Recent editorials from North Carolina newspapers:
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Nov. 21
Winston-Salem Journal on the death of a food bank CEO:
It was sad and surprising to read about the passing on Sunday of Clyde Fitzgerald, a former chief executive officer of Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina and a man who spent much of his life working passionately to feed the hungry. … Before we feast, it would honor Fitzgerald’s memory to remember his mission and take an extra step for those who struggle to get by.
“There was no one more passionate about addressing hunger and food security, especially with children, than Clyde Fitzgerald,” Eric Aft, who succeeded Fitzgerald at the food bank, told the Journal’s Lisa O’Donnell earlier this week. “No one will ever fill those shoes, and all of us are simply committed to doing our best to fulfill that vision he had, that we will have hunger-free communities.”
Fitzgerald was a regular presence on the Journal’s editorial page, writing guest columns that expressed in plain, unvarnished terms the necessity of supporting efforts to feed the hungry as well as to fight poverty and support farmers. He had a mature understanding of how food “works” in America, the forces that produce it and the struggles many have to acquire it. He urged all, from Congress on down, to join him in feeding people.
Fitzgerald became the CEO of Second Harvest during a particularly bleak time, as the 2008 financial crisis began to gain steam and donations dwindled. But under Fitzgerald’s leadership, donations increased and the situation improved. The amount of food distributed during Fitzgerald’s tenure as CEO skyrocketed from 7 million to 37 million pounds, Aft told the Journal.
“Hunger is a human tragedy that exists only because we as a community allow it to exist,” he told Winston-Salem Monthly in June. “There’s enough food to feed every man, woman and child. The challenge is access to food.”
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Online: https://www.journalnow.com/
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Nov. 18
StarNews of Wilmington on building storm-resistant structures:
The high winds and heavy rains that swept through the area Thursday (Nov. 15) morning shifted our focus back to Hurricane Florence - specifically the damage so many structures sustained from rain infiltration.
Not the river-flooding damage, and not water damage caused by trees through roofs or missing shingles. Rather, the number of homes and buildings that had no visible structural damage, yet enough rain got in to make them uninhabitable, mainly from the ensuing mold.
We’ve lived through enough storms that the details of past storms are sketchy, but we don’t recall such widespread rain-intrusion from, for example, 1999’s Hurricane Floyd, another slow-moving storm with torrential rain.
Hurricanes, of course, cause a variety of problems - straight-wind damage, flooding, rain intrusion and trees uprooted, to name a few. And with damage so widespread and extensive, we’ve yet to get a handle on exactly what transpired during Florence, and why some structures fared so much better than others. For example, education buildings were hit quite hard, including those in county school districts and at UNC Wilmington. Florence damaged UNCW to the tune of $140 million.
As we noted, the big culprit seemed to be rain intrusion, but not necessarily through gaping holes. …
Our main concern - especially regarding the educational facilities - is that while the mold and moisture are gone, do the structures remain as vulnerable and penetrable to rain as they obviously were when Florence hit. Beyond the cost of repairs - much of which will be covered by insurance and FEMA money - the disruption in class time was even more costly.
That begs the question - if we were to have a Florence sequel next year, will we see schools in parts of coastal North Carolina closed again for such long periods - more than a month in Onslow County. That can’t become a new normal. What, however, must become a new normal is adding “hurricane resilience,” and not just in structures. It is needed in our roads and highways, sewer-treatment plants, water supplies, stormwater systems and waste disposal facilities for livestock, just to name a few of the weak points.
When we build and rebuild, the standards need to be higher and the designs smarter. And there are resources out there. The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, a nonprofit research organization supported by property insurers and reinsurers, has established a certification process it calls FORTIFIED. The IBHS describes it as “the national standard for resilient construction,” and the standards are tailored to the risks most likely to affect your area.
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It’s about preventing what damage we can, mitigating the damage that does occur, and using design strategies and materials that can, for example, withstand moisture, making it much more likely that even if a building has to be evacuated, the occupants - be it a single family or 25,000 students - can return much quicker and with far less disruption.
This approach must be our new normal.
Online: https://www.starnewsonline.com/
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Nov. 20
The Fayetteville Observer on vaccines:
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This week, it’s an apparent chickenpox epidemic at a school in Asheville where some of the parents who may buy into faddish pseudoscience have chosen not to give their children what have become the standard childhood disease immunizations. While many of us have endured the itch and pain of chickenpox, there has been an effective vaccine for it for about 20 years. By the end of last week, 36 children at the Asheville Waldorf School, which serves youngsters from nursery school to sixth grade, had come down with chickenpox. It’s the state’s worst outbreak in the two decades since the vaccine became available.
While this state requires all students to have certain basic immunizations prior to entering school - chickenpox is one of them, along with measles and mumps - exceptions are allowed, based on the advice of a physician or on religious grounds. Many families at the Asheville Waldorf School have taken advantage of the religious exemption, and now they’re paying the price. The school has one of the highest rates of religious exemption from vaccines in the state. And now, bad decisions are coming home to haunt.
While 90 percent of the American population once faced chickenpox as a childhood rite of passage, its incidence has plummeted since the widespread use of the two-dose vaccine began. The vaccine is about 90 percent protective. The viral illness once appeared in about 4 million people a year in this country, about 10,000 of whom ended up with hospitalizations. It caused as many as 150 deaths a year and was especially dangerous to babies, adolescents, adults, pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems.
As it is with other immunizations, rumors and incorrect information about this and many other vaccines have spread across the country, especially on social media. One of the leading misinformed theories is that the vaccines can cause autism. The initial research was found to be fraudulent and subsequent testing has thoroughly debunked the claim. Yet it has taken on a life of its own, gaining adherents and causing outbreaks of illnesses that had nearly been eliminated.
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Whatever the reasons, the health outcomes from avoiding flu shots aren’t good. During the last flu season, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports, 179 children died from the flu. Hundreds more were hospitalized. Eighty percent of them were unvaccinated. While the vaccines aren’t 100 percent effective, they give people a better chance than they have by going without.
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We hope parents everywhere will consult health care professionals about vaccinations and make the effort to become educated about scientific research into vaccine safety. That means ignoring what’s on Facebook or Twitter and going to reliable sources. Vaccines of all kinds save lives. Ill-considered decisions to avoid them can be deadly.
Online: https://www.fayobserver.com/
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