take our jobs. In reality, it was a coronavirus that spread disease and job loss across our country. It was likely brought by Americans returning home from cruises, vacations in Italy, or business trips to Asia, not immigrants from Central America, South America, or Africa. Across the U.S., many of the people taking care of us in hospitals, nursing homes, or our own homes are immigrants — as are many workers on farms, in grocery stores, in restaurants, and for food delivery services.
We should all be very grateful to these brave health care and food system workers no matter what country they were born in. And our leaders should tell the truth about the greatest threats to our country and take action to protect us from them. Let’s take all the money that is being used for a wall on the southern border and begin to get prepared for the next wave of coronavirus, by producing more personal protective equipment and ventilators, and investing more in hospitals and vaccine development. And don’t vote for politicians who don’t tell us the truth.
Sue Erich
Orono
Stand with Calais Regional Hospital staff
The article in the Bangor Daily News last week regarding the Calais Regional Hospital incident that occurred back in February infuriates me to no end. That paper took an isolated incident with one doctor that was dismissed and maligned the entire hospital.
I think a better story would have been that because of the fast action of our emergency room staff and a Calais paramedic, a life was saved in February. My family and I always get such great treatment there. If I am at the hospital in an official capacity, I have never seen anybody that cares more than the doctors, nurses and staff at our hospital.
We are living in a historic time right now. To print a story like this could indeed cause panic — which is something that our communities do not need at any time let alone now. We need to be celebrating the work of our health care professionals. I would give praise to the administration for taking such prompt and decisive action regarding the doctor.
The economic struggles of Calais Regional Hospital are well documented, the struggle is the same for many small hospitals across the country. The hospital is working tirelessly to adjust what they can there to ensure our area has a hospital. They need our support now more than ever.
To those of you working at the hospital — whether you are one of the maintenance workers or the CEO, a doctor or nurse, a receptionist or in the food service — I thank you very much. You are on the front line of this fight, and speaking for myself, I stand with you. All of you stay safe. We need you.
Bob Fitzsimmons
Chief of Police
Baileyville
Sen. Collins was right in 2016
In a 2016 Washington Post OpEd explaining “Why I cannot support Trump”, Sen. Susan Collins said his ”…lack of self restraint and his barrage of ill-informed comments would make an already perilous world even more so.” How right she was, prescient even.
In an interview with the BDN last week, Collins had some praise for Trump’s coronavirus response, saying that “the president did a lot that was right in the beginning.” He didn’t. He first suggested that it wasn’t a significant problem, and I believe he has failed to demonstrate leadership at every turn. Americans are facing a grave danger, and he and Collins seem to be trying to rewrite history now to cover up their failures.
This is not the Collins I voted for. In my mind, she has changed. I wonder if party matters more to her than the Mainers she serves, and if she’s forgotten who she’s accountable to.
This is no longer about politics. The USA has 4.25 percent of the world’s population. Yet we have 25 percent of the reported Covid-19 cases worldwide, and that number is growing exponentially every day. Her actions have deadly implications for Maine and the entire country.
Jennifer Jones
Falmouth
Hold President Trump accountable
Gov. Janet Mills has responded decisively to the coronavirus. Her primary responsibility as the state’s chief executive is to protect the health of Maine’s citizens by taking whatever steps are necessary to restrain the spread of this disease. Numerous headlines from the front pages of recent editions of the Bangor Daily News attest to these steps.
The chief executive of the nation, however, has responded to the outbreak in a much less decisive way. First, he downplayed the seriousness of the contagion, claiming that it would all disappear. Then he asserted that his administration had the necessary medical supplies well in hand. This was not true.
In the last week or two, however, the president has changed his tone, publicly acknowledging the seriousness of the situation that the U.S. faces, and warning us that hundreds of thousands of Americans could die.
Good for him. But on a deeper level, I believe he remains to a large extent responsible for these actual and potential deaths. As Sonia Shah has recently pointed out, the president’s deregulation of extractive industries such as oil and coal has broken down the boundaries between nature and human habitation, and nature is where the coronavirus once harmlessly dwelt.
In October 2019, the Trump administration chose to end the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Predict program that identified animal microbes that could potentially become human pathogens. And only in February, the administration proposed cutting funds to the World Health Organization.
Trump’s responsibility for our current crisis runs deep. We should not allow him to bully or bumble his way out of this. As citizens, as victims, and as potential victims, we should hold him to account.
William J. Murphy
Belfast