Tag: COVID-19
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Teachers Are Afraid to Return to Their Classrooms
by Kerry Dougherty We all knew this was coming. In fact, I suggested last month that if you have kids in local public schools you should quickly enroll them in Catholic or other private schools before those filled and your kids would be stuck trying to learn online. (Some of these institutions have scholarships available.) Most private…
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Bacon Bits: Purges, Clickbait, and Drunkenness
Pushing back against the New York Slimes. Liberty University is suing the New York Times for defamation, accusing the paper of crafting a “clickbait” story intended to create the erroneous impression that there was a COVID-19 outbreak on the school’s campus this spring, reports the News & Advance. The lawsuit says that reporter Elizabeth Williamson…
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More Fallout from the COVID Shutdown
by James A. Bacon A least 5.4 million Americans lost their medical insurance when they lost their jobs to the COVID-19 epidemic between February and May, says Attorney General Mark R. Herring in a press release issued today. In Virginia, he adds, it is estimated that 14% of adults lack health insurance. Nine hundred thousand…
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Northam’s COVID Conference
by Kerry Dougherty Well, I sat through another Ralph Northam press conference Tuesday eager to hear if any reporter – just one – would ask the governor if maybe, just perhaps, the uptick in Covid cases in Tidewater might be linked to recent protests. I mean it’s possible, isn’t it? After all, the positive tests…
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Uncertain Times, Uncertain Leadership
by Shaun Kenney You have to give Governor Ralph Northam the tiniest bit of credit. Not only did he survive wearing blackface or wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood (we still don’t know which) but he has done just about everything possible to present himself as the only governor who is also a doctor of…
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Will Northam’s COVID Crackdown on Hampton Roads Work?
by James A. Bacon Yesterday Governor Ralph Northam blamed the recent rise in confirmed COVID-19 cases in Virginia upon noncompliance with his May face-covering order. In a Tuesday news briefing, he announced that the state will step up enforcement of the order. Northam singled out the spread of the virus in Hampton Roads for special…
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No More Shutdowns Without Detailed Data
by Kerry Dougherty Here we go. Again. California Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down much of his state’s economy yesterday. He closed indoor dining, churches, (they’re always the first to go), hair salons, barbershops, wineries, fitness centers, etc. I’m sure it’s just coincidental that this happened shortly before the Golden State’s numbers began to climb last month:…
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The Shocking Number of Hispanic COVID-19 Deaths for Ages 35 to 64
by Carol J. Bova The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) death certificate reports are the one reliable indicator of the impact of Covid-19 on the various population groups in Virginia. The CDC racial/ethnic breakdown from 2/1/20 to 7/4/20 of all deaths from COVID-19 alone, together with COVID-19 and pneumonia, shows Virginia Hispanics accounted for 12.6%…
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VCU Study Finds 30,000 “Spillover” Deaths from COVID-19 Epidemic
by James A. Bacon In March and April this year, the COVID-19 epidemic resulted in approximately 87,000 more deaths in the United States than the average for those months, concludes a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. About 65% were directly attributable to the virus. The other 35% was…
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Snowflake Nation: Law Students
by James A. Bacon Members of a “collective” of recent law school graduates and professors have signed a petition urging the Supreme Court of Virginia and Virginia State Bar to admit them to the bar without the necessity of taking the bar exam in Roanoke this year. Why? Because they’re scared of the COVID-19 virus.…
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Virginia COVID Cases Up, Deaths Down
by Kerry Dougherty Welcome to Day 121 of 15 Days to Slow the Spread. Seems like just yesterday that we watched, aghast, as Italy’s hospitals collapsed under the weight of those sick and dying from COVID-19. It was late February. If we didn’t act we faced the same fate, experts said. And so, in mid-March,…
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Inequity Accounting for Hispanic COVID-19 Cases
by Carol J. Bova Last week Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William, wrote a letter to Governor Ralph Northam decrying the high rate of COVID-19 infection in Virginia’s Hispanic population. She blamed “longstanding and systemic factors, such as disparate access to information, testing, and treatment.” Jim Bacon responded that Virginia Department of Health (VDH) data…
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Mayor Stoney Panders to the Mob, Lawsuit Says
by James A. Bacon Two elderly residents of Monument Avenue have filed a lawsuit charging that Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney pandered to mob rule by ignoring proper legal procedures to remove Civil War statues and by failing to arrest protesters who assaulted homeowners living near the Lee statue and vandalized their houses. Stoney justified the…
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Are Hispanics Victims of “Inequities” in COVID-19 Epidemic?
by James A. Bacon Hispanics make up 9% of Virginia’s population but 43% of the state’s COVID-19 cases. So, it seems a not-unreasonable thing for Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William, a candidate for governor, to call upon Governor Ralph Northam to increase funding for outreach over Spanish-language media to build public awareness about the…
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Homeschooling the New Normal in Loudoun?
by Elise Daniel By trying to please everyone with their COVID-19 response plan, Loudoun County Public Schools are angering most parents. When the LCPS school board voted last week to move forward with a hybrid model for schooling in the fall, it disappointed the majority of parents who voted to keep their children in school…