BREAKING NEWS: Davenport and Bettendorf School District schools will require masks on all buses and school vehicles starting Wednesday, Sept. 22, according to an e-mail sent out to all students in the districts. The following e-mail was sent out today: Beginning on Wednesday, September 22, 2021, masks will be required on all school buses and other district vehicles based on the CDC requirements and affirmation by the IDPH and Iowa Department of Education. This guidance was posted in the Iowa Department of Public Health “COVID-19 and K-12 School Update for Fall 2021” guidance which... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: The Davenport School Board voted 5-2 tonight to install a mask mandate for all Davenport Community Schools. TJ Schneckloth, Superintendent of the schools, issued the following statement tonight: Dear DCSD Families and Staff, On Monday, September 13, 2021, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa issued a temporary restraining order regarding the State of Iowa’s current mask requirement ban.  With the issue of this temporary order, until further notice, Iowa school districts can require face masks in schools. Following a special Board meeting on Thursday,... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has ripped into President Joe Biden’s new covid-19 mitigation plan, calling it “dangerous” and saying “enough is enough!” Biden’s new vaccine requirement was announced yesterday, requiring all government employees to be vaccinated and companies with 100 employees or more to require workers to get vaccinated or tested for the virus every week. Companies violating the policy could be hit with heavy fines. There’s no timetable yet on when the mandates will come into effect. “It’s about protecting yourself and... Read More

Will Iowa residents, schools and businesses be forced by the federal government to comply with mask mandates and other covid-19 restrictions? This is the big question as a battle royale shapes up between Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, the Biden administration’s Education Department, and the Iowa Supreme Court, headed up by a Republican judge who was appointed by Reynolds in 2018. This week, Iowa was nailed with a civil rights investigation by the Biden administration’s Education Department over Gov. Kim Reynolds’ move to ban mask mandates. The federal government investigation levels the charge... Read More

BREAKING NEWS (UPDATED): Iowa has been slammed with a civil rights investigation by the Biden administration’s Education Department over Gov. Kim Reynolds’ move to ban mask mandates. The federal government investigation levels the charge that Iowa, and Gov. Reynolds’ actions, “create an unsafe learning environment for students with disabilities who are at heightened risk of severe illness from covid-19.” Iowa is one of five states to get hit with the investigations, the other four being Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah. “We’re advocating for... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: As the covid-19 delta variant rips through Iowa, a fierce battle is raging between Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Iowa Supreme Court over mask mandates and further mitigations. On Friday, the chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, Susan Christensen, whom Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds appointed in 2018, signed an order making masks mandatory in public areas controlled by the court ruling — regardless of vaccination status —  clashing with Reynolds’ state law banning mask mandates in public schools and other public areas. Christensen based her order on recommendations... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Covid-19 numbers are dropping in Rock Island County, according to data released by the Rock Island County health department. As previously reported earlier on QuadCities.com, numbers across Illinois have been dropping as the number of vaccinated people above age 16 in the state has gone over 50 percent. Today, the Rock Island County health department reported 16 new cases of COVID-19 today, bringing the total to 14,487. Currently, 26 patients are hospitalized in the county with the virus. The average age of today’s cases is 32. The new cases are: • 2 women in her 40s •... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Covid numbers for Illinois Region 2, which includes the Illinois Quad-Cities, continue to worsen, bringing our area ominously close to potential mitigations, according to data released over the weekend. As earlier reported on QuadCities.com, covid-19 numbers in Illinois Region 2, which includes the Quad-Cities area, have been surging over the past two weeks, putting the area at risk for mitigations and a shutdown of some activities. Region 2 has seen a rise in covid cases for more than seven days, which would put it in danger of having some mitigations reinstated; it has seen three... Read More

There’s an old saying that you shouldn’t blame the messenger when you receive bad news. However, that saying is reliant on the messenger being a neutral party. When the messenger is merely the one bringing you the message, it’s without blame. For example, when we at QuadCities.com, give you a story featuring covid statistics, we’re passing along information we’ve gleaned from an official source. We also attribute that source, so that you know where we got that information. We have no part in creating that information. We do not make up the statistics. We do the duty of what the media... Read More

When you allow people with less intelligence and common sense to think for you and inform your decisions, the results are seldom good. And that’s why Iowans — and those traveling through Iowa in the Quad-Cities and throughout the state — need to ignore the abysmal advice of short-sighted Governor Kim Reynolds and trust scientists and their own common sense and good judgement in regard to covid. Over 5,000 people have died in Iowa since the pandemic began, 60 percent of those in the last three months, according to the Iowa Department of Health. Sixty percent. Over the last three... Read More