Tag: COVID

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Still on Call

Alisa Haushalter (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Some readers might wonder: Whatever happened to Alisa Haushalter? The former director of the Shelby County Health Department, Haushalter was, not so long ago, one of the most visible people in the public eye as department head at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

By one measure — the fact that she was publicly accountable and on call on a daily, even hourly basis — she may have been for a time the single most visible of all local officials. Not only was she at the helm of the health department and having to cope directly with the scourge of Covid, managing local responses to it as best as she could; she had the responsibility of communicating every aspect of the disease’s progress and every important piece of data relating to its impact on the community. It was 24/7 and then some.

It is certainly arguable that Haushalter herself was one of the chief victims in Shelby County of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her work as the director was hailed as exemplary then and later by her associates in the department and in county government at large.

But, simply because of the prominence of her position, she was caught up in various controversies that owed more to the inherent disruptiveness wrought by the pandemic than to any actions she was responsible for.

Consider this a tease for a forthcoming lengthier, and possibly eye-opening, treatment of Haushalter’s pivotal and arguably heroic service on behalf of Shelby County in a time of crisis. Suffice it to say for the moment that political pressures relating to state vs. local issues played a large role in her decision, in February 2021, to step down as health department director.

But her service to Shelby County has continued. When she came here in 2016, after years of health service, first in Nashville and later at the renowned Nemours health complex in Delaware, she had a request of then-County Mayor Mark Luttrell, who hired her.

For three years, while working in Nashville, she had gone back and forth between the state’s two largest cities working on her doctorate, which she got from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

“When I was in Nashville,” she recalls, “I had dual appointments. I taught at Vanderbilt, and I was at the health department there. So when I came here, part of my discussion with Mayor Luttrell was, ‘Can I have a dual appointment so that I’m still teaching?’” The answer was yes, and, while serving as health department director she taught health policy at UT. 

Her thinking was eminently commonsensible. “That really was sort of how I came back to Tennessee. You learn along with the students, and the students get to learn from someone who has experience, not just what they’re getting from reading the book. And so it has always been a good match.”

Upon leaving the department, Haushalter would expand her teaching load to include, currently, healthcare economics and population health.

She has never departed from the idea of service. She’s still very much here and on the case, keeping her hand in — learning, doing, and teaching. Aside from her regular students, she says, she’s still on call at the department. “There are team members over there that still reach out to me that I coach or mentor.”

Her bottom line: “I’m committed to public health, I’m committed to nursing and have spent decades doing that. And I’m committed to Shelby County.”

More about Alisa Haushalter to come. Stay tuned.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Masked for Life

Emma Lockridge led an eight-year fight for justice for her heavily polluted Detroit hometown. (Photo: Courtesy Emma Lockridge)

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to put on a face mask to block the horrific smell of chemical odors that seeped into your bedroom from nearby factories. That used to be my nightly routine. Wearing a facial mask is nothing new to me. I’ve been using them since 2007, the year my courageous nephew donated a kidney to me to extend my life. After surgery, my transplant team gave me a packet of masks to protect myself from germs because organ transplant anti-rejection medications also would suppress my immune system throughout my life. Since then, Covid has escalated my need to wear masks.

I initially wore masks to shield myself from human germs, but in 2017 I was regularly wearing facial masks for another reason. I had to shield myself from the chemical odors that overwhelmed my bedroom on most nights at around 2:30 a.m. when there was a massive release of factory toxins into our community.

(Photo: Courtesy Emma Lockridge)

My subdivision, Detroit 48217, was and still is the most polluted area in the entire state of Michigan. It is surrounded by more than 30 major polluters that self-report emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency and a Michigan state environmental department. The area is subjected to chemical releases from a tar sands oil refinery, steel mills, a municipal water treatment plant, asphalt production facilities, a multi-lane freeway, and a facility that bakes human waste into fertilizer. I nicknamed the biosolids fertilizer facility “the queasy-bake oven” after inhaling its putrid-smelling emissions.

In addition to polluted air, I discovered our former elementary school grounds were contaminated with enough lead in the soil to deem it an EPA brownfield. The school grounds were fenced off so no one could walk on the poisoned land, but the swings and climbing apparatus from my youth are still in place as a reminder that as children we played endlessly on that land.

I was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2005 after my sister died of the disease. My next-door neighbor’s kidneys also failed and my neighbor across the street died after years of dialysis treatments. It is important to note that when I was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure, I was not diabetic, my blood pressure was controlled, and I was a healthy weight. Many studies, including data from the CDC, have made a connection between kidney failure and lead contamination.

The largest polluter based in our ZIP code is an oil refinery that underwent a $2.2 billion expansion around 2010. The refinery conducted a home buyout plan near its facility but did not include our sector. The purchased area had a large white population. It felt unjust to me living in the predominantly Black area not to have our homes included in the buyout plan.

