Tag Archives: COVID

DC riot, national news

Optimism put to test

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Those of you who know me best will understand that I am an eternal optimist. I tend to see the best in people; too often, I admit that they let me down.

My wife tends to look more skeptically at individuals she meets for the first time, which is smart in that it saves her the grief of dealing with disappointment.

My optimism extends also to the state and strength of our nation, which I admit fully and freely is undergoing many stresses that threaten its very fabric.

The pandemic continues to ravage our population. We are ending a war in Afghanistan and are watching the bad guys seize the government they once ran. We have a former president of the United States whose cult following continues to wreak havoc on our democratic processes.

Will any of these factors individually doom our nation? Will they do so collectively? Can we stop any of these things from reaching critical mass? Can we stop them all?

No and yes to the first and second set of questions. At least that is how I see it.

Our framers crafted a government built to withstand these challenges. They sought to create “a more perfect Union.” They knew better than to seek absolute perfection. They knew the nation under construction in the 18th century would be an ongoing work in progress likely for as long as the republic existed.

I am going to retain my optimism even as we struggle with these battles. Indeed, any concession to the worst-case scenarios out there would consign me to a level of anxiety that I am not sure I could handle.

So, perhaps my optimism is a self-defense strategy. Whatever. I’ll maintain it until the bottom falls out and rely on the wisdom that President Ford offered when he took office at the end of an earlier monumental crisis.

He told us: “Our Constitution works.”

national news

This pol takes the cake

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There had been a neck-and-neck battle throughout several states to determine which of them had the nation’s weirdest individual serving as governor.

Then a clear “favorite” emerged just the other day. The “winner” appears to be Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida.

I want you to roll this one around for a moment. DeSantis issued a “no mandate” order, meaning that there would be no orders coming from local governments to have folks don masks to fight the COVID outbreak in Florida.

Ahh, but some school superintendents defied that order. They ordered teachers, students and staff to wear masks. De Santis’s response? It was to threaten to withhold the pay for public school educators who chose to defy the governor’s no-mandate edict.

Now I have to ask you: Is that just about the most outrageous thing you’ve heard come from a governor?

The irony, of course, is unbelievable. Florida — along with Texas — is the state with the most outbreaks of the Delta variant of COVID-19. It is logging the nation’s greatest infection rate, hospitalization rate and, oh yeah, death rate.

DeSantis, though, won’t budge from his order banning any additional health restrictions designed to, um, keep people alive. The Sunshine State nitwit says the COVID surge is coming from immigrants crossing the border from Mexico, a clear effort to pin something — anything! — on President Biden. I should mention that DeSantis is a possible 2024 GOP presidential candidate.

To be sure, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, another Republican, has been giving DeSantis a run for the distinction of nation’s top gubernatorial weirdo. Abbott has issued a no-mandate order of his own, only to be challenged by some of the mega school districts in Texas; they were led by Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, who has emerged as my latest hero in this political battle.

Institutions of higher learning in Texas are invoking mandatory COVID testing programs for their students, faculty and staff. That’s a start, although it’s not as in-your-face as the mask mandate that came from the DISD and other big-city public school systems.

I cannot figure this clown DeSantis out. He wants to run for president in 2024, or so we are being led to believe. He’ll be among a large field of Republicans seeking to run for the nation’s highest office.

I am wondering if he is going to use the withhold educator salaries gambit as a campaign ploy. If he does, he is toast. Please, governor … try to justify that bizarre and cruel policy.

I double-dog dare ya.

medical news

Fight the ‘common enemy’

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Dr. Anthony Fauci is the man who at this point in our pandemic battle does not need an introduction.

He said the following: “I wish … that people would realize that the common enemy is the virus. Not each other. We’re in this together. And the only way we’re going to conquer this virus is by working together.”

Well, there you have it. This bit of wisdom almost can stand without a single additional thought.

I’ll just offer this brief addition. The backbiting over mask-wearing, government mandates and the alleged “loss of freedom” only weakens our hand as we keep fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is imperative that we start “working together.”

medical news

Pols vs. docs: Who do we believe?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There once was a time not too long ago when we thought we had made the turn down the stretch in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then came the variant called Delta. It’s changed. So now we’re being treated to a war of words between elected politicians and medical experts.

Who do you believe? The pols — some of whom want to run for president in 2024 or the physicians/scientists/researchers who have no obvious political ambition?

