Jon Sanders, director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life at the John Locke Foundation, assesses Dr. Mandy Cohen’s record as head of North Carolina’s top health agency. Cohen is now director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sanders offered these comments during an Aug. 22, 2023, interview on One America...
Even if things are still tense after the Tar Heels beat the Blue Devils during Coach K’s final home game this weekend, the counties where UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University respectively reside can come together on one thing: The need for indoor masking is officially over. As of Monday, March 7, two of the...
North Carolina won’t be joining the growing number of states ending the mask mandates for public school students. In a meeting Wednesday, Feb. 10, with county health officials statewide, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services said the agency is updating the DHHS Strong Schools NC Public Health Toolkit k-12 to recommend “students and...
COVID will be with us always, in one form or another. That realization, based on evidence and, yes, science, isn’t news. Yet finally, politicians and health experts are admitting as much. What took them so long, because something tells me they, too, knew long ago that COVID would not simply disappear? “‘We’ve understood we’re not...
A youth risk survey for middle- and high-school students in the public school system is raising eyebrows for asking students about drug use and sexual activity. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey — a joint project between the N.C. Division of Public Instruction and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — is distributed every...
The N.C. Senate passed House Bill 110 on Wednesday, Sept. 8, which would modify rules to the HOPE rental assistance program. The bill comes as state and local leaders struggle to quickly distribute the federal rental assistance aid they’re tasked with administering. The changes will let landlords apply for assistance on behalf of tenants, along...
America has largely moved on from COVID-19, even as much of the world is still deep in its throes. Thing is, many politicians in the U.S., as well as left-leaning media outlets, would have us believe otherwise. Sure, in their heart of hearts, they want COVID to go away, for the world to truly move...
The freedom to choose — where we work, what we eat, what we wear, etc. — is a core tenet of libertarianism, and that freedom, though often questioned and even attacked, endures. Even as we’re still crawling out of the entangled system of government-imposed lockdowns, suppressions, and restrictions. Sad results from the pandemic. The Centers...
Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect the governor’s latest directive on masks. Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, says Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, should immediately withdraw his imposed mask mandate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday said people who are fully vaccinated no longer need to wear masks indoors, and...
Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, decreed Wednesday, April 28, that he will lift the mandate on masks for people outside, but that the indoor mandate will remain at least until June 1. North Carolina’s COVID-19 restrictions are arguably the most stringent among Southern states, even as numbers — hospitalizations, deaths, infections — have fallen, or...
The N.C. State Board of Education has voted unanimously to switch social-distancing requirements under a “Plan A” return to public school classrooms to 3 feet rather than the previous six feet. The new rules are in accordance with new guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that cut in half the social-distancing...
