Despite the explosive spread of the omicron variant, many statehouses are attempting to conduct business as usual As Dr. Jennifer Bacani McKenney walked the halls of the Kansas Statehouse on opening day of the legislative session this month, she was taken aback by what she saw. In the hallways, where "people are chatting and hugging and all that stuff, there were probably less than half of the people wearing masks...
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Claire Niver, a senior vice president with Pepsi Bottling Ventures, told legislators last week the global pandemic has had a “monumental impact” on the North Carolina-based company. Niver described in detail how the company hand-made 1,600 masks for frontline workers and created a partnership with Jim Beam so employees would have a ready supply of hand sanitizer when it was unavailable in most stores. "We had no layoffs and no furloughs. We are an essential business," Niver said proudly.
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While the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic recession it spawned have taken a huge toll on low and middle-income people across the globe, most members of the very exclusive club frequently referred to as the “super-rich” have been doing just fine, thank you. In fact, a recent report prepared by veteran policy analyst Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies for the website Inequality.org, put it this way...
...It’s been almost 90 years since humorist Will Rogers uttered his famous lament: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.” Sadly, for that party and, no doubt, quite amusingly for those otherwise affiliated, the observation would still hold were Rogers alive today.
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After schools closed to in-person instruction in March 2020, PBS North Carolina (then known as UNC-TV) provided students learning from home with broadcast and online educational content aligned as closely as possible to the NC Standard Course of Study. Curated materials – content created by others – were used during what the NC Department of Public Instructions and PBS North Carolina officials called Phase 1 of the ambitious At Home Learning Initiative.
The second phase began in August 2020 with North Carolina teacher-generated content supporte ...
Vaccine refusal is a major reason COVID-19 infections continue to surge in the U.S. Safe and effective vaccines have been available for months, but as of mid-September 2021, only 65% of eligible American adults are fully vaccinated. In many areas, a majority of eligible adults haven’t taken advantage of the opportunity to get vaccinated. In the U.S., polling on intent to get vaccinated shows a massive political divide.
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Veteran epidemiologist and ethicist is fearful university leaders have not learned vital lessons from last year As students return for the fall semester at UNC-Chapel Hill Wednesday, Dr. Jim Thomas is having an uneasy sense of déjà vu. “I’m very uneasy about what I’m seeing,” said Thomas, a professor emeritus in the Epidemiology department at the Gillings School of Global Public Health. “Or what I’m seeing again.”
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The Delta variant of COVID-19 is “several-fold” more transmissible than the Alpha variant, making mask mandates in schools more important than ever, a Duke University professor of pediatrics said Wednesday. Dr. Danny Benjamin’s advice comes as most of North Carolina’s 1.5 million school children prepare to return to classrooms and school boards wrestle with whether to adopt mask mandates amid surging COVID infections.
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I am angry. You are angry. Hell, the entire nation is angry. But what makes this such a challenging time is that we are not all angry about the same things. I am angry that we have developed vaccines that dramatically prevent the spread of COVID, but that in much of the country, the vaccine itself is treated as if it were the plague.
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Americans have always been, in many respects, an optimistic and forward-looking people. Ours, happily, is not a nation overly obsessed with settling old international scores and grudges or constantly addressing perceived slights from past adversaries. One flip side to this admirable tendency, however, is what frequently amounts to a short collective memory.
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It’s a new year, but the pandemic and its many harms to the people and communities across our state continue to deepen. As families are struggling to put food on the table and stay up-to-date on bills and rent, landlords and neighborhood businesses are struggling as well, and the ability of neighborhoods, communities, and the economy to start a recovery will stall.
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There are a lot of reasons that all Americans – at least those willing to think and pay attention– should feel a profound sense of hope and optimism as a new presidential administration takes the helm of the ship of state this week. Perhaps most obvious is the simple fact that we’re not where we were four years ago at this moment: watching the assumption of power by an administration for which chaos, corruption and credible questions regarding its loyalty to the nation would quickly become hallmarks.
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Looking back on the pandemic, some of its many disturbing impacts, and one community's controversial plan to revive its economy In a year upended and dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Policy Watch covered the crisis with daily stories and investigative pieces from the institutional to the personal.
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