Ignore pandemic history and we are doomed to repeat it

Echo essay published in The Conversation: 

By J. Alexander Navarro, Assistant Director of the Center for the History of Medicine, at the University of Michigan

People gave up on flu pandemic measures a century ago when they tired of them – and paid a price.

1918 the greatest pandemic in history

Picture the United States struggling to deal with a deadly pandemic.

State and local officials enact a slate of social-distancing measures, gathering bans, closure orders and mask mandates in an effort to stem the tide of cases and deaths.

People were ready to be done with masks as soon as it looked like the flu was receding. PhotoQuest/Archive Photos via Getty Images

The public responds with widespread compliance mixed with more than a hint of grumbling, pushback and even outright defiance. As the days turn into weeks turn into months, the strictures become harder to tolerate.

Theater and dance hall owners complain about their financial losses.

Many citizens refuse to don face masks while in public, some complaining that they’re uncomfortable and others arguing that the government has no right to infringe on their civil liberties.

Clergy bemoan church closures while offices, factories and in some cases even saloons are allowed to remain open.

Officials argue whether children are safer in classrooms or at home.

As familiar as it all may sound in 2021, these are real descriptions of the U.S. during the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic. In my research as a historian of medicine, I’ve seen again and again the many ways our current pandemic has mirrored the one experienced by our forebears a century ago.

As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year, many people want to know when life will go back to how it was before the coronavirus. History, of course, isn’t an exact template for what the future holds. But the way Americans emerged from the earlier pandemic could suggest what post-pandemic life will be like this time around.

Sick and tired, ready for pandemic’s end:

Like COVID-19, the 1918 influenza pandemic hit hard and fast, going from a handful of reported cases in a few cities to a nationwide outbreak within a few weeks. 

No mask- no service in 1918 on streetcar

Many communities issued several rounds of various closure orders – corresponding to the ebbs and flows of their epidemics – in an attempt to keep the disease in check.

These social-distancing orders worked to reduce cases and deaths. Just as today, however, they often proved difficult to maintain. 

By the late autumn, just weeks after the social-distancing orders went into effect, the pandemic seemed to be coming to an end as the number of new infections declined.

People clamored to return to their normal lives. Businesses pressed officials to be allowed to reopen. Believing the pandemic was over, state and local authorities began rescinding public health edicts. The nation turned its efforts to addressing the devastation influenza had wrought.

For the friends, families and co-workers of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who had died, post-pandemic life was filled with sadness and grief. Many of those still recovering from their bouts with the malady required support and care as they recuperated.

At a time when there was no federal or state safety net, charitable organizations sprang into action to provide resources for families who had lost their breadwinners, or to take in the countless children left orphaned by the disease.

For the vast majority of Americans, though, life after the pandemic seemed to be a headlong rush to normalcy. 

Starved for weeks of their nights on the town, sporting events, religious services, classroom interactions and family gatherings, many were eager to return to their old lives.

Taking their cues from officials who had – somewhat prematurely – declared an end to the pandemic, Americans overwhelmingly hurried to return to their pre-pandemic routines. They packed into movie theaters and dance halls, crowded in stores and shops, and gathered with friends and family.

Officials had warned the nation that cases and deaths likely would continue for months to come. The burden of public health, however, now rested not on policy but rather on individual responsibility.

Predictably, the pandemic wore on, stretching into a third deadly wave that lasted through the spring of 1919, with a fourth wave hitting in the winter of 1920. 

Some officials blamed the resurgence on careless Americans. Others downplayed the new cases or turned their attention to more routine public health matters, including other diseases, restaurant inspections and sanitation.

Despite the persistence of the pandemic, influenza quickly became old news. Once a regular feature of front pages, reportage rapidly dwindled to small, sporadic clippings buried in the backs of the nation’s newspapers. The nation carried on, inured to the toll the pandemic had taken and the deaths yet to come. 

Unfortunately, people were largely unwilling to return to socially and economically disruptive public health measures.

It’s hard to hang in there:

Our predecessors might be forgiven for not staying the course longer. First, the nation was eager to celebrate the recent end of World War I, an event that perhaps loomed larger in the lives of Americans than even the pandemic.

Second, death from disease was a much larger part of life in the early 20th century, and scourges such as diphtheria, measles, tuberculosis, typhoid, whooping cough, scarlet fever and pneumonia each routinely killed tens of thousands of Americans every year. Moreover, neither the cause nor the epidemiology of influenza was well understood, and many experts remained unconvinced that social distancing measures had any measurable impact.

Finally, there were no effective flu vaccines to rescue the world from the ravages of the disease. In fact, the influenza virus would not be discovered for another 15 years, and a safe and effective vaccine was not available for the general population until 1945. Given the limited information they had and the tools at their disposal, Americans perhaps endured the public health restrictions for as long as they reasonably could.

A century later, and a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, it is understandable that people now are all too eager to return to their old lives. This end of this pandemic inevitably will come, as it has with every previous one humankind has experienced.

