Dr. Vince Akimoto, a Guam Medical Association member, is assisted by his staff in putting on protective gear as part of an Ebola preparedness drill at American Medical Center yesterday. The purpose of the drill was to demonstrate the recommended protocol medical professionals should take to handle the Ebola virus.

A leader in Guam’s medical community contends the island is not ready for a possible case of the Ebola virus, although lawmakers and other government officials have said otherwise.

“The truth to be told is that the island is not prepared,” said Tom Shieh, president of the Guam Medical Association. “To tell the people of Guam that we are prepared is basically lying to the people, and I think that’s wrong.”

Shieh said private medical clinics have so far received no logistics or training support from the government of Guam.

Shieh also said GMA has asked Public Health multiple times to reach out to its community of doctors to teach them about the virus and to provide training and support, but the help hasn’t come.

The medical association represents more than 200 physicians and allied health professionals, and its members provide care for more than 75 percent of Guam’s population, Shieh said in a press release.

Disagreement
Patrick Lujan, Guam Department of Public Health and Social Services emergency preparedness manager, disagreed with Shieh’s statements and said the island is, in fact, ready.

Lujan said in terms of personal protection equipment, the island is prepared.

“We cannot say that we are not ready whatsoever because we are ready and we are getting more ready,” Lujan said. “We’re ready to a degree because we have things in place if one or two (Ebola cases) comes through the island.”

Lujan said Public Health has put together a task force and is constantly meeting with the airport, Port Authority, the airlines and other agencies to give briefings on Ebola.

Lujan acknowledged a gap between the preparedness plans in the government and private sector.

“The government works with each other,” he said. “The government works well with military. We need to work better with the private sector.”

Some private clinics are taking matters into their own hands.

Mock drill
Dr. Vince Akimoto, a GMA member, held an Ebola preparedness drill yesterday to practice and demonstrate the protocol medical professionals should take to handle the disease.

Akimoto held the drill yesterday at the American Medical Center in Upper Tumon. He created a mock scenario of an infected family of three and practiced what the clinic would do to treat patients with Ebola symptoms.

As part of the drill, he and his two nurses donned a face mask and wore trash bags over their scrubs. The team assessed the patients’ symptoms in their car.

Akimoto said in the case a person was symptomatic of Ebola, he would not have the patient enter the clinic as a safety precaution.

He advises any person who feels they have Ebola symptoms to call the clinic beforehand so medical personnel can prepare for their arrival.

“Mock trials are good. It allows us to look at gaps and areas to make improvements,” Shieh said.

Lujan was present for the drill and said he provided Akimoto with ways the drill could be improved.
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Me, I tend to accept the word of the Head of the Guam Medical Association. Hafa Adai

A lot of what racism is about is just OTWs being denied their rights…not that white people have unearned privileges that they didn’t deserve, but that non-white people get treated in unacceptable ways that they don’t deserve.

But there’s also this fact: if you’re in a society where a significant sector of the population is discriminated against and disadvantaged, that gives you advantages. If the folks at the jobs I’m applying for, or trying to get promoted in, subconsciously discriminate against black applicants, I am in fact MORE likely to get a job there than I deserve, or to get promoted, because without that discrimination it might have gone to a better-qualified OTW instead.

Alternately, I can expect my race to be considered “standard” or “normal;” the fact that I have a race at all and that it’s only one of many possibilities becomes nearly invisible.

The truth is that the overall system of racism does end up providing certain systematic undeserved advantages to white people.

I think this fact, unrealized, ends up serving subconsciously as the source of some resistance to anti-racist efforts. Sometimes, it might actually happen that an anti-racist effort takes something away from me that I would have gotten before, however trivial.

And because human beings all tend to interpret everything we have had in the past as ours by right, when something is threatened to be taken away from me, I will feel like I’m being unjustly attacked, that I’m losing what was rightfully mine, and that it’s OTWs who are unjustly pushing for special privileges.

One can see this same behavior by Christians when they react to resistance to the privilege that Christians enjoy in America. I’m a Christian too, so I mean no offense.

Christians will often very sincerely, genuinely feel that their right to religious freedom is being attacked, when in fact all that is happening is that other people are asking for their OWN right to religious freedom be respected, which unfortunately means that Christianity cannot maintain its unjustly privileged status in the public sphere.

The term “white privilege” DOES tend to be upsetting to white people, but maybe there’s no way around that. If we’re going to be able to respond to the problem of racism sensibly, white people need to realize that NOT everything they have historically gotten by being white was a right. Some of it was unjust privilege.

It is the same power whites had for 200 plus years in this country, Today, that power has just dimmed a bit, but it is the same power white cops have to kill OTWs at will. That is racism.

Not liking a race because of the race has no power if you can not use that dislike to disenfranchise or harm that race with impunity. Your dislike is strictly an opinion. An opinion is bigotry. It is powerless.

Power is important if you are deprived of it because it prevents you from making racism just an opinion, bigotry. Without it, assholes like Douglass#20, get to use their bigotry with the power to deprive the targeted race or group of equality and even their lives. That is racism.

I doubt Douglas#20 would switch positions. That is what his race is trying so hard to prevent, the coming demographic change. It is also why they deprive OTWs, at every opportunity, of using their voting rights at the polls.