My latest liherald.com editorial….

“Justice for George Floyd came swiftly in New York.”

So began our June 18-24 editorial last year. We were referring to a 10-bill raft of legislation that Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police in Minneapolis.

Among several measures, the legislation:

• Repealed the state’s 1976 50-a statute, which shielded police officers’ disciplinary records from public view. (In the Floyd case, the Minneapolis police officer who killed him, Derek Chauvin, had 18 disciplinary infractions on his record.)

• Banned police from using chokeholds.

• Required state troopers to wear body cameras.

Cuomo also signed an executive order requiring local police departments to develop community-oriented policing plans that were formulated with public input. Plans had to be submitted to the state by this April. The governor gave the people a role in determining how they would be policed.

There was much talk on the right of how such measures would impede police work and endanger officers. Quite the opposite, the legislation has only increased police transparency, slowly but surely building public trust. Tens of thousands of good police officers who do their jobs without incident had no problem with the state’s reform package.

Improving police relations in communities of color could take years, if not decades. The sense of unease and fear that too many Black people feel toward police had been brewing since the creation of the nation’s first police department in New York City in 1844. It will take time to heal. New York state is, however, headed on the right path.

To read the full editorial, click here.

My latest liherald.com column looks at the amazing river otter. Here goes:

By Scott Brinton

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau

Last Nov. 8, I was kayaking in Emory Creek in Freeport, just north of the Narrows, when I spotted what I thought was a chunk of garbage floating in the waterway and paddled over to collect it. I was headed north, back to the Albany Avenue boat ramp, after two hours on the water. Suddenly the garbage jerked, as if it were alive. 

“What the . . .?” I blurted out. Were my eyes deceiving me?

As I approached, I realized it wasn’t garbage, but a river otter, the first one I’d ever seen in the wild — or anywhere. I slowed my paddling, hoping to sneak up close enough for a quick photo. I stroked all of three times when the otter lifted its head slightly and dived headlong underwater, its back forming a perfect U as it plunged, like some mythical sea serpent of yore. I waited a few minutes to see if it might resurface, but it vanished.

I came away feeling grateful to have seen this beautiful creature, if only momentarily. River otters are indeed rare on Long Island. They once numbered in the hundreds of thousands on the East Coast, but were hunted mercilessly from the 1600s through the early 1900s for their sleek fur, the densest of any mammal in the animal kingdom. When Europeans first settled in North America, otters inhabited every waterway on the continent, according to Mike  Bottini, a wildlife biologist with the nonprofit, Islip-based Seatuck Environmental Association. By the 20th century, their numbers had dwindled to a few thousand, scattered in small, out-of-sight colonies. 

Seatuck teamed up with the nonprofit Peconic Land Trust on May 20 to present a webinar on “The Re-wilding of Long Island,” about how any number of creatures — including river otters — are making a comeback thanks to conservation programs, so I had to tune in. In addition to Bottini, it featured Emily Hall, Seatuck’s conservation policy advocate; Kelly Hamilton, a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation wildlife biologist; and Enrico Nardone, Seatuck’s executive director. Arielle Santos, its wildlife conservation policy program coordinator, moderated.

To read the entire column, click here.

Please, please, please, get vaccinated. Here’s my latest LIHerald.com column:

By Scott A. Brinton

As I made my way along Bay Parkway, headed to Jones Beach Field 3 on a recent Wednesday, I more than half-expected the worst. I anticipated a mile-long line and a five-hour wait, during which I would be spoken to brusquely by exhausted state government employees. At the end of it all, I would have a needle stuck in my arm.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived at Field 3 at 7:50 a.m. for an 8:00 appointment, and there was no line. A National Guardsman, dressed in olive green fatigues with an olive green mask, met me at the gate, asked whether I had an appointment and waved me through to a check-in post, where I showed my ID.

That was it. I was in. No hours spent idling in line. I was about to receive the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, is 95 percent effective in preventing Covid-19.

