Category: Public safety & health
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So, How Did UVa’s Vaccine Mandate Work Out?
by James A. Bacon Readers may recall that last August the University of Virginia “disenrolled” 238 students for not complying with the university’s COVID vaccination mandate. (Of those, 49 had enrolled at the time the decision was made. The intentions of the others were not known. Many likely had made other arrangements knowing that the…
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What’s Causing Virginia’s Excess Deaths? Whatever It Is, It’s Not Just COVID
Virginia has high vaccination rates, and deaths from COVID-19 are a small fraction of what they were at the height of the pandemic. Yet “excess” deaths in Virginia — the number that would be predicted based upon projections from pre-COVID years — are running 13.4% higher than expected this year. According to Centers for Disease…
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Medicaid, Public Health and Chronic Disease Management
by James C. Sherlock From the CDC: Chronic diseases have significant health and economic costs in the United States. Preventing chronic diseases, or managing symptoms when prevention is not possible, can reduce these costs. Virginia pays a great deal of money every year to contractors who manage the care of its Medicaid population. It is…
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COVID: It’s Baaack! But Relatively Few Deaths So Far
by James A. Bacon Just a reminder, people: COVID-19 may have receded from the headlines, but it hasn’t gone away. After bottoming out in April at less than 1,000 daily confirmed cases, the seven-day moving average in Virginia has climbed back up to 3,200 or more. You can be double vaxxed — as much of…
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One of the World’s Stupidest Inventions Now Illegal in Virginia
Who says Virginia’s polarized legislature can’t get anything done? Governor Glenn Youngkin has signed a bill banning the vehicle modification known as “Carolina Squat.” The law was inspired by the death of Virginian BJ Upton in a car accident involving such a vehicle. The modification raises the front of the vehicle significantly higher than the…
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When COVID Hysteria Meets Safetyism
by James A. Bacon The percentage of Northern Virginia’s adult population grappling with anxiety and depression more than tripled during the COVID-19 epidemic — from 8% to 28% — according to data published by the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia. The percentage peaked at 39% in February 2020, affecting 755,000 individuals, but abated to 545,000…
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Bad Memories: 15 Days to Slow the Spread
by Kerry Dougherty Happy anniversary, America. It was two years ago today that we surrendered our civil liberties due to hysteria over a virus. Yep, it was March 16, 2020 that we were told to stay home for 15 days to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. Health officials demonstrated how this would work…
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When the Numbers Stopped
by Joe Fitzgerald The Virginia Department of Health began posting daily COVID numbers on March 17, 2020, and effectively quit Thursday. A press release on the VDH website explains the changes, but doesn’t include enough real information to make it worth the trouble of linking there. For two years, though, VDH produced daily information that…
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Torturing Statistics Until They Confess: An RTD Primer
by James A. Bacon Sabrina Moreno with the Richmond Times-Dispatch has written a three-piece series arguing that disinvestment in the Virginia Department of Health led Latinos to being “the most likely to get infected, hospitalized and die” during the COVID-19 pandemic. The fourth paragraph of the story makes the following extraordinary assertion: Three months after…
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The Incredible Shrinking Virus
It’s amazing how quickly COVID-19 has faded from the headlines. I guess good news is no news. A recent Centers for Disease Control study estimates, based on antibody testing, that 43% of all Americans have been infected by the virus. Naturally acquired resistance plus the high percentage of the population that has been vaccinated (76%…
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The Governor’s Surge
We’ll know soon if the rest of us get what the unvaxed voted for. by Joe Fitzgerald Virginia’s governor ran on a platform to protect children from critical race theory and expose them to COVID. The first goal was moot, since CRT wasn’t often mentioned in public schools to begin with. How well the second…
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Everybody Wins – Nurse Practitioners for Underserved Communities
by James C. Sherlock The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing has instituted a terrific program thanks to a wealthy alum who gave $125 million to recruit and train nurse practitioners to practice in underserved communities. The Leonard A. Louder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Fellows program will be tuition-free and students who still need help…
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Next Up: Strike Down the Airline Mask Mandate
by Kerry Dougherty Hang in there’re kids. Just eight more school days until you can see the smiles of your classmates again and breathe freely. On Tuesday, the Virginia State Senate approved Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s emergency clause to the mask-optional bill that will make the law go live on March 1. Three Democrats joined the…
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Democratic Flip-Floppers Voted Yes Before They Voted No
by Kerry Dougherty Tired of masks? Me too. But this is important. Imagine how hard the teachers’ unions must have lobbied their indentured Democratic servants in the Virginia State Senate to get seven who voted to end forced masking of school children on Tuesday to vote against the same exact bill on Wednesday. It passed…
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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…