Trapped! That’s how we felt in our homes. Our home values had plummeted to $15,000 because no one wanted to move into toxic air. Many of us did not want to stay, but we also could not afford to leave

My calling to become an environmental justice organizer was launched. I strategically organized my neighbors, and after nearly eight arduous years of protest rallies, testimony before local government and congressional panels, trips to refinery shareholder meetings, and garnering support from outside our community, the refinery extended the buyout offer to our community in 2020.

I have transitioned to Memphis only to find a community that reminds me of home. The Boxtown neighborhood in Southwest Memphis is based near a refinery and they are dealing with the possibility of an oil pipeline being routed through their area. Many Memphians are also concerned about protecting the aquifer. I feel compelled to help inform people about what is happening there. I will continue to advocate for a healthy environment so that others do not end up tethered to a mask for life.

Emma Lockridge is a veteran news reporter who focuses on the environment and social justice initiatives. Formerly based in Detroit, she also is a photojournalist who has had exhibits of her impactful images.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

There’s Something in the Air

Bela Lugosi as Dracula (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Things seem a little different these days. Recently, I attended the Beale Street Music Festival, to cover the event for the Flyer, but also because live music is one of life’s greatest pleasures. After two years without writing a BSMF recap, pounding out 1,000 words the Monday after felt blessedly normal.

Don’t get me wrong. Those paying attention know that weekly positivity rates on Covid tests are ticking back upward. Covid isn’t gone. But events are happening, I’m vaccinated, and when I watched Cory Branan rip through “The Prettiest Waitress in Memphis,” I was able to enjoy the song instead of wondering just how many of the people in the crowd were Covid-positive. Anyway.

Last week, I went to a friend’s annual work party at a local brewery. That evening I met some friends for dinner and drinks. We shared stories, talked about work, and my friend admitted that she wasn’t moved by a recent live production of Macbeth she attended. Uncultured swine that I am, I said that for me, no theater-going experience has ever topped the time when, on a junior high field trip, I saw a college production of Dracula. (Remember that — we’ll get back around to it in a bit.)

As the evening came to a close and we prepared to head our separate ways, the conversation turned to a certain intangible but undeniable something in the air. I felt it at BSMF too — there were odd moments, times when the enthusiastic audience seemed not to know what to do. One of my dinner companions shared a story of a mild verbal interaction that spiraled into threats of physical violence. She described one of the parties involved being held back by her companions, clinging to the door frame, trying to pull herself across the threshold to start a fight.

Things seem a little different these days. There’s something simmering under the surface.

That was on my mind the next day when I caught a screening of the new Doctor Strange flick. It was okay. As a longtime fan of The Evil Dead, I appreciated the signature touches of director Sam Raimi. And there were moments when I thought, “Hey, here I am in a theater again. How wonderful is this?” The spell was nearly broken, though, by another moviegoer in my row who talked through the entire film. I considered saying something. I have before. Once I turned around and fake-apologized to a chatty couple, “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. Did we stumble into your living room? It must be awkward for all of us to be here. I hope we don’t ruin the mood.”

But I kept my mouth shut. I thought about saying something, even considered being polite instead of snarky, for a change. Then I thought about being stabbed to death in a Marvel movie and decided it wasn’t worth it. Everyone’s on edge.

Things seem a little different these days. It’s been in the back of my mind since the March 2020 debate between now-President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders, when Biden said he was not in favor of Medicare for all or any single-payer system. Both candidates admitted we were experiencing an “unprecedented moment” in history, but in the midst of that moment, the leading candidate appeared more committed to maintaining the economic and social status quo than to finding a solution. More than two years later, I haven’t gotten over it. It just feels crazy, this insistence on individual solutions to large-scale problems. This belief that nothing should change. Or that civility or bipartisanship are goals to be prized in and of themselves.

Speaking of unchanging, some 125 years ago this month, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published. Its plot points and motifs make the 19th-century novel a fair companion to today’s world. It’s a story of greed, wealth, and disease, of old systems refusing to die, sucking the life from young blood. Told in the form of letters, diary entries, and newspaper clippings, it gives the reader a broad view of the horror, something none of the characters can see as a whole. So the reader knows Count Dracula is a vampire, while the characters grope blindly in the dark. That’s often what it feels like these days.

Discussions on pressing problems are siloed, divorced from a larger reality. Meanwhile, we soldier on, going to work, paying bills, meeting friends for dinner and to discuss that certain something that taints the atmosphere, like the stench of burned sugar wafting from another room. People discuss workforce issues without mentioning the more than 994,000 Americans who have died of Covid. The shortage of baby formula hit the headlines the same week as the SCOTUS Roe leak. Something must be done to address these issues — but nothing that risks fundamental change.

There’s something in the air, and we’re reaching for the air freshener instead of looking for the source.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Two Years in the Hole

Last supper? (l-r) Jesse Davis, Sydnie Hammer, and Donna and Pete Prunkl in early March 2020 (Courtesy Jesse Davis

Two years and a week ago, I went to the Flyer’s Beer Bracket Challenge award ceremony at the Young Avenue Deli. It was an odd time, as the reports of Covid-19 on the news were creeping closer and closer to home. People weren’t quite sure how to act. Some of us shook hands, while some people opted for a more sanitary fist bump or even just waving at each other. Our film editor’s wife had to keep reminding him not to touch his face. 

