Tag Archives: #COVID19

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Ignoring a very, very large elephant in the room

Do reporters for The Philadelphia Inquirer read their own news paper?

Inquirer reporter Harold Brubaker, who specializes in the business side of health care and nonprofit sector, reported on the Keystone State’s attempts to revise nursing home regulations, but somehow he managed to miss the elephant in the room:

‘Insulting and dumb.’ That’s how a nursing home manager labeled criticism of Pa.’s new staffing proposal

Advocates say more staffing is desperately needed. But nursing home executives say Medicaid rates won’t support it.

by Harold Brubaker | August 28, 2021

Anne Clauss hates to imagine what her mother would have endured at a nursing home in Langhorne if she or another relative hadn’t visited daily during her stay from 2017 to 2018.

One evening Clauss found her mother at the end of a hallway facing away from her room, where she had been stuck for a few hours, another resident told her. Other times, staff — whom she called underpaid and overworked — forgot to bring her mother her meals.

Her mother died at a hospital in 2018. But that experience prompted the Levittown resident to comment in favor of a Pennsylvania Department of Health proposal to increase the homes’ minimum level of direct care to 4.1 hours daily per patient, up from the current 2.7 hours.

“I hope regulations can be updated to help our elderly live out their lives well cared for and treated respectfully,” Clauss wrote to the Independent Regulatory Review Commission, which will review the comments and eventually hold a public hearing. It’s not clear how quickly the commission will act.

Let’s tell the truth here: nursing homes are dreadful places, facilities in which to warehouse the elderly who can no longer care for themselves, but who can, and do, live on with nursing care and physical assistance. It’s a truth all of us know, but no one is willing to say out loud, because so many people fear that they will one day have to warehouse their aging parents in such a facility.[1]My family has been fortunate in that regard; such a decision was never one we faced. And I cannot imagine that any of us do not dread the thought of having to be in a nursing home themselves. I’m very thankful that I’m very healthy, but who can know what the future holds.

There’s a lot more at the original, and Mr Brubaker did a thorough job in his story, save for one thing. He noted that nursing homes have real difficulties in attracting staff, and that Medicaid payments for patients work out to roughly $8.00 an hour, which is significantly less than certified nursing assistants are paid. To provide more hours of patient care, more nursing staff would have to be hired, but there’s simply not enough money paid to nursing homes to do so. For the details, read Mr Brubaker’s original.

The effort is coming to a head during the COVID-19 pandemic in which over 13,000 people have died in Pennsylvania’s nursing homes.

This is where Mr Brubaker’s story fails. He mentions the COVID-19 panic just this once, and that’s it. But, as we previously noted, and as Mr Brubaker’s own newspaper has reported, Philadelphia’s Acting Health Commissioner, Dr Cheryl Bettigole, has mandated that all health care workers in the City of Brotherly Love must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by October 15th. Dr Bettigole has noted that more than a dozen long-term care facilities in Philadelphia have less than 50% of their staff vaccinated.

If you’re more committed to not getting the vaccine than to the safety of your patients, it’s time to do something else. Health care is not for you.

This is something that Mr Brubaker should have mentioned: not only are patients in nursing homes getting fewer hours of care than they should, Dr Bettigole and the city of Philadelphia want to fire the CNAs and RNs who refuse to get vaccinated.

Oh, they won’t put it that way — though the Commissioner came close — but that’s the result of the policy. The city obviously wants to force the reluctant to get vaccinated, and some will probably concede, but if over half the staff have resisted vaccination, in an industry which has been continually pushing for it, it has to be expected that at least some, quite probably a significant percentage of them, will continue to refuse to comply.

From an article referenced by the much nicer Dana on Patterico’s Pontifications:

As of last night, there were 102 people waiting for an ICU bed in the greater Houston area.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo told Begnaud that she was prepared to open a field hospital, but as of Friday morning, hospitals in the Houston area were telling her they had extra beds — but not enough nurses. Seven hundred nurses arrived last week, but it’s still not enough to meet the demand.

Of course, that article, too, failed to address the elephant in the room:

Houston hospital workers fired, resign over COVID-19 vaccine

By Jamie Stengle | June 22, 2021

DALLAS (AP) — More than 150 employees at a Houston hospital system who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine have been fired or resigned after a judge dismissed an employee lawsuit over the vaccine requirement.

