Laurel: To being proactive. As covid-19 numbers in Southwestern Pennsylvania swell with the spread of the omicron variant, UPMC Children’s is taking steps to address the impact on a growing demographic.

The variant is contributing to rising cases among pediatric populations. UPMC Children’s already had one unit dedicated to coronavirus patients. This week, the hospital announced the opening of a second. This is stressed as a precaution, not a reaction to a present need.

“UPMC Children’s has opened up a second unit to expand care capability for covid-19 patients at the hospital,” said Children’s spokeswoman Andrea Kunicky. “The hospital is safe, operating normally and ready to provide care for patients and their families.”

This is a smart move that will make the major pediatric hospital prepared in the event the beds become necessary rather than scrambling to find a way to provide care once the need has arrived.

Lance: Trying to please everyone. After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld a lower ruling, ending the statewide mask mandate for schools, you might think that masks would no longer be an issue in public schools, right?

Wrong. Despite the fact that parents and schools wanted to be free to make their own decisions for the kids in their care, now those decisions are creating another situation at one district. Pine-Richland is considering segregating masked and nonmasked students.

The issue is the questionable efficacy of trying to do so in the same classroom, which is the plan. Exactly how helpful will this be? There aren’t smoking sections in Pennsylvania restaurants anymore because they didn’t really work. Walk into a casino, and it can take you back 20 years or so to remember the smell of smoke in a nonsmoking section.

If the point of masks is, as was said for months, that “mine protects you and yours protects me,” segregated masked and nonmasked sections in the same room only seem to protect the school district from actually making a decision.

Laurel: To new life for an old hangout. The former Yak Diner in North Apollo hit the road this week, moving one-third of a mile to a new location along River Road.

It didn’t take long, but it is just the most recent in a series of lives for the shiny 1955 O’Mahony stainless steel dining car-style prefabricated building, which was once the Gateway Diner in Wilkins, then a video store in Washington Township before its stint in North Apollo. It now becomes Dolly’s Diner, the new business of mom-and-daughter duo Toni Taylor of Kiski Township and Arlene (Dolly) McCoy of North Apollo.

It’s good to see entrepreneurship and an appreciation for a piece of the past come together for the community.

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