Readers, including the mother of a 3-year-old and a heart transplant recipient, discuss how the changes affect them.
To the Editor:
Re “New C.D.C. Guidelines Give Communities More Room to Loosen Restrictions” (news article, Feb. 26):
As the parent of a 3-year-old, I am outraged and saddened that the C.D.C. has decided to place my child and all other children under the age of 5 at increased risk by dropping most mask requirements. My child has spent two-thirds of their young life unable to go many places, because the places were closed or because they would be around large groups of other children.
My child has not been to a children’s museum, a friend’s birthday party or a McDonald’s play area. And while we parents wait to be able to vaccinate our kids, the C.D.C. has decided to make it so I can’t take my kid to the grocery store either.
Children have sacrificed to keep others, especially older Americans, safer by giving up many normal childhood experiences to reduce the spread of Covid. All I ask is that we as a country protect our youngest citizens by waiting to drop mask requirements until after kids under 5 can get the Covid vaccine.
Is that too much to ask? Or have we become that selfish as a nation that we do not want to protect infants and toddlers from a deadly disease?
Katherine Glaves
Seattle
To the Editor:
You report that the C.D.C. has issued a new set of recommendations intended to help communities live with the virus and “get back to some version of normal life.” How in the world does “normal” relate to Covid still killing tens of thousands Americans a month?
What happened to concern about the lives of our people, especially our older citizens, our grandparents and uncles, who constitute the largest age group of the dead? What about the immunocompromised, who are being left behind and vulnerable?
We’re jamming up stores and bars while disregarding the safety of these people. This is not “normal.” This is shortsighted and self-centered.
We cannot ignore the safety of huge parts of the population and go back to “normal” while the death rate continues much higher than “normal.” Shame.
Lynn Means
Huntington, N.Y.
To the Editor:
Re “Push to Move On From Covid Sharpens Pain of Those at Risk” (front page, Feb. 18):
As an immunosuppressed heart transplant recipient, I am frustrated less by the political and public health talk that invalidates my daily reality, and more by the scourge of transplant drug regimens — because this is at the center of what compromises the lives of patients like me.
It’s not just that masks and Covid-19 vaccines don’t work well enough for us; it is the dangerous medicines we take every day that threaten our safety and quality of life, with or without the challenges of this virus.
Covid-19 susceptibility illuminates what has long been a problem in transplantation: antiquated drugs that flatten patients’ immune systems. The lack of personalized medicine in transplant means that all organ recipients are given powerful high-dose immunosuppression that not only leaves them susceptible to Covid-19, but also can cause cancer, diabetes and other deadly diseases.
The time has come to fund research for alternatives to current transplant drugs and to employ patient-specific dosing. Covid-19 has brought this issue to the fore.
Amy Silverstein
Chappaqua, N.Y.
The writer serves on the Transplant Community Advocacy Committee of the American Society of Transplantation.