If we have anything to learn from the history of the 1918, influenza pandemic, as well as our experience thus far with COVID-19, however, it is that a premature return to pre-pandemic life risks more cases and more deaths.

And today’s Americans have significant advantages over those of a century ago. We have a much better understanding of virology and epidemiology. We know that social distancing and masking work to help save lives. Most critically, we have multiple safe and effective vaccines that are being deployed, with the pace of vaccinations increasingly weekly.

Sticking with all these coronavirus-fighting factors or easing off on them could mean the difference between a new disease surge and a quicker end to the pandemic. 

COVID-19 is much more transmissible than influenza, and several troubling SARS-CoV-2 variants are already spreading around the globe. The deadly third wave of influenza in 1919, shows what can happen when people prematurely relax their guard.

Fight the COVID pandemic vaccines and masks: Follow expert medical advice!

Echo opinion: Our View- Get your shots and mask up:

Published in The Frederick Maryland News-Post editorial:

Some businesses around our community have signs up requiring patrons to wear a mask to enter. Some encourage wearing a mask, or even “strongly” encourage a mask. But a few only suggest a mask for unvaccinated people.

That is no longer enough, not in this evolving COVID-19 pandemic. Not with the omicron variant of the coronavirus spreading like wildfire across the country.

New infections are primarily hitting the unvaccinated, but increasingly we are seeing breakthrough infections among those fully vaccinated.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who has been fully vaccinated and received a booster, announced that he has tested positive for the virus, but that he was feeling well. Scientists note that most of those who have been vaccinated are not coming down with serious illness. But the danger is that they are still able to spread the virus to others.

This is the time to renew our efforts against the virus. And wearing a mask while in a public, indoor settings is second only to the vaccine for preventing an infection.

Looking at the surging numbers of hospitalizations in Frederick County is enough to scare anyone. Last week, they prompted County Executive Jan Gardner to advise everyone — regardless of vaccination status — to wear a mask while in stores and other indoor spaces.

That is absolutely the correct guidance.

Gardner’s office also urged churches and businesses to “strongly consider” requiring their visitors to mask up during the holiday season.

“Everyone needs to do their part to protect our loved ones and vulnerable people in our community,” Gardner said in a news release. “The winter surge is preventable if everyone would get vaccinated, tested, and follow health advisories.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci — the nation’s leading infectious disease expert — told CNN on Sunday that omicron is very likely to overtake the delta variant, the COVID mutation that is causing most infections in the country right now.

Scientists estimate that cases of the new variant double about every two to four days nationwide. Last week, the percentage of people in New York City testing positive for COVID-19 doubled in three days.

A cyberattack kicked the Maryland Health Department’s website offline two weekends ago but it was back running and on Tuesday reported 6,218 new cases in the previous 24 hours. The state has said hospitalization numbers paint a grim picture, with 1,392 people being treated.

More people are hospitalized now due to the virus in Frederick County than have been since the last huge surge last winter. 

Moreover, the number of patients being treated in the intensive care unit has also skyrocketed.

Frederick Health, the county’s largest health care system, was caring for 67 COVID-19 inpatients Monday, with 11 in the intensive care unit. Of the total inpatients, only 11 were vaccinated, according to the health system’s COVID-19 data dashboard.

To Frederick Health CEO and President Tom Kleinhanzl, the latest surge in hospitalizations was “entirely preventable.”

In a joint statement issued by Frederick (Maryland) Health and the county health department last week, officials warned that the real danger is that the hospital would be overwhelmed with patients.

Cheryl Cioffi, chief operating officer at the health system, said the best way for the community to assist hospital staff is to get vaccinated, get their booster shot, continue masking up indoors and exercise good judgment during the holiday season.

County Health Officer Dr. Barbara Brookmyer said: “We want our friends and family who need medical care to get the level of care they require without delay.”

The best way you can show appreciations to our health care workers for their tireless efforts to take care of this community is not to bring baked goods or candy to the hospital. Instead, get your shots and wear your mask, and keep yourself, your family and your friends out of the hospital.

Cruz to Loose encore cubed!

So, the litany of Ted Cruz stupidity missteps continues: #CruzToLoose! Ted Cruz mistakes 'Western Australia' for 'Washington State' in botched attack on 'power-drunk' Dems

RawStory echo report by John Wright

And there was this:
Cruz accuses Democrats of playing 'ridiculous theater' in proposals following mass shootings with dozens of preventable fatalities and gun injuries. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) accused Democrats of playing “ridiculous theater” by proposing universal background checks and other reforms following serial mass shootings, and gun death mortalities, which he claimed would take “away guns from law-abiding citizens.” 

Meanwhile, school shootings in 2021, continue terrifying students, educators, parents, and communities—There have been 34 school shootings in 2021, in fact, 24 since August 1. 

A shooting on Nov. 30, in which a student killed four people and injured seven at an Oxford, Mich., high school, was the deadliest school shooting since May 2018. There have been 92 school shootings since 2018. The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have interrupted the trend line. The 2020 figure, with 10 shootings, was significantly lower than 2019 and 2018, which each had 24.

