Kansas State changing mask policy, cites CDC guidance

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) – Kansas State University is altering its mask policy for outdoor settings, citing updated guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

WIBW-TV reports that starting May 17, those who are fully vaccinated can participate in campus outdoor activities and recreation without a mask, except in crowded settings and venues. Those exceptions may include live performances, parades and sporting events.

The university says masks will still be required in all indoor spaces on university property.

The CDC announced the new guidance in late April, saying fully vaccinated Americans don’t need to cover their faces anymore unless they are in a big crowd of strangers.

Kansas hit hard by identity theft during COVID-19 pandemic

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Identity theft rose sharply last year during the COVID-19 pandemic, and no place was hit harder than Kansas.

The Wichita Eagle reports that 43,211 Kansans alerted the Federal Trade Commission in 2020 that someone had stolen or tried to steal their identity. That was 2,272 more cases than in 2019.

Kansas’ 1,802% year-over-year increase was the highest among the states and more than three times the national average. Rhode Island was next, with an increase of 1,002%.

Of all the 2020 identity theft reports in Kansas, 88% were classified as government documents or benefits fraud. The Kansas Department of Labor has cited a barrage of fraudulent unemployment claims since the coronavirus pandemic began.

News to Know (5/10/21)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Just over a third of the U.S. population is now fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. But 14 states have less than 40 percent of their populations **partially** vaccinated, with Mississippi at the bottom. This comes as more states turn down doses, with Wisconsin asking for just eight percent of its Federal allocation, Illinois nine percent and Kansas under nine percent.

JOPLIN, Mo. – We’ve got something exciting coming up this week on KOAM and FOX 14. On Thursday, we’ll be hosting “Vaccine Day”. Experts from Mercy Hospital Joplin will be taking your calls and answering your questions regarding the covid-19 vaccine. Be sure to tune in to each newscast starting with the KOAM Morning News for our “Vaccine Day” special.

MIAMI, Okla. – Officials with the Grand River Dam Authority police say a person contacted them regarding a body in Tar Creek just north of the Neosho River in Miami. Officials with the GRDA police say the body was recovered and taken by the medical examiner. The victim is described as a male with reddish brown hair, facial hair, a thin build, around five foot eight to five foot ten inches tall with no tattoos. Anyone with information is asked to contact the GRDA police. The investigation is ongoing.

JOPLIN, Mo. – The Route 66 Auto Center in Joplin caught fire Sunday. Fire officials on the scene say a car caught fire inside the auto shop. They also say due to it being a body shop, the chemicals within the shop may have played a part in the blaze. Joplin, Diamond, Carthage, and Webb City’s fire departments were called in to fight the fire. The fire did not spread outside of the building. As of now, a cause has not been determined, but officials have ruled the fire an accident.

PSU’s newest nurses eager to fight COVID-19

 

PITTSBURG, Ks. – They may not have graduated in front of a packed auditorium because of COVID-19 precautions, but that wouldn’t take away from the special day of PSU’s newest class of nursing students.

In fact, the current pandemic has many of them all the more eager to get out there and save lives.

“Just the sheer amount people here that are graduating today shows me that we just have people who aren’t afraid and are able to get out there,” said graduate Cindy Miles.

“It is rewarding to be able get fresh out of the gates and into this pandemic and be able to help out,” said graduate Sierra Merando.

Not only will these nurses be a great help in the fight against the Coronavirus, they’re also helping a nation that’s dealing with a nursing shortage.

“I think it feels really good to be able to graduate and say that I’m going into a profession where we need people,” said Merando.

It took a lot of hard work for these nurses to get here, and the pandemic didn’t make things any easier.

“The whole virtual semester, when COVID hit our area, it was tough getting it going from being in person the whole time to going virtual,” said Merando.

But for some graduates like Cindy Miles, that virtual learning had a silver lining. That’s because she wants to pursue a career in telehealth.

“There was a lot of bureaucratic red tape involved with preventing telehealth from being something that was going forward, but I think at this point, they’ve realized just how useful it really is,” said Miles.

PSU’s nursing graduates included the first nurses to go through the new nurse practitioner residency program. It was made possible by a partnership between Pitt State and the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas.

Owe back rent? What you can do before the eviction moratorium ends

JOPLIN, Mo. – A federal judge has temporarily stayed a ruling that found the CDC exceeded its authority when it implemented a federal eviction moratorium last year.