It was the beginning of a working vacation for me. No, I don’t mean the time I spent working from home. I had planned to take a week to go visit family in North Carolina and, while there, interview barbecue pitmasters for a cover story for Memphis magazine. Again, no one was quite sure how to act. Some people shook my hand; some didn’t. But I ate a lot of great barbecue, had many interesting conversations about the history of different regional variations, and occasionally worried about this strange new disease everyone was talking about. 

After the North Carolina portion of the trip, my fiancée and I stopped in Martin, Tennessee, where my sister and brother-in-law lived at the time. My mother was in town from Arizona. We were worried about her being in a full airplane, of course, but we weren’t sure just how worried we should be. And she had already bought the tickets — months ago, in fact. So we stayed home or went to the park.

With each day, the situation became more dire, until my work email started blowing up. We would be working from home. Everyone should come to the office, pick up their computers, and take ’em somewhere isolated and with internet. The Flyer’s then-editor Bruce VanWyngarden joked, “See you in June,” thinking we’d be home for two weeks, tops. 

When I left Memphis for nine days of barbecue “research” and visiting family, Covid felt like something I should be vaguely concerned about. By the time I returned, the World Health Organization had declared Covid a worldwide pandemic. The Flyer offices were a ghost town when I ventured there to retrieve my computer. It felt somehow wrong. Newsrooms, even ones as small as ours, are loud and no little bit chaotic. It was just me, the humming of fluorescent lights, and the accumulated dust, made obvious by the hastily packed-up computers and personal possessions. 

We all have our own stories. For most of the world, the first few weeks or months of the pandemic were truly individual experiences. The guidelines seemed to change so quickly, at the mercy of rapidly progressing research into a new virus and the whims of an unprepared supply chain. We worried about our loved ones. We worried about the state of the nation. We worked, and our professions gave us a degree of safety — or they put us in harm’s way. I’ve worked as a cook, a dishwasher, a package handler — I can imagine what it must have been like to be on the job as one of those people in March and April 2020. Let alone a nurse, doctor, or other healthcare professional. Or a grocery store worker. 

Then, it seemed at least that we settled into a pattern of waiting. There were portions of the pandemic that seemed distinct from others — the Tiger King binges, the bread-baking, the long walks outside. Even if you weren’t binging or baking (I wasn’t), you couldn’t help hearing about it. 

So much has changed, now, two years after the pandemic was officially declared. Frankly, I don’t think things will ever be as they were before. In the U.S. alone, 964,000 people have died from Covid. Globally, that number is more than 6 million. 

We have lost people we’ll never get back, an incalculable loss. But the rest of us have to carry on, and forge some kind of equilibrium, a “normal.” It will just look a little different; it will take time. People have lost loved ones, friends, businesses. Young people have lost out on formative experiences. But I hope that we have gained things as well, though it will likely take just as much time to find perspective, to help us realize just what they may be. I hope that, in some aspect, virtual meetings will stick around. I hope we will be more aware of others’ health, of the need for inclusivity — of what we lose without it. 

More than anything, I hope we can be patient with each other as we try to emerge from this pandemic hole. And that we refuse to leave anyone behind.

Jesse Davis
jesse@memphisflyer.com 

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

True Blood

Photo: Jesse Davis

I’ll tell you this story as it was told to me.

Years ago, my dad was digging a hole in the front yard so he could plant a tree. His neighbor, a man named Ben who I remember as being perpetually clad in overalls and a gray T-shirt, pulled up in his pickup truck, rolled down his window, and said, “What are you up to?”

“You’re looking at it.”

Ben threw open the truck’s passenger-side door and said, “Get in.”

Our old neighbor took my dad to donate blood. Apparently it was something Ben did with regularity, every eight weeks or so, as the guidelines go. That was how my dad learned he was O-, the universal donor. That was why the refrigerator in my childhood home was covered in Lifeblood magnets.

I’m O- too, so I donate with regularity. The phlebotomists tell me that donating a double-red is better, easier to transport, especially with my blood type, so I can’t go quite as often as Ben. But I do make a point of showing up whenever they call to remind me I’m eligible again. I don’t write this to pat myself on the back — donating is quite literally the easiest thing I can do for my community. Heck, I do it lying down!

I bring this up because the Red Cross just announced that they are “experiencing the worst blood shortage in over a decade. The dangerously low blood supply levels have forced some hospitals to defer patients from major surgery, including organ transplants.” With the Omicron variant spreading rapidly, blood supplies at a historic low, and nurses and doctors fleeing the overstrained healthcare system, now would be a horrible time to wreck your car, have a heart attack, or have your appendix burst. Drive safely, folks.

It seems to me that now would be a good time for the Food and Drug Administration to revise their guidelines about the three-month deferral for donations by men who have sex with men.

