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COVID-19 by the numbers
New Mexico’s COVID-19 cases continue to rise, with health officials yesterday reporting 878 new cases—a 17% increase from Tuesday—bringing the statewide total so far to 221,960. The health department has designated 199,037 of them as recovered. Bernalillo County had 271 cases, followed by Lea County with 123 and Chaves County with 62. Santa Fe County had 30 new cases.
The state also announced four additional deaths; there have now been 4,459 fatalities. As of yesterday, 353 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, 12 more than the day prior.
Currently, 75.2% of New Mexicans 18 years and older have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 66% are fully vaccinated. Among those in the 12-to-17-year age group, 55.6% are partially vaccinated and 42.6% are fully inoculated. In Santa Fe County among adults 18 years and older, 86.8% have had at least one dose and 76.6% are fully inoculated.
You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.
Ethics allegations fly in mayoral campaign
Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber’s campaign has filed an ethics complaint against Union Protectíva de Santa Fe, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2951 and American Legion Post 1, accusing the three groups of illegal political activity based on ads that ran in SFR and on Facebook. None of the groups have registered as political committees, required under city code. The ads include one satirizing the city’s CHART process, led by Webber, aimed at addressing cultural divisions exemplified by the destruction of the Plaza obelisk. CHART—the Culture, History, Art, Reconciliation and Truth Committee—becomes Canceling Hispanic arts, religion (and) traditions in the spoof. The complaint alleges that between March and July of this year, the three organizations “paid for advertising that unambiguously called for the defeat of Alan Webber for Mayor, and failed to register as political committees.” The complaint goes on to allege the groups “may also have engaged in coordinated expenditures” with City Councilor JoAnne Vigil Coppler’s campaign. “Mayor Webber is clearly retaliating against Hispanic, Catholic, veteran and military citizens and groups with this baseless and desperate complaint to create divisiveness,” Union Protectíva’s spokesman James Hallinan writes to SFR. “Webber is a struggling mayor who is out of touch with Santa Fe’s history and culture.” The allegation of collusion cites an email from Union Protectíva President Virgil Vigil to Vigil Coppler stating his support. Vigil Coppler’s campaign manager Sisto Abeyta tells the Albuquerque Journal the email went to an email the city councilor no longer uses, and was sent prior to her candidacy.
As for the other groups, VFW Cmdr. Gilbert Romero tells the Journal any criticisms he has of Webber come from him, rather than the organization, while American Legion Cmdr. David Lucero says he has no knowledge of his group paying for any ads. Coppler is one of two challengers in the race; former Republican congressional candidate Alexis Martinez Johnson also is running and has filed an ethics complaint against Webber, slated to be heard today, which accuses him of using city funds to support his mayoral campaign.
State Fair vaccine mandate sparks GOP criticism
Two Republican state senators want Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to reconsider requiring proof of vaccination at the upcoming State Fair. State Sens. Crystal Diamond and Cliff Pirtle, of Elephant Butte and Roswell, respectively, wrote a letter to the governor and Acting Health Secretary David Scrase yesterday following the news of the requirement, which is part of a new health order announced earlier this week. Diamond and Pirtle’s letter centers on the vaccine requirement for children aged 12 and older, noting that many youth participate in the State Fair through 4H and FFA activities: “They have spent the greater part of this past year raising their animals and preparing their produce,” the letter reads. “While we understand the pressures you and other state officials are experiencing, we feel this decision was particularly careless and inconsiderate of the children and parents of our state.” Those “pressures” include rising COVID-19 cases and dwindling hospital capacity. The letter continues to say that families should not have to choose between “an experimental vaccine” or “having their hard work be completely lost.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the COVID-19 vaccine for everyone 12 years and older; only the Pfizer vaccine has thus far been approved for the ages of 12-17.State Fair officials, however, appear sanguine about the requirement. “It’s really not a big deal,” Expo New Mexico General Manager Dan Mourning tells the Albuquerque Journal. “It’s more like showing your driver’s license or a ticket to get into an event, so I don’t see it affecting us negatively,” he said. “We’re pretty efficient about moving people in and out and through the admission gates quickly.” Several vendors also said they approved of the decision, which they believed would either encourage people to seek out vaccinations prior to the State Fair’s onset Sept. 9, or make them more comfortable attending.
