To the Editor:

Oregon has laws that require children to be in safety/car seats. Every state in this nation has car seat laws. Car seats save children’s lives and protect them from serious injury. Kids in car seats can’t move around the car once buckled in. Their freedom is very restricted. Fines are imposed on the driver if kids aren’t properly secured. Car seats and boosters are taken for granted. Yet mandating a parent and a school that a child has to wear a piece of cloth over their face in certain environments, just while the pandemic is still happening, which protects the child and the children around them, and their teachers, from contracting and/or spreading what can now be a deadly disease for kids and even infants, is “tyranny”? I am seeing that word plastered around this community. History has horrific examples of tyranny. Trying to keep kids from dying by mandating a simple protective measure is not going to show up in history books as tyrannical. If it is reported, it will be as a simple, responsible, public health measure that any reasonable government would take to protect its most vulnerable people.

Nancy Nickel

John Day