Senior Services operates out of the Olympia Center at 222 Columbia St.
NW. The main door to Senior Services is on State Avenue. Staff worked
early Monday, then forgot to lock the doors to the nonprofit, Executive
Director Brian Windrope said.
A check of video camera images revealed that about noon
Monday, a woman tried the door, found it was open, then entered with a
second person, and they began to help themselves to food stacked up for
Meals on Wheels.
Senior Services has experienced so much demand for its Meals on
Wheels service during the pandemic they have been storing food in the
lobby, he said.
“It was two or more people going through
everything to take what they wanted,” Windrope said in an email to The
Olympian. “They made themselves food, took alcohol we store for Bingo
nights, took coolers we use for food, and even took a special quilt that
used to drape over our piano. Just a sad event.”
Windrope estimated the loss at $1,000.’
“We can’t afford to lose all that food,” he said, although the service will carry on this week.
Before the pandemic, Meals on Wheels was delivering 200 meals a week. Since the pandemic, it has more than doubled to 450 meals.
Windrope
thinks those who entered the building stayed from noon Monday through 1
a.m. Tuesday. Olympia police were alerted to the incident and have
looked at the video, Windrope said.
Lt. Paul Lower said Wednesday the incident is still under investigation.
While
staff were cleaning up on Tuesday, two people tried the doors again and
appeared disappointed when they couldn’t enter. The Olympia Center has
been closed to the public during the pandemic, but if the word is out
that there is food stored in the lobby, Windrope said he now fears a
break-in.
[Screenshots of Twitter thread. Transcript given below.
Quoted Tweet: NBC News (@NBCnews):
4 people in Oregon have tested positive for the coronavirus after receiving both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, health officials said. https://t.co/bZKxw3POS6
Post-Culture Review (@PostCultRev):
Because the vaccines are not 100% effective, a widely publicized fact. The goal is to build herd immunity through mass vaccination. Every single headline like this is a choice a news outlet makes to scare people for attention, and undermines that effort. It’s pure fear mongering.
Let’s say it’s a world where most people aren’t wearing seat belts when they drive. And let’s say wearing a seatbelt saves your life in an accident 96% of the time, while not wearing one aligns to a 25% casualty rate. So you’re doing a big campaign to get people to wear them.
This is basically a news story that looked at 100 accidents involving people wearing seatbelts and started with the headline “Four People Die In Auto Accidents Despite Wearing Seatbelts.”
While that’s true, it’s also not surprising. And it also doesn’t report on the fact that in that 100 accidents, if none of them had been wearing seatbelts it’s likely 25 of them would be dead instead of four.
So despite the fact the seatbelts have saved a net of 21 lives, the article has undermined faith in seatbelts because the didn’t save all 25. And in a low-trust environment where people are already doubtful of the efficacy of seatbelts, fewer will now wear them.
So this article, and every one like it, will ultimately have a body count attached to it. Because they aren’t reporting news, as there’s nothing surprising about this, but reporting a fact in a way that pushes all the stress buttons in a lot of terrified people’s brains.
If the vaccines were wholly ineffective that would be one thing. But this is just reporting “Vaccines Work Exactly As Expected” as if it were a prospect we should be frightened of.
Now the article isn’t as bad as the headline (though it literally doesn’t explicitly mention vaccine effectiveness percentages or put these cases in any real context) but 99% of people who see this won’t read past that headline and the publisher absolutely knows this.
As I said, framing it this way is a choice they’re actively making to prioritize attention over public trust. It’d be easy to say this is because of the way social media has weaponized holding our focus with pure fear and outrage, but this is basically how the news industry works
It’s the same reason people spent most of the 1990s thinking violent crime rates were skyrocketing when they actually dropped year by year. Because while violent crime dropped, the amount of reporting on violent crime quadrupled.
Subsequently gun ownership goes up, surveillance systems become more acceptable and ubiquitous, police get more leeway, incarceration is increased to astounding levels, because everyone is in a terror-filled feedback loop that leads them to irrational and paranoid choices.
And others can use that terror to advance their own ends. This shit is exploitation. And it will kill people.
In the UK, coronavirus patients with learning disabilities are mandatorily labeled “Do Not Resuscitate.”
Some hospitals are claiming that the patients signed off on this decision. However, most of these patients don’t speak English or are otherwise incapable of giving informed consent. And a lot of families aren’t notified about the DNR order until after their loved one has passed away.
This is completely horrifying and unjustifiable, especially considering that people with disabilities are much more likely to die from covid-19 than the general population. Denying anyone life-saving treatment is insane, but to actively discriminate against the most vulnerable members of society?
