I read John Balentine’s “An overabundance of caution is our undoing” (Aug. 13).

He claims that “All levels of government for 17 months now have been crafting virus-related recommendations based on an abundance of caution.” He must have missed President Trump referring to the COVID virus or expressed concerns about COVID as a hoax. Such comments were made because of an overabundance of caution about the economy. He also must not remember the claim that we had 15 cases that soon would be down to zero.

Mr. Balentine claims, despite the 600,000-plus deaths in the U.S. alone, that we are too cautious with this deadly infectious disease. The author then claims that deaths are now nearly nonexistent. The day his article was published, COVID killed 641 of our fellow Americans. If we lost 641 citizens to a terrorist attack, I think one would have a hard time selling the argument that deaths were nearly nonexistent. Hospitalizations due to COVID have doubled since July 2021.

Mr. Balentine claims, in effect, that people who follow the CDC recommendations are basing their behavior on “unscientific hysteria,” yet he wrote that “Nobody talks about the bacteria lining those nasty masks.” Does he suggest that masks are a prolific killer like COVID or is he simply expressing his unscientific fear of masks out of an abundance of caution?

The U.S. has 4.2% of the world’s population, yet until the vaccine came out we had 25% of the world’s deaths. One can only wonder what percent of the world’s deaths the U.S. would have sustained had more listened to the cry that we were being too cautious with this prolific killer.

Robert Edwards
Scarborough