News

This is in response to the news article of August 18 and a Letter to the Editor August 20. The letter, written by Aron Dody clearly outlined the problem with reporting “news” when sources are not verified and data and facts are not included. Those of us who displayed signs were showing support for the Morris County Health Department and the majority of County Commissioners and were not there representing a partisan group. This is a health issue not a political one. We strongly support the continuation of a mask mandate and are ALL residents of Morris County. There were several in support of the mandate that were not given coverage by the newspaper and the article left a lot of information unreported. First, there were residents from Morris County in the anti-mandate group and there were also people who had been recruited to attend who are not residents of Morris County. The subject of this item on the County Commissioners agenda was about the Morris County mask mandate. Why were people outside of the county recruited to attend and why were they provided the opportunity to speak their opinion? The gentleman “booked” to speak for a group of attendees was most recently affiliated with the Kansas Policy Institute (4/23/21), a partisan organization, and is currently a candidate running for the Kansas Treasurer’s seat. His expertise is not in medicine but is in economics and politics. He stated, per the newspaper article, that only two children have died from Covid in Kansas. What is the acceptable number of dead children? If one of those children were your child or grandchild, would it be acceptable – if it could have been prevented? At the present time, those hospitalized with Covid are in the 18 to 49-age range. They are not elderly individuals, as Austin indicated. Multiple medical experts nationwide have provided this information. (CDC, July 29, 2021) The most recent Covid death in Morris County was 38 years of age. There was no factual data provided that would be cause to discontinue the mask mandate.

TOPEKA (AP) — If the Evil Knievel museum does move from Topeka, Kansas, to Las Vegas, the owner of the museum dedicated to the daredevil has pledged to repay $117,000 it has received from the city since it opened in 2017.

Preliminary estimates reported by the Labor Market Information Services division of the Kansas Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics show a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 3.8 percent in July. This was an increase from 3.7 percent in June and a decrease from 6.6 percent in July 2020. Current unemployment rates in Morris County were reported at 3.4 percent.