A spokesperson for Houston Methodist hospital system said 153 employees either resigned in the two-week suspension period or were terminated on Tuesday.

The case over how far health care institutions can go to protect patients and others against the coronavirus has been closely watched. It’s believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S. But it won’t be the end of the debate.

It’s not a case of some health care workers may quit, or may be fired, for refusing vaccination, but that some have already quit, some have already been fired.

I get it: the editorial position of the Inquirer is strongly in support of vaccination, and perhaps noting that the city’s vaccine mandate will actually cost the city’s nursing homes employees isn’t something a biased newspaper like the Inquirer wants to report.[2]I take publisher Elizabeth Hughes opinion piece as an admission that the Inquirer has, and will continue to have, a bias toward the left. But for an article like Mr Brubaker’s to fail to note the potential loss of nursing home employees, just as he is noting that the Commonwealth might require more, is simply poor journalism. It wasn’t just a missed point, but ignoring a very, very large elephant in the room.

References

References
↑1 My family has been fortunate in that regard; such a decision was never one we faced.
↑2 I take publisher Elizabeth Hughes opinion piece as an admission that the Inquirer has, and will continue to have, a bias toward the left.
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Some Central Bucks Karens want to force other people to wear masks, but don’t have the courage to identify themselves

We have previously noted the decision by the Central Bucks School Board not to make facemasks mandatory for the upcoming school year. Naturally, when some people oppose a decision by an elected body, they sue!

    Central Bucks parents sue after school board votes against mask mandate

    It asks the judge to order the district to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for mitigating the virus in schools.

    by Maddie Hanna | August 28, 2021

    A group of parents of children with special needs sued the Central Bucks School District late Friday, alleging the district’s plan to start the school year Monday without masks or other COVID-19 mitigation measures violates their rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

    The lawsuit — backed by a fund-raiser started by parents that had amassed more than $35,000 as of Saturday afternoon — follows a 5-4 vote by the school board Wednesday night rejecting a mask mandate and other measures ahead of the new school year.

    It asks U.S. District Court in Philadelphia to order the school district to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for mitigating the virus in schools.

    “Together we have made a phenomenal statement that we need to follow CDC and [American Academy of Pediatrics] guidelines to keep the children, teachers and staff in our schools safe as well as prevent the spread of COVID in our community,” Susan Lipson, a family medicine physician who helped organize the GoFundMe, wrote on its page.

Actually, I’m surprised: Maddie Hanna, the article writer, actually wrote the way a journalist is supposed to write, with the most important information, the lede, first! But further down came the infuriating part:

    Parents suing the district — whom the lawsuit identifies only by their initials because “universal masking is a very contentious issue in the district” — say the plan puts their children “at risk of death and debilitating illness from COVID-19.”

So, we have parents suing the school, attempting to force other people to go along with their wishes, and to override the decision of the elected school board, and they don’t have the guts to identify themselves? I’m going to tell you what to do, but you don’t need to know who I am?

Yeah, that’s pretty infuriating.

The decision by the school board does not prohibit anyone from wearing a face mask. These parents can wear one or three or twelve masks if they want! They may take any virus mitigation efforts they wish, as far as their children and they are concerned.

But that isn’t good enough; they want to force other people to take extreme steps to protect their children and themselves. But they don’t have the courage to admit who they are.

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Impeach Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd!

Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd. Photo: Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts.

I wrote Impeach Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd! back on March 3, after he issued his illegal and unconstitutional injunctions against laws passed by the General Assembly, and it appears I was right. It took way, way, way too long for the state Supreme Court to rule that the injunctions should not have been issued, and order the injunctions dissolved:

    We find that this matter presents a justiciable case or controversy but that the Franklin Circuit Court abused its discretion in issuing the temporary injunction.[1]Cameron v Beshear, Section B, pages 13 forward. Accordingly, we remand this case to the trial court with instructions to dissolve the injunction.[2]Cameron v Beshear, page 2.

Now, five days later, we find that Judge Shepherd is not going to follow the instructions to dissolve the injunctions!

