TOP THREE
Long Covid In Children: Via the BBC, "After the world's biggest study into the issue, the researchers, led by University College London, said they were reassured."
"The research suggests somewhere between 2% and 14% still had symptoms caused by Covid 15 weeks later."
"53% of them had at least one symptom after 15 weeks, simply because they are common in the general population."
"Among those who had tested positive, this proportion was 65%.""A more significant difference was seen among those 30% had three or more symptoms, compared with 16% of those who had never tested positive, suggesting 32,000 out of nearly 235,000 who were infected between September and March have developed long Covid."
"The most common symptoms among test-positives were tiredness, headache and shortness of breath and, among test-negatives, tiredness, headache and the unspecified category of “other”."
CDC Report on LA Schools: Which explores lower case rates all last year in LA schools than in the community.
"The findings suggest that implementing recommended prevention measures might protect children, adolescents, and adults from COVID-19 in TK–12 schools. The level of protection appears to be higher in children and adolescents than in adult"
"In schools with safety protocols in place for prevention and containment, case rates in children and adolescents were 3.4 times lower during the winter peak compared with rates in the community."
Two Top FDA Officials Resign:
“Two of the FDA’s most senior vaccine leaders are exiting from their positions, raising fresh questions about the Biden administration and the way that it’s sidelined the FDA,” Endpoint News reports.
Axios: “The FDA appears to be increasingly rudderless at a crucial time in the pandemic. The agency still has no permanent commissioner and now is losing two highly regarded vaccine experts all while officials weigh full approval of the COVID-19 vaccines for adults, initial authorization for kids, and booster shots for many.”
FEDERAL
ED: New resource provides "Evidence-Based Strategies to Address Impact of Lost Instructional Time by Using American Rescue Plan Funding"
FCC: Released a back-to-school EBB toolkit with flyers, bookmarks, and draft press releases, newsletter materials, and more.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
CDC School COVID Testing Materials: CDC released new resources including sample letters, social media content, and FAQs for schools to use as part of COVID testing.
Myocarditis Risk 37 Times Higher for Children with COVID-19 than Uninfected Peers: According to a new CDC study.
"Across all ages, the risk of myocarditis was almost 16 times higher for people with COVID-19 compared to those who aren’t infected."
The myocarditis risk is 37 times higher for infected children under 16 years and seven times higher for infected people ages 16-39 compared to their uninfected peers."
An RCT on The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: "A randomized-trial of community-level mask promotion in rural Bangladesh during COVID-19 shows that the intervention tripled mask usage and reduced symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, demonstrating that promoting community mask-wearing can improve public health."
There were 178,288 individuals in the intervention group and 163,838 individuals in the control group
"All intervention arms received free masks, information on the importance of masking, role modeling by community leaders, and in-person reminders for 8 weeks. The control group did not receive any interventions."
"Tripling of mask usage was sustained during the intervention period and two weeks after. Physical distancing increased from 24.1% in control villages to 29.2% in treatment villages. After 5 months, the impact of the intervention faded, but mask-wearing remained 10 percentage points higher in the intervention group."
"There was a ~9% reduction in symptomatic COVID (via sero tests) in the control vs. intervention groups. However, there was a *35% reduction in symptomatic COVID among those over 60* in villages that got surgical masks."
Boosters: Via Stat, "Biden pledged to ‘follow the science.’ But experts say he’s sometimes fallen short."
"Most recently, and perhaps most striking, was the administration’s endorsement of “booster” vaccine doses, which numerous scientists say was based on scant evidence and undercuts the authority of scientific agencies."
“Normally, what you do is lay out the data first, and then say how the data supports the decision,” said Jesse Goodman, who served as the Food and Drug Administration’s chief scientist for four years during the Obama administration. When the White House made its announcement on booster shots, he argued, it did essentially the opposite.
"While the White House has cited Israeli data in arguing that vaccines’ protectiveness wanes over time, even Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledged at a recent press briefing that for people who’ve received just two doses, “protection against severe disease and hospitalization is currently holding up pretty well.”
"Many American scientists were distressed, too, that the administration’s decision appeared to undercut the authority of the CDC and FDA. To them, offering a third dose before the FDA’s approval, or before a CDC advisory panel’s recommendation, smacked of political interference with government science agencies — a phenomenon that Biden railed against in 2020 as he campaigned against President Trump."
Has the Delta Variant Peaked? The NYT's David Leonhardt and Ashley Wu look into "Covid’s mysterious two-month cycle."
"Since the pandemic began, Covid has often followed a regular — if mysterious — cycle. In one country after another, the number of new cases has often surged for roughly two months before starting to fall. The Delta variant, despite its intense contagiousness, has followed this pattern.”
“After Delta took hold last winter in India, caseloads there rose sharply for slightly more than two months before plummeting at a nearly identical rate. In Britain, caseloads rose for almost exactly two months before peaking in July. In Indonesia, Thailand, France, Spain and several other countries, the Delta surge also lasted somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 months.”
