Tree rings show scale of Arctic pollution is worse than previously thought

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Research News

 

IMAGE: WIDESCALE POLLUTION HAS CAUSED DEVASTATING FOREST DECLINE EAST OF NORILSK, RUSSIA. view more 

CREDIT: DR ALEXANDER KIRDYANOV

The largest-ever study of tree rings from Norilsk in the Russian Arctic has shown that the direct and indirect effects of industrial pollution in the region and beyond are far worse than previously thought.

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, has combined ring width and wood chemistry measurements from living and dead trees with soil characteristics and computer modelling to show that the damage done by decades of nickel and copper mining has not only devastated local environments, but also affected the global carbon cycle.

The extent of damage done to the boreal forest, the largest land biome on Earth, can be seen in the annual growth rings of trees near Norilsk where die off has spread up to 100 kilometres. The results are reported in the journal Ecology Letters.

Norilsk, in northern Siberia, is the world's northernmost city with more than 100,000 people, and one of the most polluted places on Earth. Since the 1930s, intensive mining of the area's massive nickel, copper and palladium deposits, combined with few environmental regulations, has led to severe pollution levels. A massive oil spill in May 2020 has added to the extreme level of environmental damage in the area.

Not only are the high level of airborne emissions from the Norilsk industrial complex responsible for the direct destruction of around 24,000 square kilometres of boreal forest since the 1960s, surviving trees across much of the high-northern latitudes are suffering as well. The high pollution levels cause declining tree growth, which in turn have an effect of the amount of carbon that can be sequestered in the boreal forest.

However, while the link between pollution and forest health is well-known, it has not been able to explain the 'divergence problem' in dendrochronology, or the study of tree rings: a decoupling of tree ring width from rising air temperatures seen since the 1970s.

Using the largest-ever dataset of tree rings from both living and dead trees to reconstruct the history and intensity of Norilsk's forest dieback, the researchers have shown how the amount of pollution spewed into the atmosphere by mines and smelters is at least partially responsible for the phenomenon of 'Arctic dimming', providing new evidence to explain the divergence problem.

"Using the information stored in thousands of tree rings, we can see the effects of Norilsk's uncontrolled environmental disaster over the past nine decades," said Professor Ulf Büntgen from Cambridge's Department of Geography, who led the research. "While the problem of sulphur emissions and forest dieback has been successfully addressed in much of Europe, for Siberia, we haven't been able to see what the impact has been, largely due to a lack of long-term monitoring data."

The expansion of annually-resolved and absolutely dated tree ring width measurements compiled by the paper's first author Alexander Kirdyanov, along with new high-resolution measurements of wood and soil chemistry, allowed the researchers to quantify the extent of Norilsk's devastating ecosystem damage, which peaked in the 1960s.

"We can see that the trees near Norilsk started to die off massively in the 1960s due to rising pollution levels," said Büntgen. "Since atmospheric pollution in the Arctic accumulates due to large-scale circulation patterns, we expanded our study far beyond the direct effects of Norilsk's industrial sector and found that trees across the high-northern latitudes are suffering as well."

The researchers used a process-based forward model of boreal tree growth, with and without surface irradiance forcing as a proxy for pollutants, to show that Arctic dimming since the 1970s has substantially reduced tree growth.

Arctic dimming is a phenomenon caused by increased particulates in the Earth's atmosphere, whether from pollution, dust or volcanic eruptions. The phenomenon partially blocks out sunlight, slowing the process of evaporation and interfering with the hydrological cycle.

Global warming should be expected to increase the rate of boreal tree growth, but the researchers found that as the pollution levels peaked, the rate of tree growth in northern Siberia slowed. They found that the pollution levels in the atmosphere diminished the trees' ability to turn sunlight into energy through photosynthesis, and so they were not able to grow as quickly or as strong as they would in areas with lower pollution levels.

"What surprised us is just how widespread the effects of industrial pollution are - the scale of the damage shows just how vulnerable and sensitive the boreal forest is," said Büntgen. "Given the ecological importance of this biome, the pollution levels across the high-northern latitudes could have an enormous impact on the entire global carbon cycle."

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Simpler models may be better for determining some climate risk

PENN STATE

Research News

 

IMAGE: HOUSE IN RHODE ISLAND IN THE MIDST OF A FLOOD IN 2007. view more 

CREDIT: NOAA

Typically, computer models of climate become more and more complex as researchers strive to capture more details of our Earth's system, but according to a team of Penn State researchers, to assess risks, less complex models, with their ability to better sample uncertainties, may be a better choice.

"There is a downside to the very detailed, very complex models we often strive for," said Casey Helgeson, assistant research professor, Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. "Sometimes the complexity of scientific tools constrains what we can learn through science. The choke point isn't necessarily at the knowledge going into a model, but at the processing."

