113TH NAT’L NAACP CONVENTION
CONVENES IN ATLANTIC CITY
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
From today through Wednesday, July 20th, the 113th Convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) will come to order in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
This will be the first NAACP convention held in person since the coronavirus outbreak over two years ago.
The theme for this year’s convention is “This is Power,” with racial equity as its priority goal, and there’s little doubt that the nation’s preeminent civil rights organization has its work cut out for it going into the 2022 midterm elections, and the looming 2024 presidential contests.
“From police brutality to COVID-19 to voter suppression, Black communities are under attack,” states the NAACP website. “We work to disrupt inequality, dismantle racism, and accelerate change in key areas including criminal justice, health care, education, climate, and the economy. When it comes to civil rights and social justice, we have the unique ability to secure more wins than anyone else. Help make racial equity a reality.”
The immense challenge of ensuring free and fair elections and votings rights for all has always been on the table for the NAACP, its over 2200 units and chapters, and over 2 million members nationwide. The same goes for dealing with the ongoing issues of civil rights, reproductive rights, education and economic justice.
Under the banner “This is Power,” there will be workshops led by organizational leaders to help shape and mold policy decisions around police reform and other NAACP agenda items going into 2022-23.
“This year’s convention will convene some of our brightest minds to cement a path forward,” says NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson.
According to press reports, an estimated 8,000 to 11,000 people are expected to attend the NAACP Convention over the next six days.
Some are calling it “the most important national convention to be held in Atlantic City since the Democratic National Convention in 1964.”
No doubt there will be many from the NC Conference of NAACP Branches, which has an estimated 100 chapters, attending, including President Deborah Dicks Maxwell.
This is expected to be a successful convention, despite the North Carolina controversies involving litigation against certain leaders of National NAACP, in particular Pres./CEO Derrick Johnson.
-30-
NEW COVID VARIANT AND
MONKEYPOX - YOUR
WORRIES ARE NOT OVER
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
With summer officially underway, the last thing most people want to worry about is news regarding a more virulent, contagious COVID-19 variant sweeping across North Carolina and the country.
And that certainly goes for the heretofore unheard of “monkeypox” infections starting to rear their ugly heads as well, again in the state and across the nation.
But scientists and health officials warn us not to ignore either of these two new health challenges to our ability to get back to some semblance of normalcy after two years of social distancing and face masks, because even with vaccines, all of us remain at risk.
First COVID-19.
Over the past two weeks here in North Carolina, there has been a big jump in the number of counties in the CDC’s (U.S. Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention) Orange Zone with high COVID spread. A county is considered in the Orange Zone if it has more than 200 new cases per week for every 100,000 people who live there, and ten percent or more of the people hospitalized are COVID-19 patients.
Last week showed 18 North Carolina counties in the Orange Zone. Some of those 18 counties include Forsyth, Davie, Stokes, Harnett, Granville, Person, Vance, Warren and Durham, among others.
The week before there were just four counties.
The CDC recommends that those living in high spread Orange Zone counties wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status.
Fifty-three NC counties - like Cumberland, Buncombe, Catawba, Iredell, Cabarrus and Mecklenburg - were classified as being in the Yellow Zone, meaning that they are considered in medium spread communities, and 29 are labeled as Green Zone counties because they’ve shown to have the lowest level of spread.
Guilford is a Green Zone county because COVID-19 spread is considered low there.
The COVID news for North Carolina is sobering because the Omicron BA. subvariant is now the dominant COVID-19 strain across the US, and driving a wave of summertime infections across the globe, according to the CDC.
“[This is] the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen, says Dr. Eric Topol, founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
Ironically, while the death rate from COVID-19 in the United States has fallen for now, the BA.5 is proving infectious even to those who contracted the earliest version of COVID-19., meaning that there is little to no protection from it presently.
The chief concern, researchers say, is that once contracted, patients will suffer through lingering bouts of fatigue, shortness of breath, and other symptoms of dysfunction. The Federal Drug Administration is urging vaccine makers to specifically target BA.5 in their next booster rollout for the fall.
As of June 25, BA.5 has accounted for 38% of all cases in North Carolina, and climbing. As before, the elderly are being cautioned to take extra precautions.
And now, Monkeypox.
As of last week, a second case of monkeypox has been identified in North Carolina, specifically in Mecklenburg County. The first case was determined in Haywood County.
The infection can last anywhere between two to four weeks. The disease is rare, but once caught, it can cause flulike symptoms, swelling of the lymph nodes, and a rash of ugly bumps across the body.
State health officials say monkeypox is transmitted through direct skin-to-skin contact.
The NCDHHS continues, “Having contact with an infectious rash, through body fluids or through respiratory secretions. Such contact often occurs during prolonged, face-to-face contact or during intimate physical contact, such as kissing, cuddling or sex. While anyone can get monkeypox, in the current outbreak, many of the cases are in men who have sex with men.”
According to NCDHHS, there have been over 3,300 cases identified worldwide since May, including 156 in the United States. The number of cases is growing.
No deaths have been attributed to the monkeypox infections.
If you think you’ve been exposed to the monkeypox infection, contact your doctor, or local healthcare clinic.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment