Rural residents reluctant to get vaccines: study

 

Bill Knight column for 1-28, 29 or 30, 2021

 Trips to the store might show that most folks are serious taking pandemic precautions, from wearing masks to keeping safe distances, but a new study says many rural residents nationally aren’t concerned about COVID-19, think the threat is exaggerated, or consider their responses a personal choice instead of a civic responsibility.

About one-third of rural residents are reluctant to get vaccinated, according to Kaiser Family Foundation, more so than city or suburban dwellers (27% and 25% respectively). Respondents said they probably wouldn’t or definitely wouldn’t get the vaccine, even if it’s free, safe and effective.

More than 470,000 Illinoisans already have received vaccine doses, and the state this week moved to phase 1B of its vaccination schedule. However, the country’s reserve supply of vaccinations is depleted, according to the Washington Post, so getting doses to states may be delayed.

Despite the previous administration’s claims that vaccines were set aside to ensure that people who’d received the first of two doses would be able to get the second, officials discovered that the government had stopped stockpiling vaccines weeks ago.

On the other hand, Illinois health-care systems are stepping up to vaccinate people 65 and older, and they’ll be contacted to schedule appointments in coming weeks, according to health departments. Also, health officials also will start offering vaccinations to frontline workers: first responders; school, child-care and shelter personnel; food and agriculture workers; manufacturing employees; corrections staff and inmates; U.S. Postal Service workers; and workers in public transit and grocery stores.

Further, there’s good news for areas in Illinois that are improving enough that some restrictions are being relaxed, such as permitting limited inside dining for the first time since November, expanding capacities for museums, casinos and large retailers, and bringing back indoor fitness classes and recreation programs.

Nevertheless, some suspicions persist despite the surge in the last few months, especially about whether the vaccines will make a difference.

But the vaccines are vital to beating back the pandemic, scientists say.

“The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — the only two approved in the U.S. — are among the best vaccines ever created, with effectiveness rates of about 95% after two doses,” reported David Leonhardt in the New York Times. “That’s on par with the vaccines for chickenpox and measles. And a vaccine doesn’t even need to be so effective to reduce cases sharply and crush a pandemic.”

This month, rural America overall experienced a record number of COVID-19 infections, possibly showing that the surge’s pause over the holidays was due to interruptions in test reporting, not a fading threat. Rural counties reported 232,239 new infections in early January, according to the Center for Rural Strategies (CRS) – up 35% from the previous week, when rural COVID-19 deaths also peaked, at 4,084.

In fact, last month, rural residents were twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than residents of the nation’s largest cities, reported Tim Marema of CRS.

“In December, there were 35.1 deaths per 100,000 from COVID-related causes in rural areas, versus 17.7 deaths per 100,000 in metropolitan areas with 1 million or more residents,” he reported. “The rural death rate has been higher than the metropolitan rate since mid-August.”

Experts say several factors could affect the outcome, such as rural hospitals having a greater percentage of COVID-19 patients and comparably limited bed availability, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which showed COVID-19 patients in rural hospitals increasing from 10% in October to 25% in December – 4% to 6% higher than urban hospitals.

“Because staffing can be more difficult to maintain in rural hospitals, the higher exposure in rural hospitals may put their staffs – and the hospitals they work in – at greater risk to maintain peak care capacity,” the HHS report says.

Meanwhile, another wrinkle in a vaccine rollout is fewer pharmacies with vaccination services available in rural areas.

The Rural Policy Research Institute in Iowa City said, “A significant number of the entities represented in the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs data will be unlikely to provide vaccination resources because of the nature of their business.”

The institute found 62,352 U.S. pharmacies likely to contribute to the actual administration of vaccines, but 688 rural counties without such capability.

            Such geographic differences require rural residents to be cautious and, yes, plan to be vaccinated.

Remembering ‘Forgottonia,’ noticing new ‘secessions’

 

Bill Knight column for 1-25, 26 or 27, 2021

 Days remain to enjoy “Forgottonia: The Musical,” an original production presented online about a region seceding from the United States.

Loosely based on a real, if satirical, brainstorm by the late Neal Gamm in western Illinois in the early 1970s, the show is streaming at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday on www.youtube.com/flynorththeatricals.