As it turned out, the vaccination experience was nothing like what I’d half-expected. I marveled at the assembly-line efficiency with which doses were administered by friendly government employees. Lines of orange cones led me to a large white tent that fit four cars at a time. There were a half-dozen or so such tents. The entire operation looked like a cross between a giant car wash and a fast-food eatery, with lots of military personnel directing traffic. I pulled up to my slot. I was asked a series of simple questions. I showed my ID again. I was told to pull down my sleeve, and I was injected. Then I was told to pull over to a waiting area and sit for 15 minutes to check for a reaction. Feeling nothing out of the ordinary, I drove home.

For more, click here.

By Scott Brinton

I covered the Bellmore-JFK High School Homecoming parade in the fall of 2004, photographing the revelers and floats as they headed from the Bellmore Long Island Rail Road station off Sunrise Highway to the Bellmore Avenue school. It was a sunny day, full of carefree teenagers. 

I could never have imagined then that day would haunt me still.

All journalists who’ve been in the profession a while have stories they can’t shake. You might think you had locked them away at the back of your brain, but they reappear without warning, leaving you in a state of disbelief or sadness or anger. Thinking back on that Homecoming parade leaves me feeling all three.

Covering the recent West Hempstead Stop & Shop shooting, in which 49-year-old Ray Wishropp, a father of seven from Valley Stream, was killed and two others were injured, sent the memories of that parade streaming back.

That day, I snapped photos of Carol Kestenbaum, a 17-year-old JFK senior, as she drove the Homecoming king and queen in her white convertible. A little more than two years later, Kestenbaum was shot dead while studying education at the University of Arizona. She had warned a friend that the young man she was dating seemed unhinged. 

The 22-year-old found out about the warning, killed Kestenbaum and her best friend, Nicole Schiffman, another Kennedy High graduate who was studying journalism at the University of Maryland, and then took his own life. Schiffman had come for the weekend to celebrate Kestenbaum’s 20th birthday.

They were among the tens of thousands of Americans who have died in a perpetual cycle of gun violence in this nation. I held back tears when I covered their funerals on a cold winter day in 2007. They were buried side by side at New Montefiore Cemetery in West Babylon.

For the full story, click here.

In this #LIHerald.com editorial, I look back the #environmental progress that #LongIsland has made over the past 5 years, and I have to say, I’m hopeful:

April 22 is Earth Day, when we come together as a nation — and a planet — to celebrate the natural world and renew our vows to protect the environment from harm.

In honor of Earth Day five years ago, the Herald developed a three-part wish list of actions that government representatives and private citizens might take to help clean up and preserve Long Island’s environment. This year, we decided to take a look back and see how we’re faring in meeting the goals on this seemingly lofty list.

Point One: Cleanup of the Northrop Grumman toxic plume.
In 2016, we wrote, “Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the State Department of Environmental Conservation must find a way to force Northrop Grumman and the Navy to clean up the toxic mess they left behind in Bethpage, Wantagh and Seaford. The toxic plume that formed during World War II beneath the old Grumman aerospace plant in Bethpage is steadily moving southward. Chemicals used to manufacture naval warplanes were carelessly allowed to seep into the ground. If the plume isn’t stopped, it will eventually reach South Oyster Bay, contaminating the fragile wetland ecosystem that hugs the entire South Shore and harming, if not destroying, the area’s fishing and clamming industries. The stakes could not be higher.”

We are happy to report that Cuomo announced a $406 million remediation plan in December among the state, Northrop Grumman and the Navy to clean up the plume. The only trouble: Doing so could take 100 years, showing us, in no uncertain terms, that it’s far better to prevent damage to the environment through government regulation than to allow polluters to have their way.

For more of this editorial, click here.

Here’s my latest liherald.com editorial, on a subject that is truly near and dear to my heart….

At the turn of the 20th century, environmental protection meant preserving wilderness so future generations might know nature as the great environmentalists Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir knew it — bountiful and largely pristine.

Some 120 years later, saving wild tracts of land remains a central focus of the burgeoning environmental movement, but there’s an added mission: preparing for the eventuality of climate change, the slow heating of the earth over time.

