Tag Archives: #MaskMandate

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Governor Tom Wolf dances to avoid a court ruling He's going to end mask mandate in January, hoping to get the lawsuits against the state dismissed as moot.

Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) will, thankfully, be gone in a year, but he’s anxious to protect what executive authority he can while he remains in office.

As the Delta variant spread, Governor Wolf initially stated that he would leave mask mandate decisions up to local school boards. Then, when many of those school boards didn’t decide the way he wanted them to decide, the Governor got acting Secretary of Health Allison Beam to issue a public health order requiring masks indoors in the Commonwealth’s schools, public and private alike, as well as early learning and child-care facilities.

We noted, last June, that the Governor scheduled an end to the state’s mask mandate just a day after the state legislature slapped him down over it. Now, he’s doing it again!

Pa. mask mandate for public and private schools expected to end in January, Wolf says

Gov. Tom Wolf’s update to the school mask mandate comes as vaccinations have expanded to children ages 5-11. The mandate will remain in early learning and child care centers.

by Jamie Martines | Monday, November 8, 2021

HARRISBURG — A statewide order mandating students, staff, and visitors to public and private K-12 schools to wear a mask while indoors is expected to be lifted Jan. 17, Gov. Tom Wolf announced Monday.

At that point, local school officials will be allowed to decide what mitigation efforts to implement.

Part of the order that applies to early learning programs and child care centers will remain in effect until further notice, Wolf said in a statement. . . . .

“Now, we are in a different place than we were in September, and it is time to prepare for a transition back to a more normal setting,” Wolf said in a statement Monday. “Unfortunately, the COVID-19 virus is now a part of our daily lives, but with the knowledge we’ve gained over the past 20 months and critical tools like the vaccine at our disposal, we must take the next step forward in our recovery.”

There’s more at the original, but part of the answer is clear: the masking order has been challenged in court, and if the order is ended on January 17th, just 2¼ months from now, given the long delays in the court system, the lawsuits can be dismissed as moot, because the order will have ended. That would leave the method used by the Governor and his minions in place, in case they wanted to use it again.

The plaintiff’s attorney has stated that the lawsuits will proceed anyway, because the order will be kept in place for younger children and day care facilities, and that not challenging the order in court leaves the mechanism available if the Governor wants to use it again.

We had noted the vast assumption of power by the petty dictators in the executive branch. Then-Secretary of Health Richard Levine[1]Dr Levine is a male who is so delusional that he thinks he is female, and goes by the name ‘Rachel.’ In their continuing mission to normalize transgenderism, the credentialed media always refer … Continue reading even ordered Pennsylvanians to wear masks in their own homes, if they had non-household members present.

Of course, the mask mandate might not end in Philadelphia, because Mayor Jim Kenney and acting Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole just love to exercise authoritarian power.

References

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↑1 Dr Levine is a male who is so delusional that he thinks he is female, and goes by the name ‘Rachel.’ In their continuing mission to normalize transgenderism, the credentialed media always refer to him as ‘Rachel,’ and no longer note that he is ‘transgender. The First Street Journal, in accordance with its Stylebook, does not go along with such stupidity, and always refers to people by their biological sex and proper name.
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Governor Andy Beshear hurts the poor in Kentucky

Steve Beshear, the former Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, has a guesstimated net worth of $1.5 million. Mr Beshear spent almost his entire adult life in politics, and:

is an American attorney and politician who served as the 61st governor of Kentucky from 2007 to 2015. He served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1974 to 1980, was the state’s 44th attorney general from 1980 to 1983, and was the 49th lieutenant governor from 1983 to 1987.

He ‘suffered’ through an interregnum when he finished third in the Democratic primary for Governor, and he spent twenty years practicing law with Lexington’s prestigious firm of Stites and Harbison. Briefly put, Mr Beshear led a reasonably privileged lifestyle in the Bluegrass State’s second largest city.

