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A retired farmer in Kansas sent New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo an N95 mask to help protect New York doctors and nurses battling the coronavirus pandemic, because maybe sometimes people actually are good?
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“I am a retired farmer hunkered down in northeast Kansas with my wife who has but one lung and occasional problems with her remaining lung. She also has diabetes,” read the letter, which Cuomo read aloud during his Friday daily press conference. “We are in our 70s now and frankly, I am afraid for her.”
Cuomo said the letter was addressed from “Dennis and Sharon” and apparently the pair overcame their fears for themselves, because they enclosed in the letter one of their own, five N95 masks. A shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) has dogged front line responders across the United States since COVID-19 first broke out, and the state remains an epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, although hospitalization rates in New York are now flat or declining,
“Would you please give this mask to a nurse or doctor in your state?” the letter asks Cuomo, who then held up the mask. (Should the governor be fiddling with a mask that should stay sanitary? Unclear.)
“How beautiful is that, how selfless is that, how giving is that,” Cuomo added, after he finished the letter. “It’s that love, that courage, that generosity of spirit that makes this country so beautiful.”
Cover: April 22, 2020 – Albany, NY, United States: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) speaking at a press Conference at the State Capitol. (Photo by Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)
