RSN: FOCUS: Jonathan Capehart | What About Black Students' 'Discomfort'?

 

 

10 February 22

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FOCUS: Jonathan Capehart | What About Black Students' 'Discomfort'?
Jonathan Capehart, The Washington Post
Capehart writes: "Of all the attempts around the country to coddle the snowflakes among us who can't handle the reality that our shared history is equal parts noble and brutal, the 'discomfort' bill in the Florida state legislature is the most idiotic."

Of all the attempts around the country to coddle the snowflakes among us who can’t handle the reality that our shared history is equal parts noble and brutal, the “discomfort” bill in the Florida state legislature is the most idiotic.

The official name of the legislation, part of the bonkers “stop woke” agenda of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, is “Individual Freedom.” One of its provisions directs that classroom instruction not make any student "feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.”

That protection from “discomfort,” of course, is a one-way street accessible only to White students. What about the unease Black students feel learning history that is sanitized or just plain incorrect? I know I’m going back some decades, but I’ll never forget the discomfort of being one of the few Black kids in a predominantly White school, especially during history class when slavery, the Civil War, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. or the civil rights movement would come up.

One teacher often had students read sections of the textbook aloud in class. No one ever saw my growing alarm as I realized that the (startlingly brief) section on slavery would be intoned by me. I could feel the eyes on me as I read aloud paragraphs that barely scratched the surface of the inhumanity visited upon my ancestors.

The Civil War was merely a costly conflict between North and South that resulted in the liberation of the slaves. And the civil rights movement, in retrospect, was discussed with an odd mix of admiration at how African Americans braved harrowing violence to push for the equality promised in the Constitution — and annoyance at how they disrupted the status quo by doing so. Mostly, though, Black people and our foundational contributions to this country were downplayed or ignored.

Anyway, back to that Florida bill. While it says educators “may facilitate discussions and use curricula” to teach about things such as slavery, racial oppression and racial discrimination, the flawed measure includes a big ol’ “but.” It says that “classroom instruction and curriculum may not be used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view inconsistent with the principles of this subsection or state academic standards.”

“Indoctrinate or persuade” is a giant loophole that could potentially lead to banning anything that twinges the fragile sensibilities of those who can’t handle confronting the truth or being intellectually challenged. Just how vacant this legislation and this movement are was illustrated by Tina Descovich, a leader of the conservative group Moms for Liberty. “To say there were slaves is one thing,” she told The Post, “but to talk in detail about how slaves were treated, and with photos, is another.” This is the very definition of what author Robin DiAngelo calls “white fragility,” which she says is “triggered by discomfort and anxiety" but is “born of superiority and entitlement.”

What’s happening in Florida is part of a larger and offensive national freak-out over teaching the truth of our history. This past month, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) issued an executive order to “end the use of inherently divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory” — which, I might point out, is not taught anywhere in Virginia public K-12 schools. During a radio interview that followed, Youngkin announced that there is even a tip line for parents to report school officials who they believe are teaching “divisive” subjects.

Singer John Legend had the perfect response to Youngkin’s nonsense. “Black parents need to flood these tip lines with complaints about our history being silenced,” he wrote on Twitter. “We are parents too.”

That’s who gets lost in all this: Black parents and their children. All because some White people can’t bear feeling “uncomfortable” learning about “divisive” subjects. They want a gauzy, feel-good version of history that blinds them to the impact such a mythology has on events unfolding now. Meanwhile, Black people have to live with the real-life consequences of this blissful ignorance.

In her new book, “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation,” Imani Perry, an African American studies professor at Princeton University, writes: “Americans are quite good at taking up pleasures of history and leaving its victims to fend for themselves. … If you want to understand a nation, or have aspirations for it that are decent, myth ought to be resisted.”

We’ll never understand this country as long as book banning, tip lines and legislation to bubble-wrap the tender White souls among us continue to flourish. We’ll just have more Black kids reading more rewrites of history, wondering what was left out. And they’ll know their discomfort never mattered.

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This is the tragic cost of ignorance and misinformation.

Let's depend on FACTS, RESEARCH and SCIENCE.

There is no indication that other than speaking loudly and spreading misinformation, Linda Zuern had any science background. The ANTI-VAXXERS are spreading the virus and jeopardizing others.