New York state took a major step forward recently when Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature included a $3 billion proposal, called the Restore Mother Nature Bond Act, in the state budget. Bravo to State Sen. Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat from Long Beach, and Assemblyman Steve Englebright, a Democrat from Setauket, for working to push through this measure as chairmen of the Environmental Conservation committees in their respective chambers.

State residents will vote on the bond act in the November general election. We’re throwing our hat in the ring early on this one: We encourage people to approve this measure.

In addition to protecting forested lands, particularly those that help preserve our drinking water supply, the bond act would allocate at least $1 billion for projects to help protect Long Island and New York City from future flooding caused by global warming.

To read the full editorial, click here.

No doubt, Nassau County residents — especially elected leaders — are breathing a sigh of relief after passage of the American Rescue Plan. Here’s my #LIHerald.com editorial:

Nassau County got some very good news last week after passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan: The county will receive $397.7 million in federal aid to pay for expenses after it fell into a deep budget hole caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Covid-19 has not only killed more than 530,000 people in the United States, but also has ravaged the finances of our state and local governments and school districts. States and counties — which depend heavily on sales taxes for funding — were particularly hard hit over the past year. People haven’t been shopping at local businesses the way they did before the pandemic, in part because many fear contracting the virus in public, and many simply haven’t the money to shop.

We hope and trust that the ARP will be a vital shot in the arm to reignite the economy, both here in New York and across the country. It is certainly giving local elected leaders the opportunity to breathe easier, knowing they won’t have to lay off essential workers, including police officers and emergency medical technicians.

In total, New York state will receive $12.6 billion in aid, which will be used to mitigate the spread of the virus and enhance the vaccination effort, as well as balance the state’s budget so it, too, can avoid layoffs. School districts will also benefit from the funding allocation.

To read the full editorial, click here.

My latest liherald.com column:

They rip roofs off houses under repair, wash dishes in restaurants and pick fruit and vegetables, among countless other jobs, working 12- and 16-hour shifts for poverty-level wages with no benefits. They often live in tiny illegal basement apartments, or in multi-family houses that are stretched beyond capacity, or, in some cases, in the woods along our parkways.

They are undocumented immigrants, existing in America’s shadows, afraid to speak up for themselves for fear that they might be deported to their home countries. Many pay taxes — the IRS estimates that 6 million undocumented immigrants file individual income tax returns — but they receive little in the way of services or benefits.

That has been the case even during the coronavirus pandemic that has devastated New York and the nation. Undocumented immigrant workers were excluded last year from the $2.2 trillion federal CARES Act, which provided aid to struggling businesses and most American workers. States could offer pandemic aid to these workers — and California did, setting aside $75 million for disaster relief aid for them. The California Department of Social Services selected 12 nonprofit groups to help undocumented immigrants apply for disaster funds, amounting to $500 per adult, or a total of $1,000 per household.

New York, however, has not provided a similar aid package to undocumented immigrants. The statewide campaign #FundExcludedWorkers is calling on lawmakers in Albany to do just that. A measure now sits in the State Senate Labor Committee, but it has gone nowhere.

To read the editorial in full, click here.

My latest liherald.com is my personal take on the coronavirus pandemic:

How strange the past 12 months have been, for us all. Personally, I’ve been holed up for most of it at my desk in my bedroom, papers stacked up around me, my cellphone always at the ready, resting against my computer. 

I’m not complaining. I know how fortunate I am during this coronavirus pandemic to be able to work as a newspaper editor from home most of the time. 

My two adult children, both in college, Zoom in to their classes from their bedrooms one floor below. My wife, a teacher, works at her school, but on occasion has been called to teach virtually from home.

I can’t help but feel cloistered, hemmed in by my bedroom walls. There’s a world outside, waiting for me, but I can’t venture far very often. So few of us can these days, our lives dictated by the ebbs and flows of an insidious viral invader.

I leave my house in Merrick only for short, well-planned errands — no more browsing in stores — to teach three hours a week at Hofstra University, to take walks around the neighborhood or at a local park with my family, or to report a story.