The former Governor’s son, Andy Beshear, wound up leading a similarly privileged lifestyle, able to attend Vanderbilt University, the only private school in the Southeastern Conference, current estimated cost of attendance $80,546 per academic year, and then the University of Virginia School of Law, current estimated cost of attendance for out-of-state students $91,704 per academic year.

In 2005, he was also hired by Stites and Harbison. No ambulance-chasing for the younger Me Beshear.

The younger Mr Beshear was elected state Attorney General in 2015, and subsequently Governor in 2019.

When the COVID-19 pandemic, or panicdemic as I sometimes call it, arose in early 2020, Governor Beshear issued draconian executive orders which shut down much of the ‘non-essential’ businesses in the Bluegrass State. Fifteen days to flatten the infection curve, we were told!

View from Natural Bridge, October 23, 2021. Photo by Dana R Pico. Click to enlarge.

Fast forward to this autumn. The Pico family visited Natural Bridge State Park on Saturday, October 23rd. It wasn’t a long visit, in that we didn’t have much time, so we took the skylift to the top of the bridge, from which I took the photograph.[1]Photos copyright by Dana R Pico. May be freely used with proper attribution.

When one of my Twitter friends replied, “I am surprised more leaves haven’t turned yet!” I resolved to return in two weeks to repeat the photo. So, we returned on Sunday, November 7th, and I got the photo, which will appear further down.

We had more time on Sunday, so while we took the skylift up, we decided to hike down Balanced Rock Trail, which ends not at the bottom of the skylift, but at Hemlock Lodge, the park’s hotel, gift shop and dining room facility.

Signs on the doors to Hemlock Lodge. Photo by Dana R Pico. Click to enlarge.

And Hemlock Lodge is where we found these signs on the doors, requiring masks for entry. Well, we didn’t have masks with us, and entered anyway, quickly discovering that the signs were mostly honored in the breach by park visitors, though employees did wear the infernal things.

What we also found was that the once-thriving restaurant was closed to dining! There were two ladies working therein, who would get carry-out orders. I asked them why the place was closed, and was told that the facility had been shut down due to COVID-19, and that was in March of 2020. Most of the staff had been laid off, and now, twenty months later, they still were not back.

Natural Bridge State Park is located in the Red River Gorge geological area, and straddles Powell and Wolfe counties in Kentucky. These are two very poor counties:

  • Powell County: The median income for a household in the county was $25,515, and the median income for a family was $30,483. Males had a median income of $26,962 versus $18,810 for females. The per capita income for the county was $13,060. About 18.90% of families and 23.50% of the population were below the poverty line, including 31.00% of those under age 18 and 20.00% of those age 65 or over.
  • Wolfe County: The median income for a household in the county was $19,310, and the median income for a family was $23,333. Males had a median income of $23,859 versus $18,952 for females. The per capita income for the county was $10,321. About 29.90% of families and 35.90% of the population were below the poverty line, including 50.20% of those under age 18 and 26.70% of those age 65 or over.

As much as people hear about jobs going begging for people, much of that is in suburban and urban areas; rural eastern Kentucky is not like that. When Governor Beshear — a Democrat, of course — shut down so much of the state parks, he put people out of work that had fewer prospects for finding something else.

View from Natural Bridge, November 7, 2021. Photo by Dana R Pico. Click to enlarge.

For restaurant workers? There’s Miguel’s Pizza, right across State Route 11 from the entrance to the state park, but it offers lower wages and doesn’t have state employee benefits. Governor Beshear, reared in wealthier Lexington, the scion of a prominent family, doesn’t really understand what he has done to rural Kentuckians, or, if he does understand, he doesn’t really care.

This has been the problem with the Patricians all along: they are so wrapped up in their own little worlds that they have lost any concept of what it is like for the plebeians. For the well-to-do, well, heck, two weeks to flatten the curve was nothing, they could handle it!

But for the working class, two weeks without their jobs isn’t nothing; it’s two weeks without bills getting paid. Governor Beshear doesn’t understand that, and doesn’t want to understand that.