Not only was Linda Zuern unvaccinated, but went before a pubic meeting:

"At a Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates meeting in December, Zuern spoke about a report on the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment of the COVID-19 virus. Zuern questioned why some doctors were not allowed to use the medicine on patients. "

PUBLISHED IN JAMA (there are other studies as well):

“In the well-conducted clinical trials published to date, hydroxychloroquine has been evaluated in a wide variety of populations, ranging from patients with severe illness to individuals at risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, in whom the drug was used as primary prophylaxis; these studies failed to show any beneficial effect of the drug.”
LINK

This comment from the NY POST, the MURDOCH TABLOID:

The same kind of misinformation could have potentially prevented smallpox from being eradicated in the US, Fauci said.

“If you look at the extraordinary historic success in eradicating smallpox and eliminating polio from most of the world, and we’re on the brink of eradicating polio, if we had the pushback for vaccines the way we’re seeing on certain media, I don’t think it would have been possible at all to not only eradicate smallpox,” Fauci said. LINK

UNVACCINATED Linda Zuern, former Bourne selectman, dies of complications of COVID-19

Beth Treffeissen Cape Cod Times 

Published Jul 20, 2021

BOURNE — Linda Zuern, remembered as a staunch conservative, well-respected educator and friend to many in the town of Bourne, died on Friday due to complications of COVID-19. 

“This is one exceptional lady that touched so many lives, so many lives,” said Mimi Frank, her good friend from Woods Hole. 

Zuern, 70, died at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston on Friday of severe complications caused by COVID-19, according to family members and friends.

Zuern was brought from Cape Cod by MedFlight to the hospital in early June and had been in a coma on a ventilator until her death. She was not vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a close friend and one of her neighbors.

Zuern was one of the first members of the United Cape Patriots, a local grassroots conservative group that frequently held Trump support standouts on the Bourne rotary, along with other rallies.

She was often seen holding a Trump support poster as motorists drove by honking in support or against, said Adam Lange who founded the group in 2017.  Lange was one of four people who protested last week in opposition to the state VaxBus program — which distributes COVID-19 vaccines — when it arrived in Provincetown. 

Zuern was a big believer in the Constitution and believed in having a small government, which is what the Tea Party was all about, Lange said. Zuern helped found the Upper Cape Tea Party, he said. 

After her father died last year Zuern went to visit her mother in South Dakota. On their return trip to Bourne, both her mother and herself contracted COVID-19. Her mother survived the disease. 

At a Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates meeting in December, Zuern spoke about a report on the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment of the COVID-19 virus. Zuern questioned why some doctors were not allowed to use the medicine on patients. 

Ronald Beaty, the former county commissioner, is proposing that the town of Bourne honor the former selectmen by naming a street, roadway, or municipal structure after Zuern in the near future. 

“It was a shock that we lost her,” said Beaty, who has supported Zuern over the years. “We are all grieving and we are going to miss her very much.” 

Beaty admires Zuern for being a very vocal person in the community. She motivated people to work on campaigns and frequented the Bourne Rotary to support former President Donald Trump, he said. 

THE HIGH COST OF IGNORANCE: In Undervaccinated Swaths of Arkansas, COVID-19 Upends Life All Over Again

 

In Undervaccinated Swaths of Arkansas, COVID-19 Upends Life All Over Again

Sharon LaFraniere

Sun, July 18, 2021,

Linda Marion, 68, lays in her hospital bed with complications due to COVID-19, at Baxter Regional Medical Center in Mountain Home, Ark., July 8, 2021. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times)

MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. — When the boat factory in this leafy Ozark Mountains city offered free coronavirus vaccinations this spring, Susan Johnson, 62, a receptionist there, declined the offer, figuring she was protected as long as she never left her house without a mask.

Linda Marion, 68, a widow with chronic pulmonary disease, worried that a vaccination might actually trigger COVID-19 and kill her. Barbara Billigmeier, 74, an avid golfer who retired here from California, believed she did not need it because “I never get sick.”