I’ve realized that I’ve never before spent so much time by myself. I had grown accustomed to the nervous energy of a newsroom on deadline, the constant tapping of fingers on keyboards, the chatter of reporters speaking at breakneck pace with sources on the phone, the sound of footsteps moving hurriedly across a carpeted floor. 

Then, suddenly, seated at my home desk, there was only quiet whenever I stopped to listen. I could hear nothing but the faint sound of cars on the Meadowbrook Parkway nearby or, here and there, the howling wind. There was no movement, only stillness. 

At first, I felt alone. Then, as the months passed, a funny thing happened: I started to embrace the aloneness. My mind was less cluttered. I found I could think faster, write faster. I became a more efficient editor.

To read the column in full, click here.

In honor of Women’s History Month, here’s my latest LIHerald.com column:

It’s been over 27 years since Colin Ferguson stepped onto a Long Island Rail Road train in Mineola and started indiscriminately firing a 9mm pistol at passengers. Six were killed, including Dennis McCarthy, of Mineola, and 19 were wounded. Dennis’s son, Kevin, then 26 and a broker with Prudential Securities in New York City, took a bullet to the head, but survived. His left arm remains partially paralyzed.

That attack propelled Carolyn McCarthy, Dennis’s wife and Kevin’s mother, to run for Congress. McCarthy, then a nurse, was assailed as a political neophyte and a single-issue candidate, with her laser focus on gun control. Despite the odds against her, she won, and served in the House of Representatives from 1997 to 2015, retiring because of a cancer diagnosis.

Throughout her time in Congress, McCarthy ably represented her district, becoming a respected member of the House and a strong-willed politician. She was frustrated often by the lack of movement on common-sense gun-control legislation, such as an assault weapons ban, because of big-money special-interest groups like the National Rifle Association.

Still, she endured.

It boggles the mind, but in the 243-year history of this nation, only two women have represented Long Island in the House of Representatives. McCarthy, who was elected in the 4th Congressional District, on Nassau’s South Shore, was the first, according to the Congressional Archives.

The second is her successor, Kathleen Rice, who was previously the Nassau County district attorney, and whom McCarthy strongly endorsed in the 2014 election against Republican Bruce Blakeman, the County Legislature’s former presiding officer and a current Town of Hempstead councilman.

To read the column in its entirety, click here.

The Press Club of Long Island will present an online panel discussion, “Covering the Courts,” on Thursday, March 4, at 7 p.m.

Join us as we delve into the legal system, breaking down aspects of the law for journalists, aspiring journalists and anyone interested in the inner workings of the courts.

The panel includes two prominent attorneys and a local reporter who spends a lot of time in courtrooms:

Kevin Keating, defense attorney with three decades of experience

Anthony La Pinta, criminal defense, civil rights and personal injury attorney for 30 years.

Eileen Lehpamer, News 12 Long Island Crime Reporter

Moderator:

Cecilia Dowd, Newsday reporter and PCLI board member.

RSVP to billbleyer@gmail.com to receive the Zoom invitation.

For more information, email cecilia.dowd@gmail.com

Speaker Biographies

Kevin Keating

Kevin Keating has more than 30 years of experience in the defense of criminal matters in federal and state courts. He has successfully represented individuals, corporations and organizations in a wide variety of matters. He has tried more than 200 cases and has been lead counsel in numerous trials that have garnered large media attention. He has been appointed special prosecutor and argued appeals before the United States Supreme Court.

Eileen Lehpamer

Eileen Lehpamer, the full-time criminal justice reporter for News 12 Long Island, is an Edward R. Murrow Award-winning journalist with several Emmy nominations for investigative work. Eileen recently launched a half-hour True Crime TV show for News 12+, as well as a matching podcast series for News 12 Talks called “True Crime Long Island with Eileen Lehpamer.” Eileen has covered New York City and Long Island news since 1997. Her background includes 20 years as a reporter and producer for CBS Radio – 1010WINS in New York.

