Letters to the editor Oct. 31

Mask response

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to Ms. Morrison’s remarks (Face paint vs masks, Oct. 14).

Regarding surgical masks in OR suites, bacterial infection of open surgical wounds is not comparable in any way to viral respiratory illnesses.

Ms. Morrison mischaracterizes the crux of the first portion of my letter which was the ineffectiveness of mandatory masks for communal benefit. The U.S. CDC is hopelessly politically compromised regarding their recommendations. The European CDC is more impartial and judges not enough evidence to recommend communal masking in their September 2021 update.

Ms. Morrison rather switches to specific high risk scenarios where social distancing cannot be achieved. Decorum demands manners of course. But the solution for those situations is not masks but immunity. Get vaccinated.

If you are opposed to vaccines and must be in that situation, you are likely young and healthy with very low risk of death or debility and should seek out a physician who will prescribe medication for early symptom treatment to even further reduce that small risk.

I maintain you are foolish to rely on masks longitudinally. But as always, it should be an individual choice.

Long-term, such as in schools, all children are going to be exposed whether they mask or not. The Swedish experience strongly suggests the lack of harm of unmasked children both to fellow students and teachers. Furthermore there are estimates that 50-80% of children in the U.S. have already been exposed to COVID.

Now to end before I become blue in the face.

— Dr. Michael Boharski, Kalispell

Election partisanship

The Daily Inter Lake’s Sunday, Oct. 24 edition had two articles in the opinion section relating to how local voters should view and self-screen candidates. One article was the Inter Lake editorial and the other was a letter to the editor from Mike Skinner of Bigfork. Both of these articles advocated for voters to dispense from considering a candidates political party affiliation in local elections. They argue that one should pay more attention to a candidates “person” and not their party. They also argue that national parties do not get involved in local school boards, county zoning, roads and bridges, etc., and this is generally true and appropriate.

However, when you consider a candidate’s thought process you would like to know if he a “big government or small government” kind of person. Is the candidate a “tax and spend” or “stay out of my pocket book” kind of person. It is pretty obvious that the national party platforms and policies have some influence on many people one way or another, be they voter or candidate.

When one watches the news of other localities nationwide being influenced by party politics (see Portland and Seattle) you have to wonder “when will this come to small-town Montana.”

I disagree with the Inter Lake and Mike Skinner. Don’t overlook a candidate’s political party just because you think that local politics are idealistically pure. It is up to the voter to be well-informed and party politics is just one data point.

— Duane Egan, Columbia Falls

Invest in our library

Our family loves our local library. We have only been to ImagineIF in Kalispell, but we have always been a library-going family…in all of our communities.

ImagineIF is different, though. It is by far the warmest, most accessible, enjoyable, best-stocked library we have every used. The librarians are friendly, patient, helpful and enthusiastic. Our kids have been able to take a full basket of books out of there every other week for years, and have never been disappointed. Talking to librarians has been an important experience for them as they work to gain real people skills … not using a device, but talking to a human to find the books they want, and being treated like what they are interested in matters.

The folks I’ve worked with at the library have also been engaged and invested in the larger community. When I was working with the Free the Seeds group, Megan and Deidre were an important part of getting the library involved and using it as a way to reach more folks in our area. It worked.

It would be a shame … worse than a shame, to lose these people — and the quality of our library — because of pay cuts, or undervaluing their education and experience. I really hope the board, and other “powers that be” decide to provide a living and competitive wage for these folks … their morale and quality of life matters as much as everyone else who is getting paid more and more in this employees’ job market.

Finding (and keeping) folks who care and are invested and engaged is not easy to do, and they deserve to be paid for what they bring to the table.

— Tawnya Rourke Kelly, Kalispell

A wild thought

A recent Daily Inter Lake front page story states that Kalispell schools are having a surge in enrollment. It was a very interesting article. One thing that stuck out in my mind was that this area is so expensive to build, expansive availability of property or parking etc.

Then I had a wild thought. What if some of the old shopping malls or vacant box stores were turned into schools.

It seems that this is not the first time someone has thought of that as it is already been done. As I see retail stores go out of business and collapse, leaving great big areas of square footage just seeming to deteriorate by age over time, it just seems plausible that some renovations could be done and suitable school square footage could be obtained.

Just a thought.

— Les Anderson, Havre