This month, all three were patients on 2 West, an overflow ward that is now largely devoted to treating COVID-19 at Baxter Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in north-central Arkansas. Billigmeier said the scariest part was that “you can’t breathe.” For 10 days, Johnson had relied on supplemental oxygen being fed to her lungs through nasal tubes.

Marion said that at one point, she felt so sick and frightened that she wanted to give up. “It was just terrible,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t take it.”

Yet despite their ordeals, none of them changed their minds about getting vaccinated. “It’s just too new,” Billigmeier said. “It is like an experiment.”

While much of the nation tiptoes toward normalcy, the coronavirus is again swamping hospitals in places like Mountain Home, a city of fewer than 13,000 people not far from the Missouri border. A principal reason, health officials say, is the emergence of the new, far more contagious delta variant, which now accounts for more than half of new infections in the United States.

The variant has highlighted a new divide in America, between communities with high vaccination rates, where it causes hardly a ripple, and those like Mountain Home that are undervaccinated, where it threatens to upend life all over again. Part of the country is breathing a sigh of relief; part is holding its breath.

While infections rose in more than half the nation’s counties last week, those with low vaccination rates were far more likely to see bigger jumps. Among the 25 counties with the sharpest increases in cases, all but one had vaccinated under 40% of residents, and 16 had vaccinated under 30% , a New York Times analysis found.

In Baxter County, where the hospital is, fewer than one-third of residents are fully vaccinated — below both the state and the national averages. Even fewer people are protected in surrounding counties that the hospital serves.

“It’s absolutely flooded,” said Dr. Rebecca Martin, a pulmonologist, as she made the rounds of 2 West one morning last week.

In the first half of June, the hospital averaged only one or two COVID-19 patients a day. On Thursday, 22 of the unit’s 32 beds were filled with coronavirus patients. Five more were in intensive care. In a single week, the number of COVID-19 patients had jumped by one-third.

Overall, Arkansas ranks near the bottom of states in the share of population that is vaccinated. Only 44% of residents have received at least one shot.

“Boy, we’ve tried just about everything we can think of,” a retired National Guard colonel, Robert Ator, who runs the state’s vaccination effort, said in an interview. For about 1 in 3 residents, he said, “I don’t think there’s a thing in the world we could do to get them to get vaccinated.”

For that, the state is paying a price. Hospitalizations have quadrupled since mid-May. More than one-third of patients are in intensive care. Deaths, a lagging indicator, are also expected to rise, health officials said.

Dr. José R. Romero, the state health director, said he still believed enough Arkansans were vaccinated, or immune from having contracted COVID-19, that the “darkest days” of December and January were behind them. “What I’m concerned about now is we’ll have a rise or surge,” he said, “then winter is going to add another surge, so we’re going to have a surge on top of a surge.”

Dr. Mark Williams, the dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said the delta variant was upending his projections for the pandemic. It is spreading through the state’s unvaccinated population “at a very fast rate,” he said, and threatens to strain the ability of hospitals to cope. “I would say we have definitely hit the alarming stage,” he said.

At Baxter Regional, many doctors and nurses are girding for another wave while still exhausted from battling the pandemic they thought had abated.

“I started having flashbacks, like PTSD,” said Martin, who obsesses over her patients’ care. “This is going to sound very selfish but unfortunately it’s true: The fact that people won’t get vaccinated means I can’t go home and see my kids for dinner.”

The Biden administration has pledged to help stem outbreaks by supplying COVID-19 tests and treatments, promoting vaccines with advertising campaigns and sending community health workers door to door to try to persuade the hesitant.

But not all those tactics are welcome. Romero said Arkansas would happily accept more monoclonal antibody therapies, a COVID-19 treatment often used in outpatient settings. But Ator, the vaccine coordinator, said door-knocking “would probably do more harm than good,” given residents’ suspicions of federal intentions.

Both said the Arkansas public had been saturated with vaccine promotions and incentives, including free lottery tickets, hunting and fishing licenses and stands offering shots at state parks and high school graduation ceremonies.

The last mass vaccination event was May 4, when the Arkansas Travelers, a minor league baseball team, had its first game since the pandemic hit. Thousands gathered at the stadium in Little Rock to watch. Fourteen accepted shots.

Even health care workers have balked. Statewide, only about 40% are vaccinated, Romero said.