Anthony La Pinta

Anthony La Pinta has been a federal and state criminal defense, civil rights and personal injury attorney for 30 years. He has achieved the coveted “Preeminent-AV” rating by Martindale-Hubbell and has also been selected to the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 editions of “Super Lawyers Magazine,” New York Metro Edition. La Pinta has successfully defended many high-profile criminal prosecutions that have drawn national media attention. He is an adjunct professor at Touro Law School, a current member of the New York State Grievance Committee for the 10th Judicial District and a member of the Board of Directors for the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

This coming week will mark one year since the #coronavirus #pandemic reached #LongIsland. Here’s my #LIHerald.com editorial to mark this grim anniversary:

The coronavirus pandemic reached Long Island a year ago next week, at first bringing a handful of cases before it dug in and exploded, wreaking havoc. We failed to see it coming until it was too late. We failed to imagine its destructive power.

Nassau County’s first reported case was a 42-year-old Uniondale man who worked at Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre and was treated at NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, now NYU Langone. 
His case was reported last March 3. Three days later, Uniondale Schools Superintendent Dr. William Lloyd said in a statement, “The district has been in close contact with Nassau County and New York state health officials, and we have been told that at the current time, there is no reason to take any additional precautionary or preventive measures than those we already have in place.”

By mid-March, schools had shut down. Nassau County Executive Laura Curran gave the order to close them for two weeks. Students didn’t return to their school buildings until September, learning, as best as they could, virtually, using new and unfamiliar online platforms like Zoom and Google Classroom. 
Businesses shuttered, some never to return. Hospitals — and the brave women and men who staff them — were quickly overwhelmed by the coronavirus case-load. So were funeral homes. Death, it seemed, was everywhere.

And so here we are, a year later, battered and bruised, many of us filled with anxiety because of a job loss, economic issues or simply the uncertainty that the coronavirus has brought to all of our lives. 
“Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” the saying goes. After a full year of coping with a relentless disease, watching too many family members and friends fall prey to it, we are tired, ready for this nightmare to be over. We need to feel normal again.

We are wiser, however.

To read the full editorial, click here.

My latest #LIHerald.com editorial….

During February, Black History Month, we celebrate the great African-American political and civil rights leaders, scientists, artists, poets, movie stars and athletes. But we must also pause to recall America’s dark past, stained by horrific acts against Black and brown people, at times perpetrated by our own government. 

As the Covid-19 pandemic rages on, it’s critical that we look back at the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” to understand the distrust that many African-Americans feel toward our government and medical institutions. That distrust may be a contributing factor in the significantly higher Covid-19 infection rate and death toll seen among Black and brown people.

The Tuskegee study was supposed to last six months. It carried on for 40 years, from 1932 to 1972, a collaboration between the U.S. Public Health Service and Tuskegee Institute, a historically Black college in Alabama. The study of 600 poor Black sharecroppers examined 399 with syphilis and 201 without the disease. Study participants were told they were being treated for “bad blood,” a colloquialism for syphilis, anemia and fatigue, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In truth, they weren’t being treated at all — even after 1945, when penicillin was accepted as “the treatment of choice for syphilis.”

In fact, the study looked at what would happen if syphilis were to go untreated — but the participants never knew that. It wasn’t until 1972, when an Associated Press story disclosed the study, that it ended.

Is it any wonder that many African-Americans might distrust the continual exhortations of our federal, state and local governments to be inoculated against the coronavirus as soon as they can?

To read the editorial in its entirety, click here.

My latest #LIHerald column is an ode to President Barack Obama’s wonderful “A Promised Land.” Here goes….

Every life has its inflection points, moments that can steer you in one direction or another, and that direction, as poet Robert Frost would say, makes all the difference. That is especially true for former President Barack Obama, as he makes clear in “A Promised Land,” his introspective account of his personal and political life, released by Crown in November.

Impression one of this 701-page tome: Obama is an excellent writer. Impression two: His political idealism is heady and infectious — inspiring — and because he is so solidly grounded in his family and his ever-evolving faith, he is utterly relatable as a person. He’s one of us, born into the middle class, with all its attendant daily struggles and perpetual yearning for a better life — for the American dream. 

Early in the book, Obama ponders a fascinating question: What if he had never left Chicago, where he was a community organizer from 1985 to 1988, and struck out for Harvard Law School? What if he had stayed, fighting, and winning, seemingly small battles to improve people’s lives, helping to repair a park or housing project or starting an after-school program? 

