Restore Restrictions & Offer Information and Best Practices for Community Care

I am in full support of the restrictions and stay at home measures that are now being lifted. It is terrifying that while people are still dying (600 total deaths a week ago), the virus still spreading (around 700 new cases a week ago), no vaccine or treatment, the fact that Minnesota has fallen to a D from an A in pandemic response grading on a national level, and as Minnesotans are doing the least to care for each other than they have in months, we are *now pulling back restrictions on business and gathering. I have compassion for our situation. For how difficult this is. Now is not the time to ease restrictions. At this point, healthcare workers don’t even have the proper equipment/protection to do their jobs. Now is the time for information and best practices to care for each other and ourselves with an understanding that community is at the heart of humanness. I fear you're caving to a loud minority complaining about the inconvenience that would keep vulnerable people, like my mother, *alive during the pandemic. Before and while the virus spreads and the mortality rate rises, we must restore restrictions and send a compassionate, yet strong message to Minnesotans communicating the severity of our individual and collective actions. We need to care for each other, be there for one another, and seek relief while being healthy and safe. We are indeed facing a great challenge. A lot of people use the word “unprecedented”, which is either willfully or ignorantly misleading. Our situation is not at all unprecedented to our society. While new to so many of us, if this was truly unprecedented, we wouldn’t have a history to learn from; we wouldn’t have voices calling from graves to beware the repetition of mistakes long past. But we do. And we need to listen.

First sent on May 18, 2020 by Adán Gabriel Rangel