Guest Commentary: An ounce of prevention

Benjamin Franklin is credited with coining the phrase, “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure,” after seeing how Boston handled fires in the city. Even though Mr. Franklin was referring to fire prevention, this is true of almost everything, and especially health. The problem with prevention, if you could call it that, is that disease prevention cannot be seen. If someone is sick and is cured, we know that a medical intervention was successful. But it can sometimes be hard to appreciate the impact of public health measures because we cannot know what would have been.

We have had many beautiful spring days lately, and the idea of social distancing may seem a little silly when you and your family feel fine, and you see all your friends on social media feeling healthy as well. But in the case of coronavirus, we can learn from what is happening around the world. If we want to prevent Canton from suffering a similar fate, what we need to do is pretty simple: handwashing for 20 seconds, social distancing, and isolating ourselves if we feel sick. This is the only way to prevent people from contracting, and possibly dying from, this virus.

We are lucky that we live in a time where many of us can stay in touch with friends over the internet, and actually see their faces. If this happened when I was a student at the John F. Kennedy Elementary School, I’m sure we would have all been fighting over who could use the phone to talk with our friends. We each would have had to wait our turn just to hear their voices, and certainly couldn’t send emojis! So let’s all use the means we can to stay connected, and do everything we can to stop the spread of this deadly disease.

Julie Goodman, PhD

Canton Board of Health

Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=65465

Posted by Guest on Mar 27 2020. Filed under From One Citizen to Another, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.