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| Illustration by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times |
It’s no surprise that a lot of people are trying to push the whole COVID-19 experience down the memory hole. An inquiry seeking to establish what went right and what went wrong would probably prove embarrassing to too many people who are now near-mythological figures in the American culture canon.
Nonetheless, an accounting is in order. The people responsible for keeping us safe and preventing the coronavirus from spreading got too much wrong for any of us to be satisfied with their performance. We need an investigation, not because we’re looking for a scalp or two to hang on the wall but because the next time something like COVID-19 makes its presence known — and there will be a next time — we need to be better prepared.
There’s a lot we need to do differently. We should encourage people to remain calm in the face of unfolding uncertainty and not to stay away from hospitals and doctors if they feel sick. During COVID-19, the media, U.S. public health officials, doctors and politicians did neither, thinking that would help contain the virus and keep it from spreading.
It didn’t, and according to a new report from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, it led to more people dying from things other than the virus than projected. Measuring the Death Toll From Non-Covid Causes, a study undertaken by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan and Rob Arnott, founder and chairman of Research Affiliates, attempts to explain why the rise in deaths among Americans under the age of 50 was higher from non-COVID causes than from the virus itself.
It’s an astonishing conclusion drawn from a thorough examination of death certificate data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2020 and 2021 that also includes preliminary data from 2022. By measuring the excess deaths that occurred over the normal trend line over the specified period, Messrs. Mulligan and Arnott found at least 250,000 Americans died unexpectedly from causes not related to COVID-19. --->READ MORE HERE
Over $736 million in federal coronavirus relief funds earmarked for nonpublic schools were not provided to their intended recipients in 27 states, a new report from a government watchdog group found.
The report from the National Opportunity Project details the extent to which numerous states went to block the allocation of Emergency Assistance to Non-public Schools funds to schools that otherwise were eligible.
"Government mismanagement at federal and state levels ultimately kept qualified schools from accessing funds designated for them by Congress," the report's author and NOP senior policy analyst Jessica Hockett wrote. "The practical implication of this problem is that schools were unable to use the resources intended for them to address academic and mental health needs still accumulating due to the government’s handling of COVID."
The funds in the Emergency Assistance to Non-public Schools program were supposed to support nonpublic schools that were adversely affected by lockdowns in the early days of the pandemic, much like the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund that supported public school districts
The report says that a combined $736 million in funds dispersed to 27 states did not fund the schools they were supposed to. The cause for the lack of disbursement was linked to a number of causes, including poor government oversight, limiting permitted expenses, and governors taking advantage of a "reversion clause" that allowed states to spend unallocated funds for "any educational purpose." --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates
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