Plus this: While the Cruz constituents in Texas were literally freezing to death during an ice storm when the state's power grid failed, he took his family to vacation in Cancun, Mexico! Cruz said that his Houston home didn’t lose power, unlike vast swaths of the state, though he said in his Thursday statement that he did end up losing power and heat. 

David Shuster "...confirmed @SenTedCruz and his family flew to Cancun for a few days at a resort they've visited before. Cruz seemed to believe there wasn't much for him to do in Texas for the millions of fellow Texans who remained without electricity/water and  literally freezing."

Rolling blackouts at times meant more than 35% of Texans went without electricity—and many of those without any source of heat.

Cruz to Loose in Cancun Mexico*

Echo report in RawStory:  Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz apparently confused "Western Australia" (WA) with "Washington State" in an attempted attack on Democrats over COVID-19 restrictions on Wednesday night.

On Twitter, Cruz falsely suggested that "Washington State" had banned dancing at private parties on New Year's Eve.

"Blue-state Dems are power-drunk authoritarian kill-joys," Cruz wrote. "Washington State: NO DANCING ALLOWED!!! Any rational & free citizen: Piss off."

Cruz later deleted the tweet, but here's a screen shot:

Cruz was responding to a post containing an image of a comment thread from Facebook. In the comment thread, "WA Government" responded to a question about New Year's Eve COVID-19 restrictions by saying that "Dancing is strictly not permitted."

As it turns out, the comment thread came from the Facebook page of the Government of Western Australia, not Washington state. Cruz may have gotten confused since the postal abbreviation for Washington state is "WA."

"Witness the idiocracy for yourself. This…leader (?) confuses Western Australia (WA) for Washington State. Like he confused Texas for Cancun. https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status"

#SIASD!

*P.S.  So let me get this right?  Ted Cruz was born in Canada.  His father was a Cuban immigrant.  So, how is it that Ted Cruz gets to travel in and out of Mexico without having proof of US citizenship? In other words, do we really have to let him back in after he leaves to visit another country? 

Calgary, Alberta CNN — Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth has become a key campaign issue. The U.S. Constitution requires a candidate for president be a “natural born citizen.” Most experts believe Cruz is a natural born citizen, but no president has ever been born outside of the U.S. and his father was not an American citizen at the time.

And, Maine Writer opinion here- these goofs will not be the end of the #CruzToLoose litany.

/1476356717336309766

COVID workers need support but anti-vaxxers not so much

Maine Writer- Gratitude echoed during this daunting pandemic and any other time, when the goal of our community is to support one another during particularly challenging times. (Be sure to scroll and read the comment posted on this Central Maine Editorial Board opinion. I pasted it at the end of the article.) 

Gratitude and grace needed during the holidays (and any other time too!): The advice of the Maine CDC director strikes the right chord in a bewildering, frustrating time.

http://clipart-library.com/clipart/119695.htm

Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, took a few moments at the start of his Wednesday briefing to make some observations about celebrating the holidays during a pandemic.

Before sharing what he knew about the fast-spreading omicron variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, the status of the state’s hospital capacity and efforts to vaccinate more people, Shah spoke about how our attitudes toward this disease could fit with the spirit of the season – a time of gratitude and grace.

Central Maine Editorial Board: We couldn’t agree more. Both qualities are in short supply this year, and the need is great.

Our gratitude, Shah said, is deserved by so many people, starting with health care workers, who have been fighting on the front lines of a crisis that keeps changing.

Nirav Shah Director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention

“They do this in a variety of settings,” Shah said. “Health care workers at hospitals, nursing homes, EMS stations, home care workers, hospice workers, every sector of the health care system has played a role in our response to COVID-19.”

Shah continued: “The work they do matters, perhaps more than ever before. And they do it over this holiday season because the disease doesn’t take a break.”

These workers deserve our thanks. “And if you know one – and you must – give them a high-five and thank them for what they have done throughout the pandemic.”

To the list of the deserving, Shah added public health workers – from community outreach workers to lab technicians – as well as volunteers who staff vaccination clinics and other community efforts, and members of the Maine National Guard who have been serving a role since the beginning of the pandemic, which has only expanded.

At the same time that he called attention to the people around us who should be thanked, he reminded us about those who need our generosity – the people in our lives, our friends, families, coworkers and neighbors who may be evaluating the risk of the pandemic in ways we don’t understand.

“These days it seems, when it comes to COVID, each of us feels like we are on an island,” Shah said. “Everyone who is taking COVID more seriously than you is an over-reactionary worrywart. And everyone who is taking COVID less seriously than you, it’s easy to cast them as someone who doesn’t get it, someone who is denying science.”

But, neither of those extremes is right.

“What is true is that everyone approaches COVID differently through their own lens, a lens that reflects and refracts their own health status, their family’s health, whether they’ve been vaccinated as well as a host of other factors,” Shah said. “No two people, right now, will think of COVID and their own risk in the same way. And that means that no two people will take the exact same set of steps, especially as we go into the holiday season.”

This can be frustrating and confusing and has already caused conflict within families, workplaces and communities. 