References

References
↑1 Photos copyright by Dana R Pico. May be freely used with proper attribution.
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Mask mandate fights in Pennsylvania

If you sent your kids to a private school, the private school decided that face masks would be optional, and you disagreed with that decision, wouldn’t you stop paying tuition and send your kids to public schools, where they had a mask mandate?

A Northeast Philly private school defied the city’s mask order. Philadelphia took it to court.

Calvary Christian Academy did not require masking, enable social distancing, or require those exposed to COVID-19 to quarantine, the city said in court filings.

by Kristen A Graham | Tuesday, November 2, 2021

For nearly two months, a Northeast Philadelphia religious school flouted the city’s mandatory masking order.

And though staff and children are now wearing masks after the city asked a judge for an emergency injunction, leaders of the church that runs Calvary Christian Academy have vowed to fight for the right to keep masks optional.

It’s another salvo in an increasingly bitter political battle over mask-wearing in Pennsylvania and schools across the country.

Since the beginning of the school year, CCA, a prekindergarten-through-12th-grade school on Philmont Avenue in the city’s Somerton section, “did not require masking, did not enable social distancing among the students, and did not require members of the school exposed to COVID-19 to quarantine,” according to court documents.

Though both Philadelphia and Pennsylvania issued mandatory masking orders this summer amid the continuing pandemic and rising case counts, CCA told parents in a Sept. 6 letter that despite government orders, “we will keep the current COVID protocol in place, which states that masks are optional.”

Some parents complained about CCA’s mask-optional policy at the beginning of the school year. Separately, the school came to the attention of health department workers monitoring COVID-19 containment through a number of cases reported at the school — 23 between Sept. 7 and Oct. 5.

Calvary Christian Academy is not the most expensive private school out there, but it isn’t exactly cheap, either. Tuition is $4,450 for Calvary Church members, and $5,850 for non-members,[1]It’s quite common for parochial schools to have lower tuition rates for parishioners, and parishioners are expected to make contributions to the church. in the elementary school, $4,950/$6,350 for the junior high, $5,450/$6,900 for grades 9-11, and $5,850/$7,300 for seniors. If you were a Calvary parent, and disapproved of the optional mask policy, you could save a bunch of money by using the public schools.

Of course, for Calvary parents, that would mean sending their kids to the city’s disastrous public school system.

CCA staff told a city worker in late September they believed the school did not need to observe health department regulations because “CCA was a private religious school,” court filings show. The school also failed to submit to the city information about close contacts of CCA staff and students who tested positive for COVID-19.

Naturally, the city fought, and on Friday, October 29th, Common Pleas Court Judge Joshua Roberts signed an order requiring all personnel, students as well as staff, to wear masks. The school will reluctantly comply, while continuing the legal battle to overturn the judge’s order.

But, as the Inquirer reported on Thursday, October 28th, the mask mandate isn’t being strictly enforced in some public schools.

Sometimes when Lily Beard is running late for her second-period class, the only open seat is in front of a group of boys who don’t wear masks.

“They’re always coughing and being disgusting behind me,” said Lily, a ninth grader at Council Rock South High School, where, she said, it seems as if half the kids aren’t wearing masks.

“It’s completely unfair that we can’t go to school and learn and be safe.”

Then, don’t run late!

Of course, young Miss Beard is, one supposes, fully vaccinated, and the photo accompanying the article showed her mother and her wearing black, commercially-made masks. If the vaccines are supposed to protect the vaccinated, and masks protect the mask wearers, shouldn’t that be enough for the fearful?

Miss Beard complained that only about half of the students were wearing masks regularly, which tell you one thing: they don’t want to wear masks, and there’s no reason why their rights not to wear a mask should somehow be trumped by Miss Beard’s claim that they should.

Then, on Tuesday morning, the Inquirer raised the obvious question: at what point would Our Betters decide that the ‘pandemic’ was over?

Everyone’s asking when the pandemic will be over. Here’s how we’ll know.

If COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations did eventually reach levels usually associated with the flu, would that be a reasonable benchmark for saying the pandemic was over?

by Tom Avril, Jason Laughlin, and Laura McCrystal | Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Throughout each day, Cheryl Bettigole receives granular, neighborhood-level updates on the numbers we’ve all been hearing for months. The percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19. Transmission rates. Hospitalizations, deaths, and progress with vaccines — in Philadelphia and beyond.

The lines on the graphs often bounce around like the stock market. Yet at some point the city’s acting health commissioner and policymakers throughout the country have to reduce it all to a pivotal yes-or-no question:

Is it OK to resume life as normal?

“Things are trending in the right direction,” Bettigole said last week. “But we’re not past COVID.”

It is now generally accepted that COVID will always be with us in some form, much like seasonal coronaviruses that cause the common cold. But thanks to vaccines and the lingering immunity that many have acquired through infection, the share of the population protected from severe disease continues to grow.

That trend has infectious disease experts predicting that sometime in the not-so-distant future, perhaps a matter of months, the disease will become “endemic” — still circulating, yet not out of control.

What level is low enough to know we’ve crossed that line? And who decides what is normal?

That last is the real question: just who gets to decide what’s “normal,” when the government will stop trying to run people’s lives?

The public are already deciding some of that for themselves. Roughly 2,300 New York City firemen and EMTs called out sick on Monday, in apparent protest over Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vaccine mandate. With 10,591 uniformed firemen, 4,274 uniformed EMS workers and 2,096 civilians, if 2,300 called out, that’s 13.56% of the workforce. As we have reported here, at least a couple of Kentucky school districts are lifting their mask mandates. My own observations at Lowe’s and Kroger indicate that mask wearing, even when the stores request it, is not being honored by roughly half of the customers.

But, what we will see is that while masking policies will fall away, because people are going to simply refuse, political leaders are going to continue to press for mandatory vaccinations, claiming that, if the virus is ‘endemic’ it still needs to be fought by requiring vaccinations. The Patricians will not want to give up control over the plebeians.

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↑1 It’s quite common for parochial schools to have lower tuition rates for parishioners, and parishioners are expected to make contributions to the church.
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Tomás Ó’Cualáin is very angry that he contracted the virus!

Tomás Ó’Cualáin tells us that he is a physician and a neuroradiologist, and very much a supporter of vaccination against #COVID-19.

Yet, despite his precautions, Dr Ó’Cualáin has contracted the virus, and he’s angry, very angry, about it:

Dr Ó’Cualáin[1]His last name might actually be Folan. has told us that he has done everything, everything! by the book, gotten vaccinated, wearing not just the cloth or cheap masks most people get, but the supposedly more protective N95 masks, avoided unnecessary social contact, and his wife even got vaccinated while she was pregnant, despite the fact that while some health care professionals recommended it, we don’t know yet if the vaccines cause problems with the development of unborn children.[2]Note: the Tweet to the left is actually a screenshot of his original, but it is linked to his original; if you click on it, it will take you to the original.

He continued:

The rules just seem completely made up and arbitrary as to who is allowed to get boosters and when.

Meanwhile peoples lives & their chronic health hangs in the balance.

Don’t even get me started on the people who refuse to get vaccinated. My thoughts on them aren’t fit to post.

Dr Ó’Cualáin tells us that his thoughts on those who refuse the vaccines aren’t fit to post, but, actually, he did post them, in an earlier tweet:

Nurse fired for not being a proponent of science in a science-based field which necessitates that you science.

Makes video about how she is a victim.

Her patients would have been the victims.

Get out of Medicine & Nursing if you don’t science.

You don’t belong here.

Quote Tweet
Gillian McKeith @GillianMcKeith · Oct 30
Nurse fired for not accepting the you know what. Religious exemption denied.. Freedom is everything and you must never give it up #coercion https://twitter.com/HiDearZaki2/status/1454386707378417666/video/1

It would seem that the good physician is gleeful that a nurse got canned for sticking to her principles and beliefs.

It seems that the good doctor really, really doesn’t like unvaccinated people, which turns out to be a bit on the ironic side, given that he retweeted this image. Hypocrisy, anyone?

