2022 Reporting

The powers that be really want to turn the page on the COVID pandemic, even though the United States is still suffering hundreds of deaths a day and thousands of new hospitalizations. Evidently, that's a number of deaths and admissions Congress can live with. Two thirds of the country is vaccinated, and just about a third are boosted. And with the need to aid the defense of Ukraine, COVID is, evidently, so yesterday.

This Labor Day, more than two years into a pandemic that killed more than one million Americans, our workforce is still reeling from the impacts of this once in a century mass death event and workers appear to have realigned their values, elevating their own wellbeing and that of their families above the goals of whatever revenue targets their employer may have. That’s seems particularly true here in New Jersey, the initial epicenter, along with New York, where for a long stretch we had the highest per capita death rate in the world. Over the arc of the ongoing pandemic, according to a report from the Rutgers Unity Labor Education Research Network, New Jersey’s percent of unionization has increased at a rate that out performed all but five states.

Sometimes all it takes is a seemingly innocuous public notice put out by government agency that can tip the public off that there’s something seriously amiss in the bureaucracy. If COVID taught us anything, it’s that we need to pay close attention for ourselves. Such was this case over the weekend when DEP’s New Jersey State Parks, Forests and Historic Sites Facebook page posted an advisory that a portion of the Sussex Brach Trail in Lafayette was going to closed for further notice because the United States Department of Agriculture had confirmed that over 100 black vultures had died in that portion of the trail from Avian Influeneza (bird flu).