Yet, Dr. Shah’s prescription is to meet these differences with generosity instead of anger.

“Recognize that they are coming at this world, a messy, bewildering world, with a different set of thoughts and values than you may be,” he said. “It can be frustrating, but it’s also a time where grace will get us much further than will irritation.”

This is not exactly the kind of advice we expect to get from a doctor, but it struck the right tone at a time when so much of the news we have been hearing is bad.

After nearly two years of uncertainty and disappointment, we have learned not to see this pandemic as a transitory phenomenon that will be over sometime soon.

But, rather than settle into despair, we can offer our grace to the people in our lives who need it, and our thanks to those who have been giving so much to protect us from a disease that consistently and stubbornly surprises.

Among those to whom we offer our thanks are the people at the Maine CDC, whose work has never been more demanding or important, and their director, Dr. Nirav Shah.

Comment published on the editorial page:  

From Maine Stoic:  I admire Dr. Nirav Shah very much, make no mistake. I have followed his guidance since the beginning of the pandemic. Nevertheless, I have reached the point where I have to disagree with the notion of being gracious and accepting of those who refuse to be vaccinated. What if twenty percent of the Maine population decided from time to time to put on a blindfold and walk down a busy street firing a deadly weapon in random directions, leaving a trail of injury and death behind them? What would Dr.Shah, or most other rational people think of that scenario? 

How would Dr.Shah have the greater majority of us respond to these people? The unvaccinated are doing very much the same thing. The time is long past where we, individually and collectively, must respond to the vaccine refusers in some stronger and more effective manner.

From P. Turlo: “These days it seems, when it comes to COVID, each of us feels like we are on an island.” The island analogy is misleading. There are certainly shades of gray. Yes, we should take into account the fact that many "may be evaluating the risk of the pandemic in ways we don’t understand." But there's another group who will simply deny science and who will put others at risk for 'political' reasons. Those 'reasons' involve a deep, unfounded distrust of 'science.' Dr. Shah has been extremely helpful and comforting for months on end. His attempt to promote 'grace' is commendable, but in some cases it will fall on deaf ears. When it comes to the deniers, "grace," in many cases, won't get us further. I agree with the thanks we should give to all the healthcare workers and the long list of support staff who tend to those with COVID. 

They have many, many long days ahead. God keep them safe.

Rising sea levels and national security

Rising seas threaten Norfolk Naval Shipyard, in Virginia, raising fears of 'catastrophic damage': “Every year you wait to make decisions and take actions, the risk goes up," said retired Rear Adm. Jonathan White.

"If a Category 4 hurricane made landfall at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, the storm surge could be greater than 9 feet in places,"- NOAA

This echo article has been jointly published by NBCNews.com and InsideClimate News, a nonprofit, independent news outlet that covers climate, energy and the environment. By Nicholas Kusnetz.

PORTSMOUTH, Va.(And Norfolk VA) — At the foot of the Chesapeake Bay in southeast Virginia lies a Naval shipyard older than the nation itself. One of the country’s first warships was built here in 1799. So was the first battleship, and decades later the first aircraft carrier.

Over the past three centuries, Norfolk Naval Shipyard has been blockaded and burned to the ground, only to be rebuilt again and again. Today, it’s one of four Navy shipyards that maintain the nation’s nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, which enable the Pentagon to respond quickly to military and humanitarian crises across the globe.

But the shipyard now faces its greatest existential threat: rising seas and extreme weather driven by climate change.

In the past 10 years, Norfolk Naval Shipyard has suffered nine major floods that have damaged equipment used to repair ships, and the flooding is worsening, according to the Navy. 

In 2016, rain from Hurricane Matthew left 2 feet of water in one building, requiring nearly $1.2 million in repairs.

And that wasn’t even a direct hit — the most immediate worry, former military leaders say, is a strong storm that blows right through the area.

“It would have the potential for serious, if not catastrophic damage, and it would certainly put the shipyard out of business for some amount of time,” said Ray Mabus, who was the Navy secretary under President Barack Obama. “That has implications not just for the shipyard, but for us, for the Navy.”

Among the shipyard’s greatest vulnerabilities are its five dry docks, which are waterside basins that can be sealed and pumped dry to expose a ship’s hull for repairs. Once inside, vessels are often cut open, leaving expensive mechanical systems vulnerable to damage from storms and flooding.

The dry docks “were not designed to accommodate the threats” of rising seas and stronger storms, according to a 2017 report by the Government Accountability Office. 

Navy officials warned the government watchdog agency that flooding in a dry dock could cause “catastrophic damage to the ships.”

Already, high-tide flooding is contributing to extensive delays in ship repairs, the GAO (Government Accounting Office) said, disrupting maintenance schedules throughout the Navy’s fleet. Sea level in Norfolk has risen 1.5 feet in the past century, twice the global average, in part because the coastline is sinking.

The Navy has erected temporary flood walls and uses thousands of sandbags to protect the dry docks at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The Navy has also begun elevating some equipment, but the facility remains vulnerable, according to a Defense Department survey on the effects of extreme weather on military bases, obtained through a public records request.

