Letter to the Editor: Appalled at businesses’ failure to take all safety measures

Dear Editor,

As a public health professional for the last 35 years, I have been often disappointed and, at times, appalled by some behaviors I have seen in local businesses. Primarily, I am addressing the failure to wear masks in retail stores and restaurants.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have curtailed visits to area businesses, but have continued trying to support local small businesses as much as possible, leaving generous tips for carry-out orders. I have resisted ordering everything online, or paying others to shop for me, because I desperately want to see small businesses and their employees survive this public health disaster.
And yet, it would seem that the very same people who decry public health orders, the ones who perceive public health orders to be harmful to business, the ones who resent wearing a mask in public because it violates their individual freedom and rights, are in the end, ironically, the ones who will contribute most to the decline of small businesses.
After multiple experiences in the Clarkston area over the past couple weeks, I am finished with certain local businesses. I am talking to the party store owners, the restaurant owners who make me go inside for carry out, the grocery stores, the drug stores – because you fail to enforce correct mask wearing among both your customers and your employees.
Wearing a mask is not a liberal conspiracy; their effectiveness is proven and based on actual science. Next time you go for surgery, why not suggest to your surgical team that masks are optional?
Listen, I don’t love wearing my mask, but I do because I want to live and keep those around me alive.
And to you business owners and managers who are too afraid to confront your unmasked customers, you have already lost me as your customer, because you failed to keep me safe when it was within your power to do so.

Sincerely,
Martha Brooks
Clarkston

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