The nation wide eviction ban was initially put into place last year by the Trump Administration to provide protection for renters facing hardship because of the pandemic. Experts with the CDC feared having families lose their homes would exacerbate the spread of COVID-19. The moratorium was extended through the end of June, 2021, by the Biden Administration.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington D.C. struck down the eviction moratorium, saying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had overstepped their authority when issuing the federal evictions ban.

But, late Wednesday night, a federal judge in Washington granted a temporary stay of the order, meaning the moratorium will continue through the end of June. The stay came after the U.S. Justice Department filed an appeal to the original ruling.

The stay will give an estimated 4 million Americans a short reprieve. But, that reprieve is exactly that — short.

“These renters who have just been living for free are gonna be kind of out of luck anyway, because they are gonna owe all the back money that they did owe,” says Brian Carberry, Managing Editor for Rent.com. “Some of these renters that are behind are really gonna have to start getting in gear and figuring out what they need to do.”

Carberry says that renters need to be working on a plan to pay their back rent now, or they could be facing eviction once the moratorium does end. One simple piece of advice he offers for renters is to have a conversation with their landlord, and come up with a payment plan that works for everyone.

“I think, yes, landlords are gonna want to get their money back, but most people are human. I mean everyone’s human. But most people are gonna understand what you’re going through because they’ve been having financial difficulties too,” says Carberry.

There’s also a lot of grants and assistance program that renters can utilize to help pay their back rent, especially if their income was impacted in some way by the pandemic.

In Kansas, the biggest one is the Kansas Emergency Rental Assistance (KERA) program.

“They will pay back rent for you, and then going forward they will pay up to three months in advance for rent,” explains Tiffany Ronine, Resource Coordinator at SEK CAP. “So, if you have 12 months that you owe and then you need another three months, they could potentially pay all of that.”

To learn more about the program, and to apply, go here: https://kshousingcorp.org/emergency-rental-assistance/

In Missouri, the Missouri State Assistance for Housing Relief (SAFHR) program does the exact same thing as the KERA program in Kansas.

You can apply here: https://www.mohousingresources.com/safhr

In Oklahoma, renters can apply for rental assistance through the Community Cares Partners COVID-19 Relief program.

You can find more information on eligibility requirements and apply here: https://okcommunitycares.org/en/home/

All of these state wide programs utilize federal relief dollars from the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill passed in March. Experts recommend applying for the program in your respective state as soon as you can, since these dollars will go quickly.

If we go back to southeast Kansas, SEK Cap has several programs that they’re working on to help renters and others impacted by the pandemic. SEK CAP offers services to residents in 12 counties: https://www.sek-cap.com/services/services-avenues-to-success

SEK CAP is currently accepting applications for its rental assistance program, but the application deadline is fast approaching. It ends on May 14. The program assists qualifying individuals and families with rental subsidies and or security deposits and utility bills. You can find more information on how to apply here: https://sek-cap.com/services/housing

 

Authorities: Fake vaccination cards sold at California bar

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The owner of a Northern California bar where authorities say made-to-order fake COVID-19 vaccination cards were sold to undercover state agents for $20 each was arrested in what officials call the first such foiled operation they are aware of nationwide.

The plainclothes agents from California’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control said they were told at the Old Corner Saloon in Clements to write their names and birthdates on Post-it notes and then watched as employees cut the cards, filled in identifying information and bogus vaccination dates and laminated the finished products.

“On the back where they put the two dates when you were vaccinated, they used two different color pens to make it look like it was two different times,” supervising agent Luke Blehm said Friday. “So they went to some effort to make it look authentic.”

Vaccination cards are being used in some places as a pass for people to attend large gatherings. The European Union is considering allowing in tourists who can prove they have been vaccinated.

In California, officials have allowed venue operators to offer easier access to people with proof of vaccination. That includes preferential access to large events such as concerts and sporting events and allowing venues to create vaccinated-only sections where social distancing requirements are not as strict.

Acting on an anonymous tip to the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office, four undercover agents went to the bar several times in April and bought four fake laminated vaccination cards, officials said.

They also reported seeing at least eight others buy fake cards, but haven’t uncovered how many were sold.

They returned to the small-town bar this week and arrested its owner. Agents said they found another two completed cards and 30 additional blank cards along with a laminator and cutting device.

“This is such a new case. We looked for some other guidance from other cases around the country and we haven’t been able to find one like this at all,” Blehm said.

Fake cards have been advertised on social media and online sales platforms, he said, prompting the California attorney general’s office to send cease and desist warnings to those entities.

But it’s the first example he’s found of someone selling cards out of a bar.

