We will hear from
The Evening of Elegance Committee
Please be ready to offer your help with one or more of the many tasks ahead of the event date: September 24th!
(at the Hilton Garden Inn)
Next week, September 1st (already! Ugh!)
we will be privileged to hear from
Jeanine Vander Bruggen
Pioneer Courthouse Coordinator
Pioneer Museum of St. George
Before we move to events, some members have asked if we had an e-mail address for Dan Rak.
It turns out one was found:
forests@br47.onmicrosoft.com
Upcoming events:
RYLA will be held at Aspen Grove September
21-24. RYLA is for high school sophomores and juniors and has truly changed lives. If you know of a potential attendee, please see Derrick Loyola or Gregg Grajek ASAP!
The Evening of Elegance is coming up fast! Mark you calendars now for September 24th at the Hilton Garden Inn. The plans are coming together really well, this promises to be an excellent event.
Here is a piece of nostalgia to remind everyone how much fun this event is!
Please thank our gold sponsors:
Paramount Tax and Accounting
(Ron Wilhelm)
and
Infinite Solutions
(Darrin and Richelle Hallman)
for their support.
Registration is open, just go to the Club Website.
Our district will celebrate World Polio Day on Saturday October 15th. District Governor, Jose will be hosting a live stream broadcast from Park City and encourages all to participate!
And, on a VERY LOCAL level, Sandi Schwartz will again be taking her
Ride to Nowhere!
Sandi will ride her Peloton bike 100 miles to raise funds for polio eradication. So critical right now!
The Huntsman Senior Games will be returning to St. George October 3-15.
Lil will be brining up on update as we get closer but in the meantime, the organizing committee needs our help in putting together the welcome bags (11,000 of them!)
Volunteers are asked to work from 9-12 or 1-4 on Wednesday, September 28th. If needed a shift of volunteers will be scheduled for Thursday as well.
If you have ever done this you know you spend 3 hours walking around - and around - and around - tables of local materials stuffing bags of information for the athletes. It really is fun to socialize as you walk....
Please let Lil know if you can help.
will be here before you know it! Mark your calendars now for October 28th and 29th. Dave H. will be providing more information on volunteering etc. as we get closer.
Here is the link to sign up to volunteer:
https://ironman.volunteerlocal.com/volunteer/?id=54775
Be sure to sign up for Run Aid Station 4
(that is be at 100 West and Diagonal)
Upcoming meetings:
The next meeting of the Evening of Elegance Committee will be August 24th, at Bloomington at 5:30.
The Board will meet next on Thursday, September 1st at Bloomington at 5:30
The Service Committee will be meeting on September 6th at Sandi's home.
Upcoming Opportunities for Service Above Self.
The monthly food drive will take place on August 24th (the Bagging and boxing at the Food Bank), 25th (distribution in Washington City) and 26th (distribution in St. George.
The Rotary Reading Program, established last year in the Washington County School District, was a great hit. So much so that we have been invited to return this year. They would like to have volunteers in place by the second week of September. This is a very rewarding project so if this is your thing, please see Sandi or Richelle right away for more details.
Richard S. will lead a group of dedicated road cleaners (that would be us) on a trek to clean up our section of Dixie Drive.
This will take place on October 1st. Richard will provide details and e-mail and invitation s we get closer.
As you are aware, our Club sponsored the Rotary Satellite Club of Southern Utah Veterans.
We are happy to see members of their club joining us from time to time and hope perhaps some of you would like to attend a meeting with them.
They meet the 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month at 6 pm at the Elks Lodge.
Thank You Veterans Club for your service!
WILD POLIO VIRUS, TYPE 1 (WPV1) - There were no new cases of WPV1 reported anywhere this last week, so the count remains at 19 for the year.
FORTY-EIGHT - The number of days since the last case of WPV1 occurred in Pakistan (June 30th).
SIXTY-EIGHT — The number of days since the last case of WPV1 occurred in Mozambique (June 10th).
TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN (7 MONTHS) The number of days since the last case of WPV1 occurred in Afghanistan (January 14th).
TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-ONE (8 MONTHS +) - The number of days since the last case of WPV1 occurred in Malawi (November 19th, 2021).
NINETEEN - The total number of cases of WPV1 that has occurred in 2022 year- to-date (1 in Afghanistan, 4 in Mozambique and 14 in Pakistan).
SIX - The total number of cases of WPV1 that occurred in 2021 (1 in Pakistan, 1 in Malawi and 4 in Afghanistan).
ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY - The total number of cases of WPV1 that occurred in 2020.
ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SIX - The total number of cases of WPV1 that occurred in 2019.
There were also No New Wild Positive Environmental Samples (ES’s) reported this last week, so the total, year to date, remains at 15 Positive Environmental Samples, 13 in Pakistan and 2 in Afghanistan.
CIRCULATING VACCINE-DERIVED POLIO - On our other battlefront in the war on polio, the circulating Vaccine-Derived Polio, there were 7 new cases vs. 36 the week before, quite an improvement. 3 were in Nigeria and 2 each in Niger and Yemen.
And finally, there were 13 Positive Environmental Samples (ES) of vaccine derived polio Type 2 reported last week, 5 of which were collected in Nigeria, 4 in Ghana, 2 in Benin and one each in DR Congo and Niger.
THE CASE OF cVDPV2 REPORTED IN ROCKLAND COUNTY, NEW YORK
has brought up a lot of discussion in national media about just what is polio anyway, as there are many folks out there who don’t know much about it, how it’s spread, it’s dangers and how to prevent it. Until the Rockland case, many thought that it was eradicated completely. What follows is a couple of well known publications offering tutorials of a sort, to help answer these questions. The first is from The Washington Post which offers a slide show with a written narrative. It seems pretty accurate, except for a comment about the vaccine temperature not having to be maintained a certain level, which it does. The “Cold Chain” for the polio vaccine is one of GPEI’s great accomplishments. Click on the above link to view the slide show.
The other publication offering is from USA Today. It is actually a podcast, but they also published it as an article for those who would rather read than listen. It too answers a lot of questions about how the polio case was discovered, the wastewater tested, and where do we go from here. And, like the Washington Post story, it also has a few “Hiccups”. For instance, it refers to the first polio vaccine as the oral vaccine, developed in 1955 by Jonas Salk, when actually it was the injectable vaccine he developed in 1955, followed by Albert Sabin’s oral vaccine in 1961. It also does not fully explain how, in rare instances, the oral vaccine can mutate back to full strength and infect an un-immunized child. But I include it in this newsletter because it does answer a lot of questions that I’m sure folks wonder about and provides a good narrative about the sequence of events, questions about school vaccination requirements, etc. surrounding this case. Click on the above link to access the podcast and article.
A Third online publication, not as well known as the above organizations, is “Your Local Epidemiologist” a newsletter published by Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD, an epidemiologist and biostatistician with the University of Texas. She was invited to the White House recently to participate in discussions about pandemic preparedness in the U.S. and across the globe, and in July was interviewed on
the PBS Newshour by Judy Woodruff about Covid-19 and Monkeypox. In her latest newsletter, she talks about not only Covid-19 and Monkeypox, but also Polio, where she offers a pretty detailed breakdown on the vaccination situation in New York City. Click on the link above for the newsletter, published today (Monday, August 22nd).
*Note: our community has an endless number of absolutely critical needs and needs help from our citizens. However, as a Rotary Club we cannot be all things to all people. So only those service opportunities approved by the Board will be listed in this bulletin. If you have project you wish our members to support, please submit your request to President Dave prior to the Board Meeting each month. Thank you!