Letters to the Editor: Should un-vaccinated bear consequences for spreading COVID?

COVID consequences

Imagine a soldier going into battle without a gun. Well that’s what’s happening with people refusing to take the safe and highly effective COVID-19 vaccine. The delta variant is on the rise and if not defeated may well mutate into something that our current vaccines cannot handle which will mean a return to lockdowns and mask mandates. Alarmingly nearly 100% of new infections, hospitalizations and deaths are among the unvaccinated. Enough! If an eligible person refuses to take the vaccine then he or she should receive no health insurance coverage for a COVID related illness. Unfair, you say? As compared to these people causing rampant spread of this virus? As compared to them clogging the health care system and causing costs to rise with higher premiums and copays? I’m not suggesting people be marched at gunpoint into vaccine centers. I am saying these people can and should bear direct financial liability for the consequences of their life-threatening actions.

Jay Hopkins, Frankfort

Rent help

The Centers for Disease Control moratorium on evictions has ended, but Team Kentucky has plenty of funding to help landlords and tenants.

Kentucky tenants who are behind on rent and their landlords should apply now to the Team Kentucky Healthy at Home Eviction Relief Fund at teamkyhherf.ky.gov. Even if you are back to work, you may be eligible for help.

The Healthy at Home Eviction Relief Fund can help with up to 12 months of back rent and three months of future rent. Help with utilities is also available.

Since March, we have disbursed $33 million in assistance to landlords, utility providers, and tenants across Kentucky, and we’ll pay out over $3 million this week alone.

We do not expect to run out of funds, so tenants and landlords should apply today!

Our average assistance is currently $5,200 per renter household, and it is paid directly in a lump sum payment to the landlords. Some landlords have applied for multiple tenants and received more than $60,000 in past and future rent payments.

Kentucky Housing Corporation, Frankfort

Pay it forward

A man’s kindness has floored me, and I’m asking readers to help pass on his thoughtful action. Recently I went to a fast-food restaurant to get a build-your-own burrito bowl. A worker greeted me with a smile, and we moved down the line, pointing and interacting silently through the plexiglass divider. We mimed our way along with smiles, ending with mutually happy thumbs-up.

As I headed to the register to pay, he shook his head and motioned me away. He told his boss that he was paying for my lunch himself — not the business — him. I protested but was so touched that I accepted his goodness that probably amounted to an hour’s wage.

I did not need the monetary help, but such kindness between strangers has given me new hope in this world of increasing violence and intolerance.

If everyone reading this would pass on one kindness (not necessarily monetary) and think of this anonymous man, his actions will be magnified many times and our community a gentler place to live.

Gaye D. Holman Lexington

Collision ahead

Big oil and gas companies insist on their right to explore for additional reserves of oil, gas, and coal for future exploitation. But the facts are these: If we extract and burn only the currently known reserves of oil, gas, and coal that will be more than enough to push our planet into a condition where the earth is largely uninhabitable by humanity and most forms of animate life. The end point is in sight. There is no longer any need to increase inventories of energy resources to be stripped from Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or anywhere else. We already have enough raw materials in the extraction pipeline to take us through the end of life on earth as it is currently experienced by Americans. But the ExxonMobils, Royal Dutch Shells, BPs, and other big energy companies show no signs of slowing down. It is as if following the Titanic’s impact with the iceberg and after the fate of the ship is known the chefs and dining room staff continued to plan meals for the two weeks remaining in the voyage. That is the ultimate in stupidity and bullheadedness; and yet we continue to march down that path.

James R. Porter, Danville