What if he had never run for president?

To read the full column, click here.

Here’s my latest #LIHerald editorial, once again on the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic….

Some 100,000 New Yorkers may face debilitating long-term health effects after falling ill to Covid-19, according to “What If You Never Get Better?” in the most recent issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Yes, 100,000.

That is a staggering number of people who may suffer from “long-haul Covid,” a seemingly inexplicable malaise with a wide range of symptoms, from general fatigue and achiness to severe joint stiffness and pain, heart palpitations and “brain fog,” described as a rush of emotion and thought, as if all the brain’s synapses were misfiring at once, leading to confusion and memory loss. Some have called it a “brain hurricane.”

Similar effects were described by patients who fell ill during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, long after the outbreak had waned. That is telling us that the effects of the coronavirus pandemic may be with us for years to come.

To read the full editorial, click here.

The Press Club of Long Island strongly condemns violence against journalists. Federal prosecutors are investigating threats and assaults on journalists covering the U.S. Capitol riot and its aftermath at home. No one should be threatened or harassed for doing their job. As reporters, we proudly serve our community because we are part of the community.

To check out the PCLI website, click here.

For journalists, be sure to plan ahead with your newsrooms to develop strategies for staying safe. Here are resources to help:

• U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Updated tracker of incidents of violence against journalists and tools to report attacks
• Missouri School of Journalism Webinar: Safety, Prep and Knowing Your Rights
• Poynter: 23 Guidelines for Journalists to Safely Cover Protests
• American Press Institute: Best Practices for Journalists Covering Crises on Twitter
• Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) full resource list for journalists covering protests
• SPJ Toolbox for covering protests and civil unrest
• Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma Guide to Safely Covering Street Protests

Additionally, the Associated Press is holding a webinar, “AP Definitive Source: Protecting Journalists,” on Jan. 14. To register, go to: https://ap.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JgCOykJWTWidS8d0gFeYdA.

Below are details:

AP Definitive Source: Protecting JournalistsThe safety and protection of journalists has become even more of a priority for news organizations of all sizes given current news events. How do you enable your staff to report from volatile situations safely and without fear of injury or reprisal?Please join AP Vice President of Global Security and Safety Danny Spriggs, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and other news leaders for a discussion of journalist safety this Thursday, Jan. 14, at 2 PM Eastern.The 30-minute session will include a review of standard equipment as well as a need for news staff to assess surroundings, determine potential locations of trouble and have an exit strategy. The session will be followed by Q&A.Please register even if news prevents you from joining, as we will send a recording link to everyone who registers.

WHODanny Spriggs, Vice President of Global Security and Safety Sally Buzbee, Senior Vice President andExecutive Editor

WHENDate: Thursday, January 14 Time: 2 PM Eastern

We have now entered the “dark winter” predicted by President-elect Joe Biden. Please — please — take care of your mental health during this trying time. Here’s my most recent #LIHerald editorial….

Let’s say it like it was: 2020 was miserable. It was a horrid year for us all. Everyone — everyone — was affected to one degree or another by the coronavirus pandemic, which washed over us like a merciless tidal wave, leaving fear, anxiety and death in its wake.

The speed at which the virus swept across the land was stunning, leaving us feeling helpless against a viral invader. 

Nearly 4,700 people have died of Covid-19 in Nassau and Suffolk counties — and an estimated 25,000 in New York City — since the coronavirus broke out in the greater metropolitan area in March, bringing grief to hundreds of thousands of lives here.

On top of those terrible — and terrifying — statistics, Long Island lost more than 100,000 private-sector jobs from November 2019 to November 2020, an 8.8 percent decline, according to the New York State Department of Labor. The biggest losses came in hospitality, 35,800 jobs; education and health services, 23,600; trade, transportation and utilities, 15,000; professional and business services, 10,000; and manufacturing, 8,000.

There is help available, however. If you are feeling anxious, depressed or suicidal, regardless of the reason, you can — you should — check out the state Office of Mental Health website, where you will find numerous resources to turn to for help.

