Protesters were misguided

The photo of a Commack rally demanding an end to the coronavirus shutdown was most disturbing [“Gov: Find why cases not falling faster,” News, May 2]. It showed the sharp partisan divide over opening the economy despite warnings from health professionals, with protesters carrying a “Trump 2020” flag and MAGA sign. Worse, it revealed that some protesters have bought into the conspiracy theories spreading on the internet. For example, a few steps from a woman wearing a “Guns don’t kill people, Clintons do” shirt, someone was carrying a sign that read, “No mandatory vaccines, no 5G, #Bill Gates is not my President.” This refers to two dual conspiracy theories: 1) that the coronavirus was propagated by Microsoft’s Bill Gates so he could have computer chips implanted into everyone during vaccinations, and 2) that COVID-19 is being spread by radio waves from 5G cell towers.

Another sign reads in part, “Stop Media Lies,” as if the free press is falsely reporting that more than 70,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 in just over two months, more than 3,000 of those on Long Island. Thankfully, no protesters had flak jackets or assault rifles, like those in Michigan’s capital two days earlier, whom President Donald Trump described as “very good people.”

Edmund Fountaine,

Oakdale

I defend the right of anti-lockdown demonstrators to voice their opinions, but find their aggressive waving of the flag offensive. To use our symbol of national unity to cloak their actions as patriotic is both pathetic and demeaning. Thomas Paine defined true patriotism in 1776 when he wrote in “The Crisis” pamphlet: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

The patriots who built this nation risked, suffered and sacrificed more than any of us are likely to experience. Because of them, our current crop of “sunshine patriots” are free to speak and demonstrate at will, however selfishly misguided they may be. But no one should confuse the rights that the Founding Fathers gave us with a license to transgress the rights, or endanger the well-being, of other Americans — and especially not those of our heroic first responders and health care workers. Speak your minds openly, but please leave the flags and patriotic pretensions at home.

Robert Mattson,

Smithtown

People should protest to reopen New York. But their protest is aimed at the wrong person. It is not Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo who is responsible for keeping New York closed, it is President Donald Trump.

In my view, the president’s inexplicable series of actions and inactions since January are responsible for the pandemic here. And once he acknowledged the pandemic was not a Democratic hoax, he failed to use his powers under the Defense Production Act to produce enough respirators and personal protective equipment to aid the brave doctors and nurses battling for us on the front lines. Also, he has refused to acknowledge the need for testing on a mass scale for everyone — not just for him and his cabinet — and the army of tracing personnel needed to reopen the state in an intelligent and safe manner.

Instead of protesting the failures of the man responsible for the shutdown and delay in reopening, the protesters draped in American flags and Trump 2020 banners attack the governor and philanthropist Bill Gates.

The only sign missing from this demonstration was the sign that would accurately describe this temper tantrum: Privileged White Middle Class Lives Matter!

L. Michael Cacace,

Smithtown