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The Citizen, 2017-03-09, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2017. PAGE 5. Other Views How quickly we forget progress you don't know whether to chuckle or shake your head when you hear that professional hockey players are missing hockey games because they got the mumps — especially when you realize many of them are earning as much for sitting out one game as many of us ordinary mortals make in a year. Recently five members of the Vancouver Canucks missed games after they came down with a childhood disease that most of us have all but forgotten exists. Hockey teams have been particularly affected because team members are in close proximity and may accidentally pick up each others' water bottles, spreading the disease through the exchange of saliva. Given that Sidney Crosby, the world's number one hockey player, came down with the mumps a few years ago, one would have thought managers of National Hockey League teams would have protected their million - dollar assets by getting them a booster shot for the measles -mumps -rubella vaccine that most people in Canada now get shortly after their first birthday. It's now recommended they get a second dose as part of a measles -mumps - rubella -varicella (chicken pox) immunization between the ages of four and six. Apparently many of the people being infected by this outbreak, which has hit not just hockey players but people who visited downtown Toronto bars, are in an age group (18-35) who probably got only one shot. Doctors are now suggesting people need a booster shot later in life to really make them immune to these diseases. The fact that 100 or so cases of mumps across the entire country is making headlines makes old guys like me remember how far things have come. Back in the 1950s and 1960s nearly all of us suffered through measles, mumps and chicken pox (I had measles and chicken pox and others in my family had mumps but somehow I missed Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk getting that). The dangers these diseases present for long-term harm were no doubt just as present back then as they are today, but we didn't dwell on them — perhaps because we had scarier diseases back then, diseases that have since been nearly wiped out. The biggest and scariest was polio. Parents lived in terror of their children being infected by this paralysing disease that could kill by making children (and some adults) unable to breathe. Some were kept alive only with the use of "iron lungs", machines that breathed for them. Others, the "lucky" ones, lost the strength of the muscles in their limbs. Between 1927 and 1953, six waves of the disease swept the continent, affecting thousands. It played no favourites. Millionaire Franklin D. Roosevelt caught the bug and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, able to stand only briefly with the use of leg braces. Still, he became a three -term U.S. President, helped by the fact the press of the day didn't think his personal handicap should be broadcast to voters. Then, suddenly in 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk, an American researcher, developed a vaccine to prevent infection from the polio virus. Those of us in school at the time gratefully lined up for mass vaccination programs. Suddenly the most feared disease around vanished from our medical landscape. The other frightening disease of this era was tuberculosis. The disease, under various names, had been a killer for most of the history of mankind. "Consumption" was a favourite plot device to kill someone off in Victorian novels. So many people were harmed by this infection of the lungs that sanitoriums were built to treat them and became homes to those permanently damaged. Portable X-ray buses toured the province giving us all chest X-rays to see if we'd had our lungs scarred by an infection we might not have known we had. Then, in 1952, a new oral antibiotic was released that quickly treated those infected and another drug helped the recovery of those who had been damaged by the disease. The disease became a minor problem, though returning now and then even today. Sanitoriums closed. It's no wonder my old childhood physician Dr. Victor Johnston chose the title Before the Age of Miracles for the book he wrote in the 1960s about his long medical career. Now when I hear people leading anti - vaccination campaigns, worried about possible side-effects of vaccines, I figure they're young enough they don't remember the days when we were so grateful to be vaccinated — to escape from the terrorizing spectre of catching one of the killer diseases of that era. If you don't know the horror of the disease, you can obsess about the potential harm from the cure. Along with those polio survivors, I'm a bit of a walking medical curiosity. When I was about 12, I missed three months of school (two of them spent in bed) recovering from rheumatic fever, a disease that could leave you with a weakened heart for the rest of your life — as it did my cousin. Rheumatic fever is unheard of today. When I tell a young doctor my medical history these days she/he either has a blank look or looks at me like a museum exhibit. Aren't we lucky that so many once -feared diseases are virtually extinct? Let's keep it that way. Get your kids vaccinated. Just where do those tax dollars go? 0 ver the weekend I had a lot of driving to do both within Huron County and beyond and the family consensus was that snow removal isn't what it used to be. Now I know that I've talked about this before — about how great snow removal in Blyth was (because this past year has definitely put that in the past tense) but after driving the roads maintained by the county on Saturday and Sunday, I've got to say, those in charge of snow removal need to up their game. Saturday morning we headed south towards the London area to visit some family and were immediately shocked by how poor County Road 4 (London Road) was immediately south of Blyth. The curve in the road just south of the Old Mill was slippery, snow-covered and just overall not well tended. At the time, I didn't think much of it, there was quite a bit of snow the night before and it's just natural for some of it to stay on the road. It wasn't until we headed south of Clinton on Provincial Highway 4 that I realized the snow removal there was far superior to county roads. Whereas County Road 4 was snow -packed, slippery and downright dangerous, Provincial Highway 4 was bare and mostly dry. This wasn't a 6 a.m. drive. We were heading to the London area for lunch so we didn't leave until after 9:30 