Sunday Reads – July 4, 2021
Happy Independence Day! Thanks for spending a few minutes of your holiday quietly reading before you dive into tropical weather preparations. If you are planning to collect your storm supplies here’s a handy link to help you get moving after you catch up on your reading here.
The American way
Back to our nation’s birthday — what’s more American than voting? We’d say not much. After all, that’s how we select our leaders to represent all of us in group decisions, big and small. This week the U.S. House voted 385-120 to remove the sculpture of Alexander Stephens from Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol, along with works representing others who supported the Confederate States of America in some way. Stephens was a former Georgia governor and vice president of the Confederacy. Coastal Georgia’s U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, along with 25 others, did not vote on the measure.
July 1 ushered in Georgia’s much-debated voting law. Courts heard first arguments in some of the 8 lawsuits filed against it. The new 98-page law makes it possible for the state to take over county elections boards and implements new identification processes for absentee ballots, among many other provisions including one that outlaws individuals to hand food or drink to people in line to vote.
Access to education just got trickier
This week, Savannah-Chatham public schools told parents that not all of their 36,000 students will have a seat on the bus for the next school year. There’s just not enough drivers for the nearly 300 positions so preferential seating will go to those with greatest needs and those who attend classes in their assigned school zones. That likely leaves out many students who may have earned spots in one of the 25 “choice schools” the district has worked for a decade to create. Examples would be the high-performing specialty programs at Woodville-Tompkins Institute or Savannah Arts. Now those students, who live in neighborhoods all across the district, will have to look for other ways to get to school after they’ve worked so hard to gain entry into the acclaimed programs.
Delta’s not just an airline any more
There’s more this week on the quiet storm we’ve been dealing with already: People who won’t get vaccinated for a variety of reasons. No matter what those are, the rate of vaccine hesitation is now being termed a rising public health threat as the Delta variant of COVID-19 continues to mount an attack in Georgia. GPB News has a worthy podcast this week looking at the strain’s threat and the danger it presents in the state as vaccination numbers remain low due to access and outright refusals.
If you are nerding out on data this week or traveling, here’s a link to an amazing U.S. map compiled by healthdata.org showing vaccine hesitancy rates. It’s searchable by county or ZIP code. It’s addictive. And if you are heading through Newington (ZIP 30446), Fitzgerald (31750), Fargo (31631) or the west side of Tifton (31793) in east Georgia, you might want to wear a mask since the hesitancy rates there are over 50%.
Also this week, Georgia Health News published a 3-part series on vaccine hesitancy among hospital workers, and one of the larger points was that it’s really hard for consumers to know if their caregivers are vaccinated since many facilities aren’t reporting as the process to collect data has become onerous.
And for your second cup
Another American tradition: Wondering what else is out there. In recent weeks, the U.S. military released video and reports on things they couldn’t identify — yep, UFOs. The problem, one researcher says, is that studying unidentified flying objects has been taboo for scientists over the years, so we really don’t have enough science to figure out what these “things” might be.
Plan now to stay safe as severe weather threatens to head our way. We want you rested and ready for next week’s Sunday Reads.
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