Hmm. I am going to stick with the docs. I will ignore the politicians.

We have clowns such as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida making an utter a** of himself by threatening to withhold salaries of school officials who order students and teachers to wear masks to fight the COVID pandemic.

Here in Texas, we have another GOP governor, Greg Abbott, who issued an order that bans schools, counties and cities from taking measures that go beyond what the governor has decreed. School officials in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Austin have defied the governor’s order. Why did they do that? Because the medical experts in their respective communities have told them that requiring masks will help stem the infection rates cause by that Delta variant.

Congress is sprinkled with fruitcakes and assorted nut jobs who keep suggesting that mask-wearing mandates deprive us of our “freedom” to live like Americans. Hey, listen up goofballs: I prefer to live, period. The alternative — illness and possible death — would rob me of much more “freedom” than any order that comes from the county courthouse, city hall or the school district administration.

The doctors have the knowledge, the information, the credentials and the credibility to withstand the criticism being leveled at them by political hacks.

I intend to stand with the medical experts.

They are the men and women with the skill and the knowledge to put the COVID-19 scourge down for the count.

education news

Why the no-mask mandate?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am willing to admit that there are a lot of things in this cold, cruel world I do not  understand.

One of those things is the nutty notion that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has embraced by declaring that only he can tell local governments how to react to the surge in infection from the COVID pandemic and its associated variants.

Abbott issued an executive order that bans school districts and other governmental jurisdictions from issuing mandates requiring masks indoors.

Several large independent public school districts — starting with Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and Houston — have defied the governor. They have ordered everyone in their buildings to mask up. To which I say, “Good for you!”

My 8-year-old granddaughter started school today in Allen. The Allen Independent School District hasn’t followed the lead set by its bigger district neighbors in Dallas and Fort Worth. The kids aren’t being told they must wear masks while sitting in class, or walking into the cafeteria, or goofing off with their friends in the hall.

I have to ask: What in the name of preventive measures is Abbott thinking when he issues those no-can-do orders to local jurisdictions?

I used to talk occasionally to Gov. Abbott when he was a mere Texas Supreme Court justice and later state attorney general. He ran for governor the first time after I left the daily journalism world, so I haven’t had a ringside seat to watch his morphing from a reasonable Republican into some sort of cultist who follows the example set by the 45th POTUS.

I am left merely to shake my head in disbelief and amazement that he has put our children’s health in peril — and that includes my precious granddaughter — by telling school systems they are forbidden from taking measures they believe will save lives.

Greg Abbott is acting like a madman!

national news

Fauci is not our ‘enemy’

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Staff photo by C.B. Schmelter

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

One American’s “enemy” is another American’s hero.

With that said, I want to share a brief item that showed up today on my social media news feed. It comes from U.S. Rep. Val Demings, a Florida Democrat who is running for a seat in the Senate occupied by Marco Rubio.

Demings said: Marjorie Taylor Greene called Dr. Fauci an “enemy to our nation” and members of the GOP like Marco Rubio have called for Dr. Fauci to be fired – so I’ve created a petition to stand up for Dr. Fauci and other scientists … 

Who is Marjorie Taylor Greene? She is the Georgia congresswoman who spouts stupid and insanely frightening rhetoric endorsed by the QAnon crowd about the pandemic, the vaccines developed to rid us of the virus and assorted other nonsense.

Greene, a Republican (of course!) is the true “enemy to our nation.” Dr. Anthony Fauci has become the go-to guy on the pandemic and how we need to ensure we do not become infected.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is entitled to spout her trash. I am entitled — indeed, obligated, in my view — to ignore it. Oh, and I also am entitled to speak out against such hideous idiocy.

medical news, military news

Military to order vaccines

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Imagine you’re serving in the U.S. armed forces.

Your commanding officer or the non-commissioned officer in charge of your unit notices your boots aren’t shined properly. He or she orders you to shine ’em up, make ’em look pretty, shine them so you can see your face reflected back at you.

You do what you’re told, right? It’s a lawful order … which is why they call them “orders.” You are required to follow all lawful orders.

So it is that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has declared that every member of the U.S. armed forces — all 1.4 million men and women — will be required to be vaccinated against the COVD-19 virus and the assorted variants that are making Americans sick. That, too, is a lawful order.

I applaud the defense secretary — a retired four-star Army general — for issuing this order. He knows of which he speaks.

