Dear Moreno Valley Residents,
Coronavirus is especially cruel.
The New York Times reported at the end of April that, “At least 1,000 people with the virus, and sometimes more than 2,000, have died every day for the last month.” Sixteen of those tens of thousands of deaths have been here in Moreno Valley.
Every one of those numbers represents a life cut short. Each one stands for a team of health professionals who did all they could to save that life. And each represents a devastated group of family and friends whose lives will never be the same.
One of the greatest cruelties of this virus is that it forces us to weigh the economic effects against the death toll and choose a maximum number of lives we are willing to give up in return for restoring people’s jobs and businesses. We all realize that reopening our economy, even slowly and carefully, is going to result in some deaths that otherwise could’ve been avoided. And yet we also need to look after our own livelihoods, and try to avoid or lessen the pain and damage that so often comes with unemployment.
As poet T.S. Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month…” As we move through May and into June, we can only hope that’s true.
Let’s continue to look out for each other, MoVal.
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