re: Louisiana now at 13 positive cases

Letter to the editor in The Advocate that I thought was spot on.

[quote]Area hospitals have finally started screening patients for coronavirus. Good. It’s about time.

But it appears that the most important question asked in the screening is whether the patients have recently traveled to countries where the virus has already been discovered to be prevalent. Excuse me, but we live in a state that has just celebrated one of the nation’s favorite festivals. We have packed people into the French Quarter from not only around the country but the world as well.

It is nonsense to say that we have not yet seen cases here. We have not seen them because we have not been looking. They’re here!

And when we finally get a true picture we may well find that Louisiana, home of Mardi Gras, surges with COVID-19. If this happens — I pray it doesn’t — when next election comes, we ought to turn out all the public officials who have been taking a conservative and passive approach, waiting for people to show symptoms instead of aggressively testing.

We ought to act in accord with that famous American political mantra: Throw the bums out