Opinion

In support of robust contact tracing in Montana

Editor:

I much appreciated the article on contact tracing in the May 21 Enterprise. As we have now been taught, the three T’s of eradicating COVID from our communities in order to flatten the curve and break the chain of transmission are Testing, Tracing and Treatment/Isolation. 

It is a common, if not especially honorable, practice in American politics for a candidate and her campaign to prefer to run not against their actual opponent on the ballot but rather against the most unpopular caricature of the opponent’s party.

Even as some states and localities are “reopening” businesses and public spaces, it is likely that the COVID-19 pandemic will still be with us in November when Americans will elect a president, the entire membership of the U.S. House and more than a third of the U.S. Senate.

It is past time for Congress to require states to expand opportunities for voting by mail and early voting — and to help pay for those changes — so that Americans on Nov. 3 aren’t faced with a choice between protecting their health and exercising the most important right of citizens in a democracy.

The government has closed most schools.

So, more parents are teaching kids at home.

That upsets the government school monopoly.

Education “experts” say parents lack the expertise to teach their kids.

Without state schooling, “learning losses ... could well be catastrophic,” says The New York Times. Home schooling “will set back a generation of children,” according to a Washington Post column. Harvard Magazine’s “Risks of Homeschooling” article quotes a professor who calls for a “presumptive ban.”