Climate risks are important to planners, builders, government officials and businesses. The probability of a potential event combined with the severity of the event can determine things like whether it makes sense to build in a given location.

The researchers report online in Philosophy of Science that "there is a trade-off between a model's capacity to realistically represent the system and its capacity to tell us how confident it is in its predictions."

Complex Earth systems models need a lot of supercomputer time to run. However, when looking at risk, uncertainty is an important element and researchers can only discover uncertainty through multiple runs of a computer model. Computer time is expensive.

"We need complex models to simulate the interactions between Earth system processes," said Vivek Srikrishnan, assistant research professor, Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. "We need simple models to quantify risks."

According to Klaus Keller, professor of geosciences, multiple model runs are important because many events of concern such as floods are, fortunately, the exception, not what is expected. They happen in the tails of the distribution of possible outcomes. Learning about these tails requires many model runs.

Simple models, while not returning the detailed, complex information of the latest complex model containing all the bells and whistles, can be run many times quickly, to provide a better estimate of the probability of rare events.

"One of the things we focus on are values embedded in the models and whether the knowledge being produced by those models provides decision makers with the knowledge they need to make the decisions that matter to them," said Nancy Tuana, DuPont/Class of 1949 Professor of Philosophy and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Determining an appropriate model that can address the question and is still transparent is important.

"We want to obtain fundamental and useful insights," said Keller. "Using a simple model that allows us to better quantify risks can be more useful for decision-makers than using a complex model that makes it difficult to sample decision-relevant outcomes."

Srikrishnan added, "We need to make sure there is an alignment between what researchers are producing and what is required for real-world decision making."

The researchers understand that they need to make both the producers and users happy, but sometimes the questions being asked do not match the tools being used because of uncertainties and bottlenecks.

"We need to ask 'what do we need to know and how do we go about satisfying the needs of stakeholders and decision makers?'" said Tuana.

###

The National Science Foundation through the Network for Sustainable Climate Risk Management supported this work.

 

Herd immunity an impractical strategy, study finds

Results provide insight for public health policymakers fighting COVID-19

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Research News

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IMAGE: PEJMAN ROHANI SOUGHT TO DETERMINE IF AND HOW COUNTRIES COULD ACHIEVE HERD IMMUNITY WITHOUT OVERBURDENING THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM, AND TO DEFINE THE CONTROL EFFORTS THAT WOULD BE REQUIRED TO... view more 

CREDIT: (PHOTO BY ANDREW DAVIS TUCKER/UGA)

Achieving herd immunity to COVID-19 is an impractical public health strategy, according to a new model developed by University of Georgia scientists. The study recently appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Controlling COVID-19 has presented public health policymakers with a conundrum:

How to prevent overwhelming their health care infrastructure, while avoiding major societal disruption? Debate has revolved around two proposed strategies. One school of thought aims for "suppression," eliminating transmission in communities through drastic social distancing measures, while another strategy is "mitigation," aiming to achieve herd immunity by permitting the infection of a sufficiently large proportion of the population while not exceeding health care capacity.

"The herd immunity concept is tantalizing because it spells the end of the threat of COVID-19," said Toby Brett, a postdoctoral associate at the Odum School of Ecology and the study's lead author. "However, because this approach aims to avoid disease elimination, it would need a constant adjustment of lockdown measures to ensure enough--but not too many--people are being infected at a particular point in time. Because of these challenges, the herd immunity strategy is actually more like attempting to walk a barely visible tightrope."

This study carried out by Brett and Pejman Rohani at the University of Georgia's Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases, investigates the suppression and mitigation approaches for controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

While recent studies have explored the impacts of both suppression and mitigation strategies in several countries, Brett and Rohani sought to determine if and how countries could achieve herd immunity without overburdening the health care system, and to define the control efforts that would be required to do so.

They developed an age-stratified disease transmission model to simulate SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the United Kingdom, with spread controlled by the self-isolation of symptomatic individuals and various levels of social distancing.

Their simulations found that in the absence of any control measures, the U.K. would experience as many as 410,000 deaths related to COVID-19, with 350,000 of those being from individuals aged 60-plus.

They found that using the suppression strategy, far fewer fatalities were predicted: 62,000 among individuals aged 60-plus and 43,000 among individuals under 60.

If self-isolation engagement is high (defined as at least 70% reduction in transmission), suppression can be achieved in two months regardless of social distancing measures, and potentially sooner should school, work and social gathering places close.

When examining strategies that seek to build herd immunity through mitigation, their model found that if social distancing is maintained at a fixed level, hospital capacity would need to greatly increase to prevent the health care system from being overwhelmed. To instead achieve herd immunity given currently available hospital resources, the U.K. would need to adjust levels of social distancing in real time to ensure that the number of sick individuals is equal to, but not beyond, hospital capacity. If the virus spreads too quickly, hospitals will be overwhelmed, but if it spreads too slowly, the epidemic will be suppressed without achieving herd immunity.