For more, click here.

Yes, we might have two Covid-19 vaccines, but we have a ways to go before we are rid of this deadly virus. Now is no time for apathy. Here’s my LIHerald editorial:

The Food and Drug Administration last Saturday issued an emergency-use authorization for the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, which is administered in a series of two shots one month apart. Announcement of the EUA came after a whirlwind week of media coverage following the EUA for the Pfizer vaccine.

We can only say bravo to the vaccine researchers who developed these two treatments at breakneck pace, taking months to produce what, in the past, has taken years. The science behind the vaccines seems futuristic, but it’s very much in the here and now. Both use genetic material, rather than the virus itself, to trigger an immune response by the body.

Amid the jubilation that so many of us felt as the vaccines were rolled out, new Covid-19 cases — and deaths — continued to skyrocket. On the same day that the EUA was issued for the Moderna vaccine, the U.S. recorded more than 250,000 new cases — more than on nearly any other day since the coronavirus was first reported here in early March. That same day, some 2,800 people died of the virus. The day before that, nearly 3,300. The day before that, 3,600.

We would be foolish to believe we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It will be months before we understand the true effect of the vaccines. The coronavirus became so widespread in the U.S. that it is now ubiquitous across the land, and is truly inescapable, except through mask wearing and social distancing.

We cannot believe that we can, at this moment, magically return to normal life — to our holiday gatherings, full of family members and friends. We are a long way from that. 

To read on, click here.

I recently covered Northwell Health’s second Gun Violence Prevention Forum, and from that experience came this editorial….

Listening to Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords speak, you’re quickly overcome by the urge to cry. The former congresswoman was once known for her incisive rhetoric, delivered with a magnetic smile. Then, at age 40, she was shot one sunny January day in 2011 outside Tucson, Ariz., while chatting with constituents in front of a Safeway supermarket.

The 22-year-old gunman, angered by Giffords’s political views, had targeted her. Six died in the attack, and 10 others besides Giffords were injured.

Giffords may have survived, but her speech did not. Her words once flowed easily, but now she measures each one, rehearsing phrases to string them together in coherent sentences before speaking in public. 

It is a miracle that she is able to utter a word. The bullet that struck her pierced the left side of her brain, leaving her unable to talk for two months. Through speech therapy, she regained the ability to speak, but only in short, labored bursts.

That challenge was obvious during Northwell Health’s second Gun Violence Prevention Forum, a two-hour meeting of gun safety experts, medical practitioners, policy makers and elected leaders from around the country on Dec. 10. Giffords spoke alongside U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who supports a federal universal background check for firearm purchases, and whom Giffords, a Democrat, has endorsed for Congress.

We applaud Northwell Health — in particular Michael Dowling, its president and CEO — for taking a leading role in fostering dialogue about gun safety, while also funding gun violence research: Northwell put up $1 million last December to study America’s “pandemic of gun violence,” as Dowling calls it.

To read on, click here.

Covered Vision Long Island’s Smart Growth Summit last week and penned this #LIHerald editorial from it:

It is a frightening statistic: Pedestrian deaths shot up by nearly 56 percent nationally between 2009 and 2018, from roughly 4,000 lives lost to cars and trucks to 6,227. That followed a long period of steady decline, from a high of 6,500 in 1990. 

Long Island has its share of pedestrian deaths, averaging about 60 per year.

Frank Wefering, director of sustainability for the Babylon-based Greenman-Pedersen Inc., an engineering and construction firm, presented the statistics during an hour-long panel discussion, “Walking, Biking and Complete Streets,” that was part of the three-day Long Island Smart Growth Summit hosted last week by the nonprofit Vision Long Island.

If you think about it, every sixth day on the Island, a pedestrian or cyclist is killed on the roads. Does it have to be this way? “No” was the resounding answer during the talk, given by four panelists, including officials from both the Nassau and Suffolk County governments.

The thing is, reducing pedestrian deaths requires planning and a sustained financial commitment, as well as greater vigilance by motorists, the panelists said. We agree.

For more, click here.