Tag: COVID-19
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Virginia’s Higher-Ed Juggernaut Keeps on Truckin’
During what may be the sharpest economic contraction in United States history, Virginia’s public colleges and universities managed to increase their tuition & fees by 1.6% this year — 1.7% if you don’t include the community colleges, which enacted no increases at all. Despite the challenge of the COVID-19 epidemic and the recession, enrollment at…
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Germs, Guns and Schools
by James A. Bacon Twenty days into the school year, more than one in five (21.2%) of students in Richmond Public Schools have been chronically absent, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Chronic absenteeism has always been a problem in the school system, but it’s worse in 2020 — up three percentage points from last year.…
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A Measured Consequence: More Heavy Drinking
by Carol J.Bova Yesterday, Jim Bacon wrote about “the unmeasured consequences of society’s reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic.” The RAND Corporation COVID-19 Update on October 8, 2020 provided a reference to a longitudinal survey that examined one of those consequences — alcohol usage. JAMA Network Open published a Research Letter, “Changes in Adult Alcohol Use…
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Virginia Needs to Stop Playing Politics with School Reopenings
by DJ Rippert Politics over science. Michael Hartney is a national fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and an assistant professor of political science at Boston College. He and a collaborator have studied school reopening decisions across the United States looking for factors that correlate with the seemingly arbitrary differences in school reopening policies…
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Virginia: 4,500 “Excess” Deaths This Year, Only Half from COVID-19
by James A. Bacon It’s good to see that the left-leaning Virginia Mercury making the same observation as Bacon’s Rebellion about the unmeasured consequences of society’s reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic. Research from Virginia Commonwealth University shows than an additional 4,500 Virginians died between March and August over the number that would have been predicted…
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Open Schools and Students Will Return. Maybe.
by Kerry Dougherty Whoa. Who could have foreseen THIS? Public schools — offering a substandard educational product this year — are seeing an alarming drop in enrollment as parents yank kids and enroll them in private or homeschools. Virginia public schools are down 37,000 students from last year, according to The Daily Press. And because schools…
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Richmond to Parents: You’re On Your Own
by Chris Braunlich A week after party-line votes killed Republican initiatives to assist parents of school-aged children financially with federal COVID-19 dollars, Governor Ralph Northam proposed sending another $223 million of those dollars to public schools, adding to millions already sent. There is a major divide in the way Republicans and Democrats view the role…
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News Flash: Teaching Is Not a Work-from-Home Job
by Kerry Dougherty This is rich. Some Chesapeake teachers – you know, people who went to college to learn how to teach kids — are balking at orders that they return to the classroom in early November. They don’t feel safe, apparently. While it was initially expected that the first semester would be entirely virtual,…
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ODU’s Fumble
by Kerry Dougherty Here’s an unsurprising, entirely predictable tale. On Monday, The Virginian-Pilot published a story headlined, “With Few Students and No Fall Sports Business Dries Up Around ODU.” Businesses near the campus of ODU have been through mandated closures and restrictions on their capacity, but the fall semester has brought with it more trouble:…
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Metro vs. Transurban in the Age of COVID
by James A. Bacon We are taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming about the culture wars to highlight a more traditional topic: government dysfunction. In so doing, we shall contrast the flailing, failing response of a quasi-governmental entity, the Washington Metro, with the proactive, enterprising response of a private toll road operator, Transurban,…
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Budgeting in the Time of COVID
by James A. Bacon When last we read news reports about the ongoing budget negotiations between the General Assembly and Governor Ralph Northam, lawmakers said they were making “progress” but had not yet come to a resolution. One outstanding issue is how much money to put into General Fund reserve funds to buffer against revenue…
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Fairfax Tax Rate the Same, but Tax Burden Up
by Emilio Jaksetic The massive lockdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has caused many businesses and workers to lose significant amounts of income and forced them into financially precarious situations. Despite the undeniable financial pain and suffering that many businesses, workers, and households are facing, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors insisted upon another increase…
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778 Virginia Hospital Patients Discharged to Nursing Homes
by James A. Bacon A large majority of the patients treated for COIVD-19 and released from a Virginia hospital between April and June this year went directly home. But a significant number — 778 — were transferred to a “skilled nursing facility,” according to data contained in a Virginia Hospital and Health Care Association webinar…
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Older Virginians Account for Three Quarters of COVID Deaths. What Is VDH Doing?
by Carol J. Bova We’ve seen reports that close to half of the COVID-19 deaths are from outbreaks in long term-care facilities (i.e., nursing homes, assisted living or multi-care facilities, group homes). There’s another story though, when you compare COVID-19 facts by the age ranges the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) uses in its reports. The…
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VA COVID Deaths Drop Again. Distrust the Data.
By Steve Haner The Google satellite photo shows Rhine River cruise boats parked recently at Basel, Switzerland, probably including the one that my wife and I would have been boarding tomorrow morning. Losing a scheduled cruise is of no concern against all the other human and economic costs of this pandemic, but it provides a…