Tag: COVID-19
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These GMU Minions Refuse to Bend the Knee
by James A. Bacon Megan Darling, a 33-year-old George Mason University business school student, received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine in March and April and came down with a case of COVID-19 in December 2021, from which she acquired natural immunity as well. Like other students, she has been informed that she must get…
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Need an Organ Transplant? No Religious Exemptions from COVID Mandates
by James A. Bacon During an annual consultation with the University of Virginia organ transplant team in January, Shamgar Connors met with a social worker as part of a “psychosocial assessment.” The 42-year-old Stafford County resident, who was undergoing kidney dialysis 12 hours a day, was on the waiting list for a donor kidney. Hospital…
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COVID, Risk, and Organ Transplants
This is the second of three posts about COVID and kidney transplants. James A. Bacon In January Stafford County resident Shamgar Connors, who has undergone kidney dialysis for nearly three years, engaged in an annual consultation with the University of Virginia Health system’s organ transplant team. His conversation with Dr. Karen Warburton went like this:…
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No Vaccination? No Transplant.
by James A. Bacon You would never know it from meeting him over Zoom that Shamgar Connors is living under a veritable death sentence. He requires kidney dialysis 12 hours per day. His doctors tell him that the average life expectancy for his particular kidney disease is about five years…. and he started dialysis a…
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Makary on Mandates
by James A. Bacon For insight into Governor Glenn Youngkin’s approach to managing the COVID-19 epidemic, read the latest column by Marty Makary, a research professor at the Johns Hopkins University, in The Wall Street Journal. He argues that society is paying a high cost for disparaging the immunological resistance that arises from exposure to…
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The Resistance Is Cohering. And the Media is Part of It.
NEW: Virginia’s new attorney general emphatically denies that he fired a @UVA lawyer because that lawyer is also helping investigate on the January 6 select committee. I pressed @JasonMiyaresVA on this after a spox told this to @washingtonpost. Here’s the AG’s response. @8NEWS pic.twitter.com/7Jf1hJ5w8y — Ben Dennis DC News Now (@broadcastben_) January 24, 2022 by…
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Chap Petersen to the Rescue?
by Kerry Dougherty Don’t look now, but Virginia may have its own version of maverick U.S. Senator Joe Manchin. I’m talking about Democratic State Sen. Chap Petersen of Fairfax County. The lone member of Virginia’s General Assembly — from either party — with the stones to stand up to former Gov. Ralph Northam’s despotic executive…
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Report From the School Mask Mandate Battlefield
by Dick Hall-Sizemore My grandkids have been homeschooled since they were old enough to go to school (going on 16 years or so now). Therefore, I don’t have a dog in this fight over school mask mandates. Neither do most of the commenters on this blog, I suspect. Thus, a recent conversation with a friend…
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Suddenly, Democrats Don’t Like Executive Orders
by Kerry Dougherty Good grief, they have no self-awareness, do they? I’m watching hysterical Virginia Democrats lose their minds because the new Republican governor issued an executive order that actually RESTORES civil liberties to Virginians. Yet, back when Ralph Northam was issuing one useless executive order after another, the left was silent. In fact, many…
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Belligerence as Leadership
by Joe Fitzgerald About one in 16 American adults suffer with chronic pulmonary disease. Serious health guidelines say they’re the primary ones who should not wear masks. Some of them still can, but a figure of 6% is about the maximum of adults who shouldn’t wear them. The governor of Virginia, elected to eradicate a…
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Mask Hysteria
by James A. Bacon People, get a grip! Emotions over this mask business are running out of control — on both sides of the debate. On the right: Amelia Ruffner King, a 42-year-old Luray mother, has been charged with a misdemeanor for issuing threats to the Page County School Board. “No mask mandates,” the Page Valley…
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COVID Vs. the Flu
by James A. Bacon I have seen considerable discussion on the internet recently about the relationship between COVID-19 and influenza. One thing that seems to be widely accepted is that influenza receded — indeed it practically disappeared — as COVID-19 surged. Where the disagreement occurs is over why influenza faded and now seems to be…
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The Great Unmasking
by Kerry Dougherty Excellent news for students in two Hampton Roads school districts. On Thursday, the ever-sensible Chesapeake School Board voted 7-1 to abolish its mask mandate. Beginning Monday, students in Chesapeake can breathe free again! The board is complying with an executive order signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Saturday, removing the former governor’s…
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Youngkin Unveils No-Mandates COVID Plan
by James A. Bacon So, what does a COVID-19 containment strategy look like without the activist governor’s usual go-to tools of mask and vaccination mandates? Governor Glenn Youngkin has provided the answer with the COVID Action Plan he unveiled this morning. The key elements are: (1) encourage (but don’t compel) people to get vaccinated, (2)…
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Has Omicron Peaked?
by James A. Bacon The news media today is chock full of stories about school boards in Northern Virginia and other blue localities defying Governor Glenn Youngkin’s executive order ending mask mandates. The confrontations won’t be settled until the courts rule definitively whether Virginia’s Governor or the school boards have the last word. By the…