The Wagner Rotary Club met on Wednesday, December 8th for its regular weekly meeting. President Bryan Slaba welcomed everyone. Guests were Kristina Ymker of Armour, South Dakota who currently works for Rotarian Amanda Bechen and is also an EMT for the Wagner Ambulance Service.

Rotarian Laurie Kidd offered up thanks for our sunshine, for the chance to be together for fellowship, and for guidance as we take what we learn today out into our community.

Kidd also returned to her piano playing expertise and led us in a Christmas song, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” followed by our Rotary Song, “The 4-Way Test.”

Rotarian Ken Cotton shared several excerpts from the December Rotarian Magazine. An article titled “The Language of Hope” was written from interviews with people who had delivered an address from the last thirty-seven Rotary Conversations with Novel laureates, renowned scientists, and influential world leaders sharing the spotlight. Cotton shared just a few of the impressive statements made in the last twelve years.

Behavior—Gary Slutkin and Epidemiologist and founder of CEO of Cure Violence: Behavior is not formed, maintained, or changed by punishment. It is formed by modeling and copying. It is maintained by social norms. People care more about what their friends think than what some authority is telling them. Behavior change is the bread and butter of public health.

Democracy—Bernice King, CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change: Voting and protests are democratic principles that have ensured that we have kept this democracy for so long and those are the principles that have made us the moral leaders of the world. If we want to continue to have that position, we are going to have to respect peaceful protests and we are going to have to respect voting and ensure voting rights for everyone.

Education--Henry Winkler, Actor, producer, director, author: It is about looking at the student, teaching children how they learn, not how we think they should learn. We always think it is going to cost so much money to address our problems with education and implement solutions. Creative thinking----that is all it is.

Human Rights—Jimmy Carter, US President 1977-1981 winner of the Nobel. Peach Prize in 2002: We feel that there is a human right of people to live in peace. We feel it is a human right to have a modicum of health care, to have a decent place in which to live, to have a chance to have an education, to have freedom of speech and freedom of religion and the right to elect your own leaders.

The Sergeant at Arms was once again Rotarian Jordan Weber:

$2 to Jerry Henke for having a “quacking” phone call during the meeting; $3 to Jerry Weber for selling calves today and not attending the meeting, $3 a head! $2 to Laurie Kidd for missing the last two meetings; $2 Craig Krsnak for the football fines last week$2 to Amanda Bechen for forgetting her earmuffs; $2 to Jerry Henke for having two desserts; $2 to Kathke Henke for serving him two desserts; $2 to Ken Cotton for having a multitude of sticky notes in his Rotary magazine

Happy Fines of $10 were offered by Laurie Kidd for her wonderful cruise down the Rhine River; $1 from Jeff Doom for not getting fined for the day and $1 for having two desserts for himself without getting noticed

Rotarian Ken Cotton held the lucky ticket number again and got a little closer this time to the Queen. He drew the King of Diamonds.

Treasurer/Secretary Craig Krsnak informed Ken that he had just lost out on $213.00! Football book winders were Linda Clements sold by Scott McAdaragh and Dana Sanderson sold by Joe Stedronsky. Krsnak reported that there were three misses on both attendance teams, but the Brunsing team turned in several makeups which brings a total of sixteen misses for the Woods Team and eight misses for the Brunsing Team. It is beginning to look like the steaks might be coming from the Woods Team.

Rotarian Patty Frei reported on the recent grants that she had applied for from the Rotary Foundation. The Wagner Club was awarded two grants. A $1,000.00 grant for a Community Board Directory so that people who are not on Facebook can find out what is happening in the community. We also received a $1,500.00 grant for a Message Board that would show Chamber of Commerce members

Our President Bryan Slaba also had the program for the day. He took the opportunity to inform the club members of the status of COVID 19 in the Wagner Community. He started by saying that one week after Thanksgiving seven Covid cases were presented at the Hospital. Before Thanksgiving they might have had only one case a week. It has been up and down in the last few weeks since Thanksgiving with about three to four cases a day average. Most of the cases are of the Delta Variant.

He cautioned everyone: Please be careful with your gatherings in the coming weeks. Right now, there is no need to go into any lockdown. The variant is going through the school, and they publish numbers weekly. He recently spoke to the CEOs of Aberdeen, Mitchell. and Yankton. Ninety percent of the admissions that are going into ICU are unvaccinated people and of those who are on ventilators the ratio is ninety-eight per cent.

“We were not promised that the vaccine would prevent us from getting Covid. It only stops us from getting sicker. If you are over the age of sixty-five, I strongly urge you to get the vaccine.” The average age of deaths is those 72 years old. Average death age is 81 years old. We currently have three in the Wagner Hospital right now and we lost one patient overnight.”

Hospitals everywhere in the state are being stretched to their limit. It is especially hard on small town hospitals such as Wagner who do not have ventilators and will not be able to obtain them as they are all being used in larger hospitals. Wagner cannot get any of the infusions that they normally used previously on Covid patients as all the larger hospitals on the West and East Coast called for all available infusions to be sent to them. As a result, small hospitals have nothing to offer right now in the form of infusions.

Slaba was asked what kind of symptoms are being presented? He replied, just cold symptoms, coughing, running noses. Etc. He still is a firm believer that being vaccinated is a personal choice.