    KY judge delays following Supreme Court COVID order as Beshear & lawmakers negotiate

    By Jack Brammer | August 26, 2021 11:57 AM

    Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and legislative leaders are working together on a new set of COVID-19 emergency orders, which they hope to present to a Franklin Circuit Court judge before he dissolves an injunction against new laws that will torpedo Beshear’s existing emergency orders and regulations.

    At a status conference hearing Thursday morning, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd said he will follow the Kentucky Supreme Court’s instructions in a ruling last Saturday for him to dissolve the injunction but he will wait until the court hears more about the work between the Democratic governor and the Republican legislative leaders.

    The high court unanimously said the injunction was wrong and that the new laws limiting Beshear’s emergency powers during the coronavirus crisis should not have been blocked. A provision in one of the new laws would limit Beshear’s executive orders to 30 days unless renewed by the legislature.

Just where in the Court’s ruling does it give Judge Shepherd the discretion as to when to dissolve the injunctions?

    Beshear has said he would like to implement a statewide mask mandate, but lawmakers have shown little interest in that suggestion.

Of course they haven’t: getting rid of the mask mandate was what the voters elected the legislators to do!

    David Fleenor, counsel for Senate President Robert Stivers, told Shepherd he did not know exactly when the negotiations between the governor and lawmakers would be completed but said he expects it to be in days, not weeks, quickly adding, “I hope I’m not being overly optimistic.”

The Court specified that the General Assembly makes policy for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, not the Governor,[3]Cameron v Beshear, page 20: “As we have noted time and again, so many times that we need not provide citation, the General Assembly establishes the public policy of the Commonwealth.” yet somehow Judge Shepherd believes he has the authority to hold off on following the Supreme Court’s instructions to dissolve the injunction until he hears more about what, if any, negotiations are ongoing between the Governor and legislative leaders.

That was not part of the Court’s ruling.

Judge Shepherd has told the parties to report back to him on Tuesday, September 7th, 12 days from now, and 17 days since the Supreme Court issued its ruling. Judge Shepherd, who had already suspended the laws which the state Supreme Court noted were passed legally, for 171 days, now thinks he can add another 17 days on top of that. That would be one day short of 27 weeks, more than half a year.

The state House of Representatives needs to impeach this judge when the regular session begins next January, and the state Senate needs to remove him from office and attaint him from ever holding another office in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The state Court of Appeals needs to overrule him and dissolve the injunctions, if the Supreme Court doesn’t beat them to it; I would expect Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R-KY) to immediately appeal Judge Shepherd’s refusal to dissolve the injunctions, and move that he be removed from the case.

References

References
↑1 Cameron v Beshear, Section B, pages 13 forward.
↑2 Cameron v Beshear, page 2.
↑3 Cameron v Beshear, page 20: “As we have noted time and again, so many times that we need not provide citation, the General Assembly establishes the public policy of the Commonwealth.”
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Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen!

In the land of sheeple, those who willingly comply with “Ve need to see your papers!” show their lack of courage. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

The “need to show your papers vaccination card” only exists if you willingly comply with it! Hundreds, thousands, millions did, when the Nazis overran Europe.

We like to think that the conquered people at least resisted, and didn’t like, being told “Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen!“, but, seeing how the sheeple in the United States are bending the knee to tyrants, I’m not so sure. We’ve already seen how feminist Amanda Marcotte wants, desperately wants, to have to show her papers vaccination card to get into her spin class, so we know that she’s willing to knuckle under to tyranny.

I’ve quoted enough for you to get the gist: the Inquirer story is tells you what to do if you’ve gotten your vaccination card laminated and you then need to document your booster shot. Not one word is written about the obtrusiveness and invasion of your privacy about having to carry and show the damned thing to get into restaurants and the like.

And if you don’t think that the State has been keeping track of you, think again!

    People vaccinated in the rest of the state can contact the Pennsylvania Statewide Immunization Information System (PA-SIIS) to get their full vaccination record (again, not a vaccine card replacement, but still proof that you have been vaccinated). Operated by the state health department, PA-SIIS is an immunization registry system that collects and organizes vaccine information.

Now we have the ignominy of Jeff Bezos selling handy three-packs of Badge Card Holder 4 X 3 Inches Id Cards Holder Working Card Protector Clear Vinyl Plastic Sleeve with Waterproof Type Resealable Zip (3 Pack), which you can wear around your neck like a good little sheep, and somehow, some way, no one sees anything wrong with this.