But that’s not up to me. The best I can do is donate when they call me, and take whatever steps I can not to prolong this pandemic. (You knew I was going to mention the pandemic, right?) Because, according to the Red Cross, the pandemic has placed quite a strain on their donor recruitment efforts. Young people at high school and college blood drives make up a large percentage of donors, and it’s hard to pull the blood-mobile up to a virtual classroom. As the Red Cross reports on its website, there has been a 62 percent drop in college and high school blood drives due to the pandemic. Student donors accounted for approximately 25 percent of donors in 2019, but accounted for just 10 percent during the pandemic. What’s more, there has been a 10 percent drop in donations overall since March 2020.

So yes, I can and do donate when Vitalant’s number pops up on my phone, but my double-red donation is, pardon the pun, a drop in the bucket. Just as my choice to get vaccinated and boosted and to continue to wear a mask in public is hardly going to end the pandemic.

While I encourage anyone who is eligible to go donate blood — or to get vaccinated if you haven’t yet — I also recognize the need for a larger organizing framework to guide solutions to these problems. Or at least to address the pandemic, which will, in a roundabout way, help solve the blood shortage. There will always be bad actors, people who resist restrictions designed to help the community. So the question is, do we cater to them, or do we do what’s necessary to protect the people who need our help? Put it another way, if you’re of the mind that Covid will always be with us, will be endemic, do you think the current state of things is a livable status quo?

Am I calling on my individual readers to consider possible solutions for a structural problem? Why, yes, it does appear that way.

Do I recognize the irony in that?

Also yes.

Categories
Cover Feature News

New Year, Screw You

Illustration: Bryan Rollins

Welcome to the Flyer’s first cover story of 2022.

Traditionally, the first cover story of the year is our “New Year, New You” feature — a collection of small steps to take toward self-improvement. We’ve written about dry January, reading more, getting outdoors, taking up a hobby, learning to meditate or play an instrument or how to do yoga. In short, over the years, we’ve covered a lot of ground with this feature. Last year, buoyed by a vaccine rollout and a naive hopefulness that closing the door on calendar year 2020 would make some sort of difference, we embraced optimism in this space. This year, though, we decided to focus on what we’d like to leave in the past.

So instead of hopefully embracing a new hobby, we’re kicking bad habits to the curb this year. We’re saying “screw you” to everything we don’t want to carry into the new year. If you, too, are feeling a Marie Kondo-esque urge to simplify your life, let this list of bad habits, addictions, and annoyances be your guide.

Leave Your Comfort Zone

My new life coach is Luca Paguro, the Italian child/sea monster star of the film Luca.

Last year, the world watched as Luca swam, crawled, walked, biked, and fell outside of his comfort zone. It wasn’t easy. If it were, Disney probably would not have made a movie out of it.

Luca is a hardworking, responsible sea monster child. He listens to his parents and does his chores without complaint. Still though, he’s curious about the world above the water, the one place he’s not allowed to go or even talk about. Like Reba McEntire before him, Luca wondered, “Is there life out there?” If so, how did he fit into it? Did he at all?

He drags himself to the edge of his comfort zone but can’t quite stick his head out of the water. He’s yanked out of it all by Alberto Scorfano, another sea monster child who’d become Luca’s friend and out-of-the-water mentor.

Alberto teaches Luca to walk, and that ain’t easy for someone who’s only swum his entire life. Luca fails and fails again but eventually (and awkwardly) finds his footing. That’s where Luca’s magical journey begins.

That’s really where all magical journeys begin — outside of the comfort zone. Yours. Mine. Everyone’s. Nothing new happens inside your old routines and habits. So, if you want change this year, you have to — have to — do something different.

Do you want to start a YouTube channel? Want to travel? Want to write? Want to lose weight? Want to play piano? Want to cook? Want to garden? Want to get a better job? Want to save money?

Every single one of these journeys begins at the same place, that spot right outside your comfort zone. It’s going to feel weird and probably not great in the beginning. That’s how you know it’s working.

If Luca had stayed inside his comfort zone, he wouldn’t have met new friends, ridden a bike, played soccer, tasted ice cream, eaten pasta, climbed a tree, ridden a Vespa, ridden a train, fallen in love with learning, gone to school, or won the Portorosso Cup (spoilers, sorry).

Be like Luca this year and leave behind your comfort zone. — Toby Sells

Screw the Screens

If you picked up this issue of the Flyer from a newsstand and are reading it in all its ink-on-paper glory, I salute you. Too few these days remove their eyes from digital devices often enough to read things in print. To be fair, I’m equally pleased with those of you visiting this article via our website — we know that’s how many folks consume information, and we’re happy to have you stumble upon memphisflyer.com to read this online. My desire to leave obsessive screen time behind in the new year has more to do with mental and physical health, and the ways in which we interact.

