Tag: COVID-19
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Show Us Your Papers
by Kerry Dougherty Well, what do you know. In their eagerness to flex their authoritarian muscles, Virginia Beach Public School officials made fools of themselves this week. On Tuesday evening, Human Resources fired off a stern email to all workers informing them that December 6th would be Show-Us-Your-Papers Day. By that date every school employee…
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How Team Northam Botched the Unemployment Insurance Crisis
by James A. Bacon By way of preface, let us acknowledge that managerial problems at the Virginia Employment Commission preceded the Northam administration. And let us acknowledge that the magnitude of the challenge in responding to the unemployment spike during the COVID-19 epidemic was unprecedented. It would not be fair to blame the entirety of…
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Was UVa’s Vax Mandate Justified? We’ll Never Know.
by James A. Bacon This academic year the University of Virginia mandated that all students get vaccinated. With few exceptions, all have done so, as have most of the university’s 30,000 faculty, staff and employees. According to the Daily Progress, only 173 are estimated to be out of compliance. They have until January 4 to…
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Marik Sues Sentara Over COVID-19 Treatment Ban
by James A. Bacon Paul Marik, director of Sentara Norfolk General’s ICU, has sued the hospital to reverse a ban on a treatment protocol he uses to treat critically ill patients. That protocol includes the administration of ivermectin and fluvoxamine. In the lawsuit Marik claimed that the Sentara restrictions may have contributed to the deaths…
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Vaccine Decisions Belong to Parents. Period.
I got the COVID-19 vaccine today! My wing is feeling a little sore, but it'll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy. Ms. @EricaRHill even said I’ve been getting vaccines since I was a little bird. I had no idea! — Big Bird (@BigBird) November 6, 2021 Pfizer tells…
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How Data Asymmetry Drives COVID Policy
by James A. Bacon There’s a common saying in the business world: You manage what you measure. In Virginia, as in the rest of the United States, we have a super-abundance of data about COVID-19. Just visit the VDH website for a taste. As we have frequently observed on this blog — and we’re hardly…
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McAuliffe’s COVID Lies Are an Ominous SIgn
by Kerry Dougherty Politicians lie. We all know that. But Terry McAuliffe is a special kind of liar. Not only does he prevaricate about Glenn Youngkin’s policy positions, but he deliberately spreads falsehoods about the severity of Covid-19 in Virginia. Don’t take my word for it. The Washington Post just gave him FOUR Pinocchios for…
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COVID Did Not Cause the Spike in Richmond Murders
by Hans Bader Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) suggested a spike in murders in Richmond is due to the coronavirus. But it isn’t. VCU Medical trauma surgeon Michael Aboutanos said VCU is experiencing a 121% increase in gunshot-wound victims from across the Richmond metropolitan area. In response, Senator Warner cited the effects of COVID-19, the “frustration…
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COVID, School Closings and the Real Racism
by James A. Bacon If you’re looking for evidence of “systemic racism” in Virginia schools, you can find it in a table produced by Matt Hurt, executive director of the Comprehensive Instructional Program, and published in the previous post. The table shows the extraordinary decline in in-person instruction that took place in the 2020-21 school…
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Bedlam at Southwest Airlines
by Kerry Dougherty At the risk of sounding like a paid Southwest Airlines P.R. person, I can truthfully say it’s my favorite airline. No change fees. Two bags fly free. Decent fares if you book early enough. Best of all, Southwest flies out of our sad little airport. Those perks are nice, but what impressed…
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What If They Threw A Party And No One Got COVID?
by James A. Bacon It has been a month since Hokie fans packed the stands of the Virginia Tech-University of North Carolina football game in Tech’s Lane Stadium, sparking social-media fears of a massive spread. Despite the spectacle of thousands of screaming, expectorating fans in close quarters, there has been no meaningful outbreak. Not only…
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Desperate Dems Demand Medical Records
by Kerry Dougherty Oh look. Desperate Virginia Democrats — along with their pals in the media — are trying to weaponize COVID-19 vaccines against what appears to be a resurgent Republican Party in the commonwealth. It isn’t enough that gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin has said REPEATEDLY that he’s vaccinated, that he believes Virginians should be…
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Northam’s Scare Tactics
by Kerry Dougherty It was a gird-your-loins kind of day in Virginia on Monday. While we were on the radio in the morning, our producer handed me a bulletin announcing that Governor Ralph Northam was holding a press conference in the afternoon, on the subject of COVID. Uh-oh. I can’t repeat what I said off…
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UVa Petri Dish Update
by James A. Bacon About a month ago I suggested that the University of Virginia would make an interesting real-world experiment in the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination mandates during the Delta Variant phase of the epidemic. The Ryan administration required vaccinations for all students, allowing only a handful of medical and religious exceptions. Vaccinations were…
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Pandemic and Pounds. Buy Bigger Belts
by Kerry Dougherty I’m shocked. Who could have predicted that closing fitness centers, filling public parks with sand, draining public pools, curtailing youth sports, shuttering schools and telling workers to stay home would result in a sharp increase in obesity? And who would have guessed that being obese would contribute to more serious outcomes for…