In preparing for the fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Upper Valley, there is a need for an expanded, integrated, comprehensive Emergency Operations Center and a series of emergency practice drills. This EOC and the drills should include the whole Upper Valley.
Fortunately, we have an excellent EOC, run by the Lebanon Fire Department and under command of the capable fire chief. This makes the best sense. However, depending on the size of the biothreat and its impact on essential support functions, the EOC may need additional support and the involvement of all stakeholders to prepare for the fifth wave of infection.
We should consider all of the 15 essential support functions as described in the National Response Framework and Biological Incident Annex — transportation, communications, housing, mass care and so on — along with local and state government plans and private plans, along with a knowledge of the pandemic plans that have been released by the White House over the past two years.
The pandemic is a health care issue and is a responsibility of state governments, not the federal government. The federal government plays a key support function, but it is not the leading agency. Hopefully, we can continue to get support from the federal government, such as the recent $22.5 million in federal pandemic relief funding.
We can see the pandemic surging in Europe, and it often moves across the ocean to us. We need increased coordination and improved, integrated command-and-control equipment and infrastructure, along with advanced simulation capabilities and bandwidth and the authority to act across Vermont and New Hampshire borders with support from both governors.
It is time to prepare for the fifth wave of the pandemic in the Upper Valley.
JOSEPH M. ROSEN
Lyme
The writer is a professor of surgery and radiology at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the Geisel School of Medicine, a staff physician at the White River Junction VA Medical Center and an adjunct professor of engineering at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. The views expressed here are his own.
The 2022 American Legion Oratorical Competition is offering more than $200,000 in scholarship awards for high school students under the age of 20.
The 2022 National Finals are scheduled for April 22-24 in Indianapolis. The national contest winner is awarded a $25,000 scholarship. Second place takes home $22,500 and third gets $20,000. Each department (state) winner who participates in the national contest’s first round receives a $2,000 scholarship. Those who advance past the first round receive an additional $2,000 scholarship. These scholarships can be used at any college or university in the United States.
Competition begins at the post level. Winners advance to a district level, then a state competition. Each post winner will receive a scholarship for advancing to the district level. Each district awards up to $300 for participants and each district winner then moves to the New Hampshire state competition, which will be held on Feb. 26, at 9 a.m., at St. Anselm’s College. New Hampshire awards $2,500 to the first-place winner, who will then go to the national competition. Second place wins $750, and $500 for third.
Speaking subjects must be on some aspect of the U.S. Constitution, with some emphasis on the duties and obligations of citizens to our government. Speeches are eight to 10 minutes long; additionally, a three- to five-minute speech on an assigned topic is also part of the contest.
Guyer-Carignan Post 22 here in Lebanon strongly encourages any high school student to participate in the 2022 contest. This contest is open to any high school student from Hanover, Lebanon, Mascoma and Kimball Union Academy, as well as approved home-school students.
The Guyer-Carignan Post 22 contest takes place on Feb. 5, at 9 a.m., at the Soldiers Memorial Building in Lebanon. If interested, parents or students should contact their English, guidance or social studies teacher at their school, or call Post 22 at 603-448-3429.
LARRY GREENWOOD
Lebanon
The writer is oratorical chairman for American Legion Guyer-Carignan Post 22.
I hate being a doomsayer, but it will be difficult to avoid a debacle in 2022 or 2024 if Donald Trump is in ascendance. Trump himself has exclaimed that “there is no way (Democrats) win elections without cheating. There’s no way.” If the Democrats win, he expects his base to give “their sweat, their blood and even their very lives,” given the fact that “We have no choice. We have to fight.”
How do we alert citizens to the fact that the threat to democracy is real? Americans will need clear examples of how our democratic system is being subverted. It’s hard to imagine any clearer signs of danger than the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Other warnings are clear as well. Some examples:
■ Political divisiveness obstructs efforts to deal with deep-set issues in our country. As New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks observes: “Different American regions and subcultures now see reality through nonoverlapping lenses. They make meaning in radically different ways.” Common ground is hard to find; the other side is “the enemy.”
■ Increasing income disparities block opportunities for the economically disadvantaged to attain a dignified standard of living, creating deep discontent.
■ Mistrust of the media and the dissemination of disinformation, which spreads easily on the internet. Rather than encouraging deliberation, mass media undermines it by creating “bubbles” and “echo chambers” in which citizens see only those opinions they already embrace. Fake news and disinformation campaigns precipitate polarization and contentiousness and are especially problematic in democratic systems.
■ The continued ascendance of a would-be dictator, Trump, reflects a cult of personality. The effort of Trump loyalists, meeting at the Willard Hotel to come up with a scheme to overturn the will of the voters, is frightful.
Most vital to our democracy is to ensure safe and fair elections and to protect election workers, same-day registration and early voting. Citizens must be committed to vote. We especially need to guard against the notion that, “if it’s never happened here, it never will.”
BOB SCOBIE
West Lebanon