Tag: COVID-19
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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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Save Our Schools — Give Teachers the Vaccine
by James A. Bacon The Northam administration expects Virginia to receive 480,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year, and has announced it will follow federal guidelines for distributing the vaccine first to health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities. Explained Virginia State Health Commissioner M. Norman Oliver Friday: “We…
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If Your Porch Is Piled With Amazon Packages Shut Up About Stay-At-Home Orders
by Kerry Dougherty Sometimes you read an entire news story and just one sentence sticks with you. That happened this weekend when I read an online piece on the pandemic. In it the experts admitted they’re not sure how or where the virus is spreading. Following a quote from one of these public health experts,…
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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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Governor Northam, You’ve Got the Money for Eviction Relief — Do Something!
by James A. Bacon Virginia is in the midst of a housing eviction crisis arising from the economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. Here in Virginia, governments have responded through three major initiatives: The federal government distributed one-time $1,200 stimulus checks to American households and funded a $600-per-week supplement to state unemployment benefits through…
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Vaccine Priorities — A Contrarian View
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The Commonwealth is going to follow CDC guidelines and make health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities first in line for the COVID-19 vaccines. I have a different proposal. Health care workers certainly should be first, no argument there. But, I would put teachers next in line. With teachers being…
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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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School Culture, Volunteerism and COVID-19
by James A. Bacon In Washington County, down by the border with Tennessee, Emory & Henry College students are helping to fill gaps in the ranks of local school teachers by volunteering as substitutes. Writes the Bristol Herald-Courier: Emory & Henry senior Aleah Bowers actually quit her job at a local grocery store to help answer…
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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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Chesapeake: Putting Kids First
by Kerry Dougherty Here’s something to be grateful for during Thanksgiving week 2020: If you believe education is important, give thanks for Jared Cotton, superintendent of Chesapeake Public Schools. Despite enormous pressure to close classrooms and send 40,000 kids home to turn into overweight, mouth-breathing computer-screen addicts, he’s keeping the Chesapeake schools open, despite rising…
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COVID Accelerates the National Dumbing Down
by James A. Bacon Drawing upon testing of 5.3 million students in all 50 states this fall, the Renaissance testing service found that students in some grades had fallen 7 weeks behind expectations for reading and as many as 12 weeks behind for math.
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Governor Northam: Do You Believe in Miracles?
by DJ Rippert Come out with your masks on, we’ve got you surrounded. COVID-19 new cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise in Virginia. However, the situation is not as dire in Virginia as elsewhere in the United States (see graphic above). At 229 new cases per million people Virginia is well below all neighboring jurisdictions.…
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Reopen Public Schools or Provide Education Choice
by Vicky Manning When I was elected to serve on the Virginia Beach School Board in 2016, I never imagined there would be a time when I would have to fight to keep our school doors open. However, that is what I have been doing for the last 6 months. The last day of in-person…
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Public School Accountability Compromised Again
by James A. Bacon Having scrapped the Standards of Learning (SOL) exams for Virginia public school students during the COVID-19 spike last spring, the Virginia Department of Education plans to relax its standardized testing requirements again this spring. In addition, school divisions will be given “greater flexibility” in awarding students credits towards graduation. “The waivers…
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AG Mark Herring Takes Aim at Gun Show
by Kerry Dougherty Mark Herring is so proud of himself that he took to Twitter yesterday to do a little preening. Virginia’s attorney general even put those silly flashing light icons at the top of his post so you’d know this was really big news. Yep, Herring’s chuffed because he successfully stopped Virginians from buying…