Sickness and death from COVID-19 are not just a ‘hiccup’
By Scott McIntosh, Opinion editor
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No doubt about it, school board members, especially in the Treasure Valley, are caught between a rock and a hard place during the coronavirus pandemic. They face tremendous pressure to return kids to the in-person classroom but at the same time want to do so safely.
But when you’re in a school board meeting where you’re informed a staff member has died of COVID-19, one teacher is in quarantine and “not well” and another teacher is in quarantine, this might be a good time to exercise some caution.
Instead, a Middleton school board member this week said, “We can’t run and hide. I know we have cases, but we cannot decide not to move forward. There are going to be hiccups in the road.”
In reality, what we can’t do is pretend that coronavirus isn’t dangerous any more, that it somehow disappeared or it doesn’t pose a threat any more.
Of course, we’ve seen this cavalier attitude throughout the pandemic, as some have suggested that “only” the elderly and those with underlying health conditions are being killed by the virus, as if we should simply accept that those folks are going to die, so the rest of us might as well get on with our lives.
It’s no surprise, then, that the United States has more than 200,000 deaths from the disease.
It should be noted, as well, that the coronavirus continues to be highly unpredictable in who is affected and who is not.
We don’t expect to have no deaths from COVID-19. That would be unattainable. But we can reduce the number of deaths by taking certain actions that stop the spread of the virus. We should not callously throw up our hands and accept that “some people are just going to die.”
If you haven’t received your absentee ballot yet, don’t panic
If you requested a ballot to vote in the November election but haven’t received it yet, don’t panic. They haven’t even been mailed out.
One of the changes made during the extraordinary session of the state Legislature in August was the date by which county clerks must mail ballots to voters.
The deadline was pushed back from Sept. 18 to Oct. 5. The change helps county clerks finalize and assemble the ballots, get them printed and mail them.
As of last Friday, 325,707 Idahoans had requested an absentee ballot, and Ada County had received 113,727 requests for absentee ballots so far.
Flu redux
I got my flu shot yesterday. Have you gotten yours, yet?
In case you missed it, I wrote a column about the extra importance of getting a flu shot this year because of a fear of a ‘twindemic’ with the coronavirus.
This week, after Gov. Brad Little stressed the importance of it and a group of health care providers urged people to get their flu shots, I rewrote that column and reposted it with some new information. If you missed it, it details why the twindemic is worrisome and how Idaho has the fourth-lowest child flu vaccination rate in the country. If you read it already, I added information about making sure your clinic is safe and what information we were able to learn from flu season in the Southern Hemisphere.
You can read the updated column here.
Boise State of the City address
Boise Mayor Lauren McLean gave her first state of the city address this week. It was short and sweet, running about a half-hour, without much big news to break. It was positive, upbeat and aspirational, as you’d expect.
In what I thought was kind of a nod to her critics and those trying to recall her, McLean sounded a feistier note when she said, “I intend to fight like hell with each of you, Boise.”
Check out reporter Hayley Harding’s coverage of the speech here.
Idaho Matters today
I love going on Idaho Matters on Boise State Public Radio to talk with Gemma Gaudette. Idaho Matters is such a great name for that show. Anyone know how it got its name?
I’ll be on today at noon talking about the above topics and probably much more. So tune in on the radio or listen to the livestream or recording online here.
How does county government work?
In the third of our four-part series of conversations about how government works, Mat Erpelding from the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce and I will be talking with former Ada County commissioners Paul Woods and Jim Tibbs about county government.
This partnership between the Idaho Statesman and the b|voting project of the Boise Young Professionals is being livestreamed for free on our respective social media channels.
You can also check out our past conversations with former U.S. Reps. Larry LaRocco and Raul Labrador and state legislators Sen. Cherie Buckner-Webb and Rep. Robert Anderst on the Idaho Statesman Facebook page.
Our next one is scheduled for 4 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 29, with Woods and Tibbs, and you can watch for free live at the Idaho Statesman’s Facebook page.
These are fun, informative conversations.
What you’re saying
Some of you had a lot to say about President Trump’s declaration that he wouldn’t trust the mail-in ballots in the coming election, and you called on our Republican members of Congress to hold him accountable. We also received letters this week on extremism, guns and, of course, the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and whether we should have a replacement before the next election. You can read those and more by clicking here. Keep those letters coming. Submit a letter here.
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