I’m sure if the government could figure out how to make the unvaccinated wear six-pointed yellow stars prominent identification badges, the Democrats would require such. But, since it’s proof of vaccination, not unvaccination, the identification cards would have to be issued to and worn by the vaccinated, and they might not like that.

Perhaps a laminated, picture identification to be worn on your shirt, like an employee ID badge. It could even have four spaces, in which a special mark could be placed, indicating how many doses of the vaccine you have had. After all, booster shots down the line will be pushed.

Heck, with that kind of system, we could mandate those badges for everyone, and the marks would tell us who hasn’t had even a single shot. They could be used for everything in society.

Except voting, of course; that would be wrong.

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Lies, damned lies, and statistics If you have a good case to make, getting caught using skewed statistics doesn't help you make it

There it was, on the left hand side of the Lexington Herald-Leader’s website main page, a story about ‘breakthrough’ COVID-19 cases, which naturally got my attention.

    Fayette County vaccination rates inch up but so do breakthrough COVID cases

    By Beth Musgrave | August 24, 2021 | 5:52 PM

    Lexington’s vaccination rate for those over 18 has hit 70 percent as COVID breakthrough infections — typically far less serious — have increased in those immunized, health and city officials said Tuesday.

    Although 70 percent of those over 18 have been immunized, the overall vaccination rate, which includes those 12 to 17, is about 58.7 percent, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data as of Sunday.

OK, here’s the first statistical problem: the vaccines were not approved for use in patients 12 to 15 years of age until May 10, 2021, so of course the vaccination rate for minors is going to be lower . . . but the Herald-Leader doesn’t tell us that. The vaccines have still not been approved for use in patients under 12, though that is expected soon.

    The city also hit another more grim milestone this week — the number of coronavirus cases in Fayette County has now topped 40,000. In the past four weeks, the city has had more than 4,000 reported cases, with 486 of those new cases from Saturday through Monday, say city and health leaders who held a press conference Tuesday on COVID issues.

    Approximately 28 percent of all August cases have been in fully vaccinated people, according to health department data.

    “But that’s also because more people are getting vaccinated,” said health department spokesman Kevin Hall.

    Still, vaccinated people are much less likely to be hospitalized, Fayette County Health Department data shows.

    Since February, 88 percent of people hospitalized locally have been unvaccinated or only received a single dose of the vaccine. Of the 94 Lexington residents who are currently hospitalized, 79 percent are unvaccinated, Hall said.

And here we go again: “Since February, 88 percent of people hospitalized locally have been unvaccinated or only received a single dose of the vaccine.” The vaccines were not even available to people under 70, who were not health care workers, until March, and even then, supply shortages meant that people under 70 could not get the vaccines in March. Nor does this account for children under 12, who have never been approved for vaccination; including children under 12 further skews the statistics.

More, even the people who were able to receive their first dose in early March — I was not able to get my first dose until April Fool’s Day, due to shortages of the vaccine — could not have gotten the second dose until early April, and would not have been considered fully vaccinated, meaning 14 days after the second dose, until mid-April. Thus, any statistic like the one given us above, using percentages from before almost anyone could have received both doses, is going to be seriously skewed. We’ve noted this previously, when Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) and state Health Commissioner Steven Stack released a wholly misleading graphic on Twitter. I do not disagree with the Governor that people should get vaccinated; I just see these tweets as wholly dishonest. Of course, I see the Governor as totally dishonest on just about everything.

If the case for vaccination is a good one, and I believe it is, why do public officials use skewed, obviously skewed, data to try to make their case? When you are trying to sell people on something — and trying to persuade people to do something they’ve previously been reluctant to do definitely qualifies as selling — getting caught using misleading information sure doesn’t help your case.

Would you buy a used car from Andy Beshear?

Beth Musgrave, from her Herald-Leader biography.

I have previously stated that the Herald-Leader employs journolism[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term … Continue reading as much as journalism, and this is another example of it. According to her Herald-Leader biography blurb, Beth Musgrave, the article author,

    has covered government and politics for the Herald-Leader for more than a decade. A graduate of Northwestern University, she has worked as a reporter in Kentucky, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois and Washington D.C.