With just one such report so far, California law enforcement and regulatory agencies said Friday that they’re not mounting the kind of sustained task force approach they used last summer to make sure business owners were following safety guidelines designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

“If we see this, we’ll do an investigation and take action on it,” Blehm said. “This is on the radar, but this is the only one we know of so far.”

Other federal and state authorities in California said they’ve not seen similar counterfeit operations.

But federal, state and local officials on a joint task force that looks for criminal activities are keeping a watchful eye, said Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the state Office of Emergency Services.

“They actively are looking for stuff like this,” he said. ”They’re looking for folks that are doing things like selling vaccines or fraudulent vaccines on the open market, vaccine cards.”

The FBI and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general in late March warned the public “to be aware of individuals selling fake COVID-19 vaccination record cards and encouraging others to print fake cards at home.” That notice also warned of internet-based sales.

It wasn’t immediately known if the bar owner, Todd Anderson, has an attorney who can speak on his behalf. No one answered the phone at the bar Friday.

Anderson was arrested on suspicion of three felonies, including identity theft, forging government documents and possession of an unregistered firearm. He also is accused of falsifying medical records, a misdemeanor.

“It is disheartening to have members in our community show flagrant disregard for public health in the midst of a pandemic,″ San Joaquin County District Attorney Tori Verber Salazar said in a statement. “Distributing, falsifying or purchasing fake COVID-19 vaccine cards is against the law and endangers yourself and those around you.”

California officials also are also pursuing disciplinary action against the bar.

For some pastors, the past year was too much to bear

(RNS) – Jeff Weddle, a 46-year-old, wise-cracking, self-deprecating, Bible-loving, self-described “failing pastor” from Wisconsin, was already thinking of leaving the ministry before COVID and the 2020 election.

He was, as he put it, fed up with church life after two decades as a pastor.

Then, what he called “the stupid” – feuds about politics and the pandemic – put him over the edge. People at church seemed more concerned about the latest social media dustup and online conspiracy theories – one church member called him the antichrist for his views on COVID- than in learning about the Bible.

Sunday mornings had become filled with dread over what could go wrong next.

He eventually decided, “I don’t need this anymore.” Weddle stepped down as pastor, walked out the door and hasn’t looked back.

The last eighteen months or so have been difficult for pastors like Weddle. Already stretched with the day-to-day concerns of running a congregation at a time when organized religion is on the decline, they’ve increasingly found that the divides facing the nation have made their way inside the walls of the church.

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This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story.

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Clergy also felt a sense of isolation, cut off from contact with their congregations and unable to do the kind of in-person ministry that drew them to the pastorate. Instead of preaching and visiting the sick, they had to become video producers and online content creators.

Chuck DeGroat, professor of counseling and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, said pastors have long had to mediate disputes over theology or church practice, like the role of women in the church or the so-called “ worship wars ” of recent decades. They now face added stresses from the pandemic and polarization, with people willing to leave their churches over mask policies or discussions of race.

“I’m hearing from pastors that they just don’t know what to do,” he said.

A recent survey of Protestant pastors by the research firm Barna Group found that 29% said they had given “real, serious consideration to quitting being in full-time ministry within the last year.”

David Kinnaman, president of Barna, said the past year has been a “crucible” for pastors. Churches have become fragmented by political and social divides. They have also become frayed, as “people’s connectedness to local congregations is waning.

“The pandemic was a great revealer of the challenges churches face,” said Kinnaman.

The Rev. Kerri Parker, executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Churches, whose member organizations include about 2,000 churches and a million Christians, has been concerned about the stresses clergy have been under since 2020.

Last summer, the council surveyed clergy and found about a quarter said they were considering retiring or leaving the pastorate due to the stresses of ministry during COVID.

In a recent follow-up survey, said Parker, about a third of respondents said they were considering their options or thinking about leaving.

Parker said that unlike past crises, like floods, tornadoes or other disasters, pastors won’t be able to escape the fallout from COVID-19 once the pandemic is over. If there’s a flood, she said, a pastor could stay at their church, help them clean up and rebuild and then at some point move to another church that hadn’t been through that disaster.

But COVID affected everyone.

“So where do you go?” she said. “Out of the church.”

For Brandon Cox, serving as a pastor had been a joy until last year.

In 2011, Cox and his wife, Angie, had started a new church in Bentonville, Arkansas, called Grace Hills. Cox described Grace Hills as a “Celebrate Recovery”-style congregation, inspired by the support group ministry founded at Saddleback Church in Southern California, where Cox had once worked.

