Category Archives: Public safety & health

Lauren, Jonah, Shamgar, and Elianah Connors.

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 policy required him to get vaccinated for COVID. If he refused, he would be taken off the wait list. According to the progress notes recorded by the social worker, he stated he was “never going to take” the vaccine.

UVa Health referred Connors to a nephrologist, Dr. Karen Warburton, whose conversation I recounted in the previous installment of this series. According to her notes, she found him difficult to converse with on the phone. “He demonstrated hostility and a very closed approach to discussion around this issue,” she wrote. I listened to the recording, and I would describe his attitude as terse and defensive — not surprising, given that he’d been told he’d be taken off the wait list — but not hostile. Be that as it may, Warburton went on to write:

He first cited concerns based on his research of the science, then tried to claim a religious exemption…. I would want to explore his candidacy from a psychosocial standpoint with our Transplant Social Work team before we activate him on the list, even if/when he is medically ready.

Transplant surgeons have reasonable grounds (even if the science is conflicting  and continually evolving) for asking patients to get vaccinated. Donor kidneys are in short supply, dialysis patients are dying every day because they can’t get them, and doctors want to ensure that those who do get them have the greatest possible odds of long-term (10-year) survival, which runs roughly 50%. COVID vaccinations, they say, improve those odds. But should the vaccinations be required for every patient regardless of circumstances? Continue reading →

Marty Makary

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 the COVID virus. 

Some excerpts from his column:

Last week the [Centers for Disease Control] released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination.

Yet the CDC spun the report to fit its narrative, bannering the conclusion “vaccination remains the safest strategy.” It based this conclusion on the finding that hybrid immunity — the combination of prior infection and vaccination — was associated with a slightly lower risk of testing positive for Covid. But those with hybrid immunity had a similar low rate of hospitalization (3 per 10,000) to those with natural immunity alone. In other words, vaccinating people who already had Covid didn’t significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization.

(The CDC study can be found here.) Continue reading →

Source: Virginia Department of Health

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 making a comeback.

The conventional wisdom is that the masking and social-distancing measures enacted to slow the transmission of COVID-19 also acted to slow the spread of influenza. That makes intuitive sense given that the measures were designed to fight influenza epidemics in the first place and were dusted off out of desperation to “do something” about COVID-19. If the conventional wisdom is correct, we would expect to see the relaxation of masking mandates under the Youngkin administration lead to an increase in reports of Influenza Like Illnesses (ILIs) compared to the normal seasonal pattern.

An alternative theory making the rounds is that the COVID-19 and influenza viruses compete with one another. COVID-19 triggers temporary immunological responses that suppress the flu. As COVID-19 advances, the flu retreats; as COVID recedes, the flu advances. Continue reading →

by James A. Bacon

As the hours tick down on his term in office, Governor Ralph Northam is inclined to reflect upon his performance. In the limited remarks he has made in public, he has expressed few regrets and admitted to few mistakes.

As demonstrated by the thoroughly documented meltdown in Standards of Learning (SOL) test scores, his positive self-appraisal is laughably myopic. Northam is the worst education governor in modern Virginia history. Hands down.

But there is more to governing than education. One must consider the performance of the economy, the budget, taxes, public safety, quality of life, and health care, among other factors. Perhaps the most pressing challenge during Northam’s term in office has been the COVID-19 epidemic. Any judgment about Northam’s performance as governor must assess his leadership in dealing with that crisis.

Several Bacon’s Rebellion contributors, including myself, have been critical of specific aspects of his performance — testing, vaccinations, school shutdowns, mask mandates, protecting nursing homes, etc. But, then, it’s easy for pundits to criticize. We weren’t the ones who had to make tough calls in the face of incomplete, evolving, and often conflicting data. Every governor was groping in the dark. No governor amassed a perfect track record. At the end of the day, we should ask, how well has Virginia fared in the pandemic compared to the other 50 states? Continue reading →