In response, the Navy proposed a more permanent barrier estimated to cost more than $30 million, part of a 20-year, $21 billion plan submitted to Congress this year to modernize Norfolk as well as Navy shipyards in Maine, Washington and Hawaii.

But the new projects have yet to be approved.

The Navy said it takes extensive measures to limit damage from flooding. “These requirements ensure the safety of our personnel, our ships (nuclear and non-nuclear), and shipyard infrastructure," William M. Couch, a Navy spokesman, said in an email.

In October, Hurricane Michael offered a glimpse of what can happen to coastal military bases in a storm’s path when it leveled much of Tyndall Air Force Base, damaging more than a dozen stealth fighters undergoing maintenance.

Months earlier, the Federal Emergency Management Agency envisioned what might occur if a similar storm were to strike Norfolk — by driving a computer-simulated Category 4 hurricane directly into the region as part of a national disaster preparedness drill. Their simulated cyclone’s 140-mph winds snapped power lines and cell towers, hobbling the grid and communications, and whipped the Chesapeake Bay into a 12-to-15-foot storm surge, high enough to flood the downtowns of nearby cities.

The Navy declined to disclose the precise damage to the shipyard in the scenario, but a news release described the aftermath as “New Orleans without the levee system.” 

National hazard maps show a storm of that magnitude would likely submerge the entire facility.

“It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when,” said retired Vice Adm. Dennis V. McGinn, who was assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment until January 2017. “And when it hits, how vulnerable are we going to be, and are we going to be standing there saying, ‘oh, we woulda, coulda, shoulda?’”
Limited time, little progress

The Navy has long understood the stakes of global warming. It has many coastal facilities, and its forces are often first on the scene of humanitarian emergencies triggered by extreme weather.

A decade ago, the Navy commissioned the National Research Council to study the risks climate change poses to its ability to respond to these crises and keep the country safe. 

Moreover, the 2011 report said a thawing Arctic would stress the military’s fleet by opening a vast new arena to police in particularly harsh conditions. The report also found that 56 Naval facilities worth a combined $100 billion would be threatened if sea level rose about 3 feet.

In fact, the report warned that the Navy needed to begin protecting the most vulnerable facilities immediately, and had only 10 to 20 years to begin work on the rest. Seven years later, there’s been little progress, said retired Rear Adm. Jonathan White, who led the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change before retiring in 2015.

“Many of those recommendations, most if not all, have gone unanswered,” he said. “Every year you wait to make decisions and take actions, the risk goes up. And I think the expense also goes up.”

Across the military, the response to climate change has been piecemeal and inadequate, according to interviews with more than a dozen retired officers and former senior-ranking national security officials.

“It’s probably on the radar, but it’s below what we would call the cut line,” said retired Rear Adm. David W. Titley, who initiated the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change in 2009. Senior officers spend their days fielding urgent requests for money and resources, he said, and have little left for long-term threats. “That’s probably how it’s looked at: ‘Yes this is a problem, but I still see the shipyard out there,’ and so it gets kicked down the road.”

The Navy has begun protecting bases here and there, elevating critical equipment like generators and creating “micro-grids” at some facilities to make electrical supply more resilient to storms. And perhaps most critically, Congress passed legislation this year requiring any military construction in a 100-year floodplain be elevated at least 2 feet above the expected flood level.

But even if some of the work the Navy plans to undertake receives funding, it may be inadequate. A flood wall to protect the most vulnerable dry docks at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, for example, will (OMG Maine Writer "Woah!" expensive wasted effort?) not be built to the more stringent standards once considered — the so-called 500-year flood, with only a 0.2 percent chance of occuring in any year. Instead, it’s a foot and a half lower, designed to protect against a 100-year flood, which probably isn’t enough to prevent flooding in a Category 4 hurricane. Climate change is already making severe storms more frequent, and a few decades from now, when the seas will be 1 or 2 feet higher, a smaller storm would inflict the same amount of damage.

(Disaster!) Managing climate change under Trump

Even when commanders take climate change seriously, politics and legislative gridlock can block funding. “My experience was, the thing that Congress is most likely to do is not fund it until it becomes a crisis,” said Mabus, the former Navy secretary. “And then it might be too late.”

Addressing climate change has become more difficult under President Donald Trump, who said recently that he thought climate scientists had a political agenda. Trump's administration omitted climate change in its first National Security Strategy, and, worse! he rescinded an Obama executive order that sought to provide intelligence analysts with current climate science to better monitor global hotspots.

In this environment, military officials have become reluctant to work openly on climate change, said Joan VanDervort, former deputy director for Ranges, Sea and Airspace at the Pentagon. “They try to stay away from the words ‘climate change,’ and use words like ‘natural resources’ and ‘resiliency’ and terms like ‘weather,’ ‘hurricanes,’” she said. When you omit “climate change as a priority related to our national security,” she added, “it’s very difficult to get funding.”

When asked about the Navy’s response to climate change at the shipyards, a spokesman pointed to comments Defense Secretary James Mattis made last year: “The Department should be prepared to mitigate any consequences of a changing climate, including ensuring that our shipyards and installations will continue to function as required.”