If she has covered government and politics for over ten years, I have no doubt that she’s at least reasonably intelligent, and ought to be able to spot the bovine feces which comes from the mouths of government officials. She should not have missed how misleading the statistics presented were, and if she managed to miss it, Peter Baniak, the newspaper’s editor, should have caught it.

I understand: it is the Herald-Leader’s editorial policy to push vaccination and mask mandates, and I absolutely support people choosing to take the vaccine. More, the newspaper is, like medium sized newspapers everywhere, on shaky financial footing. But it takes little energy and few dollars to ask the questions which get statistics which are not biased, not misleading, and this the Herald-Leader does not do.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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It ain’t just them Southern rednecks protesting against #VaccineMandates

I have heard these stories anecdotally, and seen smaller versions of them in the Lexington Herald-Leader, which isn’t exactly a major newspaper. But now even The New York Times is reporting on the story:

    A Hospital Finds an Unlikely Group Opposing Vaccination: Its Workers

    When a Staten Island hospital implemented a vaccine or testing mandate, some of its staff staged angry protests.

    By Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura | August 22, 2021

    Their movement started discreetly, just a handful of people communicating on encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Signal. But in just days it had ballooned tenfold. And within two weeks, it had turned into a full-blown public protest, with people waving picket signs to denounce efforts to push them to receive coronavirus vaccines.

    But these were not just any vaccine resisters. They were nurses, medical technicians, infection control officers and other staff who work at a hospital on Staten Island, which has the highest rate of Covid-19 infection of any borough in New York City.

There’s much more at the Times original,[1]To get around the Times’ paywall, you can also read it here. but I want to point out the most important part: the resisters aren’t just cafeteria workers and custodial staff, the lower-paid people in the hospital and those with little or no medical training. They included “nurses, medical technicians, (and) infection control officers,” people who have degrees, a lot of training, and medical knowledge.

Employees at Staten Island University Hospital who are opposed to mandatory vaccination and testing protested last week. Credit…Yana Paskova for The New York Times. Click to enlarge.

I included the photo to the right, from the Times, something I normally do not do, due to copyright concerns, but this one falls under Fair Use standards. Note that the protesters aren’t the stereotype rednecks the left would have you believe. And while it’s very difficult to read in the photo, the name badge of the gentleman in blue scrubs, holding the “I stand for medical freedom!!” sign, appears to have RN, or registered nurse, in the red band on the bottom of his hospital name badge.

    Scientists and medical professionals point out that those who refuse vaccines are potentially endangering the lives of patients. “Vaccinations are critical to protect our patients, our staff and protect the general community,” said Dr. Mark Jarrett, chief medical officer at Northwell Health, which is the state’s largest health care provider and runs Staten Island University Hospital. “It’s a tough issue, but it’s our professional obligation to always maintain that whatever we do, it’s for the safety of our patients.”

    He said he is hopeful that imminent federal approval of the Pfizer vaccine will persuade some of the unvaccinated to get shots.

    As the Delta variant, the highly transmissible version of the coronavirus that now makes up almost all new cases in the United States, drives a surge throughout the country, public health officials are struggling to boost vaccination rates among frontline medical workers. Among the nation’s 50 largest hospitals, one in three workers who had direct contact with patients had not received a single dose of a vaccine as of late May, according to an analysis of data collected by the U.S. Department of Health.

    The Staten Island protests started last Monday when Northwell Health began requiring unvaccinated staff to get weekly coronavirus tests by nasal swab or risk losing their jobs. On the same day, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that all health care workers across the state would be required to have at least one dose of the vaccine by Sept. 27, with limited exceptions for those with religious or medical exemptions.

So, a third of (hospital?) workers who have direct patient contact hadn’t received a dose of the vaccine by late May? Remember: the vaccines were first made available to health care workers, so it’s not as though their opportunities were as limited as those of the general population.[2]For me, even though I was technically eligible at the beginning of March, the vaccine wasn’t actually available to me until April Fool’s Day, due to shortages. But, as we noted here, the Times itself reported, just three days ago, that ‘Nursing Is in Crisis’: Staff Shortages Put Patients at Risk: “When hospitals are understaffed, people die,” one expert warned as the U.S. health systems reach a breaking point in the face of the Delta variant. While I assume that that one-third ratio has declined some, it must still be fairly high, or the left wouldn’t be trying to force people to get vaccinated.