Prairie dog alert
Animal Protection New Mexico and the City of Santa Fe this week both decried “cruel and potentially illegal” violence against Santa Fe’s prairie dogs, after APNM reported finding several dead in “live-capture” traps. According to APNM, while such traps may be considered by some as a live capture and, thus, more “humane,” in fact “prairie dogs still can quickly die in such traps. Prairie dogs can’t tolerate exposure to direct sunlight and heat for long periods.” Moreover, prairie dogs, like beavers and cougars, are keystone species, important to New Mexico’s ecosystem but nonetheless ones that have “been historically driven out, harassed and nearly made extinct as our communities grow and develop into habitat areas.” Anyone with concerns about prairie dogs’ welfare can contact APNM’s cruelty hotline: 877-5-HUMANE, and may remain anonymous. “Santa Fe is a city where we value and protect all of our animals, from dogs to prairie dogs,” Mayor Alan Webber said in a statement. “Recently, however, we’ve witnessed some disturbing attacks on our prairie dog villages. The city has been and continues to be committed to prairie dog protection. Valuing and protecting animals is part of Santa Fe; hurting prairie dogs harms us all.” SFR has written about the prairie dogs’ fate in Santa Fe numerous times over the year, but you can learn a little more about their history and survival in this 2008 story.
Listen up
If you haven’t heard a lot about the testing component of the new recreational cannabis industry, you’re not alone. The Regulation and Licensing Department has yet to issue rules for non-medical cannabis testing, and a state court judge rejected the health department’s attempt to update those rules. In the most recent episode of the Growing Forward podcast, hosts Megan Kamerick and Andy Lyman visit an Albuquerque testing lab to find out more about the process, the standards and some of the open questions facing the issue.
Youth forward
Local organization YouthWorks recently received the largest grant in its history—$1.3 million from the US Labor Department Employment and Training Administration—to allow it to continue its YouthBuild program for the next three years and recruit 72 more young people to participate. “We’re very thrilled about it,” YouthWorks Founder and Executive Director Melynn Schuyler tells SFR. “This grant allows us to add more young people per year and better staffing levels and a little more infrastructure to just add to the impact of the program.” Participants prepare to take the GED and gain construction or culinary skills as they work four days a week and receive a stipend. Yulissa Dominguez, 18, for instance, has been in the program for approximately two months, is working on her GED and plans to enter the culinary arts program at Santa Fe Community College. “This is a really good experience for me because I do want to become a chef, so this is good for me to know what I’m going to be doing in the kitchen and seeing how everyone works together,” Dominguez tells SFR. “It’s opened my eyes to what a kitchen is really like.”
White Yucca?
If you haven’t splurged for an HBO subscription to watch The White Lotus, you might want to reconsider: It was very entertaining. So much so that HBO has ordered a second season. We’re bad at short explanations so here’s the HBO description: “The White Lotus is a sharp social satire following the exploits of various employees and guests at an exclusive Hawaiian resort over the span of one highly transformative week.” Vanity Fair thought the news of a second season sounded like a good excuse for coming up with nine proposals for a new locale for Season 2 and Santa Fe made the list. To wit: “Southern New Mexico is now the favored locale for billionaires looking to build a spaceport, and the Bransons and Bezoses of the world need somewhere to go to recover from their five minutes in space. Santa Fe could be the perfect place for the White Lotus experience, if you swap out the coastlines for sandy vistas and hot springs, and augment the spa treatments with some spiritual appropriation. The season could focus on the burgeoning tensions between the 1 percent and the 0.1 percent, include some art-world intrigue—maybe a heist—and figure out why all the new space shuttles look so phallic.” Yes, writer Erin Vanderhoof’s understanding of New Mexico’s geography seems lacking. Also: Ouch.
A perfect day
Today will allegedly be mostly sunny, with a high near 75 degrees and west wind 5 to 15 mph. Tomorrow too, if you like to plan.
Thanks for reading! The Word can appreciate the gallows humor of the trending My Fall/Delta Variant meme, although she’s not sure it needed to be explained. Repeatedly. By everyone.
