“Renowned local health leader Dr. O’Dell Owens has died” was the headline in one local news outlet.
If you’re not from the Cincinnati area as I am, you likely do not know the name Dr. O’Dell Owens. But in this area, he was a very well-known and admired individual. The article just cited listed some of his titles: Hamilton County (Cincinnati) coroner, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College president, and Cincinnati Health Department medical director.
Personally, I never knew him or interacted with him at all. My only knowledge of him comes from his media persona. From my own observations, he seemed to be a sincere and decent fellow. I know of no scandal associated with his name. From some of the coverage I’ve seen, he was a member of a local Baptist church.
His death on November 23 at the age of 74 has generated no small amount of coverage in the local newspapers and TV stations. There is talk of naming the recently opened county coroner’s crime lab after him. That seems reasonable enough, given that he was the county coroner.
But then there’s this. The county commissioner who wants to name the office after Owens stated one reason she wants to do this is because of Owens, “encouraging people during the pandemic to get vaccinated.”
According to local radio station WVXU, “Owens planned to spend his retirement volunteering ‘to support community groups on the regional response to the COVID-19 pandemic,’ and even advised Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on the state’s COVID response” Advising Gov. Mike DeWine on the Covid response is a dubious accomplishment to cite, as DeWine was a Covid tyrant. While not as bad as some of the Democrat governors, his response was heavy-handed and did a great deal of damage to the personal liberty of all Ohioans and to the economy of the state. If it were not for the action of the Ohio General Assembly, which passed a bill curtailing the emergency medical powers of the governor, a bill that was passed over DeWine’s veto, it’s hard to say when the Covid lockdown would have ended in Ohio. It ended despite, not because of, the actions of Gov. DeWine.
According to his Wikipedia article, Owens’s role in advising DeWine concerned “equitable vaccine distribution.” The likely meaning of this is that Owens worked to ensure vaccines were distributed to black Ohioans. If so, this was not the blessing that Owens seemed to think it was.
Another article from a local TV station noted, “Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Owens was one of Cincinnati’s most vocal advocates for COVID-19 vaccination in the Black community.
There’s also this short video from June 2021 Owens made for PBS titled “Confidence in the Vaccine / Dr. Owens.” In it, Owens claims that he has confidence in the vaccine because it’s been under development since 1999 and that it’s been tested. Owens conceded that there was no long-term testing data, but he called the vaccine safe and effective anyway.
What’s the sum of all this? Dr. Owens, despite all his significant accomplishments, was a pusher of what is probably the deadliest medical treatment in all of history. But not one of the many local stories on Dr. Owens made this point. And the fact that not one news outlet coving this story saw fit to mention that Owens pushed the Covid jab tells you that we’re still very much in the propaganda matrix when it comes to Covid.
Lux Lucet 