It has to be remembered: in a time where the supply of workers is low vis a vis the demand for them, workers have the power. When it comes to registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, certified nursing assistants, and medical technicians, even if they are not formally unionized, they have the primary strength of a union, that being the restriction on the supply of available workers. With hospitals and nursing homes experiencing a serious shortage of such personnel, every one that a hospital discharges for not getting the vaccine creates a difficult-to-fill position. The Times reported, on a small health care system:

    Nearly 30 percent of Singing River’s 500 beds are empty. With 169 unfilled nursing positions, administrators must keep the beds empty.

I’m waiting on the credentialed media to start telling us about the shortages of nurses and other personnel from the decisions to mandate the vaccine.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, on the other hand, is all about pushing vaccine mandates:

    Facing new vaccine mandates, more Philly-area residents are agreeing to COVID-19 shots

    COVID-19 vaccine mandates and requirements are here, and more are likely coming. Early evidence indicates they’re effective in reaching those reluctant to get a shot.

    by Jason Laughlin and Marie McCullough | Updated: August 23, 2021

    A growing number of people trickling into Philadelphia-area vaccine clinics this month very much don’t want to be there.

    What cut through reluctance, anxiety, or the cacophony of misinformation on social media, they said, and got them to roll up their sleeves, were the restrictions and mandates that are becoming increasingly common in the city and across the nation.

    “Basically I got boxed in a corner, I guess,” said Kittrell Norman, 33, who has side jobs that now require vaccination. “Until this started messing with my money no one could tell me any different.”

    The Pfizer vaccine’s winning full approval from the Food and Drug Administration on Monday is likely to make vaccine requirements and mandates even more common.

    This is a new phase of vaccination: Get tough.

    Restaurants, cruise lines, colleges, and a growing number of employers — hospitals, municipal governments, Amtrak, Citigroup — are telling workers and customers to prove they’ve been vaccinated or go elsewhere.

There’s more at the original, but if you read it, you might notice what I did: the mandates are working on people like Mr Norman, because he doesn’t have the kind of positions in which he can take the job loss, and, to be blunt about it, he can be more easily replaced than a registered nurse.

There are good reasons to get vaccinated, but I have to wonder: just how much are the left stiffening resistance by their mantra that You Must Comply?

References

References
↑1 To get around the Times’ paywall, you can also read it here.
↑2 For me, even though I was technically eligible at the beginning of March, the vaccine wasn’t actually available to me until April Fool’s Day, due to shortages.
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The unintended consequence of #MaskMandates: schools can’t find enough bus drivers

I have previously noted, on Twitter, how Fayette County is having real problems with manning school buses:

Well, it looks like I haven’t been the only one noticing that!

Bus driver shortages are latest challenge hitting US schools

By Amy Beth Hamson and Lindsay Whitehurst | August 22, 2021

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A Montana school district is dangling $4,000 bonuses and inviting people to test drive big yellow school buses in hopes of enticing them to take a job that schools are struggling to fill as kids return to in-person classes.

A Delaware school district offered to pay parents $700 to take care of their own transportation, and a Pittsburgh district delayed the start of classes and said hundreds more children would have to walk to school. Schools across the U.S. are offering hiring bonuses, providing the training needed to get a commercial driver’s license and increasing hourly pay to attract more drivers.

The shortage of bus drivers is complicating the start of a school year already besieged by the highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19, contentious disagreement over masking requirements, and the challenge of catching up on educational ground lost as the pandemic raged last year.

The Lexington Herald-Leader story I had linked with my tweet noted the shortage of drivers, and that “several” had called out sick the previous week, which was the first week of school, made no mention at all of the mask mandate imposed by the Fayette County public schools. I had previously noted the problem, and pointed out, “Neither story says, of course, that the mask mandate ordered by Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) might be having an impact, but it’s an obvious question: would you want to be a bus driver and face possibly being accosted by angry students and their parents over such. Given the very liberal unemployment eligibility and the government paying people not to work, why sign up to take such abuse?”

