On a holiday for the red, white and blue, we're still red vs. blue -- July 1, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

 What a difference a year makes. Last July 4^th, most Americans were isolated, hunkered down at home under a pandemic cloud.

 This July 4^th, in the sunny slogan of the White House, “America’s Back Together.”

 “Because of our vaccination program and our economic response – America is headed into a summer dramatically different from last year’s. A summer of freedom. A summer of joy. A summer of get-togethers and celebrations,” President Joe Biden tweeted last month.

 You can’t blame him for trying.

 The president and top administration officials are out and about -- at parades, baseball games, cookouts, and other events -- to “celebrate Independence Day and our independence from this virus,” the White House said.

 Biden will welcome 1,000 essential workers and military families to the South Lawn for a barbecue July 4. Fireworks will again explode over the National Mall.

 But wait. Independence from the virus? America back together? Not quite. Not yet.

 Biden narrowly missed the goal he set for July 4^th of 70% of adults receiving at least one vaccination against COVID-19. His “Month of Action” in June aimed to be a sprint to the finish line but was more a slow walk.

 As of June 2, about 63% of adult Americans had received one shot and by June 30 about 66.5% had one shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Sixteen states, including Virginia, and the District of Columbia have met the 70% goal, but four states have vaccinated less than 50% of adults.

Meanwhile, the delta variant is a growing threat in every state. In Virginia, three-fourths of the 48 confirmed cases of the delta variant were unrelated to out-of-state or international travel, Dr. Danny Avula, Virginia state vaccine coordinator, said Wednesday.

 Still, Virginia’s state of emergency is no more, and the Centers for Disease Control says only the unvaccinated need to wear masks indoors in public places. The fully vaccinated need masks only when required – such as on planes and other public transportation – unless they have a weakened immune system.

 The World Health Organization, though, urges a more cautious approach, advising all the fully vaccinated to continue wearing masks and taking other pandemic precautions. In Israel, half those infected with the delta variant recently had been fully vaccinated.

 “People cannot feel safe just because they’ve had two doses. They still need to protect themselves,” WHO official Dr. Mariangela Simao told reporters.

While the number of coronavirus cases has declined greatly in the United States, more than 600,000 Americans have died of the disease. More than 11,000 COVID-19 cases are reported every day and just under 300 people die of the disease caused by the virus on average per day.

 Those who criticize Biden for missing his vaccination target may have forgotten how untethered from science some in the previous administration were. One year ago, the then-president insisted 99% of COVID-19 cases were “totally harmless” even though more than 129,000 Americans had perished from the virus and several states were suffering record levels of infections.

 That president used his July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore to fire up his base with a campaign-style attack on the “radical left.”

 The Biden administration will continue its no-drama efforts to use science to allay fears and motivate Americans to get vaccinated. People in the deep South and young people 18 to 26 have been slower to accept the need for the shots than others.

This Independence Day weekend indeed is different than the last. Americans are together with their families and friends. But it’s aspirational, at best, to say America is back as a country.

On a holiday dedicated to the red, white and blue, America is still red vs. blue. We have a way to go to bridge that gap, but the partisan divide should not extend to vaccinations.

Just as no one wants to be the last to die in a war, no one wants to be the last to die, or suffer long-term effects, from a disease that could have been prevented or mitigated by free, readily available vaccinations.

Each of us needs to take personal responsibility and do what we can to protect ourselves and each other from COVID-19. Only then will America truly be back together.

 (c)2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

Fight coronavirus: No more elbow bumps! -- March 12, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Like many others, I’m learning how to live in the time of coronavirus.

I was glad to hear handwashing is the first line of defense against the aggressive disease – until I learned I’ve been washing my hands wrong my whole life.

Simple handwashing is actually a seven-step process involving special attention to tops and bottoms of the hands, each finger and wrist and should last 20 seconds – long enough to sing the “Happy Birthday song” twice, not just once.

Fortunately, “Stayin’ Alive” by the BeeGees and “Jolene, Jolene” by Dolly Parton are among other tunes with 20-second choruses.

I feel guilty touching my face, which I still do countless times an hour, despite my best intentions.

Greetings and good-byes are now fraught with danger. I automatically accepted someone’s outstretched hand for a handshake on Capitol Hill the other day.

“We really shouldn’t,” I stammered.

“It’s OK! I have this!” he assured me, happily waving a bottle of hand sanitizer. 

Somehow, members of Congress and Hill staffers have oodles of hand sanitizer, while the rest of us haunt the empty aisles of CVS, waiting for restocking. But I digress.