Did that status update receive any new likes in the past 20 minutes? Did I get a new email? Is there a text message I need to respond to right away? It seems, especially after enduring varying levels of isolation throughout the pandemic, I’ve spent the majority of my time shifting through screens — laptop for several hours of the work day, phone while doomscrolling social media in the evenings, occasionally switching to the iPad to play some time-wasting game, television to binge-watch the newest season of That Show Everyone Is Talking About.

Not only does it create a sort of time warp (is it really already 11 p.m.?), but it steals from us precious hours we could spend outside in nature, visiting friends or family, crafting, creating art, turning the pages of an actual book, pursuing our passions, learning, growing. Too much screen time is believed to increase anxiety, contribute to short attention spans, and can make it more difficult to fall asleep. In 2022, I hope to avert my eyes more often — put away the screens and be present in the real, tangible world. — Shara Clark

Leave the Grind Behind

There was a time when reading the above section headline would have made me roll my eyes right into the back of my skull. “Leave the grind behind? That’s fine for you, Mr. Moneybags, but some of us have to grind to survive,” I would have thought.

If you have a similar response, I get it. For some people, the “grind” is the only way to keep the lights on and food on the table. Heck, I started working when I was too young to legally clock in, getting paid “under the table” to fetch and carry young orange trees at a plant nursery, and I continued that workaholic trend, holding down two jobs for most of my life so far.

That said, many young Americans have internalized the belief that everyone needs a main hustle, a side hustle, and some kind of monetized hobby at minimum. So for me, saying “screw the grind” doesn’t mean quitting doing the work necessary to survive. It means that I don’t have to say “yes” to every odd job and freelance gig that comes my way. For years, I worked at the Flyer, at another business on nights and weekends, played (usually paying) gigs, and took on whatever landscaping, yard work, house-sitting, pet-sitting, and freelance writing or editing gigs came my way. I felt, as Bilbo Baggins tells Gandalf, “like butter scraped over too much bread.”

Because the grind is what brought me here, I won’t hate on it, but I’ve come to realize that it’s not something to be prized in and of itself. It’s a means to an end, or a necessity of circumstance, not a personal identity, no matter how good it feels to be needed.

So if you’re feeling like Bilbo’s butter, I hope you can find time to take a breath. I hope you can make more room for yourself in your life and can step out from the shadow of your job or jobs. There’s more to you than your career or passion project. — Jesse Davis

Get Over Yourselves

Every year around the time when the numbers on the calendar tick up by one, we are called on to find ways to improve ourselves. Increasing our self-esteem, we are told, is the way toward happiness and greater productivity.

Well, look around you. Is it working? We’ve been gassing ourselves up for years now. Is the world a better place because we have better opinions of ourselves? Quite the opposite. Look no further than the damned pandemic — and really, can you look at anything else? There’s a whole generation of people with so much confidence in the innate superiority of their immune systems that they think they don’t need a vaccine — which, make no mistake, is an actual miracle of science — to help them avoid the deadliest disease in a century. How’s that working out for them? Badly. But they don’t care because to care would mean acknowledging the fact that they are not all that.

Instead, we should all get over ourselves. Accept the truth that you are a mistake arising from a mishap built on top of an oops. On the cosmic level, your imagination is not adequate to conceive of your insignificance. Nothing has any meaning except what you imbue in it.

Does this sound bleak and horrifying? It’s actually liberating. That racist who thinks the color of his skin makes him better than you? Who cares what he thinks? He comes from the same genetic slop pond as the rest of us. Stressed about the big deadline coming up at work? Relax! Your work will crumble into dust long before the sun expands and reduces the Earth to a cinder. Unlucky in love? Look at all those miserable married people, then redefine “luck.”

When we all accept that we are garbage, maybe we can make our dumpster more livable. In the immortal words of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, “This don’t matter. None of this matters.” — Chris McCoy

Screw You, Musical Tribalism!

We all know the smug certainty of those who proudly refuse to “get” a whole genre of music or dismiss you for not knowing certain groups. These people, real or imagined, often live rent free in our heads. Like a High Fidelity character in overdrive, it’s that guy who “only likes the Ramones,” or can’t believe you’ve never heard so-and-so. I even embody that to some. “Oh, you know, I’m not hip like you.” If they only knew!

But, as Tower of Power once asked (“Oh no, not funk!” I hear someone exclaim), “What is hip?” The proliferation of the hipster stereotype in today’s culture is really just a marker of the bewildering plethora of music now available. None of us can keep up with it. Yet these imaginary, bearded oracles supposedly can.

The blunt reality is, no one can. You don’t need to wear your records like a badge, and no one cares about your pure aesthetic. Contrary to lay opinion, there is no Memphis version of High Fidelity. Some from the suburbs often confess an insecurity about browsing this city’s brilliant record shops, and the first thing I tell them is: That smugness is illusory. That clerk behind the counter? I happen to know she digs free jazz, rap, old country, punk, and funk. And on rainy nights, maybe even a little classical. Give up your FOMO and move on. Crates of undiscovered records stand before you: Get to digging! — Alex Greene

Screw Fear of Covid

Yes, I know, the OmiGOD! variant is sweeping the country, making more people sick than ever before. But you know what? If you’re vaxxed and boosted and get it, your odds of being hospitalized are next to zero. You probably won’t even get very sick, if at all. Yes, the number of infections is way up, but the number of deaths is way down. With very rare exceptions, Omicron is not killing vaccinated people. So be one of those people.

