Letters to the Editor: Does L.A. trust its mayor or the president who refuses to mask up?

Los Angeles Times Opinion
·2 min read
The requirement announced by L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti came hours after county officials laid out the first steps to easing stay-at-home orders.
L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti announces the county's rule on face coverings during his May 6 coronavirus briefing. (City of Los Angeles)

To the editor: So, the U.S. Department of Justice is concerned that L.A. County's stay-home orders are "arbitrary and heavy-handed" and possibly unlawful. This is the same Department of Justice that dropped charges against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, in an administration lead by a president who refuses to wear a mask in public.

I will listen to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and L.A. County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer with regard to stay-home orders. I will also follow the advice of White House coronavirus task force members Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx.

All of these officials base their decisions on science and data. All of them have the public's health and well-being in mind when making decisions about slowly and safely reopening our country. I trust them, not Trump or the Department of Justice.

Susan Schless, Northridge

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To the editor: We are not all in this together, contrary to what the motto suggests. Working people in Los Angeles are living in an alternate universe to those who would command them not to work, to close their businesses and not to sit in wet sand at the beach.

Ferrer, L.A. County's public health director, has a $465,000 salary for 2020 while others go broke, are unable to pay rent or have to use the local food bank for the first time in their lives. Social distancing is just fine for liquor stories, but not churches.

It is easy for Ferrer to issue commands from her air-conditioned abode. Until she is without any income and sweltering in an apartment, she is not in this together with other people in Los Angeles.

Deborah McMicking, Santa Barbara

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To the editor: Letter writer Don Ciaffardini of Long Beach has expressed succinctly what many of us have been thinking — that what we are being asked to do isn't all that bad compared to other human struggles.

Those of us who have enough to get through this unprecedented era in our history should be very thankful that we are just being asked to take safety precautions.

Ciaffardini is correct in his statement that we wish each other to stay safe, remain healthy and be grateful. I know that I am doing all that I can do to heed his intelligent and insightful words.

Nina Mintzer, Reseda