Navy officials declined to be interviewed. In emails, Couch said that "flooding concerns were a major consideration for Norfolk Naval Shipyard in evaluating necessary work," and that the Navy has "identified some near-term projects that mitigate concerns related to rising seas and flooding," including raising equipment and building flood walls.

Like sinking a ship

All of the nation’s 69 submarines and 11 aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered. They help project the military’s might across the globe, but nuclear power has a drawback: The ships can be repaired at only a handful of facilities with the equipment and personnel to handle radiological material. 

Of the Navy’s four shipyards, only two can dry-dock aircraft carriers: Puget Sound in Washington state and Norfolk.

In two reports — from 2014 and last year — the GAO cited officials at Norfolk and an unnamed shipyard who warned that flooding from storms posed a threat to ships undergoing maintenance. In one case, they were preparing to cut a submarine in half and were concerned that “if salt water was allowed to flood the submarine’s systems, it could result in severe damage.”

The Navy explained in an email that it has measures to prevent that type of accident. When a major storm is approaching, it said, workers can quickly seal up ships undergoing repairs, allowing them to refill the dry dock and float the vessel.

That’s what the shipyard did to the submarine USS Wyoming as Hurricane Florence headed toward Norfolk in September, the Navy said.

But,  Florence veered into the Carolinas, sparing Norfolk.

Cyclones/hurricanes

But recent flooding has worsened already poor conditions at Norfolk, the GAO said. Most capital equipment infrastructure at the shipyards, such as cranes and other core machinery, is beyond its effective service life and obsolete, according to a Navy report provided to Congress this year. The shipyards have suffered extensive maintenance delays because of deteriorating conditions and other factors, with nearly 14,000 lost days of operations for the submarines and aircraft carriers between 2000 and 2016, according to the GAO.

Mabus, the former Navy secretary, said these delays ripple throughout the fleet’s carefully choreographed maintenance schedule, which means ships may not be ready when they’re needed. “It’s a very, very serious readiness issue,” he said.

Without a tremendous investment in protections, Mabus and others said, the Pentagon will have to hope that disaster does not strike. Hurricane season is nearly over, but nor’easters can bring storm surges just as high.

Omicron deja vu! Wear a mask!

Echo opinion letter published in The Plain Dealer, a Cleveland Ohio newspaper:

Wearing masks are a noninvasive mitigation effort to stop death from coronavirus and people should wear them!

It is déja vu all over again.

Last year, we reopened schools, shopping and sports venues and there was a coronavirus surge and hospitals were overrun. 

Yet, here we are again -- another COVID surge and hospitals at capacity. (Coronavirus disease: COVID-19, Delta variant and now Omicron!)

More than 800,000 Americans have died from COVID. 

If you don’t want the vaccine, don’t take it. (Maine Writer OMG- -  #SIASD!)---But, can we please at least agree that a mask is a noninvasive mitigation effort to stop death from an airborne infection?

EVERYONE should wear a mask for ONE year. Is that asking too much to save our children, our loved ones, our heroes and First Responders?

(And nurses, and physicians and health care providers!)

Or are the lunatics running the asylum?

From Robert Toth,  Lakewood, Ohio

Maine Writer P.S.
1.  Taking steps to reduce the spread of infection, including getting a COVID-19 vaccine, are the best way to slow the emergence of new variants.
2.  Vaccines reduce your risk of severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19.
3.  COVID-19 booster doses are recommended for adults ages 18 and older. Teens 16–17 years old who received Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines can get a booster dose if they are at least 6 months post their initial Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination series.

Obviously no herd immunity in COVID infected Netherlands

Wait! I thought the Netherlands COVID public health pundits predicted "herd immunity"?

Dickens Festival The Netherlands- cancelled!

"...here we are again, with no Christmas spirit in our empty (Netherlands) restaurants and a maximum of four guests a day..."

Echo report published in The New York Times by Senay Boztas*:

AMSTERDAM — Since 5 a.m. on Sunday, bars, restaurants, museums, schools, clothing stores, gift shops and anything resembling fun have been closed across the Netherlands. We’ve become the first European country to go back to lockdown life amid Omicron (until at least early January): It was “unavoidable,” said Prime Minister Mark Rutte. So here we are, looking over the borders enviously at holiday sales and seasonal celebrations in Belgian Antwerp. Once more, it doesn’t look a lot like Christmas.

The Netherlands’ lockdown stands as a warning to the United States, other European countries and COVID hot spots across the globe. 

But, the warning, though, isn’t just about Omicron — other countries have more coronavirus cases and worse vaccination rates than the Netherlands does, and they are not locking down (at least yet).

Netherlands Public Health

The warning is about policy failures — the failure to start a booster campaign sooner, to spin up free testing capacity quickly when needed, to persuade more groups of the benefits of vaccines and to ensure there are enough beds in intensive care. Now our hospitals are already full of patients who are infected with the Delta variant, and we probably won’t have enough beds for all of the people who need care if the Omicron wave hits vaccinated people hard too.