“And in the U.S. states where Delta first caused caseloads to rise, the cycle already appears to be on its downside. Case numbers in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri peaked in early or mid-August and have since been falling.”
STATE
Arizona:
Great Hearts will support Microschools
Via NYT: "School Mask Debate Tests Arizona's Governor."
Colorado: COVID cases rising in Colorado children, but few hospitalized.
Hawaii: Hawaii’s public school system is looking to the U.S. mainland for teachers to teach online classes as the islands struggle with a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Illinois: Chicago Public Schools in talks with Uber, Lyft after bus drivers quit over vaccine mandate
Maryland: Baltimore City schools to mandate COVID vaccine for high school athletes; hint that employee mandate may follow.
Montana: Via KHN, "New Montana Law Sows Confusion, Defiance Over School Quarantines."
"If everybody is getting quarantined with a more contagious variant, you could see a lot of people out of school, staff and students, and [that] really threatens the ability of schools to stay open."
New York: Gov. Hochul pushing for mandatory weekly COVID testing program for unvaccinated school staff
Oregon: Immunocompromised teachers in the Gresham-Barlow School District say they're frustrated that they weren't given an option to teach online.
Pennsylvania: Reverses course, will issue mask mandate for K-12 schools.
South Carolina: Communities in Schools aims to serve all SC students with statewide merger
Tennessee: "US Secretary of Education talks investigation into Tennessee’s COVID-19 protocols in schools"
"We’re not here mandating masks. To me, local districts should be the ones determining whether or not masks should be used as part of their mitigation strategies in conjunction with the advice and guidance of the local health officials. That’s what worked in our country last year to reopen school safely,” Cardona said. “Unfortunately, there are several states that are thinking that a different approach is better, but they’re leaving many students behind.”
Texas:
Texas lawmakers send Gov. Abbott a bill that would pay for virtual learning until September 2023, but won't fund it for students who have failed their STAAR exams.
"Almost 40% of students did not pass their math assessment and nearly a third didn't pass reading in the last school year. Those who failed were disproportionately Black and Hispanic."
Girl Scouts CEO: Our girls struggled with anxiety at summer camp, and schools need to be prepared
"Many showed up with more anxious feelings and stress than we’d ever seen, and many struggled interacting with other girls and coping in a usually carefree environment."
"Not only will teachers be faced with helping their students perform academically, but now they have kids entering the classroom who have complex mental health and social-emotional development needs."
Wisconsin: Milwaukee County Medical Examiner tweet that says, "Since March of 2020, 60% percent of child suicides cited virtual learning as stressors in their life. Ages were 12 to 17."
INTERNATIONAL
Rwanda: The country's Ministry of Education ordered that schools repeat courses taught online during closure period.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Cutting Unemployment Benefits Had Little Impact on Jobs: "States that ended enhanced federal unemployment benefits early have so far seen about the same job growth as states that continued offering the pandemic-related extra aid, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis and economists."
"Nonfarm payrolls rose 1.33% in July from April in the 25 states that ended the benefits and 1.37% in the other 25 states and the District of Columbia."
"Economists caution against concluding from these results that expiring benefits had no effect on employment. First, they say it might be too early to detect such an effect. Second, offsetting effects from state reopenings and virus-related restrictions by local governments could be masking the impact of the expiring benefits."
Students Skip College: Axios reports, "As more and more employers nix college degrees as a hiring requirement, students are choosing cheaper, faster alternatives to college like coding boot camps."
RESOURCES
Carpe Diem: Convert Pandemic Struggles Into Student-centered Learning: Via the Christensen Institute
School Vaccine Mandates: Here They Come: Via US News
Ending The Masking Wars: The Path To Ensuring Our Children Are Safe And Well-Educated This Year: Via Linda Darling-Hammond
Cybersecurity Best Practices Can Help School Staff Safeguard Student Data: Via CDT
How Schools Are Using ARP Funding: Survey from AASA
75% used funding summer learning and enrichment offerings.
62% used funds to purchase technology/devices and/or provide students with internet connectivity
66% plan to use funding to add specialized instructional support staff and other specialists
52% plan to use funding to implement or advance social-emotional learning practices and systems in their districts and/or on trauma-informed training for their educators.
44% plan to provide high-intensity tutoring
Teacher Survey: Conducted by The Harris Poll (Press Release / Survey)
Learning loss was a major concern with 86% of teachers saying their school is taking steps to address learning loss for students that may have occurred this past year.
Only about one-third are evaluating or adjusting their curriculum for the upcoming year (36%), providing tutoring (32%), or offering access to online curriculum tools and applications (31%).
More than a third of all teachers (35%) believe their school's budget did not adequately provide for their needs in terms of classroom supplies, instructional resources, and professional development this past school year.
This Is Bonkers: Bishop Sycamore, is the "high school" that apparently scammed ESPN into airing a football game.
But the coach was fired.
The State is investigating.
Bishop Sycamore played six games last season, going 0-6. It has been outscored 342-49 since starting its program in 2020.
In related news, an investigation has been launched into Andy Rotherham's bocce ball team, "The Assessmentors," based on roll off violations.