“One compares fellow Islanders to criminals even murderers because they made their own choice not to be vaccinated. Equating no masking or vaccination with assault or shooting someone dead is preposterous and nonsensical.”

Lauren Cohen’s statement above is hard to reconcile with 700,000 deaths and counting from COVID in the U.S. It ignores how highly contagious COVID is and how it has been proven that masks and vaccination greatly reduce casualties. But does it matter because we are now in an era where facts are ignored or labeled fake if they don’t agree with what you believe?

To give some idea of the scale of loss here are the figures of deaths from flu and in some of our wars.

• 675,000 flu deaths in 1918

• 498,332 Civil War Union and Confederate

• 405,399 WWII

• 116,516 WWI

• 58,229: Vietnam

• 33,686: Korea

Gabriel Jacobs

Shaw Island