a.m., a point when at least the major roadways should be cleared for travel. I took a vote of the car and both Ashleigh and I felt that better snow removal was needed on the county road. Mary Jane squished a squeaky toy which we took as agreement. On our way home, some seven hours later, there were still patches on County Road 4 where the snow wasn't just blowing across it, Denny Scott Denny's Den but actually still stuck to the road, creating sections where people slowed to 50 kilometres an hour. No such patches existed on the provincial portion of the road. Sunday, the roads didn't seem to be worse, but they still weren't great. We travelled to Seaforth on County Roads 25 (Blyth Road) and County Road 12 (North Line). Patches of the road were more than snow- covered, they were slippery and, once again, not really a safe place to be driving on. This was shortly after noon. Several hours later, after a few stops, we were on our way home again and for the first trip in two days, we saw a plow. Unfortunately, the plow was pulled over to the side of the road and not doing much about the road conditions. It just so happened these trips and preventable poor road conditions happened a few days after the county released its annual "Sunshine List" — an index of individuals in the public sectors in the county who made more than $100,000 in the previous year. The two experiences seemed to be somewhat at odds with each other. Here is a list of people who make nearly double what it takes to house and feed a family of four in my experience. They are paid that amount of money thanks to the taxes that every landowner in Huron County is required to pay and yet, we can't get clean roads so people can get to work to pay those taxes. It was a frustrating juxtaposition. How can one individual receive that much money when so many services are under -funded and how can that be done with tax dollars no less? There are 30 county employees who made more than $100,000 in 2016. The people on the list aren't responsible for snow removal — at least not directly by driving the plow — and the people that are responsible for keeping the roads clean aren't on the list, but that doesn't change the fact that those 30 people are drawing at least $3 million (probably closer to $4 million) in wages from tax dollars when basic services like snow removal seem to be lagging behind. That seems like poor priority setting to me. As an outside observer of municipal council meetings, I feel there can be a disconnect between the tax dollars that are available and the ratepayers who provide them. Often times certain council members remind everyone that the funding to run a municipality comes from the pockets of the people working to make ends meet. They point out every project, consultant and new position requires either a larger tax base or more taxes on an already struggling population. That can't be forgotten. Tax dollars need to work for the people paying them, not the people paid by them. That means the roads need to be cleared, infrastructure needs to work and people don't need annual salaries compared to low-level professional athletes if ratepayers' needs aren't being met. Shawn Loughlin Aillaki Shawn's Sense Unlike a fine wine The times are changing around us all very quickly. That's not news to anyone who uses technology on a daily basis or who's keeping track of the ever-growing list of things we can do from our smartphones. However, what I'm talking about is how we interact with one another and the ever -dreaded term: political -correctness. Just last weekend, I had cause to watch bits and pieces of A League Of Their Own. Certainly not the greatest film that's ever been committed to celluloid, but one I remember from my childhood. Growing up — not that much has changed — I was obsessed with baseball, so I would watch any baseball movie I could get my hands on. I went with my father to see A League Of Their Own in the cinema. I liked it and a lot of people my age liked it. They still like it. And why not? There's plenty to like. Madonna was in it, Rosie O'Donnell was in it, Geena Davis was in it. And even Lori Petty was in it. Maybe not the alumnus with the most successful career, but she was in Point Break, which means she'll forever have a special place in my heart. We all remember Tom Hanks' always relevant, "there's no crying in baseball" line. But really, when you sit down and watch it, the movie is full of lines, material and actions that just wouldn't fly nowadays. Hanks is a drunk, has-been manager who's attempting to hang on in the world of baseball by managing a women's team during the war. He's constantly berating the women, telling them they're not ballplayers. In one scene, he's — again, drunkenly — taking batting practice and lamenting about managing "girls". He even laments that he's hitting "like a girl" at one point in his batting session. Such comments just aren't acceptable anymore. Although, it is worth noting that Hanks would eventually have an epiphany and grow to respect the women for their on -field work. You don't even need to think about it — it just doesn't sound right any longer. We have all changed with the times and when we hear something like that, it registers differently in our minds than it did 25 years ago when A League of Their Own was in theatres. Another film that made its way to me around that era was The Sandlot, which I still rate as my favourite baseball movie ever made. The film perfectly encapsulates a summer of childhood baseball and the feeling of wanting to have your baseball glove on literally every moment of the day that you're not sleeping. It also contains another of these insults that just doesn't sound quite as funny anymore. In one scene when two teams are exchanging barbs ahead of a game that will decide who will have playing rights over the sandlot, the exchange ends abruptly when Hamilton "Ham" Porter drops a bomb on the other team from which there is no coming back. He tells the captain of the opposing team that he plays ball like a girl. I won't even get into one character's successful (if I can use that term?) plot to kiss local beauty Wendy Peffercorn by pretending to drown during her lifeguard shift and how that may fit into our evolved view on consent. I'm not a supersensitive person when it comes to this kind of stuff and it doesn't bother me to watch these movies. But those are occurrences that just cause you to stop and think of how far the world, language and interacting with one another has come. The times have changed. And that's good. But it doesn't mean we can't enjoy The Sandlot the next time it's on TV.