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Paxlovid — Not a magic pill, but a very good one

Paxlovid was given an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2021 for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 in certain patients. By the end of February 2023 an estimated 48,000 people with COVID died in the U.S. because they didn’t get Paxlovid. Why didn’t they? Paxlovid is an anti-viral treatment combining two medicines, nirmatrelvir and ritonavir. Taken together, they prevent mild to moderate COVID from progressing to severe disease leading to hospitalization or death. Nirmatrelvir keeps the SARS-CoV-2 virus from spreading ...

Colleges and the politics of exclusion

The president of the University of Pennsylvania, Mary Elizabeth Magill, and the chairman of the board resigned after the president testified before Congress that she could not unequivocally say whether calling for the genocide of Jews was against university policy. She denounced antisemitism in a well-crafted video released after the hearings, but still not clearly stating that the policy of the university was offended by calls for genocide against the Jewish people. The heads of many other colleges and universities are in the same spiral of hate, having been hung on their own petard ...

Left to rot, Bedford Springs celebrates regaining its former glory

BEDFORD — For nearly two decades, every time the alarm rang out from Bedford Fire Department No. 1, people in town would say a little prayer that the call wasn’t for the old Bedford Springs Hotel — a primarily wooden structure built when Thomas Jefferson was president. Bedford resident Bette Slayton said, “We would be in town and hear the fire whistle go off and look at each other and just cross our fingers that it wasn’t the Springs.” Any time she had to head south along old U.S. 220 past the white-columned hotel, she would gaze at the rows of wooden porches jutting from ...

Reflections on a year and COVID-19

Like most folks, at this season of joy, hope, and renewal we look back on the year that’s ending and ahead to the one about to begin. It’s a time of sharing, and we decided to ask a few Let’s end COVID! team members to share their thoughts with you. It wasn’t COVID Scare. It was COVID Care. When Let’s end COVID! formed three years ago, our goal was to help the community access COVID-19 vaccines and reliable information. Through an incredible team of volunteers and “trusted messengers,” targeting specific hesitant populations in extensive public outreach, dispelling ...

How Pennsylvania’s government can prevent deadly blackouts

Having heard witnesses say America’s largest power grid remains unreliable nearly a year after a close call with blackouts last Christmas, Pennsylvania State Sen. Gene Yaw called the testimony “a little scary.” Glen Thomas, a former Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission chairman who consults on grid issues, testified during a joint hearing of Pennsylvania and Ohio legislators. “Reliability challenges are likely to get worse, not better,” he said. Other witnesses were no more encouraging. “We cannot operate a system with 100 percent renewables,” said Asim Haque, a ...

Democrats in state House want taxpayers to pay striking workers

Publicly funding people not to work is too radical a policy even for California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Though he has every reason to curry favor with labor unions during his shadow campaign for president, Newsom vetoed legislation that would have allowed workers in a labor dispute to qualify for unemployment compensation. In support of his veto, Newsom cited the unfeasible cost of paying striking workers to stay home. In Pennsylvania, however, Democrats are undeterred by the indefensible. They want to put this radical experiment to the test with House Bill (HB) 1481, which passed the ...