Universities are known for fomenting dissent in students who then challenge prevailing societal norms, but sometimes dissent and challenge come from an unexpected direction. Consider the Future Medical Professionals for Life chapter at the University of Virginia, a recently formed organization that is exactly what it claims to be.
University of Virginia students are all officially moved in, and 96.6% of them are fully vaccinated. The distanced move-in process ended Saturday. Students are now beginning what they hope will be a normal school year. First and second-year students participated in convocation Sunday, where they all took the honor pledge. Activities have already started opening up for vaccinated students, like a welcome week concert.
(Commentary by Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies and Gerald L. Baliles Professor at UVA’s Miller Center) Forget the poet (T.S. Eliot) who proclaimed April to be the “cruelest month.” August is no summer picnic for U.S. presidents. As President Biden has discovered, a presidential vacation can be rudely interrupted by foreign and domestic crises.
What is a psychologically rich life? According to authors Shige Oishi, a UVA professor of psychology, and Erin Westgate, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida, it’s one characterized by “interesting experiences in which novelty and/or complexity are accompanied by profound changes in perspective.”
UVA Health is making some changes to its visitation policy. Starting Thursday, inpatient and transitional care patients can choose two visitors who will stay the same for the patient’s entire stay. Only one can stay overnight. People in the emergency department are limited to one visitor.
What should be done about the crisis of housing and homelessness in the District? While many hold theories, the District’s Attorney General, [UVA Law alumnus] Karl A. Racine wields powerful tools to address matters directly.
The Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents today announced the appointment of an advisory council that will assist in planning for a new Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum in Washington, D.C. The advisory board is composed of 19 citizens, the Smithsonian secretary, a member of the Board of Regents and four members appointed by congressional leaders. The members appointed so far include Vivian Riefberg, a director emeritus with McKinsey & Company and a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.
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.