If handshakes are 20^th century relics, so are air kisses – and don’t even think about an “innocent” peck on the cheek or mouth kisses. Fist bumps are out, and, just as I was getting the hang of them, elbow bumps were too.  

Elbow bumps put us within a meter of each other, and that’s about twice as close as we should be, the director general of the World Health Organization said. Maintaining 6 feet from other people is best.  

“I like to put my hand on my heart when I greet people these days,” tweeted the director general, who has the splendid name Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Some members of Congress wave or give Spock’s Vulcan salute.

I’m learning a new vocabulary. “Social distancing” is the term for public health actions designed to contain contagion. When dozens of colleges and universities around the country suspend classes, that’s social distancing, not extended spring break.

Businesses are sending employees home to telework, canceling travel and large meetings. Clubs and volunteer organizations are also choosing to meet virtually or not at all.

The Gridiron Club, Washington’s premier journalism group, canceled its annual white-tie dinner and musical show lampooning politicians for only the second time in 135 years and the first time since 1942.  

The World Health Organization Wednesday declared COVID-19 a pandemic, meaning it is widespread around the world. More than 1,000 Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers. More than 30 people in the United States have died of the disease.

Many people without symptoms put themselves into self-quarantine after learning they had dinner or interacted in other ways with someone who has been infected.

We’ll likely see less of each other as more people go into personal isolation in months to come.

“Many people in the United States will, at some point in time, either this year or next be exposed to this virus, and there’s a good chance many will become sick,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said Tuesday, but “we do not expect most people to develop serious illness.”

Most – about 80 percent – will get a mild case, but about 20 percent could get severely ill and die. The disease hits older people hardest, and CDC this week suggested people 60 and over avoid crowds, stock up on groceries and medications, and stay off cruise ships and long plane trips.

For the latest on the disease and staying healthy, avoid the bogus cures and lies on social media. Check out coronavirus.gov.

Among the CDC’s tips besides washing, but not shaking, hands: Avoid sharing food and open windows at home, in offices, taxis and ride-shares and on buses. 

The irony, of course, is many offices, hotels and other commercial buildings are sealed tight so you can’t get a breath of fresh air.

Nor can we wave a magic wand and make coronavirus disappear. But we can learn how to reduce our chances of exposure and infection, and if we get sick: Stay home!

And since coronavirus doesn’t care if you’re a Democrat or Republican, this is a fight we must make together.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Coffee's not as scary as . . . -- April 5, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Donald Trump provokes a trade war with China and shakes the stock market and our retirement accounts like snowglobes.

He asks governors to send the National Guard to a purported “crisis” on the Mexican border while he rolls back the environmental rules that protect our air and water.

Scary times, indeed.

Sit back, relax, watch cute kitten videos on Facebook and savor a hot mug of coffee. Uh-oh.

Facebook isn’t a safe place, if it ever was. With the personal data of 87 million of us shared, we’re ripe for the picking on the dark web, if we weren’t already.

And that comforting cup of joe soon will come with a cancer warning label in California. What starts on the Left Coast often wafts east.

Wait a minute. Deep breaths. Should we be scared of our coffee, too?

Decades of medical research say no. A review in the British Medical Journal last November examined more than 200 studies and found that coffee consumption was more often associated with benefit than harm.

Drinking three cups of coffee a day was associated with the greatest benefit in terms of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and stroke, compared with not drinking coffee, researchers found.

Two studies reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine last year followed people of various ethnicities around the world for years and found “people who reported drinking more coffee tended to live longer than those who reported drinking less.”

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer removed coffee from its list of substances “possibly carcinogenic to humans” in 2016, after it reviewed 1,000 studies and found “inadequate evidence” of a link to cancer.

So why the warning label? A chemical called acrylamide, produced during coffee roasting, may cause cancer. Emphasis on “may.”

A California judge wrote a preliminary ruling March 30 requiring Starbucks and dozens of other coffee purveyors in the state to warn customers about acrylamide. The chemical occurs naturally when some foods are cooked at high heat. It’s in french fries, potato chips, crackers, bread, cereal, prune juice and canned black olives.

Acrylamide is on California’s list of about 800 natural and man-made substances that are linked to cancer, birth defects or reproductive harm. Under the state’s Prop. 65, which aims to alert consumers to health hazards so they can make smart decisions, businesses must notify customers if their products contain the chemicals. It’s why you see warnings on flashlights, Christmas tree lights and pesticides, among other items.

