Category: Public safety & health
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Northam’s New Rules. Worse Than the Old Ones
by Kerry Dougherty I missed Gov. Ralph Northam’s Thursday presser. But I heard and read all about it. Two things stand out: First, his idiotic curfew is simply the action of a little man attempting to flex his muscles for a populace that is growing weary of his arbitrary and capricious rules. Second, this secular leader…
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How UVa Dodged the COVID-19 Bullet
by James A. Bacon The major challenge facing the University of Virginia this fall was controlling the spread of the COVID-19 virus when reconvening for the new academic year. With a combined student and employee population of about 45,000 the UVa administration had a gargantuan task. Fear was running rampant. Many people thought the university’s…
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Let’s Get Our Money’s Worth from Those 2,000 Contact Tracers
by James A. Bacon The Virginia Department of Health has hired 2,000 COVID-19 contact tracers and investigators since May, but the virus has spread so rapidly that public health officials are conducting triage: focusing scarce resources on household members of people diagnosed within the past six days, people living in prisons and nursing homes, and…
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Southwest VA’s Health Crisis Began Before the Pandemic
by Carol J. Bova The looming COVID-19 hospital crisis in Southwest Virginia was set in motion long before the pandemic. To begin with, the region’s health indicators and outcomes generally are much worse than the state average. Two indicators particularly impact the COVID-19 epidemic: Every county in the Southwest Virginia Health Authority service area has…
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Northam Refrains from Expanding COVID-19 Restrictions. For Now.
by Kerry Dougherty Some folks will thank him. But I won’t. I refuse to express gratitude to Gov. Ralph Northam for not announcing more COVID-19 restrictions during yesterday’s press conference that would strip away even more of our liberties. Like most Virginians, I am, however, relieved. Governors across the country — mostly Democrats — appear…
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The Strange Case of the Pandemic Patriots
by Peter Galuszka In rural Southwest Virginia, the coronavirus pandemic has gotten so bad that Ballad Health, a major health care provider there, is suspending elective surgery for a month. System-wide, Ballad, which also operates in adjacent states, had 45 available beds as of Wednesday, only 13 or 14 of them ICU beds, according to…
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Where Have All the Heart Attacks Gone?
by Carol J. Bova The Johns Hopkins University News-Letter published an article earlier this month asking, “Where have all the heart attacks gone?” The study questioned whether the U.S. COIVD-19 death rates are being overstated by omitting deaths usually attributed to attacks and cancer. The study was pulled four days later. Dr. Genevieve Briand, the…
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VDH’s Data Update Problem
by Carol J. Bova Governor Ralph Northam and Virginia’s public health officials say they want to “follow the science” and “follow the data” when managing the COVID-19 lockdown. Unfortunately, the data keeps changing. Last week the Virginia Department of Health made 1,021 changes to the dataset of regional COVID-19 cases by onset date between March…
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Thanksgiving Secrets
by Kerry Dougherty It’s a little like Mao’s Cultural Revolution, with cranberry sauce. I’m talking about Americans and their secret plans for Thanksgiving. Everywhere I go I bump into people whispering about where they’ll be and who they’ll be with this Thursday. Thanks to despotic governors and other meddling government officials, Thanksgiving shaming is a…
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I Thought It Was All About the “Science”
by James A. Bacon Governor Ralph Northam likes to say he follows the “science” and the “data” when promulgating rules to fight the spread of the COVID-19 virus. But he admitted yesterday that the latest round of lockdown measures — which included ordering children as young as five to wear masks — was inspired by…
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Arbitrary and Capricious Rules for Thanksgiving
by Kerry Dougherty I missed Gov. Ralph Northam’s COVID press conference yesterday. That’s OK, his pressers always fill me with dread. Yet I had a legit reason for skipping this one: I was getting my hair done. In case Northam decided that the only way to “slow the spread” was to put Virginia’s hair stylists…
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Virginia Drug Overdoses Could Exceed 2,000 This Year
by James A. Bacon In just the first half of 2020, at least 1,086 Virginians died from drug overdoses, an increase of 427 deaths, or 39%, from the first six months of the previous year, according to the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s 2nd Quarter 2020 report. The first quarter was trending upward…
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COVID-19 Peaks in SW Virginia, No Cause for Panic Elsewhere
by James A. Bacon Spread of the COVID-19 virus is gaining momentum as the weather cools, and news reports from around the country are raising the alarm that hospitals are at risk of being swamped by a fresh surge in patients. Here in the Old Dominion, the situation is reaching a “crisis point” in far…
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Northam: Messaging, Not Mandates
Despite a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases, hair-on-fire national media coverage, and the imposition of tighter restrictions in neighboring Maryland, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C., Governor Ralph Northam is holding steady with a relatively light regulatory regimen for Virginia. As the Virginia Mercury puts it today, “Northam is stressing messaging — not mandates…
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Update on Virginia K-12 School Outbreaks
by Carol J. Bova As the COVID-19 epidemic regains momentum this fall, the virus has crept into a few public schools in Virginia. Seven of ten outbreaks in progress are in the Southwest Region where there is significant current and rising community spread. The other three in the Central and Eastern regions where several September school…