Tag: COVID-19

California housing costs were astronomical before COVID-19. Now, they’re just wild. The median price of a home sold last month reached $811,000, up more than 20% from just a year ago.

Schools are back in sessions here in Hemet, San Jacinto Valley, and I couldn’t be happier. My kids are finally out of the house, and they are going to their normal babysitters, the teachers. Schools are “in-person,” as God had always intended them to be. We don’t have to worry about feeding them, because breakfast and lunch are free in schools. We don’t have to worry about them “being bored.” There is a new FPS video game called “The Delta Variant,” and they now get to play it all day long, without their mother constantly yelling, “put that stupid video game away.” Instead of talking to their “friends” through the game console, they now get to curse and scream at them where we can’t hear the foul language and the encrypted slang that I don’t think even they properly understand.

As millions of renters stare down the end of California’s eviction moratorium — and stories of the thousands of evictions that have taken place despite the moratorium are learned — we can clearly see the short- and long-term effects of the pandemic on Californians. It has crystallized just how many Californians decide whether they can pay rent or buy groceries, despite living in the wealthiest state in the country.

LGBTQ adults embrace vaccines A new survey by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation illuminates the state of COVID-19 vaccinations among LGBTQ individuals, filling in gaps where states’ and the nation’s lack of data collection had left them somewhat invisible. The LGBTQ+ data is “first-of-its-kind,” writes Adam Barnes in The Hill, and shows broad vaccine uptake by the community. As of the May-June study period, 92% of the U.S. respondents had received at least one COVID-19 shot, compared to 73% of American adults as of August 20. (Because the survey was distributed via LGBTQ events and media, and the organizers accepted replies from anyone who cared to participate without controlling other demographics, they note their findings are probably not fully representative of the entire LGBTQ+ community.) The high uptake in the LGBTQ community might be due to a greater prevalence of liberal attitudes and disproportionate residency in urban regions and Democrat-dominated states, suggested David Paisley, senior director of research for study partner Community Marketing & Insights. Black, Native American, Alaskan Native, Middle Eastern and North African respondents had the lowest vaccination rates at 85%. The survey also found that half of participants said the pandemic impacted their mental health, and more than half felt socially isolated, compounding existing mental health challenges in the LGBTQ+ community. The pandemic has also impacted LGBTQ youth, cutting off access to counseling and communities and sometimes forcing teens to cloister with family members that don’t support their identities or sexuality.

During the COVID-19 pandemic months of March 2020 to September 2020, U.S. alcohol retail store sales increased compared to usual trends while food services and drinking places sales decreased markedly during the same period, according to a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. These results indicate an increase in home drinking in the U.S. The findings are published online in the journal Alcohol.