Don's Tuesday Column

        THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   8/11/2020

Schools, Wu-flu—What do I care?

On the one hand—having no kids or relatives with kids needing the in-person learning experience that online, “remote” classes simply do not provide—what do I care? However, Tehama County is simply a microcosm of educational and economic crises as many parents are deprived of their livelihoods while tending to their children at home. Ironic that many parents are working in retail, or would love to go back to work—but many teachers don’t or won’t.

I do care that these impacts in our rural, small town county will have repercussions contributing to idleness, substance abuse, depression and hopelessness. Children, least able to recover from lost valuable classroom learning and socializing, will suffer perceptible grade-sliding. The public-school system will suffer as parents gravitate to home-schooling, private or religious instruction which—don’t get me wrong—is often superior to the “lowest common denominator” of instruction while tolerating misbehaving kids.

It’s encouraging that RBHS resumes, but disappointing that Corning “Schools to start year online,” (Daily News, 8/8). The bias against classrooms may reflect a lack of respect for science, data and common sense. K-12 age children are least affected by COVID-19 (more likely to catch regular colds and flu) and should be welcomed into classrooms with normal distancing, masks and cleaning.

Parents should be confident to have kids in classrooms learning; teachers and employees should feel free to assess their own age/underlying condition/risk and work in classrooms or online. It’s only the post-high school age where the Wu-flu becomes a bigger risk to health; even that is marginal up to the 40 to 50-year-olds. Around 80 percent of serious and mortal cases are 70 to 80+ years old.

Lost in the supposedly “scientific” criteria used to “guide” local school and business mandates, is that it’s subjective and arbitrary. They’ll use selected numbers ignoring that COVID is not equally, randomly distributed among all ages.

Ignored is the historical experience, replicated in some countries like Sweden, of focusing protection and quarantines on the vulnerable, infected groups, letting the rest of the people live freely, carefully, while the “herd immunity” produces widespread, natural resistance. Little of the “Asian,” “Hong Kong” and “Swine” flu remains, although they killed nearly 400,000 in today’s terms.

Also ignored: the relatively lower deaths and infections in many states and counties. California is about 29^th in deaths per million, about half the national rate (260 to 499), with most deaths and infections in cities and urban counties. That suggests counties like Tehama practice normal economic, social and school life. What do I know? I just read the numbers (worldometers.info).

There’s much intentional ignorance about Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) which, together with other drugs known about in the medical field, has been used and has had clinical results published and written about, as I’m doing here. There is also the drug “Remdesivir” going through trials; vaccines are testing. Don’t be a passive consumer of the drive-by Trump-hating, slanted coverage over HCQ. Even successful vaccines work less than 100%; German studies have found that a portion of adults have natural resistance simply due to lifetimes of colds and flu.

Never in modern medicine has animosity against a safe existing drug been spread absent actual scientific testing. Shouldn’t intelligent curiosity suggest that documented, anecdotal success in treating COVID by actual doctors be examined with an open mind?

Look up “There’s a Mountain of Evidence That Hydroxychloroquine is an Effective Treatment for COVID-19” (Matt Margolis, pjmedia.com, 7/07). Decide for yourself if the anti-HCQ hype is overblown. “Hydroxychloroquine Helps Poor Nations Overcome COVID-19” (Vijay Jayaraj, stream.org, 8/06) provides documented, cite-worthy links. President Trump used it, as well as some Democrats; see “Another Democrat Says Hydroxychloroquine Saved His Life,” Matt Margolis, 8/08.

If the history of this pandemic gets fairly written, hysterical anti-Trumpism will be seen as costing many lives, just like we can say that the decision by NY Gov. Cuomo, sending infected seniors back to nursing homes, killed thousands.

The sobering anniversary, “Michael Brown killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri,” came just after the leaked body cam recordings of the attempted arrest of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN. The coroner’s report showed that the cause of death included congenital heart disease exacerbated by the drugs present in, and previously used by, Georgy Floyd.

Don’t misinterpret these words. A jury should weigh all the evidence and tell a judge if they consider what the officers did to fit the criminal charges against them. The cop held Floyd down by a “knee-to-neck” restraint, but the coroner found no cause of death from windpipe or blood flow. The murder charge may be acquitted; likewise, the charges against the three other officers, regardless of our view.

“This surely will not sit well with those who have elevated Floyd onto the martyr’s pedestal, but nearly all of these fateful decisions were made by Floyd himself. It was he who passed the counterfeit bill that prompted the police response, it was he who resisted the officers’ efforts to arrest him, and it was he who had used the drugs that may have affected a heart already weakened by disease.” (J. Dunphy, pjmedia.com)

From the nonexistent “hands up, don’t shoot” meme over the justifiable shooting of Michael Brown, to the phony narrative of systemic racism and police brutality, to the apparent non-murder of George Floyd—protests, riots, arson, anarchy and insurrection have ensued over falsehoods.

On adding columnists: Given the 2 to 1 ratio of voters on the right and left in Tehama County, it should follow that, since this page has one pro-Trump writer and one anti-Trump writer, the next addition should be a Trump supporter. Is that fair?