Despite having some of the lowest hospitalization and death rates for COVID-19 in the nation, Vermont continues to maintain substantial restrictions on businesses and services, along with a new mandate to wear a mask in all public places starting Saturday.
Lack of staff will render many if not most Vermont school districts unable to open as scheduled by the last week of August, a Washington County school superintendent predicts. Teachers and staff are applying to opt out of in-person instruction, she said.
Gov. Phil Scott doesn’t think the universal mask mandate he announced Friday will make Vermonters less willing to patronize businesses in-person. The opposite will be true, he predicted.
As Laura Meckler and Hannah Natanson of The Washington Post observe, pandemic pods are “a 2020 version of the one-room schoolhouse, privately funded.”
A study in The Lancet medical journal found that full lockdowns, border closures and high rates of coronavirus testing are not associated with a statistically significant reduction in the total number of critical cases or the virus’s overall mortality rate.
We should use every piece of information to loosen lockdown restrictions when possible, especially where it affects fundamental parts of our lives. Such restrictions include needlessly restrictive occupancy rules on places of worship.
Home schooling has long been popular among parents whose educational, societal or religious views make them wary of public schools. However, stringent new Covid-19 guidelines apparently have pushed hundreds more Vermont parents to consider the home schooling option.
The problem is that federal policymakers often believe that their one-size-fits-all solution works best and try to dangle funding in front of desperate school districts.
The Axios-Ipsos poll released Tuesday shows 31% of Americans believe that the number of deaths is lower than what is being reported. 58% of Republicans and 9% of Democrats believed that “the real number of deaths is less than the official count.”
Democrats support extending the current benefits, while Republicans want a more limited plan with incentives to return to work.
The vast majority of donations went to ActBlue, an online fundraising platform for Democratic and left-leaning organizations. Other common recipients included Bernie 2020, Biden for President, Hillary for America, and Warren for President, Inc.