Once the focus of health care shifts from healing the patient to chasing the next blockbuster medicinal product, it follows that financial gain should supersede efforts to eliminate this virus. Not surprisingly, it has been 20 months since COVID first surfaced in China, and health authorities still cannot recommend any treatment.
The state’s largest union for public workers, the Vermont-NEA, is asking that the state use as much federal money as possible from its massive $5 billion influx over the past year to pay down an ever-increasing liability in its pension program.
With a federal moratorium on evictions set to expire, New Hampshire renters at risk of being kicked out of their homes will have access to assistance under a new law.
Some state and local public health officials soon may recommend reinstating mask mandates, imposing curfews, limiting travel and even reclosing schools and businesses. But in numerous states, newly minted laws may prevent many of those public health precautions.
The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) announced its opposition to a mandate forcing its members to get the coronavirus vaccine. The APWU also demanded that Biden’s administration negotiates with union leadership before issuing any mandate.
The Vermont Agency of Education (AOE) is soliciting feedback from stakeholders and the public on the draft Building for the Future: Vermont’s Plan for Education Recovery and Beyond. The plan is a requirement of Vermont’s Act 74 and the Federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARP Act).
At his weekly press conference Tuesday, Gov. Phil Scott and other administration officials pleaded with the public to take more vaccines or potentially face another version of the coronavirus.
“We’ve got to shake people at this point and say, ‘Come on now.’ We tried voluntary. We could not have been more kind and compassionate,” de Blasio said on MSNBC. “Free testing, everywhere you turn, incentives, friendly, warm embrace. The voluntary phase is over.”
The “medical freedom” law which passed the Republican-controlled Legislature on a largely party-line vote, states that people have the “natural, essential and inherent right to bodily integrity, free from any threat or compulsion by government to accept an immunization.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed course Tuesday, reversing its previous COVID-19 guidance by urging Americans to wear masks, regardless of their vaccination status. Critics quickly denounced the reversal, saying it undermines vaccine confidence.
Flight attendants’ and teachers’ unions whose members are on the front lines of disputed COVID safety protocols are ardent enforcers of mask mandates for the public but do not require their members to get vaccinated.
Instead of acting as if vaccinations matter, the US government spends its efforts trying to ban “bad information.” The way to stop bad information is to provide good information. The way to strengthen conspiracy theories is trying to ban any sort of speech.