MS 8th-grader dies after Reeves compares COVID in kids to ‘sniffles’ – National & International News – MON 16Aug2021

MS 8th-grader dies after Reeves compares COVID to ‘sniffles’. Taliban reconquest complete. Haiti quake death toll climbs.

NATIONAL NEWS

MS 8th-grader dies after Reeves compares COVID to ‘sniffles’

At a Friday news conference, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves defended his refusal to institute mask mandates in public schools, despite the rising numbers of COVID cases in the state. Reeves said, “If you look at those individuals under the age of 12, what you find is that it is very rare that kids under the age of 12 have anything other than the sniffles. Does it happen from time to time? Sure it does”.

And it sure did. Less than 24 hours later, 13-year-old Mkayla Robinson had died, just hours after testing positive for COVID-19. Robinson was an 8th grader at Raleigh Jr. High School in Smith County. Classes had commenced on Friday, August 6, and Robinson had attended classes most days in the week before her death.

Raleigh High School Band Director Paul Harrison posted on his Facebook about Robinson’s death. “It is with great sadness, and a broken heart, that I announce the passing of one of my 8th grade band students. She was the perfect student. Every teacher loved her and wanted 30 more just like her”.

The Smith County School District, which initially had no mask mandate, put one in place on the third day of classes. That was after 11 teachers and 76 students in the district tested positive for COVID-19 in the first week.

During his Friday news conference, Gov. Reeves struggled to recall how many children had died of COVID in his state. “I believe we have had one fatality of an individual, maybe it could’ve been two—I think there’s three under the age of 18 at this time? Two?”.

State health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, who stood behind the governor, held up four fingers. “Four so far and one this summer”, Dobbs said. That makes Mkayla, who passed the next day, the fifth child to die in Mississippi of COVID-19.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

The Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan is complete

Taliban fighters have overtaken the presidential palace in Kabul after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country yesterday. Taliban leadership are attempting to negotiate a peaceful surrender with what remains of the US-backed Afghan government.

President Biden has ordered more than 6000 US troops back to Afghanistan to evacuate diplomats and US citizens. Some Afghan translators who aided US forces and whose lives are in danger are also hoping to be evacuated. But many translators cannot make it to the Kabul airport, now the last bastion of American military control in the country.

The few remaining members of the US diplomatic mission are now operating from the airport after vacating the embassy, burning sensitive documents as they left. Embassy staff have asked potential evacuees to ‘shelter in place’ rather than trying to make it to the airport. There are disputed reports that the airport has been taking fire.

In the background, a humanitarian disaster pervades across the country. There are widespread reports of malnourished children as supply lines have been cut off. Many Afghans have attempted to flee Taliban fighting and are now displaced. Looting is also rampant all over Kabul in the lawless atmosphere.

This morning, thousands of Afghan civilians have mobbed the airport hoping to leave the country. Videos show chaotic scenes of Afghans running on the tarmac alongside US military aircraft, and even attempting to cling to departing planes.

Post mortems on America’s longest war

Republicans, Afghans, and former senior military and diplomatic officials have criticized both the Biden and former Trump administrations for rushing withdrawal from Afghanistan. Critics say this race to the exits left a power vacuum that the Taliban could exploit, which they did with astounding speed.

Even though the Taliban overtook 2/3rds of the country in a matter of weeks, the speed with which Kabul fell seems to have taken the White House by surprise. As recently as July 8, Biden described the scenario we see unfolding now as “highly unlikely”.

Part of the reason for this miscalculation was sheer numbers. Over two decades, the US spent billions training and supporting over 300,000 Afghan troops. But as the Taliban pushed forward, that troop presence evaporated. The Taliban took many centers without firing a single shot.

Biden has blamed the pervasive corruption and division within the Afghan government for the utter collapse of the Afghan defense forces. There is some validity to this view, as Afghan soldiers in the field had gone unpaid, unsupported, and underfed for months. As senior NPR correspondent Ron Elving put it: “we built an army for the Afghans but not a political structure that could sustain it”.

Still, critics say that Biden bears responsibility for not heeding warnings from the CIA that Kabul was certain to fall if the withdrawal proceeded without leaving sufficient support in place. The administration maintains that after 20 years, $1 trillion, 300,000 Afghan troops trained, dispatching over 1 million US troops, and losing over 6000 US soldiers and contractors, another few years or weeks would not have achieved a different outcome in Afghanistan. That said, the only exit strategy appears to have been “pull them out and hope for the best”.

Future uncertain

Afghanistan has long been known as “the graveyard of empires”, and for good reason. Two decades of American blood and treasure bought some gains for Afghan civil society, and particularly for Afghan women. That hard won progress now seems certain to disappear under Taliban rule.

Elving summed it up this way: “Our country has made war in Afghanistan longer than anywhere in our history, always hoping we could leave something behind that would endure. But in the end, we were simply the latest foreigners to arrive and the latest to be driven out”.

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Haiti quake death toll climbs

Early counts indicate that Saturday’s 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Haiti killed at least 1,300 and injured about 6,000. Haiti’s government still has no reliable estimates on the number of people still missing. Unlike the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake that killed around 200,000, this quake centered in the less densely populated southwest of Haiti. The communities of Les Cayes and Jeremie seem to have suffered the most damage.

The quake flattened all kinds of buildings, including schools, hospitals, churches and thousands of homes. The location has complicated rescue and relief efforts since roads to the area have been hotspots for gang-related hijackings. However, Jerry Chandler, Haiti’s Director General of Civil Protection, says that the gangs have apparently decided to allow humanitarian convoys through since the quake.

Further complicating matters is the approach of Tropical Depression Grace. The storm may bring severe weather to the area today as rescuers continue to search the rubble for survivors.

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