Needed: masks on faces and a grocery delivery system

Indications are that Washington’s fairly early emphasis on social distancing and staying home have been effective at helping to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, but more local focus could help this area weather the crisis even better:

We all need to wear a mask in public, and a method is needed for delivery of groceries to those who are supposed to stay at home.

The first one is easy. The second one isn’t.

Anyone who has been exposed to some known to be sick with COVID-19 is definitely mandated to stay home to protect everyone else, and those at high risk should not go out either. But everybody has to eat.

A community whose hobbyists can sew hundreds of face masks for those who need them can surely come up with a solution for that.

Wearing face masks is easy, if annoying; you can get used to it.

And it’s not to protect you, so much, as to protect everyone you meet, just as their masks protect you.

Cloth masks are far from perfect, but two barriers to the droplets of mucus we exchange on a regular basis are better than none. We need to develop an instant ethic that basically demands mask wearing in public: I protect you; you protect me.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher