A pandemic of historical proportions, a Grim Reaper that is accelerating the pace at which it is indiscriminately sending Americans to early graves: black and white; old and young; male and female. We are all in the danger zone, each one of us capable of lethally infecting the other. Yet our president ignores science and is missing in action. And our governor? Exercising astonishingly poor judgment, he is actually suing Atlanta's mayor because she has the courage, compassion, and conviction to take steps that demonstrably saves lives. We're talking about life and death.

In 1935, Winston Churchill stood in the House of Commons and warned his country that it was not sufficiently prepared to respond to the growing German threat. In his speech he recalled a ghoulish poem that captures the growing despair so many Americans now feel with a commander-in-chief who has gone AWOL as the gathering storm now has unleashed itself in full destructive force: "Who's in charge of the clattering train? The axles creak and the couplings strain; And the pace is hot and the points are near, And sleep has deadened the driver's ear; And the signals flash through the night in vain, For death is in charge of the clattering train."

Massive death. More than 140,000 American and more than 3,000 Georgian lives — and the death toll keeps growing. Masks, not lawsuits, will protect the health and welfare of Atlantans, Mr. Governor.

Charity, not callous calculation, protecting people, not pandering to your president, should be your guiding lights.

Churchill was great and inspiring. So too was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1933 he inherited the Great Depression. Against prevailing economic orthodoxy, FDR attempted ambitious programs to reinvigorate the economy and to help Americans at large, especially the most vulnerable. To his critics, he said this: "Governments can err, presidents can make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-blooded in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. … This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."

The first imperative of a president and a governor is a warm-blooded protection of the heath and welfare of all of the people. Lawsuits and a preposterous pretense that some Americans have the liberty to endanger other Americans by not wearing masks—in a medical emergency—is nothing more than a callous calculation for political gain and cowardly indifference to the people leaders are constitutionally and morally obligated to serve and protect.

Mr. Governor, drop your lawsuit and get on with the people's business.

Mike Kenny

Atlanta