In April, the state Legislature added yet another roadblock, making it essentially illegal for any state or local entity, including public hospitals, to require coronavirus vaccination as a condition of education or employment until two years after the Food and Drug Administration fully licenses a shot. That almost certainly means no such requirements can be issued until late in 2023.

Only fear of the delta variant appears to be pushing some off the fence.

When the pandemic hit, Baxter Regional became a vaccine distribution center and inoculated 5,500 people. But only half of its 1,800 staff members accepted shots, according to Jonny Harvey, its occupational health coordinator. By early June, demand had tapered off so much that the hospital was administering an average of one a day.

Now, Harvey said, he is ordering enough vaccine to deliver 30 shots a day because people are increasingly anxious of the delta variant. “I hate that we are having the surge,” he said. “But I do like that we are vaccinating people.”

At the state’s only academic medical center in Little Rock, run by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, vaccines are also suddenly more popular. Over a recent two-week period, the share of the hospital’s staff who are vaccinated jumped to 86% from 75%.

But those encouraging signs are outweighed by the soaring number of COVID-19 patients. On Saturday, the Little Rock hospital held 51 patients, more than at any point since Feb. 2. In April, there was one coronavirus death. In June, there were six.

Williams, who has been charting the coronavirus’s trajectory, said the rise in infections and hospitalizations mirrored what he saw in October. And there are other troubling signs.

A larger share of those who are now becoming infected, he said, need hospitalization. And once there, Dr. Steppe Mette, the CEO of the Little Rock hospital, said they appeared to need a higher level of care than those who were sickened by the original variant. That is despite the fact that they are younger.

The average age of a coronavirus patient in Arkansas has dropped by nearly a decade since December — from 63 to 54 — a reflection of the fact that three-fourths of older Arkansans are at least partly vaccinated. But some patients at the Little Rock hospital are in their 20s or 30s.

“It’s really discouraging to see younger, sicker patients,” Mette said. “We didn’t see this degree of illness earlier in the epidemic.”

Young, pregnant coronavirus patients were once rare at the hospital. But recently, four or five of them ended up in intensive care. Three were treated with a machine called ECMO — short for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation — a step some consider a last resort after ventilators fail. The machine routes blood from the body and into equipment that adds oxygen, then pumps it back into the patient.

Ashton Reed, 25, a coordinator in a county prosecutor’s office, was about 30 weeks pregnant when she arrived at the hospital May 26, critically ill. To save her life, doctors delivered her baby girl by emergency cesarean section, then hooked her up to the ECMO machine.

In a public service announcement later urging vaccination, her husband said she went from sinus trouble to life support in 10 days.

“I almost died,” she said. “My thoughts have definitely changed on the vaccine.”

Last month, the hospital had to reopen a coronavirus ward it had closed in late spring. On Monday, it reopened a second.

Many of the nurses there wore colorful stickers announcing they were vaccinated. Ashley Ayers, 26, a traveling nurse from Dallas, did not. Noting that vaccine development typically took years, she said she worried that the shot might impair her fertility — even though there is no evidence of that.

“I just think it was rushed,” she said.

David Deutscher, 49, one of her patients for nearly a week, is no longer a holdout. A heating and air conditioning specialist and Air Force veteran, he said he fought COVID-19 for 10 days at home before he went to the hospital with a 105-degree fever.

The experience has shaken him to his core. He dissolved into tears describing it, apologizing for being an emotional wreck.

When he failed to improve with monoclonal antibody treatment, he said, “that was probably the most scared I have ever been.” He called a friend, the daughter of a medical researcher, from his hospital bed. “Please don’t let me die,” he said.

He said he never got vaccinated because he figured a mask would suffice. In the past 21 years, he has had the flu once.

“Once I started feeling better,” Deutscher said, “I got on the phone and I just starting calling everybody to tell them to go get that vaccine.” He did not even wait to be discharged.

The coronavirus “is no joke,” he told his friends. Three of them got a shot.

Deutscher went home July 9, bringing a song for one of his five grandchildren that he had written in his hospital bed. His theme was the value of life.

© 2021 The New York Times Company

 

We’ve plummeted from dumb to dumber — to proud and unapologetically ignorant | Opinion

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.