Of course, given that the Herald-Leader Editorial Board supported Mr Beshear on his mask mandate, it’s not likely that one of the newspaper’s reporters would mention the mandate as part of the problem. As we have pointed out previously, the newspaper’s Editorial Board aren’t exactly in tune with the voters in the Commonwealth.

Now, what I have guessed to be true has been reported by the credentialed media. The Associated Press report noted that:

In Helena, the company (First Student) has 50 bus drivers and needs 21 more before classes start on Aug. 30, a shortfall (Dan) Redford called unprecedented.

Attendance ended up being light at Helena’s event, but similar demos, like one held recently in Seattle, led to more applications.

The delta variant also drove the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend universal mask wearing in schools, especially for children too young to be vaccinated. But in many areas, there’s a wave of fierce anti-mask protest.

First Student lost some Helena drivers to mask requirements on buses, Redford said.

The left will howl that such potential drivers are selfish in not wanting to wear face masks, but it is what it is: not everyone in the United States agrees with the #MaskMandates, and it isn’t as though we are seeing the left rushing in to fill the bus driver vacancies.

We have already noted how #VaccineMandates are contributing to a shortage of health care personnel. Now, Axios has noted that the ‘pandemic’ and the responses to it have led to a significant shortage of teachers as well.

It seems that some people just will not comply with authoritarian dictates!

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Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Why does Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) have to lie to us? This is what he tweeted yesterday, after the state Supreme Court slapped him down:

The image to the left is not the tweet itself, but a screen capture, in case the Governor or his staff delete it. You can click either this link or the picture itself to see the original on Twitter.

Note the comparison dates: March 1 through August 18, 2021. The problem is that, other than for health care workers and people over 70, the vaccines were not available. Virtually every person hospitalized with COVID-19 problems was unvaccinated because they didn’t have the chance to get vaccinated.

The vaccine is a two shot series, with the Pfizer booster dose recommended 21 days after the first, and Moderna 28 days after the first. If the vaccine first became available to you on Monday, March 1, 2021, and you got the booster shot on Monday, March 29th, since you are not considered ‘fully vaccinated’ until 14 days after the second shot, you wouldn’t be considered fully vaccinated until Monday, April 12th!

Of course, the Governor was simply retweeting one by Dr Steven Stack, who is Kentucky’s Commissioner for Public Health. Are we supposed to believe that Dr Stack didn’t know those facts, that Dr Stack did not understand that by using statistics from prior to Kentuckians being able to get the vaccines, he was skewing the numbers?

Me? In a small, eastern Kentucky county, I wasn’t able to get the first dose until April Fool’s Day. Instead of 28 days later, I couldn’t get the second dose until Cinco de Mayo, because of whatever problems the county Health Department was having. That meant I wasn’t considered fully vaccinated until May 19th, which just happened to be our 42nd wedding anniversary, so at least those dates make it easy for me to remember.

Now, I do not disagree with the Governor that people should get vaccinated; I just see his tweet as wholly dishonest. Then again, I see the Governor as totally dishonest on just about everything.

As Governor Beshear and Dr Stack continue their efforts to persuade more Kentuckians to get vaccinated, perhaps they ought to consider that using rigged statistics does not help their cause, save among those not observant enough or smart enough to spot what they did. But, then again, that says someting as well: it tells us just what those two fine gentlemen think of Kentuckians.

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#VaccineMandates, unintended consequences, and the power of persuasion

We have previously noted that the vaccine mandate by Philadelphia’s Acting Commissioner for Health Cheryl Bettigole would have the unintended consequence of exacerbating the already short staffing of health care facilities. Now comes The New York Times:

    ‘Nursing Is in Crisis’: Staff Shortages Put Patients at Risk

    “When hospitals are understaffed, people die,” one expert warned as the U.S. health systems reach a breaking point in the face of the Delta variant.

    by Andrew Jacobs | August 21, 2021

    Cyndy O’Brien, an emergency room nurse at Ocean Springs Hospital on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, could not believe her eyes as she arrived for work. There were people sprawled out in their cars gasping for air as three ambulances with gravely ill patients idled in the parking lot. Just inside the front doors, a crush of anxious people jostled to get the attention of an overwhelmed triage nurse.