Is this going to mean that every soldier, sailor, Marine, Coast Guardsman, airman or space guardian will follow those orders without challenging them? Oh, probably not. We do live in a weird world that politicizes everything.

If they refuse, then their senior officers and NCOs need to take matters into their own hands and force them to be vaccinated.

Then they should toss the proverbial book at them.

State news

What would you do?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s play this drama out a bit longer, shall we?

Dallas public school superintendent Michael Hinojosa has become a bit of a household name in just a few hours. He decided to defy an executive order from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott by ordering that everyone who works in or visits a Dallas public school wear a mask to prevent exposure to the COVID virus.

Abbott’s order said local public officials cannot do that.

I have been asking this of myself: If I were running a school district would I have the guts to defy a gubernatorial order? My own bias tells me I would. I dislike Abbott’s ham-handed approach to dictating to local officials how to protect their constituents. Still, to defy the governor in this fashion is to tempt political fate, given that school superintendents do represent fellow citizens who might disagree with a decision of such controversy and consequence.

Could I withstand the heat? To be honest, I cannot answer that question as I have never faced such a possibility … ever!

Dallas Independent School District is the second-largest district in Texas. The other Texas mega-districts sit in communities such as Harris, Travis, Tarrant and Bexar counties. They all have something in common. All of those counties voted in the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden. They opposed the 45th POTUS’s bid for re-election. I strongly suspect the former president’s blundering, feckless and untruthful response to the pandemic had something to do with voters’ decision to reject his re-election.

So now the politicization of this fight continues.

I happen to believe we well might see similar demonstrations of defiance in places — just like Dallas ISD — where residents are likely to endorse decisions such as the one handed down by Michael Hinojosa.

As for the smaller, more rural districts populated by voters who endorse the fecklessness of POTUS 45, they well might have to face their consciences if their refusal to take action results in more sickness … or worse.

local news, medical news

Dallas school boss to Gov. Abbott: Take your order and …

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Well, you know the rest of it.

Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa today well might have become the first domino to topple in the state’s effort to stop the spread of a killer virus among our public schools.

He said that effective Tuesday, all schools within the DISD will require everyone to wear masks while indoors. That means students, teachers, support staff, visitors. Everyone, man!

This is a big deal. Hinojosa’s order flies directly counter to an executive order that Gov. Greg Abbott issued that prohibits school districts from taking any additional measures to fight the virus.

I am going to stand with the superintendent on this one.

Hinojosa is taking an important step to protect the individuals for whom he must care. He said today that he realizes he is in for a fight. Gov. Abbott won’t like being told to stick his executive order where the sun don’t shine. My response? Too … damn … bad!

Might there be more independent school districts to follow suit. I surely hope so. As the grandfather of one third-grader who attends school in the Allen ISD, I want to implore that district’s administration to show the courage being exhibited in Dallas to order everyone to mask up — at least temporarily.

And spare me the crap/trash/nonsense about infringing on “individual rights.”

The ultimate end to this pandemic and the variants it has spawned surely are the vaccines. However, we can take other preventative measures — such as masking and maintaining our social distance — to stem the outbreak.

If we are not going to do so individually, then I have zero problem — none at all — with those who care for my loved one during the school day to take the steps they need to take to protect her.

medical news, national news

COVID verbal battle heats up

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden is getting into a nasty spat with a fellow who likely will seek to run for the office Biden occupies in 2024.

The president said this over the weekend about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “The escalation of cases is particularly concentrated in states with low vaccination rates. Just two states, Florida and Texas, account for one-third of all new COVID-19 cases in the entire country. … Look, we need leadership from everyone. And if some governors aren’t willing to do the right thing to beat this pandemic, then they should allow businesses and universities who want to do the right thing to be able to do it.”

DeSantis fired back, suggesting — without evidence — that the COVID virus spike is caused by the president’s “open-border policy” and that refugees are bringing with them as they stream into the country illegally.

PolitiFact | Ron DeSantis’ effort to blame COVID-19 spread on migrants is short on evidence

Ah, yes. Politics arguably is the most infectious element in this discussion.

DeSantis said he doesn’t want to “hear a blip” from Biden about COVID until he controls the border.

Except for this little item: President Biden is correct to single out Texas and Florida as the two states producing the most COVID outbreaks since the arrival of the Delta variant … which came from India, which is nowhere close to Latin America.

Can’t we start pulling together for a change on fighting this virus? How about it?