Nevada
Nevada is years away from healing COVID wounds, report says
(The Center Square) – A newly released report from the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services (NV DHHS) said it may take a long time to recover from the economic, education and behavioral health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While states have comparable stories, Nevada had over 900,000 cases, and more than 12,000 people died in the state.
Meanwhile, businesses were shuttered, especially in 2020, after Gov. Steve Sisolak declared a state of emergency.
Jobs and wages suffered as a result.
The damage was so extensive that researchers say “most industrial sectors were negatively impacted by the number of jobs and wages that were lost due to these closures.”
Even though remote learning helped combat the spread of COVID-19, NV DHHS said it caused problems for school-age children.
“The impact of remote learning can be seen through student’s assessment results on the NAEP and the ACT,” says the report.
“Symptoms of the Disease: The Epidemiological, Economic, and Public Health Impacts of COVID-19 on the Battle Born State.”
Students in elementary school had the biggest problems, with scores dropping just over six points for fourth graders. Middle and high school students were also found to have been negatively impacted by COVID-19, but NV DHHS says it was not to the same extent.
Geoffrey Lawrence, Director of Research at Nevada Policy Research Institute, said restrictions on personal freedom implemented by then-Gov. Steve Sisolak represented a panicked attempt by his administration to respond to one type of risk while ignoring all other risks.
“In reality, we live in a world of numerous uncertainties, but people have been able to adapt to these uncertainties by developing elaborate, entrepreneurial systems to produce and deliver to people the things they need to overcome the challenges presented by the natural world,” said Lawrence.
In pre-modern times, Lawrence says pestilence, famine and disease were all quite common events, to say nothing of the reduced quality of life individuals experienced for lack of education, individual rights, or material abundance.
Nevada’s response to the pandemic harkened back to this pre-modernity by embracing what Lawrence calls “fear of a new uncertainty as a rationale to break all the systems society has developed” to grapple with these many other existing uncertainties.
“It’s therefore no surprise that economic uncertainty abounded, student achievement plummeted, deaths of despair surged, and hundreds of thousands of previously self-sufficient Nevadans were left to rely on a dysfunctional public support system that couldn’t even process claims timely just to meet their basic needs,” said Lawrence.
“A better role for government during COVID would always have been to advise and inform of the risks inherent with the disease so that free individuals could take the precautions they deemed necessary.”
For example, Lawrence said it was known very early on that people had different risk profiles based on things such as age and health status.
They also had different risk tolerance.
Because of this, Lawrence argues that an informed populace would have been able to weigh this new risk against a wide variety of existing risks we all face on a daily basis.
“Elderly individuals and those with existing comorbidities could have been encouraged to take extra precaution, without prohibiting young children from attending school, for instance.”
A bicyclist who went missing on a solo camping trip was found safe Wednesday at a remote Sierra Nevada resort, almost three weeks after she was last seen.
Tiffany Slaton, 27, was discovered by Christopher Gutierrez, the owner of Vermilion Valley Resort, who was checking on the property while it was closed for the season, the Fresno County sheriff’s office said.
Slaton was in a cabin that Gutierrez said he had left unlocked for that very reason, to provide shelter to backcountry travelers.
Aware of the search for the woman, Gutierrez called the sheriff’s office, and medics arrived to take her to a hospital. It was determined she was dehydrated, but otherwise in good condition, the sheriff’s office said.
A photo released by the sheriff’s office showed her smiling broadly and giving a double thumbs-up from a wheelchair Wednesday.
Slaton had been riding an electric bike through California after completing a stint as a traveling dialysis technician in Oregon, said her parents, who live in Georgia. They said she was in touch with them daily until April 21; the last reported sighting of her was April 24 near Shaver Lake, in the Sierra National Forest above Fresno.
Slaton’s itinerary had her continuing east from Shaver Lake to Mono Hot Springs, but that road is still under seasonal closure.
The sheriff’s office led an intensive five-day search starting May 6, and the effort had continued in scaled-back mode this week.
Check back for more details of this developing story.
Originally Published:
Nevada
Jaya's Law passes unanimously in Nevada Senate Committee, aiming to criminalize wrong-way driving
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Assembly Bill 111, or Jaya’s Law, a bill seeking to make wrong-way driving a crime in Nevada, was passed unanimously by the Senate Growth and Infrastructure committee on Wednesday.
Currently, wrong-way driving is treated as a civil offense, which means that drivers who drive on the wrong side of the road may only get a fine.
Jaya’s Law, drafted by the family of Jaya Brooks, a child killed in a wrong-way crash on U.S. 95 near the Durango off-ramp, seeks to make wrong-way driving a criminal offense, meaning that drivers can get a misdemeanor for wrong-way driving.
WATCH MORE: A Las Vegas family’s fight to make wrong-way driving a crime
Jaya’s Law: A Las Vegas family’s fight to make wrong-way driving a crime
In a rare move, the committee held an immediate work session right after the hearing and after a brief one-minute recess to discuss offline, lawmakers came back and voted unanimously, passing the bill out of the committee.
The bill now heads to the Senate floor, and if passed, heads to Gov. Lombardo.
LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Nevada’s Hispanic trucking community is warning of a potential $500 delivery surcharge starting July 1.
Drivers are calling it a “growing parking crisis” if Clark County does not address it.
Several truck yards across the Las Vegas Valley, including one located on Las Vegas Blvd and Nellis Blvd., are being forced to close due to zoning violations.
For Nevada truckers, the truck yard is a safe space where they can leave their trucks and head home for the night after their shift is over. But the Nevada Hispanic Truckers’ Association said recent closures and aggressive enforcement of lots are making it nearly impossible to operate in Clark County.
While the crackdown affects all drivers, the group says Hispanic drivers are hit hardest because they make up the majority of independent owner-operators in the region.
“The problem is that there’s not enough parking for the,” said a spokesperson for the Nevada Hispanic Truckers’ Association, Dunia Antunez. “So, they’re being given tickets $500 to $800 tickets for parking in residential areas or streets.”
Starting July 1, the group says it will begin charging a $500 delivery surcharge to companies receiving goods in Clark County, unless action is taken.
“The county commissioners must stop closing down this long-term parking and they need to build more actually, because we have too many truckers, we don’t enough parking,” Antunez said.
But Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom, whose district includes the yard in question, said this property was never legally approved for this use.
“They have lots of violations, code violations, cause it was not zoned for business, no business license for that that be of use in that neighborhood,” Segerblom explained.
Segerblom said the neighborhood around the yard is changing and industrial zones are now giving way to homes.
“It’s really because of the diesel fumes, big trucks going down neighborhood streets is not healthy in my opinion,” Segerblom said. “You wouldn’t want to have a truck yard in a in a residential neighborhood.”
He explained he’s sympathetic to the truckers and promised new policies are in the works to create legal, regulated yards in the right locations.
“We want to make sure that the lot is paved, that is appropriate area, that that requires a special use permit,” Segerblom said.
Segreblom added that these new rules could still take months and said if someone brings forward a properly zoned location in his district, it could be approved sooner but for now it’s a case-by-case basis.
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