Brett and Rohani further noted that much is unknown about the nature, duration and effectiveness of COVID-19 immunity, and that their model assumes perfect long-lasting immunity. They cautioned that if immunity is not perfect, and there is a significant chance of reinfection, achieving herd immunity through widespread exposure is very unlikely.

"We recognize there remains much for us to learn about COVID-19 transmission and immunity, but believe that such modeling can be invaluable in so-called 'situational analyses,'" said Rohani. "Models allow stakeholders to think through the consequences of alternative courses of action."

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Pejman Rohani is the Regents' and UGA Athletic Association Professor in Ecology and Infectious Diseases in the Odum School of Ecology and department of infectious diseases, College of Veterinary Medicine. Tobias Brett is a postdoctoral research associate in the Rohani lab. Research reported in this news release was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health through a MIDAS (Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study) Program grant under award No. 5R01GM123007. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

As rich nations struggle, Africa's virus response is praised
Cara Anna20:10, Sep 22 2020

MULUGETA AYENE/AP
Director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention John Nkengasong.

At a lecture to peers this month, John Nkengasong showed images that once dogged Africa, with a magazine cover declaring it “The Hopeless Continent”.

Then he quoted Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah: “It is clear that we must find an African solution to our problems, and that this can only be found in African unity.”

The coronavirus pandemic has fractured global relationships. But as director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nkengasong has helped to steer Africa’s 54 countries into an alliance praised as responding better than some richer countries, including the United States.

A former US CDC official, he modelled Africa's version after his ex-employer.

Africa's groundbreaking vaccine agreement

African countries have signed a groundbreaking agreement aimed at securing millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses for the continent.

Nkengasong is pained to see the US agency struggle. In an interview with The Associated Press, he didn’t name US President Donald Trump but cited “factors we all know”.

While the US nears 200,000 Covid-19 deaths and the world approaches 1 million, Africa's surge has been levelling off. Its 1.4 million confirmed cases are far from the horrors predicted.

Antibody testing is expected to show many more infections, but most cases are asymptomatic. Just over 34,000 deaths are confirmed on the continent of 1.3 billion people.

BRIAN INGANGA/AP
Children run past a mural warning about coronavirus in Nairobi, Kenya.

“Africa is doing a lot of things right the rest of the world isn’t,” said Gayle Smith, a former administrator with the US Agency for International Development. She's watched in astonishment as Washington looks inward instead of leading the world. But Africa “is a great story and one that needs to be told”.

Nkengasong, whom the Gates Foundation honours Tuesday (local time) with its Global Goalkeeper Award as a “relentless proponent of global collaboration”, is the continent's most visible narrator. The Cameroon-born virologist insists that Africa can stand up to Covid-19 if given a fighting chance.

Early modelling assumed “a large number of Africans would just die,” Nkengasong said. The Africa CDC decided not to issue projections. “When I looked at the data and the assumptions, I wasn’t convinced,” he said.

READ MORE:
* Covid-19: CDC changes, then retracts, web posting on how virus spreads
* Covid-19: Airlines offer unlimited flight passes, but they've been known to backfire
* Covid-19: Eerily quiet Taj Mahal reopens for business
* Covid-19: US airline kicks off mother and 2-year-old son after he refuses to wear mask

THIRD WORLD USA 

Historical racial & ethnic health inequities account for disproportionate COVID-19 impact

AMERICAN THORACIC SOCIETY

Research News

 

IMAGE: HEALTH CARE DISPARITIES IN HISTORICALLY DISADVANTAGED COMMUNITIES LIKE THE NAVAJO NATION ARE WORSENED BY THE PANDEMIC. view more 

CREDIT: ATS

Sept. 22, 2020-- A new Viewpoint piece published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society examines the ways in which COVID-19 disproportionately impacts historically disadvantaged communities of color in the United States, and how baseline inequalities in our health system are amplified by the pandemic. The authors also discuss potential solutions.

In "COVID-19 Racial/Ethnic Inequities in Acute Care and Critical Illness Survivorship," Ann-Marcia Tukpah, MD, MPH, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and co-authors discuss how the legacies of structural racism, unequal resource investment and systems that perpetuate health disparities disproportionately impact individuals from the African American, Latinx, and Navajo Nation communities.

"We hope to draw attention to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on pre-existing health care disparities and inequities, with a focus on long-term care access," said Dr. Tukpah. "We also hope to spark discussion of how individual clinicians and health care systems can mitigate disparities, while recognizing the ultimate need for changes in health policy."

People in communities of color often have sub-par clinical care experiences, such as little to no access to specialty care physicians, and differences in rates of diagnostic testing. In many states, resources for COVID-19 treatment are allocated based on probability of survival.