This is not March 2020, when we had no medicines, no vaccines, and no real knowledge of how to fight Covid. Those days are gone. We now have incredibly effective vaccines available to keep us from getting Covid, and new meds and treatments to fight the disease, if we do catch it. And we have a president who believes in following the medical science instead of recommending bleach, hydroxychloroquine, horse meds, and magical thinking in a nightly dog-and-pony show.

“The hiding-in-our-basement-behind-the-pile-of-sandbags moment has come and gone,” says Andrew Noymer, associate professor of population health and disease prevention at the University of California at Irvine. “If the rationale is that there’s Covid outside the door, well we’re going to be hiding in our basement forever, because there’s going to be Covid next year, and the year after that.”

Exactly. Predictions are that a wave of Omicron is about to sweep the country, but we know what to do: Make sure you’re vaccinated and boosted, mask up in public spaces, and avoid large gatherings when a wave is passing through. But we also need to recognize that Covid is becoming endemic, meaning that it’s likely to become a recurring disease, like the flu or a cold, and — except for the very elderly, the immunocompromised, and the ideologically stupid — the rest of us are going to have to learn to stop being so afraid of it. — Bruce VanWyngarden

Quitting Coffee (Well … Kind Of)

Since my routine was to drink about three or four cups of coffee before I even got in the shower each morning, I thought maybe I’d place less emphasis on coffee this year.

The first thing I do in the morning is make a pot of coffee in my electric stainless steel percolator.

The last thing I do before I go to bed is clean my electric stainless steel percolator.

If there are just four cans of Chock Full o’ Nuts on the shelf at the grocery store, I buy all four — just in case they won’t have any the next time I need it.

I asked for — and got — a stainless steel stove-top percolator for Christmas. No electricity needed. So, if the power goes out, I can still make coffee on my gas stove. Providing I have water.

I was at a dinner party around the holidays and one of the hosts knew I would select the coffee-flavored gelato from the selection of gelati during dessert. They know.

I have come a long way since the time I used to buy a cup of coffee every night on the way home from work. A large cup. But since we’ve mostly been working from home, I drink my own coffee at night at home.

For the past few days I’ve been limiting my coffee to four cups in the morning. I look forward to each one instead of slamming them down. I admit, I do wake up faster when I slam them down. I seem to move faster and get more things done.

So, I’ve just about finished my fourth cup of coffee today. I’m done. But maybe I’ll have one more cup because this is the first day back at work since my vacation. And because there’s snow on the ground. But maybe I won’t. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. — Michael Donahue

Resolved: De-Politicize the Virus

The oddest bit of news from the year just passed was the report that Donald Trump confided to a crowd of his friendlies that he’d had a booster shot — and was booed! Have we not been accustomed to believing that anything the Donald emotes is gospel to his minions? In fact, is it not part of our own catechism, we of the non-Trumpist majority, to draw connections between the former president’s actions in office (or lack of them) and the spread of the seemingly endless coronavirus malaise? So what’s up here?

It’s worse than we thought. Not only has political factionalism intruded into matters of health and wellness — a problem that is, in theory, correctable — but the disbelief in reality has become an illness more lethal and intractable than the troublesome Covid-19 spores themselves, and one wholly beyond the borders of ideology. Quick fact-check: Who is more antagonistic toward the principle of vaccination, Robert Kennedy Jr. of the sainted Democratic clan or the recently deposed ex-president? The answer is the former. Upon occasion, Trump has actually been heard to take credit for the quick emergence of vaccines, via Operation Warp Speed.

The fact is that common sense, even in matters of survival, is in short supply. People smoke, they drink too much, they drive too fast, they burn fossil fuels because, in the short run, it seems inconvenient to them not to. The Republican Party, by and large, has weighed in against mandates for masks because it is now, and always has been, easy to score political points against an abrupt call for hard discipline. People resist having to take cold showers.

If there is a high side to the current ubiquity and rapid spread of the Omicron variant, it is that at some point, a truly common peril becomes undeniable. One way or another, everybody “gets it.” And the virus becomes so universal as to erode all these self-serving political barriers. While we still can, let us make it a firm resolution to hasten agreement on the point. — Jackson Baker

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

On the Covid Carousel

Ha! This is to be the Flyer’s last issue of 2021, and true to form, this strange year had one more trick for me. I began this column frustrated with recent messaging from the White House on Covid. I’ve been disappointed with the federal response to (again) rising case counts driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, a response that can be boiled down to, “Get vaccinated. It’s on you. What do you expect us to do?”

