While natural immunity is stronger than vaccine-induced immunity, proving natural immunity is difficult because fewer than one-fourth of infections are documented and antibodies testing is hit-or-miss. Vaccine mandates would affect more people with natural immunity (the stronger immunity) than those without any immunity, which would not justify the ostensible public-health case for such mandates. If the vaccines are effective as we know them to be, there's no need to deprive other people of their livelihoods for not being vaccinated, especially given the better-than-even odds that their immunity is better.
DHHS data show that North Carolinians with natural immunity are much less likely to contract Covid than even vaccinated individuals. Data show the reinfection rate (a measure of the strength of natural immunity) is lower than the post-vaccination infection rate (strength of vaccination). The reinfection rate was likely less (possibly much less) than 0.8% while the post-vaccination infection rate was at least 1.3% (and possibly much greater).
News & Observer editors write frequently about their concern for the poor and the need to provide North Carolinians access to quality educational opportunities — which the Opportunity Scholarship Program meets by providing low- and moderate-income students the opportunity to access a better education. Instead of seeing Opportunity Scholarships as a lifeline for needy students, editors claim the program lacks accountability, diverts much-needed funds away from the public schools, and serves as a vehicle for discrimination. Such claims falter under close review, raising further doubts about the editors’ intentions and more questions about their public embrace of teachers’ unions.
A new report published by a left-wing group included policy recommendations they claim will help hourly workers. The recommendations, however, largely introduce more restrictions, costs, and burdens to hiring hourly workers, which leads to less hiring. A better recipe to help hourly workers would be to peel back layers of government meddling in the labor market, not introduce more layers.
The state licensing board for massage and bodywork said reflexologists didn't practice massage and bodywork — then they changed their mind. House Bill 434 would ward off this licensing threat by creating a state healing arts commission to oversee reflexologists and music therapists, with other practices sure to be added. North Carolina needs structural overhaul of its occupational regulation, especially a careful, thoughtful approach in law to make sure any future regulation of a practice is the "least restrictive regulation necessary to protect consumers" and "demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to legitimate health, safety, and welfare objectives."
Despite weak opposition to the Senate tax plan, tax cuts benefit more than just the one with the reduced legal tax liability. Low- and median-income households receive a much larger benefit from the Senate’s rate cuts.
Research continues to find serious, deadly effects of lockdowns and severe government restrictions over Covid-19, such as Gov. Cooper's, while failing to find evidence of their purported benefits. From March 2020 through January 2021 (the end of available data), under Cooper's unrelenting orders, North Carolina has been witnessing a second excess death event other than Covid-19. It is disheartening to see evidence of an ongoing, non-Covid death event months and months after citing science and data to sound the alarm repeatedly in the hopes of warding off such grim results.
It is not clear that states have sacrificed jobs to save lives or sacrificed lives to save jobs. North Carolina now does well on the combined impact of Covid deaths and lost jobs. This analysis does not, however, include other causes of death, mental health issues arising from isolation, learning losses in K-12 schools, or increases in child abuse and domestic violence that could be costs of tighter restrictions.
Part 3 of this series provides the data from the CDC and DHHS used to make the graph. It uses a sample week to demonstrate how to apply the data. The hope here is to bring more clarity to what is a very real threat still facing North Carolinians.
"I am a Democrat. He’s the governor, and a Democratic governor.” And with that explanation, North Carolina state senator Paul Lowe cast the deciding vote to sustain Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of a bipartisan bill offering in-person learning for kids.
