CAPE CORAL Concern over water shortage in Cape Coral Concern is flowing through Cape Coral as neighbors are seeing their canal levels low and their wells run dry.
FORT MYERS FSW softball swinging for success in the postseason Now their focus shifts to states which means the newbies are looking to the experienced sophomores for advice.
BONITA SPRINGS Young SWFL tennis player competing with professionals You may not know her name now, but you might want remember it because 16-year-old Cookie Jarvis-Tredgett is already competing with professionals.
NORTH NAPLES ‘It’s all about connection,’ Statement Peace makes jewelry with sustainability in mind The brand Statement Peace, once started inside founder Jessica Lee’s home, is now in 2,700 stores across the country
Pine Manor 2 arrested for firing gun at birthday party in Pine Manor A party ended with two people behind bars.
FORT MYERS Shooting investigation on busy Fort Myers street Police are conducting a shooting investigation that involves a traffic crash near Michigan Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard.
FGCU New FGCU athletic director Colin Hargis ready to build on department’s success New FGCU athletic director Colin Hargis talks about the department’s future amid the age of NIL and the transfer portal.
FORT MYERS More middle-aged women being treated for acne You probably thought you broke up with it after high school, but acne is rearing it’s ugly blackheads in adult women.
Lee County student ran up and hit teacher in head, report shows The report says a 13-year-old student ran up and smacked a teacher in the head because multiple classmates offered him money to do so.
NAPLES Collier Planning Commission continues discussion for apartments near Fiddler’s Creek The developer of Fiddler’s Creek wants to build hundreds of luxury apartments on a slice of a 600 acre-plus property known as section 29.
CAPE CORAL Fatigue sets in for third day of FEMA hearings Flying several hours to come to a FEMA code compliance hearing in Cape Coral is the reality for John Gasparini from Maryland.
Prescription drug shortages lead to higher prices There are currently more than 250 medications on the nation’s drug shortage list, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. The organization says 2023 marked the worst year for shortages in about a decade.
Mental health resources to help children Here are some resources to help you navigate the mental health system when it comes to help for children. Park Royal Park Royal does not have in-patient options for youth; however, the facility’s launched a new intensive outpatient program for 14 to 17-year-olds. It typically last several weeks or months, and offers three to five […]
NAPLES Video: FWC releases bobcat after rehab stint at Naples Zoo Wildlife officials released a bobcat back into the wild after recovering from a broken leg at Naples Zoo for eight weeks.
Single-member vs. at-large voting debate intensifies in Lee County Three members of Southwest Florida’s state Legislature delegation hosted a public forum May 1 at Lehigh Acres Municipal Services Improvement District, established by the state in 2015.
CAPE CORAL Concern over water shortage in Cape Coral Concern is flowing through Cape Coral as neighbors are seeing their canal levels low and their wells run dry.
FORT MYERS FSW softball swinging for success in the postseason Now their focus shifts to states which means the newbies are looking to the experienced sophomores for advice.
BONITA SPRINGS Young SWFL tennis player competing with professionals You may not know her name now, but you might want remember it because 16-year-old Cookie Jarvis-Tredgett is already competing with professionals.
NORTH NAPLES ‘It’s all about connection,’ Statement Peace makes jewelry with sustainability in mind The brand Statement Peace, once started inside founder Jessica Lee’s home, is now in 2,700 stores across the country
Pine Manor 2 arrested for firing gun at birthday party in Pine Manor A party ended with two people behind bars.
FORT MYERS Shooting investigation on busy Fort Myers street Police are conducting a shooting investigation that involves a traffic crash near Michigan Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard.
FGCU New FGCU athletic director Colin Hargis ready to build on department’s success New FGCU athletic director Colin Hargis talks about the department’s future amid the age of NIL and the transfer portal.
FORT MYERS More middle-aged women being treated for acne You probably thought you broke up with it after high school, but acne is rearing it’s ugly blackheads in adult women.
Lee County student ran up and hit teacher in head, report shows The report says a 13-year-old student ran up and smacked a teacher in the head because multiple classmates offered him money to do so.
NAPLES Collier Planning Commission continues discussion for apartments near Fiddler’s Creek The developer of Fiddler’s Creek wants to build hundreds of luxury apartments on a slice of a 600 acre-plus property known as section 29.
CAPE CORAL Fatigue sets in for third day of FEMA hearings Flying several hours to come to a FEMA code compliance hearing in Cape Coral is the reality for John Gasparini from Maryland.
