On Wednesday, April 15, I was sitting at home, thinking of the more than 29,000 lives lost during the current pandemic and how it equates to the lives lost during the Vietnam War. During the more than a decade of that war, more than 58,000 lives were lost. We have now lost half that many American lives in less than three months due to the ignorance and incompetence of the Trump administration and its allies in Congress, and Republican governors and legislatures across the country. Their focus on the monetary side has cost people much more than money — it has cost people family members, friends and neighbors.

If the Main Street Republicans who support those elected officials don’t wake up, many more thousands of our fellow countrymen will be lost. COVID-19 doesn’t care about anyone’s race, religion, political affiliation or sexual orientation. It will attack anyone.

To put it bluntly, this country is under attack from within. It is a domestic enemy. Republicans in the administration and in Congress took oaths to protect the people from all enemies, foreign and domestic. They have failed badly in upholding that oath.

Ronald Pineau, Jay