Think of the Dutch lockdown as a Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a Dickensian warning — in a country where the annual Dickens festival has been canceled — about the need for every country to be on its toes in the pandemic era.

So far this holiday season, Europe is trying to allow at least some festive cheer. While Austria enforced a sharp three-week lockdown and severe limits on the unvaccinated, many countries are still trying to avoid shutdowns. 

For example, in Germany, the vaccinated will be able to have up to 10 guests at New Year’s parties; Boris Johnson is determined not to have new British restrictions yet; Belgium is closing certain indoor venues; and France has largely closed restaurants to the unvaccinated — but these countries are not at crisis point.

In the Netherlands, we are, because of the lack of strong and consistent crisis management. Part of the reason is that the government resigned in January and the country took 271 days to form a new one after the March elections. But our troubles also stem from ever-more-unhelpful ideas about freedom — a word with great resonance and many meanings here as well as in the United States and across the West.

The current Dutch lockdown was triggered foremost by a record-breaking average of 22,000 new infections a day at the end of November (in a country of 17.6 million), with severe cases largely among people who have chosen not to get vaccinated, and a rapid spread among school-age children.

Hospitals gave dire warnings of “code black,” meaning they are running out of beds. Some patients were transferred to Germany. And on top of all this, Omicron — currently up to 15 percent of infections — is expected to cause another spike.

But haven’t we learned enough in the last two years to avoid stop-start lockdown as a gut-reaction pandemic response?

The recent history in the Netherlands helps show why the answer is frustratingly muddled. 

Although the country has seen frequent and sometimes violent protests against coronavirus prevention measures, vaccination compliance is high and 85.9 percent of people are fully jabbed.

However, the country has been criticized for going back to “normal” too quickly. In July, for instance, the government had to backpedal on an overenthusiastic loosening of restrictions, including on nightclubs, where high attendance led to “superspreader” events.

Then, in September, two days before the British National Health Service started its booster campaign, Dutch leaders canceled the country’s “one-and-a-half-meter-distanced-society” and told people it was OK to hug again. At the time, health minister Hugo de Jonge said confidently that “vaccine effectivity is high” so the country wasn’t starting a booster campaign.

Entry to events and spaces was based on a QR code for people who had been vaccinated, recovered from COVID, or could show a recent negative test. But the “test for entry” setup has been mired in problems.

The lesson from the Netherlands is that even an admirable level of vaccination is not enough: We need to think about long-term strategy, regular boosters and unlimited, free access to testing if countries want to avoid swinging between extremes.

Another trigger for this total lockdown is the Dutch adherence to freedom. Unlike in Austria, banning the unvaccinated from spaces and places is a hot potato for all political parties. Dutch personal freedoms are strongly protected in the constitution — but surely this ban would be better than lockdown, where we all pay the price?

Prime Minister Rutte has said repeatedly that he has “no intention” of imposing vaccination by law, at one point arguing that the Netherlands is a “slightly anarchistic country that doesn’t need a preachy government.” 

Yet, some people have had enough: Just 52 percent of Dutch people support a hard lockdown, while trust in government coronavirus policy is at record lows.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of small businesses now risk financial ruin, M.P.s say. “There’s a silent majority in the Netherlands, that together with business owners, the Royal Dutch Football Association, music venues, the culture sector are asking for alternatives,” Jan Paternotte, a center-left member of parliament, said on Tuesday.

Perhaps, as Mr. Rutte says, Dutch lockdown is a sign of things to come elsewhere with Omicron — we just got here first. Or perhaps Omicron will prove less virulent and burn out the worse strains to save us all.

But  (if we aren’t already infected or in quarantine).

It being the Netherlands, though, there’s often a workaround. One in seven people claim to have had a sneaky manicure, hair trim or massage. And just as COVID crosses borders, hundreds have gone shopping in Antwerp.

*Ms. Boztas is a British journalist who has lived in the Netherlands for more than a decade and has written and worked for media including The Guardian, The Sunday Times of London and the BBC.

Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a community (the herd) becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. As a result, the whole community becomes protected — not just those who are immune.

Naming Unidentified Flying Objects by any other name? UFOs are mysterious

A few years ago, it would have drawn jokes and scorn. 

Echo editorial published in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, a Minnesota newspaper (original was published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.)

"WASHINGTON — The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds." The New York Times (Helen Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, Leslie Kean).

UFOs, UAPs — whatever, the U.S. needs to know what they are.

But given the continuing mystery over what, exactly, U.S. military pilots are seeing in the skies, a congressional proposal to create an “Anomaly Surveillance and Resolution Office” — an office to investigate what used to be called UFOs — makes sense.

This is no laughing matter. In 2017, The New York Times reported that the U.S. military was gathering data from pilots who had reported unexplained encounters during their flights. Recently released video of some of those encounters defies conventional explanation — objects moving at speeds and in ways that don’t conform with current aviation technological capabilities. And unlike most of the wack-a-doodle stuff from UFO culture, the Pentagon confirms those videos are real.