These states rely on Crisis Standards of Care (CSCs) to prioritize treatment. "Some states with developed CSCs that consider comorbidities may not rely on validated comorbidity indices, such as the Charlson Comorbidity Index," the authors state. "Instead, vague language like 'major conditions with death likely within five years' are used. This sort of vague language opens the door to implicit biases playing a prominent role in decision making regarding resource allocation."

The broader question is whether basing care decisions on whether someone has comorbidities may lead to denial of lifesaving care to racial and ethnic minorities, as members of these groups may have these comorbid health conditions. The authors point out, "These groups tend to have poorer access to care and more comorbidities--such as Type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease-- at baseline. In addition, it is unclear whether a low chance of five-year survival should dictate whether certain resources are provided, as a person's number of accomplishments, amount of quality family time, and contributions to society can be significant during these five years. Ultimately, even our best prediction models do not have 100 percent accuracy. There will likely be no complete way to mitigate/eradicate disparities in triage and care allocation, but input by represented stakeholders and a process integrating equity and justice principles will be important."

Solutions to address these inequalities include implementing a racial or socioeconomic correction factor. Since priority scoring processes are subject to implicit bias, and may lack adequate representation of affected individuals, training is essential in order to ascertain ethical and equity values. Hospital triage and ethics committees need to communicate and monitor one another.

The authors state: "As pulmonologists and intensivists, applying an equity lens to our health care delivery, we are concerned by a COVID-19 cycle: In general, racial/ethnic minority patients have higher rates of public-facing occupations, suffer more from vulnerable conditions/chronic medical problems and have less insurance coverage. They also face higher rates of infection. If ethnic and racial minority patients present for acute care delivery and comorbidities are considered in their access to scarce resources, they may not be able to access potentially life-saving interventions. If they are then COVID-19 survivors, they face greater challenges to recovery, from logistical destination issues (access to long-term care) to symptom resolution or progression (because of the underlying chronic conditions or other patient-specific or care-related factors). Therefore, we want to continue to ask: How do we break this risk cycle?"

With concerns of a second surge of COVID-19 during the upcoming influenza season, preparing for both acute and post-acute/survivorship care in the most equitable and ethical manner is critical. "Given that about half of insurance coverage is through employer-based plans coupled with now high rates of unemployment, there are significant concerns about exacerbating already existing access disparities," said Dr. Tukpah. "Various public policies might be considered. Robust data should be collected about transfer rates for post-acute destinations and outcomes. Support for funding to expand available facilities (including specialized post-acute treatment facilities), provision of coverage mechanisms for unemployed patients (similar to the CARES Act condition for uninsured patients) and development of frameworks that recognize the challenges a surge can create for discharge destinations will be important initial considerations. There is already active discussion about possible state and federal acute care protections in the literature and we hope this will be extended to the post-acute setting."

She concluded, "Empowering people and communities (with information and tools) to engage in their own health care outcomes is also critical to how we deliver health care. Additionally, individual physicians can be advocates for improved care, quality and delivery -- from recognizing implicit bias to contributing to coordinated accessible care, to leading change within their health care systems."

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USA

Age restrictions for handguns make little difference in homicides

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Research News

 

In the United States, individual state laws barring 18- to 20-year-olds from buying or possessing a handgun make little difference in the rate of homicides involving a gun by people in that age group, a new University of Washington study has found.

"The central issue is that there's a very high degree of informal access to firearms, such as through family members or illicit channels," said Caitlin Moe, the study's lead author and a PhD student in epidemiology in the UW School of Public Health. "And we can't address that kind of availability with age limits."

The UW study compared homicide rates involving firearms in this age group between five states that increased the minimum age to buy or possess a firearm higher than the nationwide limits set by the 1994 federal law and the 32 states that did not.

The five states were Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Wyoming. With the exception of Wyoming, these states also increased the minimum age for possession of a handgun. (States that raised age limits before 1994 were not included. Washington was not included for this reason, and the initiative passed in 2018 increasing age limits became law after the study period, which was 1995 to 2017.)

In the study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, UW researchers found that rates of firearm homicides perpetrated by young adults aged 18 to 20 years old were not significantly different in the two groups of states.

Determining what laws do have an effect on homicide rates is paramount, she added, because of the roughly 275,000 homicides involving a firearm during the years studied nearly 36,000 were perpetrated by people in the study's age range. Because most handguns used in crimes by young adults are acquired from sources unlikely to be affected by age restrictions, "it is not surprising that we found no association" between state laws and homicides, the study said.

Also, Moe emphasized, firearms are the second leading cause of death of American youth, after motor vehicle crashes.

"It's incredibly important that we address this major cause of death in young people," said Moe, who is also affiliated with the Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center. And that solution will need to be a country-wide, unified effort to address the "de facto availability" of firearms, especially among youth.

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Co-authors include Miriam Haviland and Andrew Bowen, Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center; Ali Rowhani-Rahbar and Frederick Rivara, UW Department of Epidemiology, Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center and the UW Department of Pediatrics. This research was funded by the state of Washington.

