Special sessions aren’t so special

When you have four special sessions in one year, calling them “special” seems an abuse of the language. The word “extra” might sit better with English majors.

It seems the Alaska Legislature is meeting practically year-round. The “regular” session started January 19 and ran until May 19. The very first special session of the year started May 20 and ran until June 18. Our legislators then took a four-day break and went back to work June 23. The second special session lasted until June 28, the third from August 10 to September 14 and the fourth opens on October 9.

People used to complain if the Legislature went to Juneau and stayed there for most of the year, but the problem then was that voters were essentially cut off from their legislators. There was no opportunity to rub elbows and talk about the public’s priorities.

But with modern communications, including Zooming, that problem is largely gone. We can’t touch elbows except in a face-to-face meeting. And these days with masking requirements and other health precautions, people are more likely to bump elbows than to shake hands.

More than 95 percent of Alaskans over age 75 have had at least one vaccine dose, which pretty much gives them immunity, but there are still quite a few people who are skeptics and won’t go for the needles.

Many of those skeptics wind up in the hospital, so many that Providence Alaska Hospital, our largest medical center, announced this week that it would have to ration medical care and concentrate its efforts on the highest priority patients. That means that some scheduled surgeries have been postponed, many not for the first time. The medical community is taking a thoughtful and cautious approach to the problem and generally those at lowest risk are the ones likely to be postponed.

The ongoing pandemic is putting great pressure on our doctors, nurses, technicians and other support staff. We owe them our thanks and understanding of whatever decisions they make on our behalf.

Covid 19 is likely to be with us for many months, though the growing willingness to get vaccinated is a great help to the medical community and will eventually relieve the pressure.

There is still a sizable community of vaccine skeptics who refuse to take the protective shots. Many of those folks will wind up in the hospital and quite a few are already there. I’m not one of them and can’t claim I understand their reluctance to roll up their sleeves, but many beliefs are strongly held and that can put their health at risk.

My wife and I got our shots last January when they first became available in Alaska. Fortunately a good friend in the medical community helped us make our case and, being geezers who could prove it, we were among the first to get the shots. For the record ours were of the Moderna strain.

There are still a number of skeptics who refuse to take the shots and those folks are the most likely to wind up in the hospital.

Given that the medical community is being overwhelmed to the point that they are deferring surgeries, it is time for the skeptics to change their tune.

This is essentially a crisis that could have been avoided. Our legislators are presumably all vaccinated and it is time for them to get back to work and get on with the fourth special session

Hopefully they will continue until the people’s work is done.

Tom Brennan is an Anchorage columnist and author of six books. He was a reporter/columnist for The Anchorage Times and an editor and columnist at The Voice of The Times.