Dr. Bonner & the Furious Five

Okay there are more than 5 school committee members but I think only 5 were furious.

New shenanigans as a child from one of the city's many schools caught the swine flu, H1N1 to revisionists.

Remember the two I said were in cahoots? Well they still are as you can see from that article that appeared in the local paper. What's new is the mayor's willingness to "throw her under the bus" as one commenter put it. "Her" being Superintendent of Schools Dr. Portia Bonner. The mayor is most of the way through his second term and is in the midst of deciding whether to run again or not. Re-election hopes are as good a reason as any to throw someone under a bus.

What's the problem here? I'll sum up. A kid had the swine flu. They found that the child did not attend school at any time during his/her incubation period. After everything was checked and rechecked the Superintendent decided to not send out papers to parents informing them of the situation since there had been no risk from being at the school with the child. The kid wasn't there. She did however post something on the school department's website.

When people found out they were up in arms as they always are involving their children. This is what maybe she didn't know. Everyone thinks their kids are little darlings but around here, it's elevated to a blissful ignorance that is quite nauseating. People don't reprimand their children ever because if they do then their kids will start taking drugs or some other terrible activity. That's what they all fear, and boy do they fear. So you have a place where the children rule. And their rule is enforced by the parents.

So her decision was wrong if she wanted anyone around here to like her. It was right if you're a sensible person who can understand English and sees the problem with mass hysteria. But of course hysteria happens anyway and these people are hysterical.

The meeting. Well, they had all the officials, health department people, official nurses, everyone who reported their findings to Dr. Bonner. They all explain that the current thinking about swine flu is that it's no worse than the normal flu. Anyone who has been keeping abreast of the news already knows this. These people tried to explain it to the school committee but they wouldn't listen and just kept up their mantra. WE should have been notified. WE should have been notified. They supposedly agree that they would never want the name of the child to get out. (They'd like to know it themselves I'm sure.) But when the officials tried to explain that giving what seems like harmless information such as the specific school or saying "he" or "she" will allow people to deduce who the child is thereby violating the child's privacy, that went over the school committee's heads. Medical records are supposed to be private by law. So the point is these people were trying to protect the privacy of the child and would have given out the information to parents and children who go to that school IF it was necessary. It wasn't necessary because no one could have been infected by that child AT SCHOOL.

Here's where the problem is. This is a small community. There aren't that many places to go. So everyone pretty much occupies the same spaces. Just recently the whole city had a cold. I had it. Everyone I ran into was coughing and sneezing. It was really weird and abnormal to tell you the truth. I've never seen everyone have a cold before. Anyway, the point is the real reason people are probably concerned is because they're not just worried about their children or themselves coming into contact with this kid at school. They're worried about McDonald's, Walmart, playgrounds, etc. They want to know who that kid is. They want to know if he lives on their block. They want to know if their kid might have passed him on Maple Street just as he/she coughed. Dr. Bonner didn't give them that crucial information, and they're pissed. But it was never her job to do so. Her job is to protect the children at school. And she did. I don't think any reasonable person, even here, would expect her to notify the entire student body's parents if a child had a normal flu. But because of the initial reports about swine flu from Mexico with an inaccurate death toll and how scary it all seemed, some people never got used to the idea that the swine flu is no worse. So again we have the problem of an uneducated populace. They didn't make it past the 8th grade and they don't bother to educate themselves as adults. Sad but true.

On to the mayor. If the mayor wanted, he could have told everyone who it was. He's a lawyer though. And that's all he is really. I can't tell you how many times he used the phrase "risk assessment" at that meeting. He just wants to cover his ass and the City's whale of an ass and hasn't learned in all this time how to govern. And if he really wanted to he could have taken on the responsibility of spilling the beans. But he knew he wasn't supposed to. (He actually did say "he" or "she" in an article. I'm not saying which.) He knew about the child's right to privacy. So he'll just throw Dr. Bonner under the bus for not doing something he could have done himself IF he really thought it was the right thing to do. But he knew it's wasn't.

What a leader would have done was cool out his babies. He would have explained to everyone that there was no reason to panic. That a child did have swine flu and that they had not gone to school when they were contagious. Beyond that, it was up to him to find out whether the kid stayed home and went out into the community. And he could have passed on that information if he wanted to. But he did nothing of the sort. He just acted like it was Bonner's problem but he made sure he said publicly that he would have done it differently. Well he didn't do it differently because it was his problem too. He let his people become an angry mob and he was waiving a torch right with them. I've tried to give him the benefit of the doubt on so many things that I disagree with him on, but he's just not a leader. He's a lawyer through and through. If you had been at that meeting and had not known who was who on the school committee, based on behavior it would have been difficult to guess who the Mayor was. His demeanor was no different from the school committee member who was concerned about his own child.

It's good to understand the people you govern, but you're not supposed to do what they'd do. You're supposed to do what's right, not popular. Dr. Bonner did that. She's a leader. Mayor Lang? I'm afraid that I have to admit that he is not one. He's just a lawyer who's trying to do a job he's just not good at. Does he mean well? I think so. But his own kid-centric philosophy gets in the way sometimes. He must be a great dad though.