Outgoing N.C. Health Secretary Mandy Cohen told lawmakers recently that schools could still close in the event of a COVID infection surge this winter. Cohen delivered this news as teachers and students scramble to wrap this semester and kids try to catch up from the year of remote and missed school. In comments before the...
Each week, staff at Carolina Journal looks back at the week in N.C. politics and chooses several interesting, relevant stories you may have missed. Medical bills and price transparency: Patients will have an easier time knowing what they’ll pay for medical services at UNC Health. The system will roll out an online tool that will...
A group of North Carolina gym owners say Gov. Roy Cooper’s continued shutdown is wrongfully painting gyms as dangerous carriers of the coronavirus. Data from other states — and countries — show gyms may be a low-risk carrier for COVID-19 if they adhere to strict cleaning and social distancing measures. On Aug. 5, Cooper again paused...
Gov. Roy Cooper will keep North Carolina in his modified Phase Two of reopening for another five weeks. That could worsen the state’s economic problems. One of the state’s top economists say North Carolina’s economy might take two to three years to recover. Cooper paused the state’s reopening at a Wednesday, Aug. 5, news briefing....
It is hard to know things. It’s harder to know how to know things. Harder still is knowing how to know the right things. In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper and much of the press corps have frequently repeated that he’s basing decisions about masks, bowling, schools, and anything else related to COVID-19 on “science...
COVID-19 is a deadly virus. That’s indisputable. But information from state health experts and the governor are fraught with mixed messages and questions, which leaves people mostly confused and often afraid, one researcher says. A big problem is that, speaking for North Carolina, that information comes from a two-headed source, that being Gov. Roy Cooper...
The COVID-19 shutdowns have ravaged rural health care. Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration froze elective surgeries to prepare for an onslaught of coronavirus patients and at the same time destroyed a major revenue source for hospitals. The shutdown cut medical services and weakened rural hospitals. Those hospitals lost millions while waiting for COVID-19 hospitalizations to spike...
This coronavirus isn’t going anywhere. It has burrowed deep into our communities, our hospitals, our psyches. It won’t magically disappear, despite all the wishing. The hoping and the dreaming. We’re hurting. In the eye of a hurricane it’s futile to try to assess the damage. We’re sheltering in place — literally, figuratively. Reaching, grasping for...
Gov. Roy Cooper on Wednesday, July 1, was vague in explaining why he delayed an announcement about how and when schools will start classes. All 115 N.C. school districts were asked to create three reopening plans, ranging from most to least restrictive. Wednesday was the deadline for Cooper to announce which plan all schools would...
Unacceptable. Gov. Roy Cooper’s penchant for absolute power. The way he plays with people’s lives and livelihoods. The flagrant partisanship and a creeping disdain among Democrats for freedom and liberty. The hypocrisy, the pandering. The weird science. It’s too much. Bars remain closed as restaurants with bars — an indiscernible difference — are open. Indoor...
On May 7, Cheryl Holtsclaw took her dad to the emergency room at Watauga Medical Center in Boone. Hospital policy blocked visitors to prevent the spread of COVID-19, so the 86-year-old man, suffering kidney problems, awaited treatment alone. While waiting, he suffered a catastrophic stroke. He was paralyzed on the right side. He couldn’t swallow....