"Wow, What Is That?", Navy pilots.

It’s not to say these are little green men. This could be Russian or Chinese or North Korean technology being taken out for a test-drive under the noses of American military pilots to gauge U.S. reaction. Among the most startling aspects of the Pentagon’s recent new openness on this topic is its acknowledgment that this isn’t one or two or a half-dozen unexplained encounters. It’s happening with relative frequency, often in restricted airspace.

The acronym UFO — unidentified flying object — was a military creation from the 1950s but has since then been so thoroughly commandeered by pop culture that the military has ditched it and now uses a new acronym: UAP, for “unidentified aerial phenomena.” (No doubt it’ll appear in the title of a Steven Spielberg film some time soon.)

Sci-Fi Giphy!

The Pentagon this summer issued a report on UAP sightings that raised more questions than it answered. It found no solid evidence that the still-unexplained sightings were from global adversaries or … something else … but it encouraged political leaders to begin taking the issue more seriously than they traditionally have.

Not so long ago, it would have sounded like science fiction, but today it makes perfect sense that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is proposing creation of the Anomaly Surveillance and Resolution Office, dedicated to investigating these sightings as they occur. Gillibrand has introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act establishing the office.

“If it is technology possessed by adversaries or any other entity, we need to know. … Burying our heads in the sand is neither a strategy nor an acceptable approach,” Gillibrand told Politico last month. “I can count on one hand the number of hearings I had in 10 years on this topic. That’s fairly concerning given the experience our service members have had over the last decade.”

The idea has wide bipartisan support — a rarity these days, and an indication of how seriously this once-snicker-inducing topic is now being taken in Washington. For once! Washington is right. 😀

Pope Francis speaks at Christmas about personal clergy failings

Pope Francis calls on humility from Roman Catholic clergy!

Yes! AP reports. By Nicole Winfield.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis urged Vatican cardinals, bishops and bureaucrats Thursday to embrace humility this Christmas season, saying their pride, self-interest and the “glitter of our armor” was perverting their spiritual lives and corrupting the church’s mission.

As he has in the past, Francis used his annual Christmas address to take Vatican administrators to task for their perceived moral and personal failings, denouncing in particular those pride-filled clerics who “rigidly” hide behind Catholic Church traditions rather than seek out the neediest with humility.

As they have in the past, cardinals and bishops sat stone-faced as they listened to Francis lecture them in the Hall of Blessings, which was otherwise decked out in jolly twinkling Christmas trees and poinsettias.

“The humble are those who are concerned not simply with the past but also with the future, since they know how to look ahead, to spread their branches, remembering the past with gratitude,” Francis told them. “The proud, on the other hand, simply repeat, grow rigid and enclose themselves in that repetition, feeling certain about what they know and fearful of anything new because they cannot control it.”

The proud who are so inward-looking are consumed with their own interests, the Pontiff said.

“As a consequence, they neither learn from their sins nor are they genuinely open to forgiveness. This is a tremendous corruption disguised as a good. We need to avoid it,” he added.

Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has used his Christmas address to rail against the Curia, as the Holy See’s bureaucracy is known, denouncing the “spiritual Alzheimer’s” that some members suffer and the resistance he had encountered to his efforts to reform and revitalize the institution and the broader Catholic Church.

Those reforms kicked into high gear this year, and some of the top Catholic hierarchy bore the brunt as Francis ordered a 10% pay cut for cardinals, imposed a 40-euro ($45) gift cap for Holy See personnel and passed a law allowing cardinals and bishops to be criminally prosecuted by the Vatican’s own tribunal.

On top of that, Francis added his Christmas greetings in the form of another public brow-beating of Vatican clerics, who normally are treated with the utmost deference by their underling and the faithful at large.

Francis told them to stop hiding behind the “armor” of their titles and to recognize that they, like the Biblical figure of Naaman, a wealthy and decorated general, were lepers in need of healing.

“The story of Naaman reminds us that Christmas is the time when each of us needs to find the courage to take off our armor, discard the trappings of our roles, our social recognition and the glitter of this world and adopt the humility of Naaman,” he said.

Francis also repeated his call for tradition-minded clerics to stop living in the past, saying their obsession with old doctrine and liturgy concealed a “spiritual worldliness” that was corrupting.

“Seeking those kinds of reassurance is the most perverse fruit of spiritual worldliness, for it reveals a lack of faith, hope and love; it leads to an inability to discern the truth of things,” he said.

Francis this year took his biggest step yet to rein in the traditionalist wing of the church, re-imposing restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass that Pope Benedict XVI had relaxed in 2007.

He intensified those restrictions last weekend with a new set of rules that forbids even the publication of Tridentine Mass times in parish bulletins.

Francis said the proud who remain stuck in the past, “enclosed in their little world, have neither past nor future, roots or branches, and live with the bitter taste of a melancholy that weighs on their hearts as the most precious of the devil’s potions.”

“All of us are called to humility, because all of us are called to remember and to give life. We are called to find a right relationship with our roots and our branches. Without those two things, we become sick, destined to disappear,” he warned.