    “It’s like a war zone,” said Ms. O’Brien, who is the patient care coordinator at Singing River, a small health system near the Alabama border that includes Ocean Springs. “We are just barraged with patients and have nowhere to put them.”

    The bottleneck, however, has little to do with a lack of space. Nearly 30 percent of Singing River’s 500 beds are empty. With 169 unfilled nursing positions, administrators must keep the beds empty.

    Nursing shortages have long vexed hospitals. But in the year and a half since its ferocious debut in the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has stretched the nation’s nurses as never before, testing their skills and stamina as desperately ill patients with a poorly understood malady flooded emergency rooms. They remained steadfast amid a calamitous shortage of personal protective equipment; spurred by a sense of duty, they flocked from across the country to the newest hot zones, sometimes working as volunteers. More than 1,200 of them have died from the virus.

    Now, as the highly contagious Delta variant pummels the United States, bedside nurses, the workhorse of a well-oiled hospital, are depleted and traumatized, their ranks thinned by early retirements or career shifts that traded the emergency room for less stressful nursing jobs at schools, summer camps and private doctor’s offices.

    “We’re exhausted, both physically and emotionally,” Ms. O’Brien said, choking back tears.

There’s a lot more at the original. For those who do not have a subscription to the Times, you can read it here for free.

The Times article notes that there are a huge number of hospitals which are very short staffed, but one point it ignores is the fact that the #VaccineMandates of do-gooders like Dr Bettigole and President Biden — whose #VaccineMandate applies only to nursing homes, not hospitals, can only reduce the number of registered nurses and certified nursing assistants available. It doesn’t matter what you think of their intentions; the consequences of their decisions can be very different from what they envision.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has an article from a week ago, which is still on their website’s main page, about hos the health care profession is trying to persuade, rather than force, people who have been resistant, to get vaccinated:

    Some people’s minds are changing about the coronavirus vaccine. Here’s how doctors persuade them.

    Deeply personal reasons are often why people who are initially reluctant decide to get vaccinated, said several physicians and vaccine providers.

    by Erin McCarthy | August 16, 2021

    Ritom Bhuyan wasn’t going to get the coronavirus vaccine. But three months ago, the 28-year-old rolled up his sleeve and got immunized.

    What changed his mind? The health of his 65-year-old father, who struggled with COVID-19 for a month after the family all caught the virus. Bhuyan realized he wanted to protect his dad by getting vaccinated.

    “My mom passed at a young age, so my dad’s all I have,” said Bhuyan, of Plymouth Meeting, “so when I saw him get sick with something potentially deadly, that kind of changed my mind.”

    These deeply personal reasons are often why people who are initially reluctant decide to get vaccinated, said several physicians and vaccine providers, and finding those connections may be key to increasing vaccination.

    With the delta variant sparking outbreaks in the country’s undervaccinated communities, causing case counts to rise across the Philadelphia region and prompting renewed masking rules, changing minds — and getting people to finally walk into a clinic and get their shot — has new urgency, they said.

    Doctors recommend patience. Six months into the vaccine rollout, they say, people who haven’t been vaccinated may require some convincing, and open, fact-based, nonjudgmental conversations with those they trust can help.

Nonjudgmental? That’s sure not what the left have been doing! We have noted how so many on the left have obviously never read Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People, preferring instead to calling the people they (supposedly) want to persuade “selfish or stupid.”

Some people could sell ice to Eskimos, but some of these guys couldn’t sell ice water in Hell.

It’s a fairly long article, and unlike with the Times, I don’t have a work around for those who are not Inquirer subscribers.[1]Both newspapers allow people a few free articles a month; if you aren’t a subscriber, but haven’t tried to open one of their articles recently, you can probably open the ones I have … Continue reading But it’s an article in which, rather than dripping with contempt and disdain for those who have chosen not to get vaccinated, is one which tries to illustrate that some — certainly not all — people who have been resistant to getting vaccinated can be persuaded.

References

References
↑1 Both newspapers allow people a few free articles a month; if you aren’t a subscriber, but haven’t tried to open one of their articles recently, you can probably open the ones I have referenced. I do pay for subscriptions to both, so if you want to help me pay for that content, click here 🙂 .