September 11, 2021 ... 20 years out from September 11, 2001. Many people have been posting where they were and/or what they were doing when they heard or saw the news of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center. At the time I did some freelance writing, editing, and data analyzing for the county school system. I had just walked into the office of the person for whom I worked when the superintendent stuck her head in and said that the decision had been made to keep schools in session, not to close early. I asked what was going on given there were no weather alerts. They seemed surprised that I had not yet heard. Hey, I'd been taking Son #2 to school for his second period class since he spent first period at home doing distance learning. I hadn't had the television on and in the car listened to CDs not the radio. I ended up standing in line at the local Red Cross for six or seven hours to donate blood it turned out was not needed, at least not for Pentagon victims.
There weren't many degrees of separation between here and there that day. Someone at church was a flight attendant with American Airlines; she knew several of the flight attendants who lost their lives. The sister of a teacher at Son #2's middle school was in a meeting on an upper floor of one of the towers that day; she did not make it out. There was a feeling of unity that day and in the immediate aftermath that seems light years away from today's divisions. I remember well members of Congress from both parties standing on the steps of the Capitol singing "God Bless America."If only we could view the coronavirus as the common enemy we had then.
Here in the present, Republicans are promising legal challenges to the vaccine mandates proposed by POTUS. Those mandates are based on a 51-year-old Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule that grants the government the power to protect employees from "grave dangers" at the workplace. In an email, POTUS's chief of staff referred to it as a "work-around." Ted Cruz and other Republicans say that this proves POTUS knows that the mandates are illegal. I don't want to disparage all Republicans, though, when there are Republicans such as the governor of Vermont, who had this to say: "I appreciate the president's continued prioritization of vaccination and the country's recovery as we move forward. As Vermont's experience shows, vaccines work and save lives. They are the best and fastest way to move past this pandemic."
France's former health minister has been charged with "endangering the lives of others" for comments she made minimizing the pandemic. In January 2020, she said there was "practically no risk" and that the "risk of a spread of the coronavirus among the population is very small." I have to ask whether that's not what a lot of people in a lot of fields including some scientific ones were thinking at that time. XPot certainly made similarly dismissive statements even after it was clear that there was a real issue. I don't think we have a similar law with which to charge him, though.
Denmark is lifting all coronavirus restrictions as the vaccination rate for those ages 12 and older tops 80 percent. Covid is no longer considered a "socially critical" disease but is instead "an ordinary dangerous illness." They have had some level of restriction in place for 548 days, just a couple of day longer than I've been doing this blog. Are they loosening restrictions too soon? A virology professor at Aarhus University says, "I wouldn't say it is too early. We have opened the door but we have also said that we can close it if needed."
So will POTUS's proposed vaccine mandates help slow the pandemic? Public health experts say yes, but not in the short term. It takes at least six weeks for a two-dose vaccine to be fully effective. The dean of the Brown University School of Public Health says it will: "It's going to fundamentally shift the arc of the current surge.It's exactly what's needed at this moment." Two federal departments that already mandate vaccinations, the Department of Defense and the Veterans' Administration, say that their mandates are working, that people have been willing to get vaccinated. As for the time it will take for the mandates to have a real effect, Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard advises, "It's a lot quicker to put on a mask that it is to get a bunch of people vaccinated." Now if only the governors of Florida and Texas would listen.
2 comments:
It truly amazes me how many people continue to avoid the vaccinations when the vaccine is 1) approved and 2) effective at keeping people from dying. I guess they feel infallible/untouchable/superior, as if "it won't happen here." While there's a slight possibility they're right, there's a slightly better chance they could get sick and die.
I do hope my vaccine-resistant family members (2nd cousins) get vaccinated. They've had the illness.
As for 9/11, I was in my sewing room with the radio on, I think. I must have heard something there about the first plane in NYC because I turned on the TV in time to see the 2nd one. Don't show me endless images of smoke and fallen buildings...the memories are still too close. I don't know anyone who was killed there or elsewhere, but someone I knew was nearby in another building at the WTC when it happened.
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