To the Editor:

This is my response to the letter “Potentially Divisive Opinion” [edition of August 7, 2020].

In your letter responding to the editorial “Who is Behind the Mask?” [edition of July 24, 2020] you write, “I find the opinions and sentiments included to be potentially divisive and believe that they may cause discrimination against a certain group of people: those who are spotted without a mask on in public.” Then do exactly what you claim editorial shouldn’t have done.

You express opinions and sentiments included to be potentially divisive like the following: “Masks are mostly being pushed because they make some people feel better and less afraid that they’ll contact the virus.” No, that is not why I wear a mask. I wear a mask hoping that it will protect my fellow citizens. It seems to me a small price to pay.

You discriminate against a certain group of people: Medical scientists who voice the facts, by calling them “experts” in quotes, as though they don’t have the right to express the facts as medical scientists. They dedicated their lives to helping keep us safe and deserve our respect.

Those scientists discovered vaccines such as polio, smallpox, typhus, chicken pox, cholera, measles, pneumonia, hepatitis, tetanus and diphtheria, flu viruses, shingles, just to name a few. Yet you wrote, “I disagree that it is ‘apparent’ that covering the nose and mouth with a piece of fabric and social distancing has protected others from contracting the virus.” If not believing the scientists, then you shouldn’t believe in the vaccines, or doctors and nurses wearing masks in the operating room, boiling contaminated water, washing your hands, sterilizing surgical instruments, or all the recommendations made by medical science.

You stated there are alternate explanations for why the death numbers are decreasing? The temperature rises and the virus dies more quickly in the air? Then what is going on in Florida, California, Texas, and Mexico? The last time I heard, it was pretty hot.

You stated that pathogens are exhaled out of our bodies and into the air and that by wearing a mask we are trapping the exhalation of pathogens inside our masks. One thing was left out. You must already have the pathogens in your body before you can exhale them out. Pathogens enter our body through the eyes, mouth, nose, wounds, or bites that breach the skin barrier. They do not magically appear in the body. You would not be exhaling pathogens into your mask unless you already had them in your system. Thus wearing a mask helps to keep pathogens away from others.

My last words to you… stay safe.

Lydia DelPrete

Great Ring Road, Sandy Hook August 10, 2020