Local Opinion

My sister Judy made our mother’s famous – within our circle – yeast rolls for Christmas dinner this year.

Throughout the past several days and weeks, Columbus Regional Health has been experiencing an unrelenting surge in inpatient and emergency room visits, culminating in record inpatient census on several occasions. Many departments and units hospital-wide are experiencing very high patient numbers, including a consistently large number of COVID-positive inpatients.

From: Brian Jasper

From: Ronald Wilkinson

From: Doug Bell

The nation received what felt like something of an early Christmas gift last week — news that the federal government on Dec. 22 approved Pfizer’s Paxlovid, the first pill to treat COVID. The Food and Drug Administration shortly afterward approved a Merck pill, molnupiravir, that is believed to be somewhat less effective but no less encouraging as another line of attack on coronavirus.

Martinez is the new Martinelli. That’s another way of making a critical political point: Hispanic voters increasingly resemble other immigrant groups, such as Italians.

Vladimir Putin thinks the Soviet Union was a great, marvelous, unmatched world power, the Roman Empire in modern setting, a historical miracle spun by Russia’s cultural and ethnic superiority with lots of nuclear weapons to boot. And he wants it back, starting with the nation of Ukraine, peopled, as he sees it, by residents in most ways Russian themselves. He has a Soviet tactic in mind. Attack that country. Make it part of the whole again.

State Republican lawmakers appear to be looking to add a significant burden to teachers and schools with a possible law that would likely provide little benefit to parents but mountains of hassle to educators.

In just five more days, Santa Claus is going to attempt his annual dive down our chimneys.