Health and Sanity category archive

Via The Bob Cesca Show Blog.

The superintendent of schools of a Georgia county is less than impressed by his state’s response to COVID-19 as regards schooling. His comments, methinks, could more generally. Here’s a bit of his piece (emphasis added):

We are using kids as virus bait, and that is heinous. We have reluctant leaders who want “others” to make these decisions, so they are not held responsible, especially since it concerns human life. They dance around the subject and hope it either goes away or at least they can say it was a “local” decision.

(snip)

Don’t suddenly tell me, as educators, we have now become “essential workers” just to get us back to work. What were teachers before now, unessential?

In a similar vein, Portland, Maine, Press-Herald contributor Victoria Hugo-Vidal is not impressed:

We sent my sister back to the University of Maine Orono last week. I’ve never played Russian roulette before, but I think this must be what it feels like. It feels like we’re just waiting for COVID-19 to start circulating and to start killing.

Methinks many decisions about reopening and about COVID-19 are based on magickal mystical thinking alloyed with political and moral cowardice. Politicians, in a mirror echo of Captain Picard, keep saying, “Make it not so.”

But it is so. And will continue to be so for some time. And the virus will feed on their cowardice and denial of science and fact.

My town seems to be acting responsibly.

Many seem to forget–or ignore–that one of the phrases in the preamble to the United States Constitution is “to promote the general welfare.”

At the Idaho State Journal, Leonard Hitchcock points this out in the context of a failure to do just that. A snippet (emphasis added):

The governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, in an NPR interview, said: “I think it’s a good time for us to go back and reevaluate the purposes of our Constitution, the personal responsibility we each have to make decisions for our own lives,” which is why, she argued, she allowed the Sturgis motorcycle rally to occur.

The willful stupidity of those remarks is astonishing. It’s true that we, as citizens of a democracy, enjoy a wide range of personal freedoms, some of which are spelled out in our Constitution. It’s also self-evident that exercising those freedoms entails personal decision-making and that we can do what we want as long as we are not harming (or are at high risk of harming) someone else.

At the Hartford Courant, Thomas Cangelosi suggests a metaphor for the United States’s incompetent and uncoordinated response to COVID-19. A snippet:

During a recent power outage in Connecticut, I stopped my car at a busy intersection where the traffic signals were blacked out. While I was relieved to see the majority of drivers following the safety protocol of a four-way stop, each taking their turn, I was disturbed by a number of drivers that saw the situation as a license to blow through the intersection.

(snip)

The scene seemed to be a microcosm of the national crossroads America faces as it negotiates the COVID-19 pandemic, which has become nothing less than a crucible of our national character.

Follow the link for his explanation.

Via Job’s Anger.

Much lauded researcher William Hazeltine explores the “moral trama” the United States if facing due to its incompetent and ineffective–nay, counter-effective–response to the coronavirus. Here’s a bit from his piece at Psychology Today Blogs (emphasis added); I commend the entire piece to your attention.

The numbers tell us how badly we are failing to make the most of our advantage. China, the country first affected by Covid-19, has four times the population in the United States, yet on a typical day in August when more than fifty-five thousand new infections were tallied in the US, only 31 new infections were reported in China. Since the epidemic began more than twice as many Americas have died of Covid as have been infected in China. I cite these figures not to praise China but rather to express a collective sense of bewilderment as to what has gone wrong with our response to the pandemic.

Our moral trauma is witnessing death, contagion and economic destruction around us, knowing full well it is unnecessary. Our country has been deeply morally traumatized – by the President through his denials, incompetence, and finger-pointing, and by his administration, his Republican enablers in Congress and compliant state governors.

At the Hartford Courant, a Connecticut teacher shares her plans for returning to school in these viral times. Here’s a bit; follow the link for the complete article:

When I return to school today for the professional development that will precede our students’ start, I will kiss my 5-year-old and my husband goodbye. I’ll go to school in my scrubs, wear my PPE, keep the windows in my classroom open and begin to troubleshoot teaching and learning under the hybrid model.

When I return home this afternoon, however, I will no longer be able to set foot inside our home. My husband’s medical conditions put him at greater risk for grave health repercussions or death from COVID-19, so I will be sleeping in a tent in our backyard and isolating myself from my husband and young son. We live in a modest home, not configured for quarantine.

(Syntax error fixed.)