Tag: Carol J. Bova
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Lies, Damn Lies, and Race-Obsessed Statistics
by Carol J. Bova A March 3 Virginia Department of Health (VDH) blog post discusses racial/ethnic “health and disease” disparities in light of the COVID-19 epidemic. It states that COVID case rates and hospitalization rates for blacks and Hispanics in the United States and Virginia are substantially higher than for whites. “Social determinants of health are…
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Virginia Ranks 40th of 53 in Nursing Home Ratings
by Carol J. Bova One of three nursing homes receiving Medicare payments in Virginia (35.3%) scored below average or much below average in the latest Medicare ratings found in the new Care Compare website. On February 1, 2021, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) updated its ratings report for nursing homes in the United…
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Misplaced Priorities at VDH
by Carol J. Bova The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) announced January 19 that it has launched a COVID-19 Outbreaks in Virginia Higher Education dashboard. The department included a disclaimer that the dashboard reports only “outbreak-associated cases and not the total number of cases at the college or university.” For more information on COVID-19 numbers,…
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COVID-19 Infections Up but Flu Infections Down
by Carol J. Bova The 2020-2021 flu season began with the week ending October 4 – Week 40. “There have been 2 infections in Virginia during the 2020-21 flu season to date,” the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) said on December 17. By comparison, last year Virginia experienced sporadic cases from weeks 40 through 44, local…
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VDH Outbreak Reporting Won’t Save Lives, Inspectors Will
by Carol J. Bova Back in June, I asked “Where Are the Other 52 Nursing Homes with Outbreaks?” because that was the number missing from the Long Term Care Facility Task Force dashboard. The Task Force explained it wasn’t involved with group homes and residential behavioral health facilities and, therefore, did not include them in…
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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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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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Reality Check: COVID Forecasts and Cases
by Carol J. Bova Since mid-April, 2020, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) has reported weekly on information from the University of Virginia (UVA) Biocomplexity Institute COVID-19 Model and RAND Corporation. One aspect of these reports is a forecast of weekly cases; another gives date ranges as to when regions are estimated to exceed hospital…
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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…
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A COVID Update Before the Winter Surge
by Carol J. Bova As the election furor dies down, interest will turn to the expected winter surge in COVID-19 cases. Before we get caught up in the onslaught of dire predictions in the news and resultant handwringing over national and worldwide numbers, let’s look at Virginia’s numbers.
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The Saga of HB 1774 — Recurrent Flooding and Flooded Roads
by Carol J. Bova HB 1774 was written to address rural stormwater issues and amended to study stormwater management practices in rural Virginia highway ditches. Why, then, does the bill direct the Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency, a group formed to help Virginia adapt to recurrent flooding and sea-level rise, to direct the study? The Commonwealth Center…
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The Saga of HB 1774 — Starting Over
By Carol J. Bova In the second part of this series, I described how the General Assembly recognized intrinsic problems in HB 1774, a bill designed to remedy deficiencies in stormwater legislation enacted in 2016 and scheduled to go into effect July 1 this year. But instead of killing the bill, legislators passed a substitute. That…
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Vehicle Miles Traveled: Where the Action Is
A few days ago I published a graph showing that Virginia has experienced a modest increase in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) since 2002, but I couldn’t draw any meaningful conclusions. Statewide numbers obscure the traffic dynamics in different parts of the state, and I didn’t have the time to drill deeper. Inspired no doubt by my sparkling…
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The Saga of HB 1774 — Rural Growth, Stormwater Credits
By Carol J. Bova Virginia’s part-time legislators saw 3,168 bills introduced in the 2017 General Assembly session according to the Richmond Sunlight website. Inundated with such a volume of legislation, overworked part-time lawmakers are hard-pressed to grind through complex issues. In such circumstances, speeding bills through the legislature can lead to bad law. And that appears to have…