All posts tagged: pandemic

Fauci is an easy scapegoat for pandemic revisionists 

Fauci is an easy scapegoat for pandemic revisionists 

Published by Sam Flores

Dr. Anthony Fauci is under congressional scrutiny following an appearance before a Senate committee last week, in which the former National Institutes of Health immunologist was grilled by elected officials over his response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On Thursday, the Senate Homeland Security Committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress over his repeated invocation of the Fifth Amendment.  The committee’s chair, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has not been shy about his scorn toward Fauci, who led the pandemic response in the first Trump and Biden administrations. Paul floated conspiracy theories that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID, was leaked from a Chinese lab and that Fauci covered up this info. There is no conclusive evidence that the virus leaked from anywhere but nature, but that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from promoting such theories. Seemingly at the advice of his lawyers, Fauci declined to entertain this political side show. Nonetheless, he serves as a convenient scapegoat for the ongoing public health failures under President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  …

The Senioritis Pandemic

The Senioritis Pandemic

Published by Jenni Sidey

Each spring, a predictable pandemic sweeps through high schools. Students suddenly start forgetting homework assignments and skipping class. Teachers report more blank stares, phones under desks, and declining grades. The name for this shift: “senioritis.” The term is often used jokingly, but the underlying pattern is real. One survey found that 68% of high school seniors report decreased motivation in their final semester due to senioritis, and 82% of graduating seniors admit to skipping classes more frequently. The Oxford English Dictionary officially recognized the term in 2012. Senioritis isn’t just laziness. It’s the predictable result of several well-studied psychological processes that collide during the final year of high school. A Mismatch in Motivation Research on academic motivation may explain the phenomenom. Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT), originally proposed by John William Atkinson in the 1950s and later expanded to educational psychology by Jacquelynne Eccles and colleagues, suggests that motivation depends on 2 key factors: Expectancy: the likelihood of attaining a goal (do you expect to be successful at it?) Value: the perceived value of a goal (is …

Reflecting on the Covid-19 Pandemic Years Later

Reflecting on the Covid-19 Pandemic Years Later

Published by Jenni Sidey

It was six years ago this week that the local government enacted the first shelter-in-place order in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This was the beginning of the hunkered-down lifestyle: some working from home, some not. Lots of comfy clothes. Ordering everything for delivery. Canceling plans: travel, concerts, and eating out. Creating your Covid bubble of safe people to socialize with. Learning how to Zoom. Getting your school-age children to focus on their online classes. At that time, we really did not know what we were in for. Setting politics aside completely, I think it is easy for people to forget that the reasons local authorities across the country enacted the shelter-in-place were threefold: Covid-19 was a brand-new virus humans had never encountered before, and science and medicine needed time to study and understand it In places like Milan, Italy, it was clear the virus strain at that time had the power to devastate or kill a large number of people (including otherwise healthy people) in a community, and the shelter-in- place effort was an …