“Up until 2020, we had a fantastic time,” Cox, 46, told Religion News Service in a phone interview.

The trifecta of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 election and the racial reckoning in response to the death of George Floyd hit like a “wrecking ball.”

Grace Hills shut down in-person worship at the beginning of the pandemic, which prompted people to leave. More left when the church reopened and required masks. When Cox and a Black pastor preached a Sunday sermon together after Floyd’s death and said that yes, Black lives matter, that caused more turmoil. No matter what Cox did, someone was angry.

“It was sort of relentless,” said Cox, who stepped down as pastor at Grace Hill at the end of April. “My wife and I just found ourselves in the place of exhaustion.”

Cox talked to RNS nine days after his last Sunday as a pastor and said he hasn’t given up on Christianity – he hopes to find a new church to attend in the coming months – but pastoral ministry is no longer for him.

Leaving the ministry has challenges. After 24 years in vocational ministry, Cox felt he didn’t have many career options. For now, he plans to work for a local real estate company.

“I kept telling people, ‘You’d be amazed how many jobs you’re not qualified for,’” said Cox.

Even before COVID, the demands of the job wore on many clergy.

The Rev. Emily Reeves Grammer served as pastor of several United Methodist congregations in the Nashville area for a decade before leaving the pastorate in 2019. Grammer, who has two children, said balancing the demands of ministry and family life proved daunting.

Grammer, who is 36, said she loved being a pastor. But she worried about the long-term sustainability of her calling to be a pastor, given that the United Methodist Church seems headed for a schism.

“I am really concerned about the ability of a lot of United Methodist churches to keep supporting full-time clergy people,” she said.

While thinking about the future, she talked with older pastors who felt it was too late for them to change careers. The advice she got was this: If you are going to leave, do it now. So she resigned from her church and went back to school to become an English teacher.

“What I love most about being a pastor is gathering people together around a text and making meaning together out of that text,” she said. Teaching literature, she said, will allow her to do the same thing.

Charlie Cotherman, pastor of Oil City Vineyard Church in rural Pennsylvania, said that, in his part of the world, pastors who had strong denominational ties and relationships to draw on may have weathered the pandemic better than pastors who were on their own.

Cotherman, who directs the Rural Ministry Project at Grove City College, said most of the pastors he works with have done pretty well during the pandemic. Some had the advantage of being in small communities with low COVID infection rates, so they were able to return to in-person services quickly.

Still, he said, COVID has taken a toll. In some churches, members, especially families, left when services went online and just haven’t come back.

“Some of these small churches in rural areas have a couple of young families,” he said. “For them to lose even one of them has been a really tough thing.”

Before he left the ministry, Weddle began a blog at FailingPastor.com, detailing some of his concerns about the ministry. Weddle said he gave the ministry his best for 21 years. But being a pastor proved an almost impossible task.

“Ultimately, you want people to grow in Christ – to be caring, making sense of the Bible and applying it to their life,” he said. “And, you know, for thousands of years it’s been very difficult to get people to do that. So, the job is inherently frustrating.”

Leaving the ministry has been a relief.

“I’ve been going to church,” he wrote recently. “I don’t have to do anything at a church for the first time in 21 years. I don’t have to worry about who isn’t there, or why, or who will be mad next. I don’t have to have regrets all afternoon and evening about how I messed up my sermon.”

Kansas seeks 9% of allowed vaccine doses, ponders COVID laws

TOPEKA, Kan. – Kansas has requested less than 9% of its federal allocation of COVID-19 vaccine doses for this week, as Republican state lawmakers try to revive proposals to ban government vaccine passports and restore limits on tracing the close contacts of people exposed to the virus.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s office said Thursday that the state asked for fewer than 14,000 vaccine doses for the week, out of a federal allotment of almost 162,000. While the state sought its full allotment of 6,400 doses of a one-shot vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson, it requested only 7,510 doses of its allocation of 155,540 doses of two-shot vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna.

Kansas has seen its vaccination rate slow in recent weeks. It peaked at an average of 29,380 shots a day for the seven days ending April 6 and averaged only 11,872 for the seven days ending Wednesday, according to state Department of Health and Environment data.

Kelly spokeswoman Reeves Oyster said the state ordered less than its allotment “to ensure that no vaccine goes to waste.”

“Last week, providers cited low demand and sufficient inventory to handle a weekly increase in demand,” she said in an email. “Like the rest of the country, demand for the COVID-19 vaccine is slowing.”

