Hits and Misses
Win McNamee/Associated Press
Guests of first lady Jill Biden, left, including, front row, nurse Refynd Duro, left, steelworker Joseph “JoJo” Burgess of Canton Township, right, and second row, diabetes advocate Joshua Davis, center, and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff applaud President Joe Biden as he delivered his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol March 1.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Ava Gialames, a seventh-grader at Charleroi Area Middle/High School, braces for the pinch of her COVID-19 vaccine shot in this file photo from November 2021. Gialames’s mother, Christine, who teaches at Charleroi, signed her daughters up for the free clinic after speaking with the family pediatrician, who said the children’s vaccines are safe.
“I have a thing for being in front of people,” according to Canton Township resident JoJo Burgess, and he had his chance to be seen by millions of people last week when he was a guest of First Lady Jill Biden in the gallery of the U.S. House chamber during President Biden’s first State of the Union address. It turns out that Burgess’ invitation was initially lost in his email inbox – he thought it was a fundraising message – but a follow-up call from the White House made him take a second look. Burgess said he wasn’t nervous at the thought of millions of eyes being trained on him, something most of us would almost certainly not be able to claim in a similar situation.
An overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of efforts to ban books from schools, according to a poll last month by CBS News and the marketing research company YouGov. More than 80% oppose removing books that criticize U.S. history, depict slavery, discuss race or contain political ideas the respondents disagree with. That’s the good news. The bad news, though, is that attempts to ban books continue seemingly unimpeded. Greensburg’s Tribune-Review reported earlier this week that the Franklin Regional School District is “pausing” the teaching of “Persepolis,” a highly regarded graphic novel about a 10-year-old girl growing up amid the Iranian Revolution, after parents raised concerns. What is there to be concerned about? The parent of one freshman at the school made this point in the Tribune-Review: “The purpose of public education is to expose our kids to a variety of perspectives, to think critically about what they hear and form their own opinions and defend them. Our students are up to the task.”
Numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths are declining, but the coronavirus isn’t entirely through with us. The number of daily deaths across the United States still reaches about 2,000 per day, and we are getting close to 1 million deaths overall across the country since the start of the pandemic two years ago. Also, it is the third leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease and cancer. Yet Florida Surgeon General Joseph Lapado said Monday that his state will recommend that healthy children not receive COVID-19 vaccines. This flies in the face of recommendations by pediatricians and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It also flies in the face of common sense – healthy children can still be infected with COVID-19, and pass the disease along to friends or family. Recommending that healthy children not get their COVID-19 shots seems to be a surefire way to put their good health at serious risk.
The U.S. Senate unanimously approved a measure earlier this week that would make lynching a federal hate crime. Believe it or not, it took 100 years – a full century – for it to finally become law. For decades it was stymied by Southern senators who believed that such a bill would contravene states’ rights. Almost 5,000 Americans were lynched from the 1880s to the 1960s in the United States, with the majority of the victims being Black. U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, explained, “While this will not erase the horrific injustices to which tens of thousands of African Americans have been subjected to over the generations – nor fully heal the terror inflicted on countless others – it is an important step forward as we continue the work of confronting our nation’s past in pursuit of a brighter and more just future.”