I had planned to suggest that at-home tests and disposable masks be sent to anyone who wants them, free of charge. Well, today, news has broken that President Joe Biden intends to send 500 million at-home tests to anyone who requests them. I’m glad our president made that decision. It’s the right one, but I wish he would have thought about how inconvenient it will be for me to have to rework the column I had just finished.

This is how we should have been fighting the pandemic all along. Personal responsibility is all well and good, but combating a global crisis requires teamwork. Anyway, if the government doesn’t exist to coordinate in a crisis, to protect the citizenry it represents, then it’s just a glorified caretaker of capital and property.

Some anti-vaxxers will throw away test kits or masks sent to them. They might see the move as government overreach. So what? Who cares? They already think almost everything is government overreach. Why let other people suffer because a vocal minority has overdosed on the conspiracy theory Kool-Aid? With all due respect to former President John F. Kennedy, it’s fine to ask what you can do for your country, but I don’t think the country should worry about doing too much for anyone. If one out of every 10 tests gets tossed (or burned on TikTok while someone rants over an audio clip of a Lee Greenwood song), but those other nine tests help prevent super-spreader events, isn’t it worth it?

This message, excerpted from a press briefing by Jeff Zients, the head of President Biden’s coronavirus task force, can be found on whitehouse.gov: “For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.”

Harsh words, but they’re likely true. Still, very nearly two years into this pandemic, we continue to do the same things while expecting different results. It’s a mistake to frame the ongoing pandemic as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Setting aside that all children younger than 5 years old are unvaccinated, that some immunocompromised people can’t get vaccinated, it’s a failure to imagine we can ever extricate ourselves from this mess by dint of personal responsibility alone.

So send tests and masks to every home in the United States. I also can’t help but wonder what would happen if we issued a new stimulus payment contingent on vaccination status. Oh, and those vaccine patents? Waive ’em. Send vaccines to every country. Again, this is a global pandemic. What good will it do us to get Covid under control in the U.S. if the Pi or Sigma variant appears elsewhere? How many variants have to arise before we accept that national borders do not make for effective protection against disease? Even if its first emergence is on another continent, it just takes an asymptomatic case and a nonstop flight for us to be right back at square one.

And no, this doesn’t mean I want everything to be free for everyone. I know I’ll get my fair share of emails from burner addresses and unsigned letters calling me a filthy communist (I do already), but I would like to think we can have a more nuanced discussion. In matters of life and death, of ever getting off the Covid carousel, I think it’s worth considering bold actions.

That’s my hope for 2022 — that we take the wider view, that we worry about who needs help instead of getting hung up on the idea that someone might get more aid than they need. So, to our president and his administration, I say that these 500 million at-home Covid tests are a nice start.

Now … what’s next?

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News Blog News Feature

TN AG Sues Feds Over Vaccine Mandate

The state of Tennessee sued the federal government Thursday, claiming vaccine requirements for federal contractors is “unlawful and unconstitutional.”

The U.S. Department of Labor released its vaccine mandate for businesses Thursday. The rules say companies with more than 100 employees must require them to be vaccinated or pass weekly Covid-19 tests. 

The Tennessee General Assembly passed sweeping legislation last week in a special session on Covid that takes away most companies’ ability to require vaccines or masks of their employees. That legislation, however, does not cover federal contractors. 

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the government’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors.  Tennessee joins Ohio and Kentucky in the suit. 

“Unless we intervene, federal contractors in Tennessee will be forced to make sense of the mandate’s many inconsistencies that require their entire workforce be vaccinated or face potential blacklisting and loss of future federal contracts,” Slatery said in a statement. “That is simply unworkable and this lawsuit seeks to stop it.”

The attorneys worry such a mandate could create a “workforce loss” big enough to present  “a significant concern for the economies of their states and could exacerbate ongoing supply chain issues.”

They argue the mandate is unconstitutional because Congress did not give the president authority to issue it.  

”Pronouncing that his ’patience is wearing thin’ with people who choose to forgo the Covid-19 vaccine, President Joe Biden signed an unlawful executive order to compel millions of Americans who work for government contractors to receive a Covid-19 vaccine,” reads the complaint. 

For Tennessee, Slatery argues that the mandate claims to preempt state law and violates the state’s sovereign interests to set its own laws. The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution dictates that federal law preempts state law, even when the laws conflict.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

A Soft Secession

Photo: James Kirkikis | Dreamstime.com

Welcome to November. The temperatures are dropping like autumn leaves, Mariah Carey is singing to department store shoppers, and many Memphians will be heading indoors for the gatherings that make up the holiday season. So it makes sense that the Tennessee General Assembly, in another special session, last weekend voted to roll back a number of Covid restrictions across the state. The state usurping the power of local government seems like a textbook example of “government overreach” to me, but I don’t want to get hung up on pointing out instances of hypocrisy. I have my word count to think of.

