Authors note
These are events that happened this week that I chose to highlight. These are in no way everything everyone needs to know. I highly encourage everyone to read the news themselves, from reliable sources and to develop their own opinions. My opinions have been italicized. With that being said all opinions stated in this article are my own so if you don’t like them then sip your tea and mind your business. Some of the news events this week can be triggering.
The theme of this week’s Wassapened This Week is flaws: Systemic flaws, flaws in medicine, and flaws in society.
Miya
On Saturday, Oct 2, the police found a body wooded area near the Tymber Skan on the Lake apartments that they later confirmed on Wednesday, Oct 6th to be that of Miya Marcano. Since September 24 Miya had been missing and she was least seen at her apartment complex, Arden Villas Luxury Apartments in Orlando. Her body was found approximately 18 miles west of her home. Armando Manuel Caballero, the maintenance man for her apartment complex, abused the privileges of his job by accessing her apartment, waiting for her, kidnapping and later killing her. This low down dirty coward of a man later killed himself. This story further shows that even if a man has nothing he will have audacity. Why is it that lives continue to be lost because a man can not take no for an answer? All this girl did was say no to his advance and in his dim witted pea sized brain it justified death. Society needs to stop allowing for this behavior to perpetuate. No woman should ever feel pressured to do anything she does not want to do.
Social media
On Monday, Oct 4, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were down for 6 hours starting a little before noon. I know I wasn’t the only one who thought their phone was broken.Facebook says it was because an update to Facebook’s routers that coordinate network traffic went wrong. While many were confused, many turned to another platform, Twitter, for entertainment. Twitter happily welcomed with a tweet saying “Hello literally everyone” which got over 3 million likes. Many companies took advantage of this marketing opportunity to poke fun at Facebook’s blunder. Netflix, Motorola and many more joined in. Not only were companies joining in, but people were also too. I’ve linked some of my favorites:
- https://twitter.com/zikriibrahim7/status/1445195515734355970?s=12
- https://twitter.com/arooj_baba/status/1445063958411366402?s=12
- https://twitter.com/nuffsaidny/status/1445061581843357697?s=12
Catholic church
On Tuesday, Oct 5, an independent commission released a report, after two and a half years of investigations, that estimated that 330,000 children in France were sexually abused over the past 70 years, from 1950-2020, by members of the Catholic church. This independent commission was set up by the Roman Catholic Church in France in order to investigate the extent of abuse in the church. In order to identify cases of abuse the commission spoke to victims, who voluntarily came forward, witnesses while studying church, court, police and news archives. The grueling nearly 2,500-page report detailed how for decades the wrongful actions of Catholic officials were covered up and dismissed while the church silenced and gaslighted their victims. About 216,000 victims were abused by priests and other clerics and then about 114,000 were abused by church figures such as camp counselors. The majority of the victims were pre-adolescent boys, boys ages 10 to 13, from social backgrounds. It’s very disheartening and quite frankly vexing to know that many of these cases of abuse will not be prosecuted as the abuser has died or the statute of limitations has expired. Most of the abuse transpired between the 1950 and 1970s. While these numbers are far worse than what many people imagined, no one should be surprised that the abuse has been occurring. This report only illuminates a structural flaw in the Catholic church’s culture of pure imaging, aka working to uphold the image of the church’s flawlessness, that allows for the culture of silencing and repudiation of its members’ actions. The church’s apologies are not enough, more needs to be done, reparations and systemic change need to occur. And to each of those moronic and duplicitous good for nothing abusers, those exposed and those still unknown, the world may not have seen but remember you served a God of vengeance. Your time is coming. Be afraid. Be very afraid not only of God but of the world.
WHO
On Wednesday, Oct 6th, the World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed the world’s first malaria vaccine. Malaria is spread when a parasite-infected female Anopheles mosquito bite/feeds on a human. Those with Malaria suffer from high fevers, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain, and flu-like illness. This moment is historic as this vaccine has been long-awaited and it is the first vaccine developed for any parasitic disease. Approximately 1-3 million people die from Malaria every year with about 80-90% of the deaths in rural sub-Saharan Africa. Can you believe that children in sub-Saharan Africa have an average of six malaria episodes a year !!! Imagine going through that multiple times a year. I had malaria once and that was more than enough for a lifetime. The endorsement comes from the results of an ongoing pilot program in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. While it did show some success, the efficiency was only moderate. It’s only 30% effective in preventing hospitalizations and 40% effective in preventing infections. This is why global health leaders are recommending that the vaccine should not replace methods, such as insecticide-treated bed nets, but instead should be given in addition to using the methods in place. I do have some concerns about how the countries who need it most will be able to afford it once companies and alliances determine if it is a worthwhile investment. Many of the countries whose people suffer from malaria the most are developing and are still trying to recover from the COVID pandemic. What systems will be put in place to ensure that those who want the vaccine will receive it?
