Letter: Critical thinking requires examining all sides of an issue

By Letter to the Editor on November 9, 2021.

Dear editor,

Judi Coombes in her Nov. 5 response to Peter Mueller’s October letter raises some serious issues regarding mask mandates, vaccination mandates and critical thinking.

Coombes is incorrect in her statement “whether masks actually work … is debatable.” In the medical field, the effectiveness of masks in reducing transmission of infection has been acknowledged fact for more than a century. For a surgeon not to wear a mask while performing surgery is unthinkable. Masks work. That is not debatable.

The real problem with masks is not that they don’t work, but that people do not wear them or handle them with the required care, a fact noted by Coombes. But to suggest that the use of a potentially life-saving device not be mandated when lives are clearly being threatened does not make sense. Albertans and Canadians would certainly not return to the days before wearing seat belts in cars became a mandatory requirement. The mask mandate is in place for the same reason – to save lives.

The vaccination mandates are attacked by Coombes because she sees them as using “threats” to take away livelihoods for non-compliance. Rather than using threats, the actual incentive for vaccination is the evidence presented by leaders in public health that suffering is reduced and lives are saved. It would be illogical for the government to permit workplaces to be less safe than they can be. Governments have always had the authority to revoke business licences as a means to enforce workplace safety, although Coombes suggests this is some new “draconian measure.” It is not.

Finally, Coombes states that “critical thinkers are what our society needs more than ever.” This letter is an attempt to demonstrate critical thinking. Critical thinking requires examining all sides of an issue before reaching verifiable, evidence-based conclusions. Coombes questions Peter Mueller’s critical thinking in the essay that she was responding to, but perhaps she should question her own.

Michael Seitz

Medicine Hat

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