Prescription drug shortages lead to higher prices There are currently more than 250 medications on the nation’s drug shortage list, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. The organization says 2023 marked the worst year for shortages in about a decade.
Mental health resources to help children Here are some resources to help you navigate the mental health system when it comes to help for children. Park Royal Park Royal does not have in-patient options for youth; however, the facility’s launched a new intensive outpatient program for 14 to 17-year-olds. It typically last several weeks or months, and offers three to five […]
NAPLES Video: FWC releases bobcat after rehab stint at Naples Zoo Wildlife officials released a bobcat back into the wild after recovering from a broken leg at Naples Zoo for eight weeks.
Single-member vs. at-large voting debate intensifies in Lee County Three members of Southwest Florida’s state Legislature delegation hosted a public forum May 1 at Lehigh Acres Municipal Services Improvement District, established by the state in 2015.
Portrait of deaf students in their classroom at Alexander Graham Bell School, 3730 North Oakley in the North Center community area, Chicago, Illinois, 1918. The boys in the photo read while the girls knit. (Photo by Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection/Chicago History Museum/Getty Images) This isn’t the first time leaders have struggled with deciding whether to keep schools open in a pandemic. During the influenza pandemic in 1918, even though the world was a very different place, the discussion was just as heated. That pandemic killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 Americans, before it was all over. While the vast majority of cities closed their schools, three opted to keep them open — New York, Chicago and New Haven, according to historians. The decisions of health officials in those cities was based largely on the hypothesis of public health officials that students were safer and better off at school. It was, after all, the height of the Progressive Era, with its emphasis on hygiene in schools and more nurses for each student than is thinkable now. New York had almost 1 million school children in 1918 and about 75% of them lived in tenements, in crowded, often unsanitary conditions, according to a 2010 article in Public Health Reports, the official journal of the US Surgeon General and the US Public Health Service. “For students from the tenement districts, school offered a clean, well-ventilated environment where teachers, nurses, and doctors already practiced — and documented — thorough, routine medical inspections,” according to the Public Health Reports article. The city was one of the hardest and earliest hit by the flu, said Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian and director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. He was a co-author of the 2010 Public Health Reports article. “(Children) leave their often unsanitary homes for large, clean, airy school buildings, where there is always a system of inspection and examination enforced,” New York’s health commissioner at the time, Dr. Royal S. Copeland, told the New York Times after the pandemic had peaked there. Students weren’t allowed to gather outside school and had to report to their teacher immediately, according to Copeland. Teachers checked students for any signs of the flu, and students who had symptoms were isolated. If students had a fever, someone from the health department would take them home, and the health official would judge whether the conditions were suitable for “isolation and care,” according to Public Health Reports. If not, they were sent to a hospital. “The health department required families of the children recovering at home to either have a family physician or use the services of a public health doctor at no charge,” the Public Health Report article said. The argument in Chicago for leaving schools open for its 500,000 students was the same: keeping schools open would keep the children off the streets and away from infected adults, the reasoning went. If social distancing was helpful then, it would have been made easier by the fact that absenteeism in schools soared during the pandemic, perhaps because of what one Chicago public health official called “fluphobia” among parents. “The absentee rate was so great, it really didn’t matter” that schools were open, Markel said. Part of Chicago’s strategy was to ensure that fresh air was circulated. School rooms were overheated during the winter so that windows could remain open at all times, according to a 1918 paper by the Chicago Department of Health. The paper concluded that an analysis of data showed that “the decision of keeping the schools of this city open during the recent influenza epidemic was justified.” And in New York, then Health Commissioner Copeland told the New York Times: “How much better it has been to have the children under the constant observation of qualified persons than to close the schools.” Markel, who with other researchers pored over data and historical records in looking at the response of 43 cities to the 1918 pandemic, isn’t as convinced. New York “didn’t do the worst, but it didn’t do the best, either,” Markel said, adding Chicago was slightly better. Research showed that cities who implemented quarantining and isolation, school closures and bans on public gatherings fared the best, he said. “The cities that did more than one” of these measures “did better. School closures were part of that contribution,” Markel said. Public health experts, including Markel, are quick to point out that COVID-19 is not influenza, which was a well-known disease in 1918. There is still a lot to learn about the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19. The right decision today, Markel said, is school closure. “It’s better,” he said, “to be safe than sorry.”