Now I don’t know what regulations kept the doctor from getting a COVID booster, but that can be what happens when governments are allowed to write the regulations. But we also don’t know from whom he contracted the virus. We already know that vaccinated people can contract the virus — Dr Ó’Cualáin did! — and that vaccinated people can transmit the virus.

But, while I am wryly amused by the doctor’s hypocrisy, his self-attested story tells us something else: despite being vaccinated, despite isolating himself from others as much as possible, despite wearing all of the personal protective equipment that he can, despite doing everything that the ‘experts’ have told us we just have to do, he still contracted the virus.

Yet, throughout the United States, actual cases of COVID-19 have declined dramatically, even though vaccinations have plateaued, even though most people have long since given up wearing masks, and even though many people are simply ignoring mask requests in places in which they are made. Why, it’s almost as though all of the restrictions that have been placed on people haven’t actually worked, haven’t actually done anything to prevent or lessen the spread of the virus.

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References
↑1 His last name might actually be Folan.
↑2 Note: the Tweet to the left is actually a screenshot of his original, but it is linked to his original; if you click on it, it will take you to the original.
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Mask mandates in the Bluegrass State They don't seem to have made much difference

The Lexington Herald-Leader does not publish a Saturday edition, but at least subscribers can get some updated content on Saturdays. In a story from Friday, we find out that the Bluegrass State’s COVID-19 vaccination rate isn’t as high as previously reported:

    Data duplication error means Kentucky’s COVID vaccination numbers just went down

    By Alex Acquisto | Friday, October 29, 2021 | 9:31 AM EDT

    A major pharmacy chain unintentionally logged a few hundred thousand COVID-19 vaccinations twice, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Thursday, which means many fewer Kentuckians than previously thought have received their first dose.

    Kroger locations across Kentucky, where vaccines are administered through its pharmacies, reported 431,100 duplicate doses to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s federal vaccine database. Those doses — 252,500 of which are thought to be first doses — will be removed Thursday evening and final numbers will be released Friday.

    “The CDC has confirmed in their system that some COVID vaccination data has been counted twice,” the governor said Thursday in a news conference, adding, “This was not intentional by anyone,” but “What it does to our numbers hurts a little bit.” Three other states have made similar errors, Beshear said, but he declined to say which ones.

There is more at the original, but I will admit to being amused.

Jerry Tipton, one of the newspaper’s sportswriters — and it’s the coverage of University of Kentucky sports which keeps the paper alive — had an article this morning on the mask mandate for entrance into Rupp Arena for UK’s exhibition game against Kentucky Wesleyan.

    As fans waited for players to make a “Blue Carpet” entrance to this year’s Big Blue Madness, a security guard noticed Pamela Buboltz’s mask had slipped off her nose. The guard motioned for her to pull it up.

    Buboltz made eye contact with an onlooker (blush). Her gaze seemed to convey a mix of annoyance and can-you-believe-this? She shook her head from side to side after adjusting her mask.

    “No one is wearing a mask,” she said when the onlooker asked about the exchange. “Look around. I see five people (wearing masks). They don’t work anyway.”

There’s more at the original, and Mr Tipton cited examples which ran the gamut.

I noted, on Twitter, on October 5th:

Both signs are still up, the one on the right “strongly encourag(ing)” fully vaccinated shoppers to wear masks beside the outer doors, and the one with no option other than to wear masks beside the inner doors. This is at the Kroger on Bypass Road in Richmond, Kentucky. And while there looked to be roughly 80% compliance three weeks ago, yesterday it was down to, by my guesstimate, 50%. Even a few of the employees, along with a non-employee vendor, weren’t wearing masks, or had them below their chins, where they were of no use.

I, of course, did not wear a mask, and there was no one from the store entrance either encouraging people to mask up or inquiring about vaccination status.

But this was the most important story:

    Two school districts in counties near Lexington are lifting their mask mandates

    by Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Friday, October 29, 2021 | 1:05 PM EDT

    Two Kentucky school districts in counties adjoining Lexington have announced that they are lifting their mask mandates.

