January 6th Select Committee Chief Legal Counsel Tim Heaphy expects his work to take six to 12 months with the committee, after which he’ll return to work as the University of Virginia’s chief legal counsel. Heaphy tells Morning News the mandate is “hold some hearings, and do some fact gathering, and issuing a report about what happened at the Capitol Jan. 6.”
While Massie and Paul double down on their COVID-19 rhetoric, another Kentucky Republican in Congress is promoting a sharply different message on vaccines: Senate Minority Leader McConnell. Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said of Kentucky’s powerful senator: “McConnell is, in my view, the most prominent Republican advocate of the sensible scientific point of view about vaccines.”
Justin Kirkland, political science professor at the University of Virginia, said McAuliffe appears to be playing on people’s dislike of Trump over his own past accomplishments. “I would say sort of the strategy is trying to tie Youngkin to the Trump arm of the Republican Party more than it is to discuss what McAuliffe was able to do when he was governor,” Kirkland said.
Darryl Brown, a professor of criminal law at the University of Virginia, said Thursday he believes current state code would restrict English from seeking geriatric release at all, because it prohibits inmates convicted of Class 1 felonies from doing so. While the rape, sodomy and penetration convictions are all unclassified felonies, with no numerical degree, they involved a victim under age 13. “For that version of the offense, the mandatory sentence is life, which makes it a class 1 felony,” Brown wrote in an email. “The statute defining punishment for class 1 felonies says that sentences fo...
The Norweigian study provided much-needed long-term data on survivors of testicular cancer, said Dr. Robert Dreicer of the UVA Cancer Center. “Additional information on this population is very important given they are young men when treated with long life expectancies,” Dreicer, a clinical expert for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, wrote via email. “This study showed a significant excess of second cancers over time and for the first time appears to show that exposure to more than two cycles of platinum-based chemotherapy increases this risk after 10 years of follow-up. Additionally ...
A collection of some of the nation’s top public health officials, faculty experts and leaders from across both sides of the political arena have sent a letter to institutions of higher education calling for them to strengthen their COVID-19 pandemic procedures and strategies. Among the signatories is Philip Zelikow, director of the COVID Commission Planning Group and professor, University of Virginia.
“It’s a time of considerable uncertainty, and we know that uncertainty, for a lot of people, leads to worry,” says professor Bethany Teachman, director of clinical training in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia. Teachman, a licensed clinical psychologist with more than two decades of experience studying how people think differently when they are anxious, suggested the onslaught of new stresses, from delta fears to elevated uncertainty, brings much anxiety.
“I think it is clear that the government has a compelling interest in requiring vaccination. But it is certainly an undue hardship to expose your other workers to unvaccinated spreaders of the pandemic. So yes, employers can require vaccination,” Douglas Laycock, a UVA School of Law professor and church-state scholar, wrote in an email.
Despite hopes of putting away our masks and returning to normal life, the elta strain has now changed the narrative. According to Dr. Cameron Webb of the University of Virginia, while those vaccinated are protected against serious illness, they can now transmit the delta variant, which carries 1,000 times the viral load of the original COVID-19 virus. As Webb explains, inadequate vaccination rates, in failing to reduce the number of places where the virus can live, have failed to reduce its spread.
“If you have plans for 2021 that involve a COVID-free celebration, cancel them,” tweeted Dr. Ebony Hilton, co-founder and medical director at GoodStock Consulting and a critical care anesthesiologist at the University of Virginia. “This goes for weddings, birthday parties, and holidays. We could have learned from the error of our ways in 2020 but instead carried them right on into 2021.”
When work needs you to throw down but you’re ready to toss it aside, you may need to take a few minutes in the toolkit. Three UVA Health nurses are helping their colleagues take short breaks to ease long hours, smaller staffs and larger patient loads.
Doctors say some people have yet to get a COVID-19 vaccine because they’re concerned about allergic reactions. UVA Health wants to help with a new study. It will be one of 29 sites across the country studying the risks of allergic reactions to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Changes have been made to the University of Virginia bus system for the fall semester. University Transit is adjusting its bus capacity and routes to help reduce the spread of COVID-19. Buses will not operate on McCormick Road until after 6 p.m. Masks will be required by all riders.
The University of Virginia disenrolled 238 students ahead of its fall semester for noncompliance with the school’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement. Of that number, 49 were enrolled in fall courses – meaning that “a good number” of the remaining students “may not have been planning to return to the University this fall at all,” UVA spokesperson Brian Coy said in an email.
“We know rainfall patterns are changing – more intense, more frequent storms,” said Jonathan Goodall, a UVA engineering professor who co-chaired a recent study for the General Assembly on climate change impacts in Virginia, during a presentation to the Joint Commission on Technology and Science earlier this week. “Those aren’t limited to the coast. Those will happen across the commonwealth.”
One 5-year-old cancer patient has grown up to become a doctor herself, and she just celebrated her white coat ceremony at UVA. But there’s more. The doctor who treated her years ago, Dr. Loren Walensky, is reacting to the touching news. When he met the then 3-year-old Kate Franklin, the two instantly developed a special bond.
Before UVA students come back to Grounds, they were required to be vaccinated unless they have a religious or medical exemption. “Ninety-nine percent of students have complied with our requirements, so there’s only 1% of our entire student body that isn’t either vaccinated or doesn’t have a valid exemption,” UVA spokesperson Brian Coy said.
Emma Navarro, 20, of Charleston, S.C., is currently ranked No. 329. She won the NCAA singles title in May as a freshman at the University of Virginia after going 25-1 in collegiate singles, a program record for single-season win percentage. She earned a qualifying wild card into the 2019 US Open as the USTA Girls’ 18s finalist.
Former UVA standout Trey Murphy was the 17th overall pick in the July 29 NBA draft. Based on the results from just-completed summer league, he’s already begun to outperform that status. Murphy was named to the All-NBA Summer League First Team on Wednesday, after helping to spearhead New Orleans to a 5-0 record in Las Vegas, often winning in dominant fashion.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809 to traveling actors. He was only 3 years old when his parents died, and as a result, he was taken in by John Allan, a rich tobacco merchant from Virginia. As a child, Allan groomed Poe to be a successful businessman like himself, but the future writer had other interests. Eventually, Poe was sent to the University of Virginia. But being a miser, Allan sent him away without enough funds to support his education, and Poe eventually had to drop out of college.