As you can see from the letters to the editor on this page, there are divergent views on Sitka’s mask mandate.
The Sentinel speaks out editorially at this time to express our full support of the mask mandate ordinance that will be up for final approval by the Assembly Tuesday.
Masks are not everything. Vaccination is not everything. But credible and science-based public health authorities including the CDC, the FDA, the Alaska Department of Health and the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium agree that vaccination and masks are the best we can do, as individuals and as communities, in limiting the spread, and hopefully ending, the pandemic.
In practice, the evidence on the ground shows these measures are effective.
Hospitals in Alaska and elsewhere are being overwhelmed by COVID patients at the same time that well-funded organizations spread disinformation, attack vaccines and masks, and promote treatments proven to be ineffective if not actually harmful. They strike the match and the viral world of online conspiracy spreads the flames.
It is not the purpose of this piece to attempt to disabuse those who truly believe the lies spread, for example, by America’s Front Line Doctors (founded in 2019 by anti-vaxxer and Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionist Dr. Simone Gold) cited approvingly in a letter on this page. To their credit as propagandists, AFLD has a beautiful web presence, far outshining the gray and fact-filled site of America’s Front Line Physicians.
AFLP, which goes back to the 1940s, is a combination of six long-established organizations of medical specialists, from pediatrics to psychiatry. They go by “The
Group of Six.”
After pages of close analysis of options for dealing with the pandemic, the Group of Six says on its website:
“We applaud the use of the federal government’s authority to expand use of masks as part of a comprehensive strategy to slow the transmission of COVID-19.”
We’ll leave it at that, in the meantime asking all Sitkans to do their part in making it safe to keep our schools open, and to support public health decisions by our city officials that are based on science.