Gamm, a Viet Nam veteran and theater student, boosted western Illinoisans’ feeling that the area was ignored, especially in transportation. Maps of the 16 counties along the Mississippi River then showed it was a “fly-over” (even “can barely get there”) territory. As Forgottonia’s self-proclaimed governor, Gamm, who died in 2013, got a lot of attention for a little while, from Springfield lawmakers to the New York Times. But then his public-relations act played out.

Now, the new play, directed by Sydnie Grosberg Ronga for St. Louis’ non-profit Fly North Theatricals, recalls such resentments, even with enjoyable fictional flourishes. It also indirectly nods at today’s social divisions, perhaps best exemplified by the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. There, neo-Confederates and white supremacists, egged on by President Trump and others, tried a coup but left defeated, with five dead in their wake and countless arrests ahead. But suspicions and rage exist elsewhere, seemingly everywhere.

Actually, another political stunt in the November election had 20 of Illinois’ 102 counties voted to secede from the state. “The Illinois Separation” included a Forgottonia county where I grew up, Hancock, and others in southeastern Illinois.

Of course, such posturing is doomed, as foolish as a drunken senior on a backyard trampoline.

Still, it sometimes pops up, like weeds or mice. The most recent secession pandering was in 2019, when five southern Illinois Republican lawmakers tried a reverse: forcing Chicago to be the 51^st state. It failed, naturally, since the legislature listened to the Better Government Association’s response that the claim that Chicago was ripping off downstate was “total nonsense.” Using facts, John Jackson of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at SIU/Carbondale the previous year had reported that for every dollar Chicago sends to Springfield, it gets back 90 cents.

Be careful what you wish for, numbskulls.

Such flights of foolishness aren’t new, either, as shown in two recent history books that address the idea – briefly touching on Hancock County, too.

Richard Kreitner’s “Break It Up: Secession, Division and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union” shows that “disunion” has been around throughout the continent since the union was established, from Aaron Burr to the Civil War to 21^st century suggestions like the “Western States Pact” between California, Oregon and Washington state. Illinois was home to a secession of sorts: the Latter-Day Saints’ Nauvoo. The Saints (Mormons) fled from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri before settling in Hancock County, where their population grew to more than 10,000 – bigger than Chicago in the early 1800s. That made Nauvoo politically powerful, forcing the state to grant the town an independent charter. So Mormon leader Joseph Smith set up not only self-rule, but his own militia, rivaling the state’s. However, Nauvoo leaders also sparked (and attacked) Mormons who objected to Smith’s policies and practices, and in 1844, after Smith was arrested for destroying an independent Mormon newspaper and inciting a riot, a mob of neighboring non-Mormons stormed the jail where he was held and killed him.

In 1845, Illinois revoked Nauvoo’s charter, and the next year representatives from 9 area counties negotiated Mormons’ departure, and they moved as a group to Utah.

Covered in more depth in Benjamin E. Park’s “Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier,” the Nauvoo experience may indicate that disunited areas such as Mormons’ independent theocracy in Illinois, with its separate constitution and government, are far easier to dream of as utopias than to realize, especially through some single unifying trait, whether Nauvoo, the United States, Forgottonia or Israel.

Park’s book asks, “Can religious and other minority groups survive in a democracy where the majority dictates the law of the land?”

Repeatedly fleeing persecution, Mormons, like other pilgrims, would say no.

Mormon dissidents, feeling Smith’s church dictatorship, would say no, too.

As current events seem to show, even faith, laws and guaranteed rights can seem insufficient.

As for “Forgottonia: The Musical,” it may “only” be a play, but there are lessons to learn from many sources, from screens at home, books at hand, or halls of governments.

Achieving and maintaining unity needs constant instruction.

Cutting ties to Trump better late than never

 

Bill Knight column for 1-21, 22 or 23, 2021

In a “billionaire bailout” far different than 2008’s $498 billion taxpayer giveaway to banks and the rich, a growing number of wealthy and influential corporations are severing relationships with President Trump and his Republican enablers after the deadly riot at the Capitol.