For more information, contact Moe at cmoe2@uw.edu.

Archaeologists unearth 27 coffins at Egypt's Saqqara pyramid

SAMY MAGDY07:27, Sep 22 2020

Egypt finds dozens of unopened sarcophagi

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered 27 coffins at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, a burial ground that is also home to one of the world's oldest pyramids, the ministry of tourism and antiquities said.

Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed more than two dozen ancient coffins in a vast necropolis south of Cairo.

The sarcophagi have remained unopened since they were buried more than 2500 years ago near the famed Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, said Neveine el-Arif, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. She said 13 coffins were found earlier this month in a newly discovered, 11 metre-deep well, and that 14 more were found last week in another well.

Footage shared by the ministry showed colourful sarcophagi decorated with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, as well as other artefacts the ministry said were found in the two wells.

The Saqqara plateau hosted at least 11 pyramids, including the Step Pyramid, along with hundreds of tombs of ancient officials, ranging from the 1st Dynasty (2920 B.C.-2770 B.C.) to the Coptic period (395-642).

Archaeologists were still working to determine the origins of the coffins, el-Arif said, adding that more details and “secrets” would likely be announced next month.


MINISTRY OF TOURISM AND ANTIQUITIES/AP
Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, with one of more than two dozen ancient coffins.

In recent years, Egypt has heavily promoted new archaeological finds to international media and diplomats in an effort to revive its key tourism sector by attracting more tourists to the country.

El-Arif said further excavations were underway in the necropolis, and more coffins were expected to be found.

Last year, archaeologists found a cache at Saqqara that included hundreds of mummified animals, birds and crocodiles, as well as two mummified lion cubs.

The Saqqara plateau is part of the necropolis of Egypt’s ancient city of Memphis, that also include Abu Sir, Dahshur and Abu Ruwaysh and the famed Giza Pyramids. The ruins of Memphis were designed a Unesco World Heritage site in 1970s.

MINISTRY OF TOURISM AND ANTIQUITIES/AP
The coffins were found in the famed Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, south of Cairo, Egypt.

In October 2019, archaeologists unearthed 30 ancient wooden coffins with inscriptions and paintings in the southern city of Luxor.

The Luxor coffins were moved to be showcased at the Grand Egyptian Museum, which Egypt is building near the Giza Pyramids.

Egypt’s key tourism sector has suffered from the years of political turmoil and violence following the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, and the sector was dealt a further blow this year by the global coronavirus pandemic.

MINISTRY OF TOURISM AND ANTIQUITIES/AP
One of the artefacts found along with more than two dozen ancient coffins.

READ MORE:
* Egypt unveils mummies of lion cubs, cats and crocodiles in rare find
* Egypt opens 2 ancient pyramids for first time since 1960s
* Egypt says ancient cemetery found at Giza famed pyramids

AP

The REPUBLICAN head of an Oklahoma public health committee invited anti-vax doctors

 to talk with lawmakers about the coronavirus

LIKE SEN RAND PAUL ANOTHER QNON OPTHAMOGIST 

(EYE DOCTOR)

By Brianna Bailey | The Frontier

State Rep. Sean Roberts, R-Hominy, chairs the House of Representatives’ public health committee.

An ophthalmologist paraded a series of internet conspiracy theories and unproven health claims before state lawmakers at a hearing at the Oklahoma Capitol this week — including that masks are ineffective at slowing the spread of the virus and that people of color need more vitamin D in their diets to prevent them from contracting COVID-19.

Instead of an epidemiologist or virologist, State Rep. Sean Roberts, R-Hominy, who chairs the House of Representatives’ public health committee, invited two doctors who are vocal supporters of the anti-vaccine movement to speak at an informational hearing on Oklahoma’s response to the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday.

Roberts did not return phone calls to his office on Thursday.

“Medical masks won’t work— there’s no sense in using them,” Tulsa ophthalmologist and blogger Dr. Jim Meehan told state lawmakers at the hearing.

The latest science endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control indicates that wearing face mask helps prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Meehan hosted a press conference in which a group of business owners announced a lawsuit against Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum, the Tulsa Department of Health, Tulsa Health Department Executive Director Bruce Dart and the entire Tulsa City Council over a mask mandate that was enacted this summer.

The lawsuit asked the court to vacate the city’s mask mandate, claiming that “face coverings cause an oxygen deficient atmosphere.”

“Forcing people to work, live, shop, eat and visit in an environment where the oxygen level falls below 19.5% has been proven to cause irreparable physiological damage to the body of humans,” the plaintiffs wrote in the lawsuit.

Health experts say that fears of oxygen deprivation or increased risk of hypoxia due carbon dioxide is a myth.

Meehan is a licensed medical doctor who operates in Tulsa. His Oklahoma Medical Board profile lists his specialties as general preventive medicine, nutrition and addiction medicine. He often preaches against vaccines on and wearing face masks on Twitter.