    In Nicholasville, Jessamine Superintendent Matt Moore said that masks in school will be optional starting Wednesday.

    Moore said several factors went into making the decision including county data, student and staff cases and quarantines, the number of vaccinations in the community, and the success of the Test to Stay Program, which allows students who test negative for COVID to stay in class even if they have been exposed.

    “I also communicated that, if the data does not trend in the desired direction, JCS would transition back to requiring masks,” Moore said.

    Beginning Monday, Nov. 8, masks and face coverings will be optional for students, staff, and visitors in Madison County Schools at Richmond.

There’s more at the original.

Thanks to the Kentucky General Assembly overriding Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) veto, the decisions on mask mandates in the public schools are the province of local school boards, and not the state. The Governor lamented that he lacked the authority to issue a mask mandate now, and said that, if he had the authority, he would “immediately implement” an indoor mask mandate. The Governor also said that he hoped businesses would put in place mask mandates themselves. Well, Kroger has the signs up doing just that, but Kentuckians are not complying, and the store is not attempting to enforce the requirement.

But the most important sentence in Mrs Spears article is this:

    In recent weeks, Madison County Schools has seen a significant decline in the number of active cases and quarantine cases among students and staff. That decline is in line with the number of cases in the county, officials said in a statement.

If the Madison County schools, which had a mask mandate since the beginning of school, is seeing a decline in cases “in line with the number of cases in the county,” where there is no mask mandate, doesn’t that say that the mask mandates have made no difference?

On September 1st, Herald-Leader columnist Linda Blackford was shocked and appalled that UK football games was inviting Mr Delta to a tailgate party:

    Then UK announced its COVID protocols for the football season at Kroger Stadium in an Orwellian orgy of double speak: The rules say if you are not vaccinated, you have to wear a mask at all times, even outside! Pinky promise you’ll abide by our honor system! You do have to wear a mask in indoor spaces. Maybe. If we check. Wouldn’t you like to see a UK usher knock on the door of a luxury box to ask some poobah UK donor enjoying a nice bourbon to pull up their mask?

    I’m not sure how to rank science versus football in the SEC, but it seems that UK could have followed the lead of a peer like Louisiana State University. The Tiger Stadium can seat 103,000 people and they’re asking for vaccination status or negative test results. Yes, there will be lines, but also less likelihood to turn games into superspreader events. Then again, maybe LSU has a slightly more celebrated football history and can afford to turn away a few irate fans.

Except the ‘superspreader’ event Mrs Blackford feared never happened. As this graph from The New York Times shows, the South has the lowest “average daily cases per capita” of any region in the country.

On September 1st, the day Mrs Blackford published her column, Kentucky had a moving seven day daily average of 4,320 new cases per day; on October 29th, that average had dropped to 1,214. That’s a 71.90% drop, with UK football games featuring only a small percentage of fans wearing masks, with the vaccination numbers lower than previously reported, and with Kentuckians mostly ignoring masking mandates and requests.

Yes, while I am vaccinated, I have been mostly ignoring the ‘safety protocols’, and I have criticized them. But I can also get kind of numbers geeky, and this article was about the actual numbers. What the worry warts have been telling us has simply not been the case!

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Kroger and masks Local Kroger didn't require masks during worst of the Δ outbreak, so why now?

This sign was posted beside the outer doors at the Kroger on the Eastern Bypass in Richmond, Kentucky, on October 5, 2021.

We reported, on August 10th, that the Kroger Company KR: (%) had updated its mask policy:

    Our current mask guidance requires unvaccinated associates to wear masks and requests that unvaccinated customers wear masks when in our stores and facilities. In light of the Delta variant and updated CDC recommendations, we strongly encourage all individuals, including those who are vaccinated, to wear a mask when in our stores and facilities. We will continue to abide by all state and local mandates and encourage all Americans to get vaccinated, including our associates.