JULY 16, 2021

Tennessee Republicans fired the state’s top immunization official, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, and shut down vaccine outreach efforts to young people.  GETTY IMAGES

We live in ignorant times.

By now, surely this is obvious beyond argument to anyone who’s been paying attention. From the Capitol insurrectionist who thought he was storming the White House to Sen. Tim Scott’s claim that “woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy” to whatever thing Tucker Carlson last said, ignorance is ascendant.

Yet, even by that dubious standard, what happened recently in Tennessee bears note. According to a story by Brett Kelman of the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville, the state, under pressure from Republican lawmakers, fired its top immunization official, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, and shut down all vaccine outreach to young people. Fiscus’ sin? Doing her job, working to increase access to the COVID-19 shot among kids.

Specifically, she sent a letter to healthcare providers reminding them that under the state’s “Mature Minor Doctrine,” they are legally allowed to vaccinate children 14 years or older without parental consent. According to Fiscus, the letter, written in response to requests for guidance made by those administering the shots, utilized language drafted by an attorney for the department of health and was vetted by the governor’s office.

All that notwithstanding, it infuriated some state lawmakers. They used words like “extreme disappointment” and “reprehensible” and talked of closing the health department. Some anonymous person even sent Fiscus a dog muzzle. Then she was fired, and the state shut down all vaccine publicity efforts targeting young people.

This means no postcards sent out to remind kids to get their shots, no nudges on social media, no flyers or advertisements, no events at schools, no outreach whatsoever. And not just for COVID, mind you, but for everything — measles, mumps, tetanus, diphtheria, hepatitis, polio.

In a pandemic.

In a state with a less-than-stellar COVID vaccination rate.

At a time when experts are tracking the rise of a deadlier new COVID variant.

It is hard to imagine behavior dumber, more dangerous, more short-sighted and more downright bass-ackward than that exhibited by Tennessee and its lawmakers.

Which is, unfortunately, right on brand for this country in this era. It was in the 2000s that Stephen Colbert coined the term “truthiness” to describe the right wing’s secession from objective fact, and some of us began to speak of them as living in an “alternate reality.” How, we wondered in newspaper columns and speeches, can we have meaningful discourse if we cannot agree on basic facts?

Years later, that concern feels too abstract. The threat turns out to be more visceral and urgent than any of us could have imagined. Yes, some people live in alternate realities. What’s worse, though, is when they have power to impose those realities on the rest of us. That’s what we’re seeing in Tennessee and elsewhere, and the results will be as tragic as they are predictable and preventable.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. But it isn’t.

Ignorance is fever.

Ignorance is chills.

Ignorance is trouble breathing.

Ignorance is an empty seat at the table, a bedroom come suddenly available.

Because ignorance is death.

And while the aphorism isn’t true, can you imagine if it were, if ignorance really were bliss? Disney theme parks would have to find a new slogan.

Right now, Tennessee would be the happiest place on Earth.

LINK

The GREATEST THREAT TO DEMOCRACY IS IGNORANCE! RYAN DANIEL

 

This exchange was posted on Cape Cod Times in response to an article about increased COVID cases. FACEBOOK doesn't remove FALSE INFORMATION! At this late date in the PANDEMIC, this is the level of ignorance that threatens DEMOCRACY.

Ryan Daniel

Just stop! Load up in Zinc and Vitamin C. And for a backup we already have an FDA approved treatment (hydroxychloroquine). Stick to Cape Cod related material and cut the fear mongering BS!

TO: Ryan Daniel

YOU ARE POSTING FALSE INFORMATION!

My opinion has nothing to do with YOUR FALSE INFORMATION.

TO: Ryan Daniel

You are posting FALSE INFORMATION!

RESPONSE: Ryan Daniel

I'm assuming you think Joe Biden is doing great things for the American people as well 🙄

REPLY: Ryan Daniel

YOU ARE POSTING FALSE INFORMATION!

My opinion has nothing to do with YOUR FALSE INFORMATION.

RESPONSE: Ryan Daniel

😝 False information huh. Turn off your mainstream media and do some research.

RESPONSE:

Mike Rubino

Turn off the mainstream media and get your Real News from facebook memes in broken English