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OPINION:
Mountain Views News Saturday, April 25, 2020
MOUNTAIN
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Susan Henderson
PASADENA CITY
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Dean Lee
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John Aveny
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Stuart Tolchin
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Bob Eklund
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Rich Johnson
Lori Ann Harris
Rev. James Snyder
Katie Hopkins
Deanne Davis
Despina Arouzman
Jeff Brown
Marc Garlett
Keely Toten
Dan Golden
Rebecca Wright
Hail Hamilton
Joan Schmidt
LaQuetta Shamblee
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WHEN DENVER BACKED OFF SOCIAL DISTANCING IN
THE 1918 PANDEMIC, THE RESULTS WERE DEADLY
Opinion by John Avlon
(CNN)Politicians were feeling pressure during the pandemic. Businesses were agitating
to reopen and deaths were going down, especially far away from the coastal cities
that it had hit worst, first. It seemed time to declare "mission accomplished" and get the
economy humming again -- especially with an election looming.
It was 1918 and Denver Mayor William Fitz Randolph Mills bowed to business leaders
and decided to back off social distancing. Armistice Day seemed like a perfect day to do
it. The city had been all but locked down for five weeks and now there was something
worth celebrating -- the end of the First World War. Grateful citizens streamed into the
streets of the city on November 11, 1918, soon after Denver's Manager of Health William
H. Sharpley declared the "plague under control!"
Trump is weakening America's immune system
Trump is weakening America's immune system
His enthusiasm was premature but understandable: Denver officials could point to progress
in containing the disease at that time, compared with other cities like Chicago. Their
first recorded influenza-related death had been on September 27, when a student from
University of Denver named Blanche Kennedy died of pneumonia after visiting Chicago.
Denver moved quickly, shutting down indoor gatherings after church on October 6.
Nonetheless, by October 15 there were 1,440 cases in a city of a quarter million but only
300 doctors.
Even in those early days of public health, with limited scientific remedies, social distancing
and masks were understood to help stem the tide of pandemic. In the town of
Montrose, Colorado, as the Denver Post recounted, a health officer named Isaiah Knott
warned his fellow citizens that "if you are sick and do not stay away from social gatherings,
you have the heart of a hun," using a derogatory term for the Germans the US
was fighting at the time. But superstition often overwhelmed science, as officials recommended
that people avoid wearing tight shoes and recommended people have a "clean
mouth, clean heart and clean clothes." Quack "cures" proliferated, peddling their wares
to the gullible and the desperate, as we see today in all kinds of coronavirus scams and
pseudo science. (Check out this Reality Check with all the sordid details).
While some experts tried to calm fears by saying the Spanish influenza epidemic was
"ordinary influenza by another name," according to John Barry, the author of the book
"The Great Influenza," by the end of the pandemic, an estimated 675,000 Americans
died, primarily in the fall of 1918, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
Trump's 2016 messaging mojo is failing him now
Trump's 2016 messaging mojo is failing him now
But folks were bristling at being asked to stay indoors in the picturesque autumn and
businesses -- especially movie theaters -- were irritated at losing so much money because
of what seemed like a relatively isolated pandemic. They argued it was better to simply
quarantine those who showed symptoms and let everyone else go about their business.
There's an obvious echo to the pressures politicians are feeling today -- especially in
states like Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp seems more intent on playing to the base
than listening to scientists. He was late to the lockdown and now wants to open up early.
But then again, he's the same governor -- of the CDC's home state -- who said it was
news to him that asymptomatic people could spread the disease, two months after it was
common knowledge.
Another pattern in past pandemics is trying to scapegoat immigrants and vulnerable
communities for spreading the disease. Immigrants, the poor and Native American
tribes were being accused of spreading the disease across Colorado. Despite the name
Spanish flu the disease is believed to have begun at US Army Camp Funston in Kansas
earlier that year before spreading across the world, killing an estimated 50 million, including
members of my family. Wealthy socialites flouted social distancing requirements
with little recourse. It seemed better to back off the draconian measures and just focus
on precautions while stigmatizing the sick, placing placards on the houses where there
had been a case of influenza.
This may have sounded reasonable at the time, but it did not have the intended result.
Instead of being at the end of the influenza's toll on Denver, the city was only halfway
through its ordeal. By backing off social distancing too early, they utterly failed to flatten
the curve, and suffered a second bump, as this graph of cities by National Geographic
shows.
By November 22, deaths were spiking and Denver officials scrambled to reinstate bans
on public and private gatherings and requiring masks for all commerce.
Donald Trump's stunning flip-flops
But the damage had been done. Five days later, Denver Post headlines blared the bad
news: "All Flu Records Smashed in Denver in Last 24 Hours," claiming that more Denver
residents had died of influenza than Coloradans killed in the First World War.
That didn't stop business owners from marching on City Hall, protesting that they were
losing tens of thousands of dollars a week, similar to the protests we've seen around the
country over restrictions to help flatten the Covid-19 curve
LEFT/RIGHT/OR IN THE MIDDLELEFT/RIGHT/OR IN THE MIDDLE
STUART TOLCHIN
QUESTION: DO WE NEED LOCAL NEWSPAPERS?
