In response to “Opinion: Operation North Country NOW will get us back to work, says former SLC IDA director” which appeared on North Country Now April 21: Low density doesn’t mean we’re safe.

Mr. Russell wrote a coronavirus proposal. Why not re-open businesses in the “low density” counties of St. Lawrence, Franklin and Jeffferson because the Adirondack Mountains and rivers provide natural barriers against “an explosive growth of new infections”? Then, with businesses and schools open, he suggests that Northern New Yorkers can be the guinea pigs. If people get sick after two weeks, it will be helpful by showing the rest of the state that easing up on social distancing was done too soon.

Mr. Russell says he knows his geography and his math but unfortunately, the coronavirus doesn’t. In this pandemic, it’s what we don’t know that will kill us. What we don’t know is how, when or if coronavirus will strike. How did South Dakota, a sparsely populated state, have an outbreak of 900 cases at a Smithfield plant? How did remote Ray Brook, NY Correctional Facility have one inmate and 7 correctional officers test positive? How did 32 cases erupt in 3 separate McDonalds within a mile radius and nowhere else in Kona, HI? We don’t know. That’s the point.

Geographical isolation isn’t the magic elixir. We still depend on truck deliveries from statewide locations. If Mr Russell thinks he can demonstrate that northern NY “is just as educated as our downstate friends”, his proposal that low population density is our weapon of immunity only proves narrow-minded ignorance. His bizarre idea that it can’t happen here because “we’re not an urban center” is a scientifically myopic idea, to say the least.

Our grandparents lived through the 1918 influenza pandemic when 200,000 people died in the US alone. Some of us lived through the 1952 polio epidemic when 60,000 children were paralyzed. Sacrifices were made. People helped one another. We can do it again now that the global viral pandemic of our century has arrived.

Yes, people are bored, worried, frustrated; wanting to get back to work and normal routines. Try complaining to the medical workers, the store clerks, police, firemen, the highway department, post office staff etc. who make it possible for the rest of us to quasi function and be at home while they and their families are being put at risk. Impatient, tunnel-visioned people would be well-advised to be realistic and sympathetic about the challenge for everyone, especially the vulnerable, in the face of this virulent, unpredictable novel virus.

Martha Hodges

Massena