Proliferation of COVID-19 Misinformation

To the Editor:
This is in response to a letter, titled “Reader Questions COVID-19 Directives,” which was published in the Aug. 26 Herald.
I know and appreciate the questions many have regarding the initiatives that are in place to prevent the spread and/or a resurgence of COVID-19. We have been blessed, in Cape May County, to have largely avoided the worst of this pandemic, and I believe the residents here are to be commended for helping to keep our numbers low, particularly during the summer, when the beach towns fill with vacationers.
That said, there is a difference between questions about the extent and efficacy of directives that have been in place and a verifiable mistruth by the letter writer, when they wrote, “I recently watched a clip from the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Thousands were crammed shoulder to shoulder in an enclosed venue, and not one person could I see with a mask, but I can’t enter a convenience store without one.”
I do not know what the letter writer thought they saw, but there were no shoulder-to-shoulder gatherings of thousands of people at the DNC. The letter writer is, at the very least, mistaken.
I share the letter writer’s concern regarding the hypocrisy of protestors gathering. That is wrong.
It was also wrong for the motorcycle rally at Sturgis to go on, as usual, and protestors who gathered in close quarters should feel culpable for giving Sturgis attendees a rationalization for their ignorance regarding COVID-19 precautions. The consequences of that super-spreader event are being seen already.
Sadly, we are living with the consequences of a failure of national leadership regarding this pandemic. State and local officials should not have been the ones having to make these choices.
The federal government is the entity with the tools and the talent to address this, but instead of putting the ‘united’ in the U.S.A, the leaders of the federal government sowed discord and left us polarized at a time when unity was badly needed.