Author: James A. Bacon
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Where Are the Other 52 Nursing Homes with Outbreaks?
by Carol J. Bova The governor’s Long Term Care Facility Task Force list shows 179 nursing home and assisted living facilities with outbreaks of COVID-19. There are 52 more, according to the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) Outbreaks tab on the daily COVID-19 data, but no explanation why they’re missing from the Task Force list.…
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Nursing Homes Most at Risk from Virus are Bigger, Urban
Three out of five of the 1,645 Virginians who have died from COVID-19 have been residents of long-term care facilities — one of the highest percentages of any state in the United States. There has been considerable speculation why. Vincent Mor, a research scientist with the Brown School of Public Health, has found that nursing-home…
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The Post-COVID World: More Home Schooling
by James A. Bacon The Home Educators Association of Virginia has seen a dramatic increase in inquiries about home schooling since the advent of the COVID-19 epidemic. In the past three months there have been 3,000 new members to the association’s Facebook page and 2,000 new requests to join through the website. “Since [the pandemic],…
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American Art and Culture Under Attack
by Kerry Dougherty Francis Scott Key. Ulysses S. Grant. George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. Teddy Roosevelt. Andrew Jackson. Abolitionist Matthias Baldwin. Juan Ponce de Leon. St. Junipero Serra. Lincoln Memorial. World War I memorial. World War II memorial. Denver monument to the victims of Armenian genocide. Boston’s Shaw Memorial to the 54th Regiment: The African-American Union…
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Updates from the Higher-Ed Apocalypse: VSU, RU, and JMU
by James A. Bacon Accelerated by the COVID-19 epidemic, the wrenching restructuring of the higher-ed industry is moving from small, private liberal arts colleges to the weaker public universities. Here’s the latest news from Virginia State University and Radford University. VSU, a 138-year-old historically black institution, faces a 10% drop in enrollment, big losses in…
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Are Guns Finally OK Now that Lefties Carry Them?
by James A. Bacon A loosely organized group of men and women with handguns and rifles are patrolling the Lee Statue on Richmond’s Monument Avenue “intent on keeping visitors safe,” reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Asked why she needed to carry a gun and participate in a volunteer security force, 19-year-old Jasmine Kelley replied, “I don’t…
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A New Look at COVID-19 Hospitalization Trends
The Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association has introduced a new data visualization graph at its COVID-19 dashboard. The chart shows the steady decline in hospital utilization by COVID-19 patients since early May.
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Why Hasn’t Northam Acted Yet on the Great COVID News?
by James A. Bacon A flood of COVID-19 test results were reported to the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) over the weekend — more than 45,000 tests — and the news is good. While 1,652 new cases were confirmed over Saturday and Sunday, the seven-day moving average of the percentage of people testing positive declined…
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Virginia Nursing Home Deaths Top 1,000
by Kerry Dougherty Anyone here remember the very beginning of the nursing home crisis in Virginia? Remember when we learned that a home in Henrico County, a facility where some residents reportedly had been stacked for a time like cordwood – three to a room – was in the midst of a deadly outbreak? Last…
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Stoney Proposes Overhaul of Richmond Policing
by James A. Bacon The Richmond Police Department received more than 80,000 calls for service in the first five months of 2020, writes Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney an a Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed. Police respond to every type of crisis, from homelessness to mental health to substance abuse. “We need officers to respond to violent and…
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How Did VDH Miss 1,100 Suspected Cases?
by Carol J. Bova When Governor Northam announced the release of the Virginia Health Department (VDH) COVID-19 details for specific nursing homes and assisted living facilities on June 19, he explained the reversal in policy: “It is also important that this information is released now, given inconsistent information reported at the federal level.” The governor’s…
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COVID Restrictions Slam Black Businesses the Hardest
by James A. Bacon If Governor Ralph Northam needs further justification for reversing his emergency shutdown measures, perhaps he should consider this recently published paper by Robert Fairlie with the University of California-Santa Cruz. Analyzing the impact of COVID-19 social distancing restrictions on small business, Fairlie found that they disproportionately hit minority enterprises. The number…
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The Coming K-12 Meltdown
by James A. Bacon Educational achievement in Virginia schools is heading for a melt-down. The racial achievement gap will get worse, not better. And Virginians will live with the consequences for decades to come. Part of this looming disaster can be attributed to the COVID-19 epidemic, which compelled the Northam administration to make difficult decisions…
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COVID-19 Update: Big Move in Nursing Home Deaths
From today’s data updates… Confirmed COVID-19 cases: 555 New hospitalizations: 53 Deaths: 16 Deaths in long-term care facilities: 55 Wait, what? How can the Virginia Department of Health report 16 news deaths overall but 55 in long-term care facilities? It appears that VDH is revising the way it reports and classifies its numbers. Whatever the…
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Northam Back-to-School Plan Unconstitutional, DeSteph Says
by James A. Bacon Wise King Ralph may have a problem with his back-to-school plan for this fall: Some of his subjects think it may be unconstitutional. Under the Governor’s directive, schools will return to something resembling normal in three phases. The most controversial part of the plan requires staggering classes so students attend in-person…