Lab studies have found acrylamide in high doses in drinking water increases the risk of cancer in rats and mice. But the doses have been “as much as 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the levels people might be exposed to in foods,” says the American Cancer Society, adding, “Based on the studies done so far, it is not clear if acrylamide affects cancer risk in people.”

A public interest law firm sued the coffee shops in a California court in 2010, saying they have a duty to warn consumers. A similar lawsuit led potato chip makers to reduce the amount of acrylamide in their products to avoid warning labels.  

But the National Coffee Association says acrylamide is in coffee at “miniscule” levels, occurs naturally and is not an additive. It’s weighing its legal actions.

“Coffee has been shown, over and over again, to be a healthy beverage,” said William “Bill” Murray, president and CEO of the coffee association. “This lawsuit has made a mockery of Prop. 65, has confused consumers and does nothing to improve public health.”

But the lawsuit and the warning labels do serve a purpose. They help us gain perspective. We don’t have to give up coffee.

As with most things, health officials advise moderation and they suggest watching what you put in your coffee. Sugar has replaced fat as a nutritional pariah.

The WHO’s cancer panel did advise caution on a related topic. 

“Drinking very hot beverages probably causes cancer of the esophagus in humans,” it said.

There you go. It wouldn’t hurt to let your coffee cool.

Sometimes we can control what scares us.   

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Move over, Mary Jane, there's a new bad girl in town -- March 6, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

For Ronald Reagan’s first presidential inauguration in 1981, a candy company sent three-and-a-half tons of red, white and blue jelly beans to the White House.  

The candy was such a hit that Reagan jovially offered jelly beans to guests in the Oval Office and on Air Force One for the next eight years. First lady Nancy Reagan traveled the country warning young people to “just say no” to marijuana and other illegal substances.  

In those days, pot was the public enemy and sugar was just sweet. How quaint.

Today, the “evil weed” is seen increasingly as unthreatening, if not benign. Sugar is eyed as a gateway drug, blamed for everything from cavities and obesity to diabetes and heart disease.  

That sugar and marijuana have traded places in the public eye says a lot about how our culture and attitudes have changed. Nearly four in 10 Americans have tried marijuana, and more than half approve of legalizing it, polls show.  In 1969, the Woodstock year, only 12 percent approved, according to Gallup.

Twenty states allow medicinal use of marijuana, and voters in Colorado and Washington approved ballot measures in 2012 that legalize the use, cultivation and sales of marijuana to people 21 and over.

Other states don’t want to be left out of the blossoming pot economy. Oregon and Alaska are expected to put full legalization to the ballot test this November. Just the other day, the city council of the District of Columbia voted to decriminalize small amounts of pot.

Proponents see pot not only as an adult, personal choice, like alcohol, but also as an economic engine and boundless source of state tax revenue.  A TV ad that aired during the 2012 legalization campaign in Colorado showed a middle-aged mom who said she didn’t like pot but taxing it would mean money for schools and health care.  

In Denver, an enterprising Girl Scout troop set up its annual cookie sales table right outside a pot shop. And that leads us to sugar.    

If people are smiling on pot – at least for now – many have soured on sugar.

The World Health Organization says that our sugar intake should be no more than 5 percent of our total calories or about 6 teaspoons of sugar for women, 9 teaspoons for men.  A soft drink has up to 40 grams – about 10 teaspoons -- of sugar.

In England, chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies said last week that she believes “research will find sugar is addictive” and that “we may need to introduce a sugar tax.”

Several medical studies say sugar triggers the brain’s pleasure centers much the same way cocaine or heroin does. A study last year found Oreo cookies are as addictive as cocaine. Nobody wants to criminalize sugar, but many think more stringent labels and a tax on sugary soft drinks are good ideas.

First lady Michelle Obama last month unveiled proposed nutrition labels that will warn consumers how much added sugar is in their food. San Francisco and Berkeley, Calif., as well as Illinois are considering a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.

When former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to ban large sugary drinks, the courts slapped him down. Still, the publicity may have dampened New Yorkers’ thirst. Soda sales in New York declined nearly 7 percent over the 12 months ending last November.

The sugar and beverage industry groups insist that soft drinks are a small part of what Americans eat and drink. They say more research is needed and it’s unfair to blame sugar for America’s weight problem.   

Still, the potential tax revenue from sugar-sweetened  drinks is, well, intoxicating. The Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University has a dandy calculator that shows how much each state could reap from a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks. In Virginia, it’s $376.5 million a year. 

If we can legalize and tax marijuana, we should debate taxing sugary drinks. Oh, and pass the jelly beans. 

(C) 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.