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Dear Editor:
After my father’s hip replacement, he noted how encouraging the medical staff was during his rehabilitation. Even routine steps with the walker, he said, were praised. I experienced the same treatment after my own hip surgery and was grateful for it. I never missed walking until I couldn’t walk.
COVID-19 has been a crash course in “you never miss the water until the well runs dry.” Simple pleasures we took for granted disappeared. Even littering habits changed. Parking lots and Forest Preserve trails once riddled with fast-food containers were strewn with discarded facemasks.
Despite a few blips, I believe the federal government and CDC have provided reasonable guidance during the pandemic. While occasional commendation for our sacrifice is welcome, I have one suggestion: Next time, maybe hold back on lifting restrictions and praising us for an extra week or two. We’re impatient by nature, but with earlier cooperation from us, and less politicizing over facemasks, COVID might have been closer to a memory by now.
We live in a trophy syndrome society that celebrates out of proportion to what was actually accomplished. That’s not our medical community’s fault, it’s just reality.
Doctors, next pandemic, make us beat the virus first. THEN tell us what a good job we did.
Jim Newton
Itasca, Ill.