According to the sign, Kroger had gone from “request(ing)” that unvaccinated customers wear masks to “requiring” unvaccinated visitors to wear masks, while still saying, “Masks strongly encouraged for fully vaccinated individuals.

But there was another sign, on the inner doorway, maybe twenty feet from the outer doors:

    Achtung! Attention! Mask required! To stop the spread of the virus, Kroger requires all customers and associates to wear a mask while in our stores.

    Thank you for shopping with us today.

I chose to obey the outer sign, and, being fully vaccinated, I declined their ‘strong encouragement’ to wear a mask. As a guesstimate, about 20% of the shoppers I saw inside were not wearing masks.

So, why did this particular branch of Kroger put up these signs? New COVID-19 cases have been declining in the Bluegrass State, and, thanks to the Republican-controlled General Assembly, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) cannot impose one. This particular branch hadn’t had any signs like this up for months, including during the worst of the ‘Delta’ variant cases. Perhaps the manager got her hand smacked by the corporate office?

At least the store was not attempting to enforce this stupid requirement. It is their private property, so they can impose any restrictions they wish. But I am a free individual, and if they start enforcing this policy, I am free to take my business elsewhere, and I will.

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Aren’t reporters supposed to ask relevant question?

I had previously thought that reporters, at least good reporters, weren’t supposed to simply accept what they have been told by government, but to ask questions. Apparently, I was wrong about that.

Only a third of Philly city employees and half of Pa. state health workers have reported being vaccinated

City officials believe the number vaccinated is “far higher” than reported, citing difficulty with getting workers who don’t routinely use computers at work to upload their vaccination cards.

by Justine McDaniel and Erin McCarthy | Friday, September 24, 2021 | 5:41 PM EDT

Most city and state employees who were asked to get vaccinated against the coronavirus have not yet reported doing so, according to numbers released this week.

Only 31% of Philadelphia city employees have provided proof of vaccination as of this week, according to the city, though all were told to be immunized against the coronavirus by Sept. 1 or begin double-masking at work.

Translation: the rules aren’t being enforced. If people had to start double-masking, starting over three weeks ago, if they were not vaccinated, those who were already vaccinated would have taken the effort to get their vaccine cards entered into the system, to keep from having to wear that repugnant face diaper!

And just under 50% of Pennsylvania’s 23,000 workers in health and congregate care facilities had provided proof of vaccination as of Friday, said a Wolf administration spokesperson. The state mandated that state health and congregate care workers be fully vaccinated by Sept. 7 or undergo weekly testing.

Odd how the Inquirer didn’t mention that all health care workers in the city had to be fully vaccinated by October 15th. While there were potential exemptions for medical or religious reasons, there was no ‘get tested’ option.

Philadelphia officials believe the number of city workers vaccinated is “far higher” than reported, citing difficulty with getting employees who don’t routinely use computers at work to upload their vaccination cards. In Philadelphia, 69% of all adults are fully vaccinated, which would indicate the rate among the city’s more than 25,000 workers is likely higher than reported.

Is this a reasonable belief? Since city workers face greater and more annoying restrictions — double-masking and weekly testing — wouldn’t those who were vaccinated but hadn’t filed their cards have done so, to avoid those odious restrictions?  I suppose it could be true .  .  . if supervisors were not enforcing the masking/testing requirements.

As for Philadelphia workers, those who aren’t vaccinated are required to wear a cloth face mask over a surgical mask while working. The city has lists identifying all such employees; Garrow said supervisors are notified and required to ensure employees are double-masking.

There was much more to the article than I quoted, but nowhere in the article did the reporters raise the question I asked: why would already vaccinated workers not report that, to rid themselves of the doubled masks? Nor did I see any questioning of how strictly supervisors were enforcing the orders; would unvaccinated supervisors have been willing to ignore the requirements for their subordinates, so that they could get away with it as well?

Good reporters would have taken the information they were given, and then head out onto the streets, to check out city work crews and see for themselves. As far as I can tell, that did not happen, or, if it did, such was never mentioned in the article.