In his Twitter bio, Meehan lists hashtags for “Medical Freedom,” a popular tag for the anti-vaccine movement, and for QAnon, a far-right fringe conspiracy that believes a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles runs a child sex-trafficking ring across the world that also schemes against President Donald Trump. Some members of QAnon believe Trump is secretly sending them coded messages on various websites to update them.

In 2019, the FBI described QAnon as a domestic terror threat.

At one point in the hearing, Meehan said that an overabundance of skin pigment prevents the sun from killing the coronavirus inside the bodies of people of color and they should take more vitamins to keep from getting sick. There is no scientific evidence for that claim.

Another opthamologist, Dr. Chad Chamberlain, who is an outspoken supporter of the anti-vaccine group Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights, was more measured in his remarks to the committee, but still downplayed the public health threat of the virus.

Chamberlain told state lawmakers that the flu was a bigger health risk for young people than COVID-19. Oklahoma had 85 deaths attributed to the flu during the 2019-2020 season. As of Thursday, 930 Oklahomans have died of COVID-19 this year.

Chamberlain also spoke against closing schools to slow the spread of the virus, claiming that deaths stemming from the long-term effects of social isolation, child abuse and neglect for children kept out of school were bigger public health threats.

“We have to recognize we are killing the children by keeping them out,” he said.

Chamberlain told state lawmakers he supports a COVID-19 vaccine for older people with a higher risk of of dying of COVID-19, but at another public health committee at the state capitol last year, Chamberlain spoke out against mandatory vaccinations.

Oklahoma has the fifth highest rate of COVID-19 transmission in the nation, according to the most recent report from the White House Coronavirus Task Force. The report listed Oklahoma red zone for new cases of COVID-19, indicating more than 100 new cases per 100,000 population last week. The report also recommended Oklahoma institute a statewide mandate on wearing masks in public and review school learning options in areas with ongoing high levels of virus transmission.

On Thursday, Gov. Kevin Stitt criticized the use by reporters of the White House Coronavirus Task Force report hosted on the state’s COVID-19 website, instead urging the public to rely on the John’s Hopkins report. That report lists the state’s positivity rate as being 8.58 percent while the White House report lists Oklahoma’s positivity rate at a flat 10 percent.

The Frontier is a nonprofit corporation operated by The Frontier Media Group Inc.

The Frontier: Oklahoma’s Teacher of the Year pleaded for patience in return to school. She was booed.
By Ben Felder | The Frontier


Jena Nelson is the 2020 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year.

One after another, parents told the Deer Creek school board during a meeting Monday evening they wanted their children back in school five days a week as quickly as possible. Digital learning had caused grades to slip, social skills were being neglected and the COVID-19 risk to students was minimal, parents claimed.

Also addressing the board was Jena Nelson, a Deer Creek Middle School teacher and Oklahoma’s current teacher of the year, who implored the board not to make a hasty decision and to keep student and teacher safety in mind when deciding when to return to full in-person learning.

“We all want the same thing, we want our kids back in school with teachers who love them,” Nelson said. “But we cannot rush to make decisions on our emotions … or tried within the court of Facebook law.”

As Nelson returned to her seat, several parents in the audience booed and shouted at her.

School districts across Oklahoma continue to weight decisions about in-person learning as the state’s COVID-19 positivity rate remains one of the highest in the nation.

School administrators are also feeling increasing pressure from parents to fully reopen schools and allow sports teams to practice and play as normal.

In Edmond, where students attend school in-person just two days a week, parents gathered at the district administration building last week to protest against the blended learning model and to urge administrators to no longer require masks.

“Five days a week, no masks,” they shouted as they marched around the building.

Like Edmond, Deer Creek students have been in classrooms just two days a week. The board voted Monday to continue with the current plan after some of its members engaged in arguments with parents in the crowd.

In the rural Wynnewood school district, superintendent Tim Simpson recently apologized for ordering the quarantine of the high school softball team after parents complained.

I “took the decision out of our parents’ hands,” Simpson wrote on the district’s Facebook page.

The district originally told parents to make their own decisions on whether to send a child to school if they had been in contact with a person who tested positive.

But after the state Department of Education’s general counsel issued a letter to the district disputing that policy Wynnewood now requires students to quarantine after contact with a person with a known case of COVID-19.

At this week’s Deer Creek school board meeting, some parents argued children have a low risk of contracting the virus or developing severe symptoms.  TRUMP TALKING POINTS

Children under the age of 17 make up 10 percent of all confirmed cases nationally, according to data compiled by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In Oklahoma, children make up 11.3 percent of all cases.

“This data … underscores the urgent need to control the virus in our communities before our schools and businesses can safely reopen,” said Dr. Savannah Stump, a pediatrician, parent of two Deer Creek students and member of the Oklahoma State Medical Association’s COVID-19 task force.

