Saving Lives

[Editor’s Note: The following is Bob’s ‘Letter to the Editor’ which was published last month in the Modesto Bee.]

04/19/2020

Bob and Mary in Rome

In “The Irishman,” Frank Sheehan spent months pinned down by German artillery fire on the beaches of Anzio. His home was a 10-foot deep hole in the ground. Anne Frank hid in an attic to avoid capture and certain death. I marvel at how little patience so many of my fellow citizens have. As we shelter in place, it is unlikely that our home will be blown to bits by artillery barrages or that a knock on the door will mean being dragged off to a concentration camp.

The current sacrifices of remaining mostly at home, with dog walks and grocery store runs allowed, pale in comparison to the never-ending fear and misery those of the greatest WWII generation suffered. Show a little greatness and stop street protests against restrictions meant to lessen the burden on your health care system.

This is not influenza. First responders and healthcare workers do not die in vast numbers giving care even to the sickest patient with flu in the ICU. This is a highly contagious disease and healthcare workers are dying in spite of taking vigorous precautions. So to the protestors who have no clue what previous generations suffered for their freedom, buckle up and think beyond yourself. Who knows: the life you save may be your own.

Robert LeFevre M.D.

 

We welcome your comments

4 comments to Saving Lives

• John Stewart

  May 12, 2020 at 10:49 pm · Reply

  Hey Bob,
  You look as good as you did at WRA! Thanks so much for your inspiring note!

• John Carr

  May 13, 2020 at 12:07 am · Reply

  Well, yes. I can appreciate that lockdown orders here and now impose comparatively harmless restrictions on most of us, especially we relatively secure retireds who do not have worries about loss of job income or how to keep our businesses alive. But with all due respect to Bob’s point, he misses the important distinction that neither Frank Sheehan nor Anne Frank were “cabined” by their enemies, not by their own governments. And, unquestionably in hindsight, it does appear that many of the lockdown orders have been overbroad and that the economic consequences may well have major effects, including loss of life and damage to our liberties, though certainly the law of the 10th Amendment and of state police power is (from my understanding, not my experience) somewhat murky. With Bob’s basic point that Americans seem to have lost some of what most of us have thought to be their toughness and resilience, regrettably I have to agree.

• John Carr

  May 13, 2020 at 12:12 am · Reply

  Mea culpa. Should have removed that “neither..nor.” Thus “..distinction that Frank Sheehan and Anne Frank were cabined by their enemies, not by their own governments.”

  Greetings to all, and thanks to our new web managers for their enlivening of the class website.

• Steve Buck

  May 14, 2020 at 3:27 pm · Reply

  Thank you Bob. You are spot on.