Charleston Currents

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FOCUS: Start printing masks now

By Janet Segal, special to Charleston Currents | Here’s an idea: Local governments and the state — the county, its libraries, technical colleges and the like — should put idle 3-D printers to use now to print masks to keep our medical workers safe.

I am self-quarantining at home with two sewing machines, fabric, a pattern from the internet and I have been sewing facemasks.

According to my nursing friends, these will be helpful for elderly patients and their caregivers and for people outside the home who must go shopping. But they will fall apart after multiple washings. They are well-made but not designed for long-term use.

There are, however, masks that can stand up to repeated sterilizing — those made of plastic on 3-D printers.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 03/30/2020 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news, My Turn

BRACK: Issue stay-at-home order now, governor

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Gov. Henry McMaster must issue a tough stay-in-place order now to keep coronavirus from spreading more in South Carolina. He can’t wait any longer.

Such an order will cause huge economic ripples throughout the state’s economy. But school isn’t open for another month. More people are getting sick. If we don’t nip this mess in the bud as much as possible now, the damage will be far, far worse when he is forced to issue an order later.

by Andy Brack · 03/30/2020 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

KNAPP: S.C. economy will survive if small businesses survive

By Frank Knapp, special to Charleston Currents | The City of Charleston has implemented a shelter-in-place order. Columbia has done the same. There are even calls for Gov. Henry McMaster to do so for all of South Carolina.

As a result of all governments’ actions and instructions to citizens for containing COVID-19 from spreading, small businesses are in crisis.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 03/30/2020 · Comments are Disabled · My Turn, Views

BRACK: New normal involves shared sacrifice for common good

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | For the record, I didn’t like the old normal. Too much of substandard education, social injustice, unbalanced tax structure and vitriolic politics.

You can imagine what I think of this new normal, coronavirus. I dislike it more. People scared. Toilet paper hoarded. Businesses cratering. Politics, well that’s still vitriolic.

But let’s try to look for a silver lining.

by Andy Brack · 03/23/2020 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

FOCUS: Management of an epidemic requires surveillance monitoring

By Fred Palm, contributing editor | Our South Carolina emergency plan is an all-event skeleton. Depending upon the particular threat, customization to the plan is made. Even in the overall skeleton plan, any epidemic event is a second thought found in an appendix (14-1) to the general model for action. In these plans, there is no pandemic appendix, so with COVID-19, we presumptively start as if the virus is an infection.

An epidemic requires a swift model that leaps ahead of the presenting of requests for medical services. State-level authorizations and equipment requests passed up the line will not be delivered in time. In fact, little time exists if an infection doubles every five days.

Social science surveys estimate the size of something, the incidence in the population. In this election season, for example, we are bombarded with polling data about what percentage of voters, likely Republicans or Democrats, are expected to behave in a particular way.

by Fred Palm · 03/16/2020 · Comments are Disabled · Common Good, Focus

A “colored” entrance to a Mississippi theater, 1939. Wikipedia

BRACK: Renew commitment to protecting civil rights of all Americans

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The forced segregation that stained the American South isn’t as far in the past as you may think.

A century ago when your great grandparents were toddlers or were raising their own, lynchings were commonplace. It wasn’t until after World War II that an American president, Harry Truman, ended segregation in the armed forces.

by Andy Brack · 03/16/2020 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

BRACK: Keep calm and wash your hands

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The flu that you prepare for every winter kills about 100 South Carolinians every year, according to state health data.

To make sure you don’t get it, you do common-sense things: Get a flu shot, wash your hands more, cover your mouth or nose when you cough or sneeze, and stay at home when you’re sick.

by Andy Brack · 03/09/2020 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views

BRACK: Do something to reduce frenzy at presidential debates

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Halfway through the nationally-aired South Carolina presidential debate on Feb. 25, the television got turned off. Too much bickering. Too little substance. Too much crosstalk.

There’s got to be a better way for voters to get information than big spectacles where candidates have 75 seconds to answer direct questions and challengers can pipe in for only a few seconds. More serious discussion is needed.

by Andy Brack · 03/02/2020 · 1 comment · Andy Brack, Views

Public domain caricature via Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0 (CC BY 2.0)

BRACK: Graham to get mute button for 6 months

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Now is the perfect time to go on a media diet of one of our U.S. senators, Lindsey Graham.

Graham’s sycophantic bad karma isn’t needed these days. For the next six months, I’m taking a vacation from Graham and his increasingly irrelevant rhetoric.

by Andy Brack · 02/23/2020 · 2 comments · Andy Brack, Views

BRACK: Welcome to South Carolina

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | For the presidential candidates, staffers, reporters and hangers-on starting to descend like locusts into South Carolina for its national debate and the Feb. 29 presidential primary, remember what native son James L. Pettigru wrote just after the state seceded in December 1860:

“South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.”

In a lot of ways, that one sentence still rings true.

by Andy Brack · 02/17/2020 · Comments are Disabled · Andy Brack, Views