Counties have been turning down vaccine doses as demand has waned, and while the department reported that more than 1.95 million shots had been administered as of Wednesday, there still were almost 647,000 more doses available. The health department in Sedgwick County, home to the state’s largest city of Wichita, has reduced the operations of its vaccine clinic by 10 hours a week because of falling demand, The Wichita Eagle reported.

Meanwhile, some Republican senators in the GOP-controlled Legislature were working on a proposal to prohibit state and local government agencies from requiring people to have COVID-19 vaccine passports to enter places accessible to the general public.

Kelly said last month that she has no interest in vaccine passports and that none would be issued under her authority.

But Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Kellie Warren, a Leawood Republican, said lawmakers are hearing from people who want to see a ban imposed.

“This would be protecting-your-privacy concerns,” she said.

With the Legislature hoping to wrap up the year’s business this week, lawmakers would have to slip a proposed ban into an existing piece of legislation when senators and House members write the final version.

House Judiciary Committee Chair Fred Patton, a Topeka Republican, said he’s working on a proposal but said senators showed him language that was “pretty broad.”

“I think it would impact even getting information from your own doctor, and certainly we don’t want that to be the case,” Patton said.

Warren also is working to resurrect limits on tracing contacts in cases where people have been exposed to COVID-19. The Legislature enacted the limits last year at the urging of Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican who is running for governor, who saw them as a way to protect people’s privacy.

However, the limits on tracing expired Saturday, and while the Senate approved a bill in March to keep them in place permanently, the House did not take up the measure. The rules prevented people exposed to COVID-19 from being forced to disclose their close contacts and said people couldn’t face criminal charges or civil lawsuits for refusing.

Those limits set COVID-19 apart from other infectious diseases, such as syphilis or hepatitis. Public health groups said the limits hinder contact tracing and decried the different rules for the novel coronavirus. Some Republicans said the special treatment was justified because COVID-19 was so widespread and the danger to privacy much greater.

Patton said House members don’t have many concerns about reinstating the special contact tracing rules for COVID-19.

Warren said: “We’ve been hearing from constituents across the state that these are issues they want the Legislature to take up.”

Families sue 2 Kansas school districts over mask mandates

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — The families of 16 students sued two suburban Kansas City school districts, arguing their children should be allowed to attend school during the pandemic without wearing masks.

“The parents are terribly, terribly upset. There’s a groundswell of dissatisfaction,” said their attorney, Linus Baker.

The Kansas City Star reports that the lawsuit against the Blue Valley and Olathe school districts in Johnson County argues students should be granted individual exemptions to mask mandates. The parents contend masks are interfering with their children’s ability to learn.

Districts offer medical exemptions, generally for students with special needs or disabilities. They also relax mask rules for students during some sports and other activities. Two parents already have medical exemptions, but are suing to seek reimbursement for the costs to obtain them.

Both districts have fielded challenges since the Legislature passed a bill that empowers parents to fight COVID-19 restrictions. But their school boards have so far upheld their mask mandates.

District officials have argued that the mandates cannot be repealed under the new law because they were enacted last summer. The law requires individuals to contest them within 30 days.

The lawsuit, initially filed in state court, was moved to federal court this week. It alleges the districts violated the equal protection clause under the U.S. Constitution.

News to Know (5/6/21)

ATLANTA, Ga – The CDC predicts a sharp drop in COVID-19 cases and deaths by the end of July, if more people get vaccinated. The Biden administration announced support for a plan to temporarily suspend the vaccines’ patent protections, in order to allow other countries to produce their own.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Facebook extends its suspension of former President Trump, whose account was banned after the January 6th Capitol Hill riot. Facebook’s Oversight Board said comments by former President Trump made the situation more dangerous. The board also called the suspension “vague” and said it should be reconsidered within six months.

JOPLIN, Mo. – The Joplin Police department investigates a fire that happened early yesterday morning on South Florida Avenue. The fire department says when crews arrived they found the single-story house with fire and smoke showing. Crews put it out quickly. No one was hurt. Authorities say someone was inside but they escaped safely.

COLUMBUS, Kan. – Cherokee County’s K9 unit and deputies are little safer thanks to a donation from Spike’s K9 Fund. The fund donated an Ace K9 Hot and Pop Pro and Heat Alarm for Deputy Nate Jones and his K9 partner Bear. The equipment allows a deputy to monitor the temperature in his car and turn on the AC or roll down the windows if things get too hot. It also allows Deputy Jones to remotely open the back doors of his patrol unit if he needs to get Bear out quickly in an emergency situation. The equipment is valued at more than $1,300.

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