They’re bailing on Trump and the GOP supporters of his lie about voter fraud: 139 Members of Congress and 8 Senators who refused to certify states’ Electoral College votes.

Besides the National Association of Manufacturers, business interests pulling plugs on campaign contributions include Amazon, Airbnb, American Express, AT&T, BlackRock, Business Roundtable, Charles Schwab, Citigroup, Comcast, Dow Chemical, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Nike. Hallmark went so far as to ask Sen. Josh Hawley to return the $7,000 the company gave his campaign. Also, the PGA ousted its 2022 championship tournament from Trump’s New Jersey golf course, and Home Depot CEO Kan Langone told CNBC, “I think the biggest mistake anybody is going to make is try and rationalize what happened. There should be no mitigation at all. It was wrong.”

Even the controversy-shy Caterpillar in a communication with employees denounced “the resulting chaos, destruction and loss of life” Jan. 6.

In addition to Caterpillar, several “bail-ers” have high profiles in Illinois, from BlueCross BlueShield and Commerce Bank to Marriott International, whose spokeswoman Connie Kim said, “We have taken the destructive events at the Capitol to undermine a legitimate and fair election into consideration and will be pausing political giving from our Political Action Committee to those who voted against certification of the election.”

But appreciation of such comments and action shouldn’t be excessive.

“I’d caution reading too much into it right now, but it will continue to snowball as the companies doing this continue to be applauded for it,” Rory Cooper, managing director at Purple Strategies, a corporate reputation consulting firm said in the Seattle times.

True. It’s not unselfish to stop backing people when your customers are outraged with them. An ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that 54% of Americans (including 1 in 8 Republicans) think the president “should be charged with the crime of inciting a riot”; Pew Research’s poll showed Trump’s job-approval rating dropped to 29%, his lowest ever.

Besides curtailing financial support for these campaigns, more and more companies doing business with the Trump Organization are also cutting ties: Stripe (the financial transaction outfit that processed Trump campaign donations), Shopify (which sold Trump merchandise online); Deutsche Bank (Trump’s primary lender); and JLL (the real-estate firm Trump hired to sell his Washington hotel, which is withdrawing from the deal).

In Illinois, the Chicago City Council has proposed an ordinance prohibiting anyone convicted of treason, sedition or subversive actions from doing business with the city, which could affect downtown’s 98-story Trump Tower.

“The Trump brand has become even more polarizing than ever,” said Northwestern University marketing professor Tim Calkins in the Chicago Tribune. “We’re going to see companies move very quickly to distance themselves from the Trump brand, and we’re going to see companies do it in a more overt fashion than they have before.”

Again, these corporations deserve acknowledgement, even compliments, but they shouldn’t expect too much praise, much less the adulation equivalent of the Medal of Freedom (already tarnished by such recognition for Matt Gaetz, Rush Limbaugh, and Devin Nunes). Most backed Trump for financial reasons.

Most Americans favor Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, a Green New Deal, higher taxes on the wealthy, and other progressive ideas that corporate big shots generally oppose, so Corporate America made a  deal with the devil: tolerate Trump’s behavior in return for business-friendly tax cuts and de-regulation, and for appointments of officials expected to rule in business’ favor.

“Their attitude was: ‘Let’s take the big tax cuts and hold our noses for the obvious xenophobia and authoritarianism’,” U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) told the Washington Post. “It was a classic Faustian bargain. They should have known from the beginning.”

Now, after four years of Trump’s administration, companies are finally bailing on him.

Maybe Americans should start holding business accountable, too.

Schwab contributed millions to Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund and Congressional Leadership Fund, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Such giving presumably won’t be affected by cramps of conscience. Also, at least 63 U.S. billionaires contributed a combined $33 million to the Trump Victory Fund in the last two years, reported the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)

“That’s about 1 in 10 of all U.S. billionaires,” said IPS executive director John Cavanaugh

Nevertheless, the Trump-created backlash extends beyond corporations. Last week, more than 250 authors, editors, agents and others in the U.S. literary community signed an open letter titled “No Book Deals for Traitors” opposing any publisher that signs Trump or members of his administration to a book deal.