Nelson, the state teacher of the year, said more needs to be considered than just he risk to students.

“Even if it’s true that kids have a lower risk they are still taught by adults,” Nelson told The Frontier. “Look at the median age for teachers (in Oklahoma), they are on the upper end. And then you start adding in teachers with underlying health issues and we have a big risk.”

Nelson worries a rush to return could result in a loss of many teachers at a time when the need for more educators is growing.

The state Board of Education has already approved 1,285 emergency teaching certificates this school year, more than double the number requested by school districts at this point last school year.

More than 200 school districts have reported cases of COVID-19, according to KOSU, which is tracking cases in public schools.

Health officials said the reopening of schools has contributed to the state’s recent rise.

“It’s mostly due to school reopening, universities are the main factor, we’ve also had some outbreaks in different congregate facilities,” like prisons, said interim Health Commissioner Lance Frye.

The Frontier is a nonprofit corporation operated by The Frontier Media Group Inc.

STUDENTS WANT CHOICE: Sequoyah High School students protest virtual learning only; want options
By Grant D. Crawford gcrawford@tahlequahdailypress.com 

Grant D. Crawford | Daily Press
Sequoyah High School students protesting outside of the Cherokee Nation W.W. Keeler Complex Thursday were met by former tribal councilor David Walkingstick, far right.

Grant D. Crawford | Daily Press
Ryly Ziese helped organize a protest outside of the Cherokee Nation W.W. Keeler Complex Thursday.

Grant D. Crawford | Daily Press

A group of Sequoyah High School students protested their lack of choice to attend class in-person outside of the Cherokee Nation W.W. Keeler Complex Thursday.

A group of Sequoyah High School students stood outside of the Cherokee Nation W.W. Keeler Complex Thursday morning to protest the tribe's decision to close the school doors and continue with curriculum through virtual learning.

While area public schools have remained open, allowing students to choose whether to attend class in-person or online, Sequoyah High School decided to transition all of its students to virtual classes after two weeks of having them on campus. Equipped with signs, the protesters voiced their displeasure with not being given the option whether to attend class in-person. They gained support from District 3 Tribal Councilor Wes Nofire, who said they should have the same opportunities as public school students.

"They're the only school that's virtual only and a lot of students have already transferred out," said Nofire. "Some of those students transferred out with Fs, because virtual learning was not working and they were not getting another option to come in and learn."

As of Wednesday, the Cherokee Nation surpassed 2,000 positive COVID-19 cases within CN Health Services, and there are currently more than 400 active cases. The tribe has ordered more personal protective equipment, and touchless sinks, toilets and water fountains for when students can return to Sequoyah. However, Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., who commended the students for exercising their First Amendment rights to assemble, said that won't occur until the tribe sees improvement in coronavirus numbers.

"The decision, as it always is with our decision at Cherokee Nation in terms of COVID response, is based on medical science, facts, and compassion," said Hoskin. "The spread of the virus is and has been too dangerous to gather in school buildings, when we have the technology to do distanced learning. We have an opportunity to protect not only the kids, but the teachers and the staff; and not only the kids, the teachers and the staff, but those Cherokee elders that live in the communities where these kids call home."

While the group of students claimed they are taking the ongoing pandemic seriously, they also pointed to the surrounding schools that have students returning to class. Ryly Ziese, a senior at SHS, said they understood that not all people want to go back to school, but if they were given a choice, she thinks with certain precautions in place it could be done with minimal concerns.

"A lot of kids that are straight-A kids are failing because of the virtual stuff," she said. "Most teachers aren't prepared for virtual, so they don't know how to handle it. It's hurting the kids a lot more than people think, and we just want the chief to know that and give us the choice to go back to school."

For seniors, 2020-2021 is the last year to participate in extracurricular activities. Some students hope to receive athletic scholarships, which is difficult to do when there are no sports seasons to compete in. Asa Robbins, SHS senior, said she hopes to be able to compete in track this year, but wanted to clarify that their protest was not about getting students back on the field.

"A lot of people are thinking we're over here moaning about not getting to play sports, and that's not the scenario," said Robbins. "Right now we're focused on education first and sports second, because we have kids failing."

Robbins said she's heard of maybe 50 students who have already transferred out of Sequoyah, and that it seems like every day she has to tell a fellow classmate "best of luck."

Hoskin said he sympathizes with the students and wishes they could return to class, adding that it's regrettable when any student leaves SHS. However, he also said the number of transfers will not influence the tribe's decision when it comes to reopening the school, but will rather be dictated by the "science of the pandemic."

"Given the spread, we're not coming back anytime soon," he said.

"There would have to be a dramatic change in the statistics on COVID spread in our communities. I visit all the time with our public health staff and our other expert advisors to get input, but ultimately I have to do what I think is best to protect the well-being of the students and the communities where they live."

