Flush those commodes, y'all

plus a shopping miracle, my most recent column in the local paper and a TV interview

First a couple fun items and then a Substack copy of my latest column in the local paper where I write once a month. And one TV hit.

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#1 My new hero might be the woman employed by the Charlotte airport who was standing in the very busy ladies’ room last week and shouting out a friendly reminder to “flush those commodes, y’all." A few times she added, “nobody wants to have to flush your stuff.”

Not all heroes wear capes but she sure does deserve an extra fancy one. I love that I got to cross paths with her. She made me smile and each time I have thought of her since—which has been every day—a smile has crossed my face again. I have also decided to start using the word “commode” from now on.

#2 I recently found two pairs of jeans in my size at my favorite second-hand store (Savers) for $10.49 each. But I couldn’t try them on because the store got rid of its fitting rooms during Covid and seemingly has no plans to bring them back. I thought for a moment about trying them on right there out in the open between the racks but immediately decided that would be wholly inappropriate—I’m almost 50 and no one needs that video going viral. My kids deserve better than, “hey, I saw your mom in her underwear at a thrift store.” So I bought both pairs and hoped for the best.

And then a miracle happened. Both pairs fit like a glove, better than most jeans I’ve bought after actually trying them on.

I definitely should have bought a lottery ticket that day.

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Published in The Valley Breeze March 2, 2023

We now know that the public health authorities in Washington and here in Rhode Island were wrong about a lot when it came to COVID. One might even say that they wielded misinformation in order to control the public in Draconian ways. To add insult to injury, these same entities too often characterized anyone who asked questions or disagreed over mitigation strategies of being conspiracy theorists or not believing in science. The national and local media largely carried water for the very people about whom they are paid to be skeptical: elected officials, public health agencies and big pharma. We couldn’t even get them to ask one question about mask mandates in schools during a Democratic primary debate. 

We’ve already known for a while that the vaccine doesn’t stop transmission even though we were told by the CDC director and others that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus.” In fairness, the first variant and the second were quite different but public officials should have known better than to make promises about vaccine efficacy and transmission since variants were inevitable—these medical professionals had to know the virus would mutate and potentially not respond to the vaccine in the same way it first had. People were fired from their jobs and discharged from the military because of this massive mistake. 

So what else were they dead wrong about?

Lockdowns. 

We’ve known for at least a year that lockdowns were wrongheaded because they did not reduce mortality rates but did have devastating effects on the public including loss of businesses, loss of jobs and livelihoods and an educational and developmental catastrophe for millions of children. 

Masks. 

Cochrane is the British nonprofit considered to be the “gold standard” for rigorous reviews of health care data. They analyzed 78 randomized control trials (including six during the pandemic) on the efficacy of masks in reducing the spread of respiratory illness, including Covid-19. Their conclusion? Community masking makes “little or no difference” They also confirmed that here in the US, states with a mask mandate did not fare any better than states without one. This is a really hard pill to swallow for us here in Rhode Island, especially because we were forced to send our children to school for almost two full school years with their mouths and noses covered. 

Lab Leak. 

Do you remember when it was considered a racist conspiracy theory to even entertain the possibility that Covid-19 emanated from a lab in Wuhan? Well, the United States Energy Department has now joined the FBI in saying that the origin of the virus was “likely” a mishap in a Chinese laboratory. 

While many rightfully feel vindicated by these findings, it’s hard to overstate the erosion of trust in our institutions that has resulted from them. One of the most discouraging aspects is the total lack of accountability for the people who got it so wrong. Early on in the pandemic, it made sense to extend grace and assume best intentions because public health officials and many reporters were working tirelessly and learning on the fly. But it didn’t take long for more information about the virus to emerge both here and abroad that made it incumbent upon our media and our medical professionals to ask hard questions and try to poke holes in the largely political narrative that had begun to take hold. Instead, too many of them jumped on the bandwagon of parroting unproven talking points and dismissing and diminishing people who expressed skepticism.

The public deserves an acknowledgement of these mistakes.

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TV

I was a guest on Fox Business News the other night to talk to about the recently introduced Parental Bill of Rights Act (though the host, Liz McDonald, threw me a curve ball at the beginning on a different subject. I got lucky and knew enough about the story to answer without looking like a deer in the headlights.)

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If you want to read an absolutely beautiful and moving piece about fathers, read this by Francis X. Maier. I’ll try to remember to share it again the week of Father’s Day.

Talk soon,

Erika