Kim McGahey’s column this past week about the public health, COVID-19 crisis being over is just plainly wrong. Public health officials are begging states and the public not to relax their cautions concerning the virus. They are concerned lest states like Texas and Mississippi reopen too quickly, exposing their residents to the variants, which are now coursing through our nation. We shall see the impact of these and other states that, understandably, want to be done with this pandemic and have taken steps that are premature to wholly reopen their economies and their schools.

People like McGahey are playing with people’s health and their very lives. Until a much higher number of Americans are vaccinated, it is simply unsafe to try to return to prepandemic life. It is irresponsible to peddle a falsehood that we have defeated COVID-19 once and for all and are now out of danger of infections and more death. Our public health officials are dealing with the facts as they know them and from scientific data. McGahey is politicizing this highly infectious disease, and his attitude toward it, and what Colorado ought to be doing about it, is going to get people sick or dead.

I hope that the governor and our state public health officials ignore statements like McGahey’s and stick to what our national experts are telling us. We’ll all be better off that way, even if it takes a few more months to arrive at a healthier, safer America.