St. Thomas community members gathered at John Monahan Plaza Tuesday afternoon to denounce white supremacy and call for a culture of accountability and respect after signs referencing a known white supremacist group were placed on campus.
The event, organized by multicultural groups on campus, prompted tears and emotional accounts as students, faculty and administrators shared and reflected on racial injustice on campus.
Dougherty Family College student Kairo Cardenas Lazos noted, however, that the crowd consisted mostly of people of color, who are being affected by white supremacy and racism.
Students at Tuesday’s gathering demanded more action by community members.
Amid all the focus on COVID-19 vaccinations, U.S. health experts have another plea: Don’t skip your flu shot.
Flu cases have dropped to historically low levels during the pandemic, but with U.S. schools and businesses reopened, international travel resuming and far less masking this fall, the flu could make a comeback.
COVID-19 restrictions including masking and staying home — especially for children, who are flu’s biggest spreaders — clearly had a side benefit of tamping down influenza and other respiratory bugs.
However, after 18 months of little influenza exposure, “we probably as a population don’t have as much immunity against this virus as we typically might,” said flu specialist Richard Webby of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.
As soon as masks started to come off, the U.S. experienced an unusual summer surge of children hospitalized with a different respiratory virus, named RSV, that usually strikes in the winter. That’s a worrying sign of what to expect if the flu returns.
The CDC encourages people to get their vaccine by the end of October. Doctors’ offices, retail pharmacies and local health departments have millions of doses in hand.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose for the third straight week, a sign that the highly contagious delta variant may be slowing a recovery in the job market.
Claims rose unexpectedly by 11,000 last week to 362,000, the Labor Department said Thursday, though economists had been expecting claims to go in the opposite direction.
Hiring, which has averaged more than 585,000 jobs a month this year, slowed to just 235,000 in August as the delta variant disrupted the recovery. Restaurants and bars cut nearly 42,000 jobs last month, the first drop this year.
Hiring is expected to pick up to more than 560,000 this month; the Labor Department issues the September jobs report next week.
Mia Laube can be reached at mia.laube@stthomas.edu.