Salt Lake Tribune
- Michelle Quist: Why Utahns should care about the ERA – “If the Utah Legislature does not approve it this year, we will know what its members think of women,” writes the former secretary of the Utah Republican Party. The bill is currently stuck in rules.
- Salt Lake City parents lose their legal fight to reopen schools. But not for the reasons you might think. The school district, he wrote, never violated any students’ constitutional right — as parents argued — in staying virtual. And it could have continued to do so, he said. The Utah Constitution only guarantees access to instruction, not to classes in person in a building.
- Sen. Mike Lee has voted no on every one of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet-level nominees so far. Here’s why. – When asked why Lee opposed those nominees, his office provided specific reasons for opposing each of the four — rather than indicating he has an overarching philosophical reason for opposing Biden’s nominees as a group.
- John Curtis says using tech to combat climate change should excite even fellow Republicans – “This one point should get them excited,” he said. “That is, we are on the cusp of either becoming the world leader in this technology or letting somebody else do it.”
- Bill may be first step to bringing back Utah vehicle safety inspections – SB93 only would require emissions techs to examine car lights and lamps.
- Half of U.S. pastors say they’ve heard conspiracy theories in their churches – Survey finds “startling disconnect” from truth in Protestant congregations.
COVID Corner
- The private sector can facilitate smooth vaccine rollout (Deseret News) – Government must once again work closely with the business community in vaccine prioritization and distribution.
- The Amazonian city that hatched the Brazil variant has been crushed by it (Washington Post) – Even in a city as traumatized as Manaus, the horror has been unlike anything doctors have seen. The oxygen quickly ran out. Dozens of hospital patients have died of asphyxiation. Scores more, unable to get care, have died at home. Every half-hour, one doctor said, a funeral procession rumbled toward the cemetery.
- The first 22M Americans have been vaccinated for COVID-19, and initial safety data shows everything is going well, CDC says (USA Today) – More than 9,000 people reported side effects after vaccination to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS. The problems in slightly more than 1,000 of those reports were considered serious. The majority of complaints involved headaches, fatigue, dizziness, nausea, chills, fever and pain.
- N.Y. Severely Undercounted Virus Deaths in Nursing Homes, Report Says (New York Times) – The state attorney general, Letitia James, said it’s likely that the Cuomo administration failed to report thousands of Covid-19 deaths of nursing home residents.
- Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine Effective, But Less So Against Variant In South Africa (NPR) Against the original COVID-19 strain, the vaccine is about 96% effective, but that drops to about 86% against the South African variant.
- Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Is 66% Effective In Preventing Moderate To Severe COVID-19 (NPR) The study was conducted in the U.S., Latin America and South Africa. The vaccine did better at preventing disease in this country – 72% percent — and less well in South Africa – 57% efficacy. The efficacy seen in Latin America was 66%.
- Coronavirus variant from South Africa has reached the United States. Here’s where we know it exists (Deseret News) – It’s been found in South Carolina, in two apparently unrelated cases.
- With precautions in place, there’s little evidence of COVID-19 spread in schools (Deseret News) – “The preponderance of available evidence from the fall school semester has been reassuring,” the researchers wrote. “There has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission.”
- It may be time to wear an N95 mask (Deseret News) – A Harvard professor recently opined that people should wear N95 masks as it would create “greater than 99% reduction in exposure.”
- Here’s what Utah doctors are advising pregnant women about COVID-19 vaccines (Salt Lake Tribune) – Get it. A new study led by University of Utah researcher says serious pregnancy complications seem to occur in women who have severe or critical coronavirus cases and the risks of the vaccine are less than the risks of the disease.
Deseret News
- Juggling parenting, work and a pandemic is not getting easier – Work-life balance in general has become harder as lines have blurred, especially for parents who’ve been working from home while balancing such tasks as keeping kids on track with homework or dealing with child care.
- What Trump’s inner circle told Utah Sen. Mike Lee in the days before Jan. 6 – Utah Sen. Mike Lee received a memorandum from former President Donald Trump’s legal team on the weekend before Congress met to finalize the presidential election suggesting that seven states had decided to or had submitted a different slate of electors than the ones they sent to Washington in December. “I found this surprising because I knew that hadn’t happened.
- Has the pandemic made drivers lose their minds? – In the past 10 months or so, people have been driving a lot less and dying a lot more in accidents. They also tend to be more angry behind the wheel than they used to be.
- The life of this Rwandan Catholic priest was just celebrated in Utah. Will Father Ubald be declared a saint? – “His ability to forgive the person who killed his mother and 80 other family members, and not just forgive, but then take care of the children of the man, he received extreme grace in his life and therefore was able to forgive in extreme fashion.” He died at the U of U Hospital on Jan. 7 of fibrotic lung disease as a result of having had COVID-19 last fall. He was 64.
- Rep. Burgess Owens apologizes to ‘liberals,’ says he accepts Biden as president – Owens tells Utah House Democrats he now realizes the difference between liberals, Marxists and socialists.
- Utah vaccine doses may triple; Gov. Cox ‘more optimistic’ than ever – Vaccine doses in Utah jumped by more than 73,000 since last week, Cox said, up from about 40,000 administered in the first week of January.
- Utah lawmakers laud ‘historic’ early budgeting for education – Base budget bill for schools funds 6% weighted-pupil increase, $1,500 teacher bonuses – that’s BIG bump.
- Larry King’s wife, Shawn King, speaks out on her husband for the first time – “I’m still processing,” she said. At the funeral, “we wore Larry’s suspenders, every one of us.”
Other
COVID-19 vaccine mobiles to deliver doses to Salt Lake County communities (FOX 13) – Two mammoth health mobiles sat parked in the Salt Lake County complex Wednesday morning, wrapped with logos and ready to go get shots in arms.
