For those who have been around this city for a while, Tuesday’s hotly-contested primary election was a throwback to an era when politics was the mother’s milk of everyday life in Revere.
However, one big difference between this political season and those of decades ago was the high degree of civility among the candidates. We won’t rehash the epic battles of Revere’s storied political history (though we chronicle them regularly in our Through the Years column), but this primary election reflected well upon the state of our city in 2023.
Although in the final analysis politics ultimately is a zero sum game — there are only winners and losers — the recently-concluded primary campaign brings to mind the famous “Man in the Arena” speech by President Theodore Roosevelt:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly ….and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Running for elective office takes courage. Roosevelt’s words truly apply to those who throw themselves into the political arena, especially at a time when everything everyone does is under a high degree of scrutiny.
So we wish to offer our congratulations to all of the candidates for putting themselves out there for the good of our community and for running high-level campaigns that were a credit to themselves, their families, their supporters, and our city.
Get your COVID-19 shots
While we would all love to leave COVID-19 in the rearview mirror, the stark reality is that the virus is still circulating among us, with the elderly and persons with compromised immune systems the most vulnerable to becoming seriously ill and dying from the virus.
Even otherwise healthy individuals, especially if they are overweight, run the risk of becoming seriously ill from the disease in the short-term and potentially suffering the lingering and debilitating effects of long-COVID, which has been well-documented, though it remains poorly understood.
Fortunately however, the CDC has approved the updated COVID booster vaccine that has been proven to be an effective and safe preventative measure against both catching the disease in the first place and, if infected, mitigating its most harmful effects.
The reasons we need an updated booster are three-fold: First, the effectiveness of the vaccine diminishes over time. Thus, the shots we received last year are significantly less protective today than they were 12 months ago. Second, the virus has mutated in the past year and the updated vaccines will provide protection against this ever-changing virus. Third, as we enter the fall and winter months, families will be gathering, with many having traveled in airplanes and returning from school, which are breeding grounds for the virus, and therefore looming as potential threats for parents and grandparents. We would note that from January to July of this year, 88 percent of deaths from COVID-19 were among people who were 65 years or older.
We urge all of our readers, regardless of age, to get the latest COVID-19 booster as soon as possible, both for our own health and that of our friends, co-workers, and family members.