ANSWER: YES WE DO
Here’s why. A democracy cannot function in accord with its ideals absent an informed electorate. Nobody knows our needs more
than we know them ourselves if we are properly informed. There is no one more interested in keeping us informed than local papers; local
papers like this one whose continued existence is presently threatened. Right here at the beginning let me inform you that what I write
here is strongly influenced by my desire to keep the paper in existence. I write from the perspective of a Sierra Madre resident for 42 years
and write almost exclusively about my day to day experiences in Sierra Madre and nearby places. My individual articles may or may not be
of interest to you but the articles in papers like this are probably a reader’s only opportunity to share in the experiences and concerns of a
local writer like me and the other writers who appear in this paper. The importance of information coming from local sources as opposed
to originating from some huge local conglomerate was emphasized today on Rachel Maddow’s repeated telecast on MSNBC.
Rachel, who is religiously viewed by many of us, and religiously avoided by others, spoke of the importance of local news in calling
attention to the huge number of Coronavirus related deaths in Rest Homes. For reasons not completely discussed this information had not
been provided by or to the National Media Outlets and attention had not been drawn to the situation. Local sources had complained and brought attention
to the situation and one hopes proper remedial measures can be taken for those already afflicted and that there will be a cessation of the placement of older
and vulnerable oldsters in these precarious placements.
In the Atlantic Magazine of December 20, 2019 there appears an article by Sean Illing entitled Intellectuals Have Said Democracy Is Failing for a
Century. They were wrong. In the article Illing refutes the argument of Walter Lippmann written shortly after the first war. Lippmann emphasizes that before
the First World War American citizens and potential soldiers were so unfairly and harmfully influenced by propaganda masquerading as news that they were
convinced to support entry into a war that was contrary to their interests. I admit that my education left me, along with Bob Dylan, unable to understand the
reason for America’s entry into the war which resulted in 116,516 deaths approximately 50% of which were attributed to the influenza death of 1918. (The
Spanish flu to which we have recently been reacquainted) Americans were duped by the media and the President who ran for re-election of the slogan “He
Kept Us Out Of War”. After the election in 1917 Americans were convinced to enter the war partly for the reason that special interests favored it as war is
always good for business. Another reason was that going to War was in accord with Wilson’s grandiose desire to fight “a war to end all wars” and to create a
League of Nations that would make all future wars unnecessary. We now know, one hundred years later, how well that worked out.
Lippmann in his article maintains that the way the population was duped was an example of how easily it was to manipulate the public, how easily
people surrender to compelling narratives which describe events before we see them causing us to imagine things before we experience them and making
the public hostages to these preconceptions. (A note here to probably unnecessarily remind the reader of the similarity of this description of Mr. Trump’s
activities that has he warned us of the coming stampede of Central American Migrants and Mexican rapists, and other imaginary calamities designed to
create fears which made the populace even more malleable. I find that behavior of the President to be sickening even to describe.) Lippmann argues that
it was the American populace that was ill-equipped to function as the informed electorate which is the basic requirement of a functioning democracy. He
states in his article published in 1922 that the world had become so complex that it was highly unlikely that anyone, even him, could be so well informed that
reasonable choices could be made. The whole point of Lippmann’s article was to expose the gap between what we say democracy is and what we know about
how people actually behave. Remember this was written in 1922 a period not quite as complicated and not quite as partisan as today when we are seeming
bombarded with propaganda 24/7 emanating from two pretty equally divided but deeply partisan sides.
Lippmann’s solution was to take the decision making power away from the people and their majority rule empowerment. Decisions should not
be made by the necessarily ill informed electorate and the representative of this outmoded majority rule, the quite regularly uninformed and unqualified
President of the United States. ( Think Harry Truman unaware of the existence of the atom bomb until he became President and who then decided to
drop the bomb twice on Japan arguing that “since we have ‘em we might as well use ‘em” seemingly unaware or at least unconcerned by the consequences
of atmospheric pollution and future potential nuclear war. Imagine Mike Pence having to deal with scientific questions while proclaiming his belief in
Creationism and disbelief in Science) Lippmann’s solution, a solution agreed to by many of my educated, privileged, and unknowingly elitist friends, is to
take the decision making power away from the politicians and the people and put in into the hands of highly qualified, properly trained experts, completely
unbiased and objective, who would then make reasonable decisions for the benefit of the now disenfranchised public.
To me this proffered solution is positively frightening. It takes power away from the people and places it the hands of the privileged. The country
becomes a tyrannical oligarchy ruled by the class of people who on every occasion has shown themselves indifferent or opposed to meeting the needs of the
general population. Their interest is almost exclusively benefitting only members of their own class. Lippmann’s “bureau of experts” supposedly would be
more protective of our rights than we are ourselves. Unfortunately, history does not bear out this expectation. In this nation invariably ruled so far by fairly
aged White Men (yes with one notable recent exception) the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer.
So what is the solution? There is no vision of democracy worth defending that doesn’t assume a minimum level of competence from a majority of
voters. How can any locality receive truthful information which will enable it to make reasonable informed decisions? Illing explains that large national
media cannot be relied upon because their main interest is to please their advertisers, to sensationalize each even in a way to stimulate interest but not to
explain policy. Also the media relies on their advertisers for support and after all their whole reason for being is to make huge profits. Illing states that “if
local newspapers are allowed to die out political discourse will be even more nationalized, which means most issues are abstract and dominated by tribal
allegiance and caricatured right-left narratives.”
We need to keep our local papers around to protect and inform us. They build our communities, they give us a place to record our deaths and birthdays and
read about our pets. They are lots of fun, they are free, and yes they give me a place to submit my articles the construction of which is one of my great joys.
Kia Ora Stay Safe and Keep Reading
Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com
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