History will show we made a mistake

I refer you to an opinion piece entitled "We're more risk averse today than post WW ll Americans" in the May 28 issue by Michael Barone.

For the first time, someone has drawn a comparison to the flu epidemics of 1957/58 and a similar flu in 1968/69, both of which killed more people as a percentage of our population than this one has thus far.

As the author mentions, there were no lockdowns or the shutting down of our economy; schools continued to operate, parks and beaches remained open and hospital ICU's were not overwhelmed.

Why would experts not look back at these, at least perhaps to glean some valuable information as we pursue answers and approaches to the challenges our current pandemic present? All you hear about is the Spanish Flu of 1918, which the vast majority of people in the world were not alive to experience.

I believe history will show that we made a very poor decision in our approach to this pandemic; the collateral damage to our people and our economy is beyond estimation. Our current leaders, as mentioned in the article, seem to think that we must pursue policies that save any life at any cost.

Do we ever learn anything from the past? i.e."Epidemics" or our own wars of liberation: Vietnam. Afghanistan, Iraq etc. (Many hundreds of thousands of lives lost with no positive outcome) Sadly, I guess each new generation has to learn the hard way, needlessly costing American lives and tax payers, trillions of dollars that could have been spent more wisely e.g. on a healthcare system for all or a "modern day" passenger/freight rail system or necessary infrastructure upgrades to bring our country into the 21st century, positively benefiting all Americans.

Rich Bowman

Barrington