Going FedEx... and the day football (soccer) died
Did you know there is a global garden gnome shortage?
Between February 3rd of this year and September 16th of last, there were no school shootings.
Why? Because the schools were closed and on a different kind of lockdown.
Education Week is tracking school shootings and the statistics are chilling.
Elsewhere in the world (according to Wikipedia), a comparison looks something like this:
Germany: eight shootings since 1913
Lithuania: one in 1925
Sweden: one in 1961
United Kingdom: three since 1967 and none after the 1996 massacre (Dunblane massacre)
Finland: three since 1989
The Netherlands: two, in 1999 and 2004
Denmark: one in 1994
Greece: one in 2009
Norway: one in 2009 (no deaths)
Hungary: one in 2009
France: two, one in 2012 and one in 2017
Estonia: one in 2014
Spain: one in 2015
Russia: three since 2014
Crimea: one in 2018
Poland: one in 2019 (no deaths)
And?
Still not getting it: ok, so did shootings go down during lockdown or not?
No they didn’t - per the NYTimes: ‘the shootings never stopped during the coronavirus pandemic, they just became less public, researchers say.’
President Biden has called it a ‘national embarrassment’; google ‘is gun crime a disease’ and you get some incredibly good articles- this quote stood out for me:
“Gun violence is America’s most preventable disease. I say that because it’s almost entirely preventable and the numbers of people affected are so high.”
Judy Schaechter, MD, MBA
University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine
The last time I wrote about gun violence in America a reader asked me, so, what’s the solution. I said, ‘don’t sell guns’. Then comes the second amendment, understandable for those needing to hunt or shoot bears who are coming for their honey, but really, why do we need over 300 million guns in the USA?
Instead of discussing the banning of guns, perhaps let’s look to see if A) it is a disease, and B) can we cure it.
The Association of American Medical Colleges (AMCC) thinks we can.
‘The consensus among top medical organizations is that gun violence is a public health epidemic, and doctors and other health professionals could and should be on the frontlines to prevent it. To that end, the AAMC was one of more than 40 medical and injury prevention organizations that met in February 2019 at the American College of Surgeon’s Medical Summit on Firearm Injury Prevention to develop a comprehensive roadmap for tackling gun violence using a public health approach.’
America’s most preventable disease
‘While they dominate the news headlines, mass shootings are only a fraction of the gun violence problem. Since 1966, 1,196 people have died in mass shooting incidents, including 190 children. The shootings in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and Gilroy, California, are just the latest of these public tragedies.
Far more common are firearms-related deaths and injuries. In 2019 alone, 8,793 people died and 17,479 injured, according to Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks all incidents of gun-related violence in the United States. In 2018, there were 14,769 deaths and 28,236 injuries due to gun violence.
These figures strikingly do not include the 22,000 annual deaths due to suicide. And access to firearms makes suicide attempts that much more deadly. A study led by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that suicide attempts with a gun are 42% more effective than suicides by any other means, including drug overdoses.’
Wow.
So here we are.
In 2012, Dr Schaechter led a coalition against the Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act in Florida, which banned doctors from asking patients about the presence of guns in their homes. That law was eventually overturned. It is a medical necessity to ask patients about access to guns in the hope of preventing suicide and mass shootings.
Schaechter regularly speaks to mostly second-year classes in medical school about gun safety. Among other issues, she talks to students about the epidemiology of bullet wounds and what socio-economic factors are involved in gun violence.
The best part about this research is that it’s trying not to get into politics:
In the Family Medicine department at McGovern Medical School Rebecca Lunstroth, JD, MA, along with a student, developed an elective course called Gun Violence and Physicians: What You Need to Know. The course addresses mental health, advocacy, public health, and conversations students and doctors might have inside the clinic with patients about safe storage.
“Our goal is for participants to walk away from this class understanding the large-scale extent of the problem, the mental impact on both the patient and the physician, what happens when a bullet hits a body, how can you use your voice as a physician to make a difference, and how to talk to your patients about guns,” the course description states. “We understand that this is an issue where people have strong opinions and our goal is to avoid wading into the political debate regarding firearms.”
Talking of strong opinions… here’s what the future King of England (and Aston Villa fan) had to say about the Super (soccer) League.
Writing on the official Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Twitter account, William said:
“Now, more than ever, we must protect the entire football community - from the top level to the grassroots - and the values of competition and fairness at its core.
“I share the concerns of fans about the proposed Super League and the damage it risks causing to the game we love."
The idea of breaking up the Premier League, with its 6 top teams to join 3 teams from Spain and 3 from Italy, is all about money and nothing to do with the game itself, that brings so much joy to so many people. Say it isn’t so.
And finally… I know how to keep an audience engaged.
I leave you with this:
per the BBC
‘Supply chain issues and the popularity of garden centres during lockdown are causing a shortage of garden gnomes.
The ornaments are in short supply with raw materials hard to come by and the recent blockage of the Suez Canal contributing to the national shortage.
Ian Byrne, assistant manager of Highfield Garden World in Whitminster, said there had been a "massive upswing" in the sales of garden gnomes.
"We haven't seen a gnome in six months now unfortunately," he said.