To appease businesses like Ford Motor Co., after spending $728,000 on a special legislative session to debate an incentive package for Ford (a stunning display of fiscal responsibility), the bill has a number of exemptions. So what was a relatively clear-cut way of dealing with matters of public health is now a convoluted method rife with exemptions and special caveats. Time will tell what happens when the anti-mandate mandate goes up against the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate.

State Senator Jeff Yarbro said, “We’re putting every business in Tennessee in the middle of a fight where they have to choose between violating federal law or state law.” Setting aside the rampant hypocrisy on display, this is hardly a practical choice.

According to a 2021 study by WalletHub, Tennessee is the 14th-most dependent state on federal aid. That’s down a few notches from 2020, when the conservative news site The Center Square reported, “Federal grants-in-aid to Tennessee comprise 37.7 percent of the state’s general fund budget, the 11th-highest rate among the 50 states, according to a new study from the Tax Foundation.”

Maybe we should cool it on the “we don’t need no stinkin’ Feds” rhetoric. How long can we thumb our collective nose at the federal government before they cut off much-needed funds to our state? It’s as though our elected leaders are pushing for a soft secession, testing the waters before they declare the Volunteer State a sovereign entity. But aren’t these the same folks who think it’s base tyranny to have to show a vaccine record card to attend a concert? How will they react when they have to flash their passport just to cross a border and go fishing in Arkansas?

Look, these are not serious people. The Republican supermajority is out of touch with reality, pandering to a radical minority who have decided empathy is a weakness and minority rule is a healthy system of government. Consider this — last week’s Covid-edition special session was all about the freedom to not do anything. It wasn’t a special session about reducing gun violence, funding the healthcare system, or anything else people on both sides of the aisle can agree we so desperately need. So, yes, I think I’m being generous when I say they’re frivolous people, obsessed with hanging onto power and privilege. How else can I describe them?

They’re like a band on a reunion tour playing the greatest hits. When you shell out the big bucks to see The Rolling Stones, you expect to get some satisfaction. You want to hear “Paint It Black” and “Honky Tonk Women.” With these Tennessee Republicans, the hits are “Small Government (State Trumps Local Somehow),” “Gimme Tax Breaks,” “Sympathy for the White Man,” “Can’t You Hear Me Reloading (Permitless Carry),” and “Jumpin’ Caravan at the Border.”

It’s the same old set list, year after year, and nothing ever gets done. But that’s the point — they don’t need to deliver on any promises because they’ve set themselves up as the last bastion protecting simple, God-fearing Tennesseans from lawlessness, sex-crazed liberals, and science. They conjure nonexistent bogeymen to frighten voters, and smugly pat themselves on the back when they succeed in keeping these imaginary monsters at bay. At re-election time, they play the hits, ask if you still have your job (not how well it pays, though, of course), if you still have your guns or if they were confiscated by a globalist.

I don’t want to secede from the United States, nor do I want some chucklehead who represents Sweet Lips, Tennessee, to have more power over my life than, say, the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission. I would wager that few of my fellow Tennesseans disagree with me on these points.

So let’s raise our expectations and ask a little more from our public servants.

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News Blog News Feature

Cost, Complexity At Heart of Judge’s Ruling on Shelby Mask Mandate

One reason a federal judge struck down Gov. Bill Lee’s mask opt-out order in Shelby County is that students wearing face masks in school is more efficient, easier, and cheaper than Lee’s plan to protect disabled students.

U.S. District Court Judge Sheryl Lipman’s Friday ruling says that Shelby County’s mask mandate for students is legal. The ruling strikes down Lee’s order that allowed parents to opt their children out of the mandate. This means that all students will have to wear a mask at school in Shelby County starting Monday. 

Lee’s opt-out order was delivered in mid-August. Legal challenges to it rose later from Shelby County and private attorneys working for disabled school children at greater risk of Covid’s effects than most. Attorneys said those student could not safely return to school with other maskless students. On these complaints, Lipman had temporarily halted Lee’s order earlier this month, but the order was set to expire Friday. 

The new order states plainly, “schools cannot implement adequate health measures to ensure Plaintiffs’ access to school with the executive order in place.” The “unmasked presence” of other students “creates the danger to these plaintiffs.” 

The order reads that local school boards won’t be able to give these disabled students reasonable accommodation to keep them from harm. Lee’s order, it says, eliminated Shelby County’s mask mandate “to create more costly and complex measures to protect every child with a disability.”

Lipman said Lee and members of his adminstration have said publicly that masks reduce the transmission of Covid-19. Mask requirements were already in place in Shelby County with set-ups for classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, school buses, libraries, and P.E. classes — none of which would need to be changed with the existing mandate. 

To do it Lee’s way and individualize processes and supports for disabled students could possibly come with new facilities like larger gyms or outdoor seating areas. It could also call for more teachers to monitor masked and unmasked students, as well as complex policies and schedules for moving between classes or to school buses. All of these could change, too, if parents change their minds on masking their children.

”The accumulation of costs, alternative schedules, and other changes stands in stark contrast to the cost-effective, minimally burdensome requirement for children to wear masks when at school,” Lipman’s order reads.