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A picture worth a thousand words. Why won't the credentialed media report the whole story?

I normally avoid photos that might be under copyright, but this one tells a tale that ought not to be avoided, and thus falls under ‘fair use’ standards. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

    SEPTA bus riders are frustrated by persistent delays. Officials say a shortage of drivers is to blame.

    The regional transit agency was not able to hire at the rate of attrition and has to play catch up.

    by Thomas Fitzgerald | Saturday, September 18, 2021

    SEPTA has a deficit of 105 bus operators, a lingering effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to delays on many of the agency’s bus routes. Alejandro A Alvarez, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge. Photographer

    For weeks, SEPTA’s real-time online bus service status page has been speckled with red triangles warning riders of delays on many routes “due to an operator shortage.”

    The transit agency is down 105 bus operators, officials said. Austerity measures during last year’s coronavirus shutdowns, including a four-month hiring freeze, have hampered SEPTA’s ability to keep up with attrition.

    As a result, thousands of frustrated riders wait longer at bus stops.

    And when operators scheduled for duty call in sick or have family emergencies, regular occurrences in a workforce of more than 2,600 people, managers in SEPTA’s nine bus garages have to scramble.

There’s more at the original, but the telling part of the photo is the sign on the front of the bus: “A mask or face covering is required on SEPTA”. You can click on the photo to enlarge it, and see the bus marquee more easily.

We have previously reported on mask mandates for certain jobs, including bus drivers, pushing people away from those jobs. People just don’t want to wear a diaper over their faces. But the only reference to that in the Inquirer article was this:

    The transit agency is down 105 bus operators, officials said. Austerity measures during last year’s coronavirus shutdowns, including a four-month hiring free(Nat Lownes, of the Philly Transit Riders Union) said some of his friends who are bus operators tell him they’re worn out with the demands of the job, which include enforcing federal mask regulations and often dealing with irate riders. “It can be brutal,” he said.

The Inquirer article didn’t have a single word about bus drivers themselves not wanting to wear masks, and while some passengers don’t want to wear the silly things for a thirty-minute ride, the drivers are required to have them on for an eight hour, or longer, shift.

This is why I frequently refer to journolists. 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. There’s really no way that Thomas Fitzgerald, the article author, didn’t know about the frustration of bus drivers and others having to wear face masks for hours on end, and the stories of the patricians going maskless while their ‘servants’ had to wear face diapers aren’t going to encourage people to take jobs requiring the wearing of masks.

An actual journalist would have reported on that, but the editorial position of the Inquirer is to support mask and vaccine mandates, and the credentialed media just don’t like reporting on things with which they disagree.

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Laughing out loud * Updated! *

Lexington Herald-Leader “Staff writer Valarie Honeycutt Spears covers K-12 education, social issues and other topics.” Uhhh, maybe she might consider going back to English class?

“(T)hree new bus drivers and one new substitute driver has been hired”? https://i0.wp.com/www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_wacko.gif?w=612&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_yahoo.gif?w=612&ssl=1

I have commented on the article, in hopes that Mrs Spears sees it updates it.

    In a Tuesday newsletter, Liggins said that additionally over the next two weeks, the district expects to have four additional drivers ready to start driving.

    “We also have 18 candidates studying for their permits, and 20 people lined up for a class to begin next week,” he said.

If the Fayette County Schools have some luck, it won’t take too much time between candidates getting their permits and being able to take their CDL road test. The question is: how many will stay?

oo0oo

Updated: Friday, September 17, 2021 @ 10:15 AM EDT

I see that Mrs Spears has made the grammatical correction! She also added this:

    In the area of child nutrition, the school district is seeing fewer vacancies each day, “but we are still looking to hire more than 50 additional people,” Liggins said.

    Staff shortages have been so severe in the district’s cafeterias that Central Office staff have been volunteering.

Translation: cafeteria staff do not want to be forced to wear masks, either. Given that those positions are part-time, it isn’t much of a job sacrifice to not take those, and go for the many other open jobs in Lexington.