Healthcare

Infectious bronchitis virus

The benefits of natural immunity should be a bigger part of the COVID story.

By Justin Katz | August 27, 2021 |

A new study (which appears to be out of Israel) confirms that natural immunity to the Delta variant of COVID-19 is even better than vaccine-driven immunity.  Breakthrough infections are 13 times more likely with a vaccine, versus a recent infection.  The number goes down only to 6 times for infections from longer ago. This study…

IHME COVID death projections for RI

The COVID overreaction playbook puts the ripped-out death-models page back in.

By Justin Katz | August 24, 2021 |

Remember everybody’s fascination with the COVID-19 projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) when this whole thing started?  On April 8, 2020, I noted how the institute’s projections had a strange habit of not matching reality.  That day, the scary proclamation was that Rhode Island had 21 days to peak daily deaths,…

Masked Matryoshka dolls

Glocester gives hope that not every elected body in RI is happy to unload responsibility.

By Justin Katz | August 23, 2021 |

Dan McGowan reports for the Boston Globe that the Glocester School Committee is going to consider suing the Rhode Island Council on Elementary and Secondary Education over its implicit statewide mask mandate: Governor Dan McKee subsequently declared a new state of emergency related to Delta variant of the coronavirus, and issued an executive order requiring masks in…

Gustave Courbet's The Stormy Sea (The Wave)

Politics This Week with John DePetro: A Storm of Bias

By Justin Katz | August 23, 2021 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss the ways in which the movers and shakers in RI avoid things everybody knows.

A man in a plague mask on a swing

We must demand more from Governor McKee as he grabs power.

By Justin Katz | August 20, 2021 |

If this is all it takes for the governor to declare “a new state of emergency,” we’re in deep, deep trouble.  We may never, ever be in a state of non-emergency ever again. Enough is enough. No real argument is made.  No sources are cited (only vaguely referenced).  No legal authority is defended.  Any deliberation…

An asteroid in the sky

We must devote all the world’s resources to asteroid protection for the children!

By Justin Katz | August 18, 2021 |

I’m sorry to report, from a Becky Ferreira article on VICE, a threat that could kill tens of millions of people (including children, women, and minorities) within the next 280 years: The odds that one of the most hazardous known asteroids might collide with Earth in the coming centuries just went up, though they are still…

Hospital beds

Don’t forget the people on the sharp end of the mandates.

By Justin Katz | August 18, 2021 |

Most attention has been paid to the question of whom the state has mandated to wear masks (whether or not it has the authority), but an important point has to be made about Governor Dan McKee’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.  Brian Amaral reports for the Boston Globe: If health care workers at state-licensed facilities in…

Viruses on a cell

The RI American Academy of Pediatrics letter ignored 36% of COVID-positive kids who are asymptomatic.

By Justin Katz | August 17, 2021 |

The Boston Globe article to which I linked earlier made a point of citing one statistic from that irresponsible RI American Academy of Pediatrics letter: They said a recent study reports that nearly 5 percent of all COVID-infected children have lingering symptoms such as MIS-C, fatigue, and brain fog for more than four weeks after their…

A masked teddy bear.

The pro-mask sense of entitlement is telling.

By Justin Katz | August 17, 2021 |

Cards on the table:  I do not want my children forced to wear masks in school.  Apart from discomfort and health (including mental health), masks unarguably impede the ability to understand what people are saying and almost obliterate the ability to read facial expressions, which is absolutely critical to education, especially for younger children.  Furthermore,…

RI House district map

Politics This Week with John DePetro: The Government We’ve Got

By Justin Katz | August 16, 2021 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss the ways in which Rhode Island politicians are making things political that shouldn’t be, and not doing so for things that should be.