Dear “Around Town” columnist Joe Earle:

I read your article in the Dunwoody reporter about safety and self-policing with the coronavirus. (Around Town: When safety comes down to politeness and self-policing,” June 3.) I thought your article came across with a bit of an elitist, creepy tone to it. An interesting observation of groupthink of the masses, in my view.

Did it ever occur to you that not everyone believes everything that comes out of the media and responds by lining up, saluting, shutting down their life and covering their face with a mask?

If you really believe everything you’ve been told, then stay home if you choose to. You could have said that in your article, but you didn’t. What you can’t do is go out and dictate that somehow we’re not being respectful because we choose to live our life as free Americans and not wear a mask in public or shut down. If anyone’s being disrespectful, it’s you.

Your article seems to elevate people who go around in secret taking pictures of their neighbors and reporting them to the police and social media. That is creepy and cowardly in my opinion, as you allude in your article: “Residents themselves become the eyes of the community on social distancing enforcement.” What enforcement are you talking about? What authority are you referring to to self-police? For example, how would you enforce someone to wear a mask when they never have worn one? What exactly would you do personally?

Something that’s missing completely from your article is the actual, very real economic devastation that is taking place to your neighbors. Do you have any consideration to the economic impact that this shelter in place has caused? There are hundreds of families in Dunwoody alone that have lost their source of income; many businesses probably won’t recover. Perhaps you have some sort of income that’s been sheltered from all this but the majority of Americans do not, especially people who are self-employed. Those are things that actually happened, not the fear of what might have happened.

I think the shelter-in-place has caused a lot of people to suffer both physically and psychologically. I think your article definitely falls into the creepy category as well. I hope you take some time to reflect on these things.

Bryan Wolfe
Dunwoody

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