Tag: COVID-19
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The Real March Madness
by Kerry Dougherty I can’t watch. It raises my blood pressure. I’m talking about the NCAA Basketball Tournament. For the first time in years I’m not glued to my TV during March Madness. I have my reasons: First, none of the teams that matter to me made the tournament. Second, I’m not in a pool…
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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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Too Bad RTD Didn’t Read “Lies, Damn Lies and Race-Obsessed Statistics”
by Carol J. Bova Almost a year ago, I wrote about a March 3, 2021 Virginia Department of Health blog post, in which VDH claimed in an article about COVID-19: In Virginia, Hispanic and Black age-specific death rates are much higher than White age-specific death rates. The age group with the largest disparity was 35-44…
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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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Naked Politics: No Masks for the SOTU!
by Kerry Dougherty It’s a miracle! After two years of constantly hectoring us to wear masks, public health officials and Democratic leaders have now decided that it’s time to lose the face diapers. Just in time for the State of the Union Address! Exquisite timing. Remember, this is just two weeks after Virginia Democrats howled…
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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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CDC Chicanery
by Kerry Dougherty Looks like the jig is up for the CDC. Someone needs to tell the secretive political animals running the agency that when you’ve lost The New York Times, you’re done. On Sunday, The Times published a story criticizing the Centers for Disease Control for hiding massive amounts of data from the public.…
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A COVID Swan Song
by Scott Lingamfelter Pandemics are not new. They have been around as long as the human race has been and will be in the future. Before COVID arrived on our shores from China, the 1919 Flu Pandemic originated in the trenches of World War I and spread rapidly, picking up the name Spanish Flu, a…
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Dems Do an About-Face on COVID
by Kerry Dougherty Some of us knew right away that it was not just a happy accident that the governors of four blue states suddenly announced two weeks ago that they were rolling back COVID restrictions and scrapping loathsome mask mandates. It was clear that this Road to Damascus moment was triggered by polls. Really…
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Things Fall Apart: Fare-Jumping Edition
by James A. Bacon Thirty-four percent of all Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority bus riders are not paying their fares, reducing revenues by $10 million in the second half of 2021 alone, reports The Washington Post. That’s up from 17% in unpaid fares two years previously. Bacon’s Rebellion readers may be reassured to know that…
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Undocumented Aliens vs. Undocumented Vaccinations
by Walter Smith Prior to the fall 2021 semester, the University of Virginia disenrolled 238 students, including 49 who had already registered for classes. What was their offense? Take a guess. Entering and residing in the country illegally, or Refusing to get COVID vaccinated in violation of a university policy that has since been overturned.…
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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…