OF GRAVE IMPORTANCE
Final resting place of Sequoyah never found, but his impact on Cherokee culture remains

By Grant D. Crawford 
Sep 23, 2020

Hunter Hodson examines the statue of Sequoyah in Northeastern State University's Centennial Plaza.


Among the pieces at the Cherokee Nation History Museum is a lithographic print of a painting by American artist Charles Bird King done while Sequoyah was in Washington, D.C., on Cherokee delegation business.

Grant Crawford

The final resting place of perhaps the most famous Cherokee has never been officially confirmed, but the impact he made on Cherokee culture is still in full effect today.

Best known for his creation of the Cherokee syllabary, Sequoyah was also considered a statesman and diplomat of the Cherokee Nation. His gravesite has never been formally identified, although people in the past have claimed to have found his remains. What was documented is his trip to Mexico, from which he never returned.

In the summer of 1842, Sequoyah and his son, Teesy, along with a group of Cherokees ventured to Mexico in search of Cherokees they believed had migrated that far south. According to a Cherokee man, The Worm, and a letter written to the Red River Trading Post from the Cherokees who were living in Mexico, Sequoyah died in the summer of 1843.


"I can't really guess what was on his mind leading up to leaving for Mexico, but obviously he felt passionate about finding those Cherokees who had migrated so far away from the rest of us," said Krystan Moser, cultural collections and exhibit manager for Cherokee Nation Cultural Tourism. "According to the account, he sought to bring them back and to unite them with the rest of the tribe. At least that's what we know based off the documentation we have."

It is believed that Sequoyah, also known by his English name George Guess, was buried somewhere near San Fernando Valley, but that has never been confirmed. The statement made by The Worm and the letter from the Cherokees differed in that regard. But by both accounts, it is understood the syllabary creator died after becoming ill.

"One thing to keep in mind, because we don't know exactly when he was born, he was between the ages of 70 and 80 when he made this trip," said Moser. "Both accounts state that he died of sickness and that he was buried in an unmarked grave."

News of Sequoyah's death didn't reached the Cherokee Nation until 1845, two years after. However, because nobody had heard from him in at least a year, it was believed that he died or that something happened preventing him from returning. So in 1843, the Cherokee Nation National Council passed two laws that benefited his family.

"They had put all of the salt operations into the Cherokee Nation's names, except for Sequoyah's," said Moser. "So his would still be his family's operation to generate income. Also, they granted a literary pension that would be issued to him, or in the event of his death, it would go to his wife Sally."

Former Principal Chief J.B. Milam, the first chief to be appointed by a U.S. president, funded an expedition in 1938 to search for his gravesite. A gravesite was found in Coahuila, Mexico, but it could not be determined to be the burial place of Sequoyah.


In an article published Oct. 2, 1952, in the Tahlequah Star-Citizen, former Oklahoma Gov. Johnston Murray announced that the "tomb of Sequoyah, the greatest of all American Indians, had been found by Mr. and Mrs. Omer L. Morgan, in Mexico, and that the remains may soon be returned to Oklahoma for re-burial." The article never included where the couple claims to have found the remains, aside from it being a Cherokee settlement in Mexico, but it went on to discuss where Sequoyah's bones would be returned to, including that Mr. Morgan and other Cherokees felt the proper place would be the courthouse square in Tahlequah.

According to The Oklahoman, in 2001, a man by the name of Charles Rogers of Brownsville, Texas, believed he had discovered the site inside a cave near the former village of Sara Rosa in northern Mexico. According to the article, he had no proof and past searches had been fruitless.

While many explorers have tried to find Sequoyah's resting place, it doesn't appear that any ever have - at least not officially. It is likely any of the belongings he would have had on his person would have decayed by now, leaving only bones. And while "the greatest of all Cherokee mysteries" may never truly be solved, the work he left behind forged the way for years of growth among the Cherokee Nation tribe.

What many consider to be his largest contribution to the Cherokee tribe, the creation of the Cherokee syllabary, was actually considered to be witchcraft before it was accepted.

"He and his daughter were put on trial for witchcraft," said Moser. "You have these talking leaves, something that the Cherokee people are not accustomed to seeing."

After Cherokees became convinced that it was indeed not witchcraft, the literacy rate among Cherokees exploded within a short amount of time, said Moser.

Sequoyah fought for the United States in the War of 1812, alongside John Ross, Andrew Jackson, and Sam Houston in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. A war hero, he was honorably discharged and then later became a diplomat. Sequoyah moved west before the Trail of Tears, during the same period as the Old Settlers. After the Trail of Tears, when there was two factions of Cherokees residing in Indian Territory, he helped broker peace and unification between the two.

"So there was a little bit of unrest there, as you had these two opposing groups," said Moser. "He was one of the people who signed what is called the Act of Union in 1839, which unified the Cherokee Nation - the eastern Cherokees and the western Cherokees - under one name."