COVID-19 Policy Update #148
COVID-19 Policy Update
THURSDAY 11/12
TOP THREE
Schools Go Back to Virtual Learning in Areas Hit by COVID-19: Via CNN.
Misinformation Could Prompt People To Turn Against COVID-19 Vaccines: New study:
3,000 respondents were exposed between June and August to widely circulating misinformation on social media about a COVID-19 vaccine.
The remaining 1,000 in each country, acting as a control group, were shown factual information about COVID-19 vaccines.
Before being exposed to misinformation, 54% in the UK said they would “definitely” accept a vaccine, as did 41% in the United States. But after being shown the online misinformation, that number fell by 6.4 percentage points in the UK group, and by 2.4 percentage points in the United States.
Many groups in the US appear to be vulnerable to vaccine misinformationRespondents aged over 35 are significantly more likely to reject a vaccine after exposure to misinformation than they were before exposure.
In the US, those who use up to 30 minutes of social media daily are less susceptible than non-users or those who use less than 10 minutes of social media per day.
EdChoice/Morning Consult: Tracking survey results from October. Worth reading the entire deck but a few slides that stood out to me:
COVID-19 RESEARCH
IHME: Weekly briefing.
COVID Trends: Weekly update.
States reported 1.5 million tests, 151,000 cases, and 67,000 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19. The death toll was 1,104. Both case and hospitalization figures hit all-time highs today.
Cases nationwide are trending up more quickly than at any point in the pandemic. Today’s 7-day average—nearly 130,000—is 54,000 more than two weeks ago, a growth of 71%.
Mobility Data Explains Inequities: Study published in Nature that used SafeGraph data to better understand mobility patterns based on income, including potential superspreading events. Some findings:
"Our model predicts that a small minority of “superspreader” points of interest (POI) account for a large majority of infections and that restricting maximum occupancy at each POI is more effective than uniformly reducing mobility."
"Our model also correctly predicts higher infection rates among disadvantaged racial and socioeconomic groups solely from differences in mobility: we find that disadvantaged groups have not been able to reduce mobility as sharply, and that the POIs they visit are more crowded and therefore higher-risk."
Hospital Capacity Dashboard: The American Hospital Association created a data visualization tool showing the occupancy of hospital beds in each state.
STATE
California: California gives districts extra money for highest-needs students. But it doesn’t always get to the highest-needs schools.
Indiana: Indianapolis health officials ordered K-12 schools to return to online instruction by Nov. 30, canceling in-person instruction through Jan. 15 due to the rise of COVID-19 cases.
Iowa: Schools line up to request virtual learning waivers.
Michigan: The Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) will shift from in-person classes to online learning starting Monday, Nov. 16 until Jan. 11, 2021.
New York: NYC schools are on the verge of closing again. "The city seems headed toward closing schools because Mr. de Blasio announced over the summer that the entire school system would automatically go to all-remote instruction if 3 percent of coronavirus tests done in the city were positive over a seven-day rolling average."
Important to note that the 3% threshold seemed to be arbitrary when set. The state's threshold was 5% which is also endorsed by other public health officials including the WHO.
Ohio: Governor DeWine: 'We must do everything in our power to slow this virus down so our kids can stay in school.'
Utah: Parents, school administrators frustrated with delays in COVID-19 notifications. "Corbitt received a troubling email. He learned his daughter had come into close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 patient. "The letter indicated that she should have been quarantining since the previous Tuesday. The letter, dated November 3, instructs Corbitt’s daughter to start quarantine on October 27, a full week earlier."
INTERNATIONAL
COVID-19 School Closures Will Reduce Children’s Income as Adults: VoxEU study. "The share with a college degree slips 2.6% while the proportion of high-school dropouts rises 4.1%. They face a long-run average wage loss of 1%."
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Online SNAP Shoppers: USDA introduced flexibility allowing SNAP beneficiaries to use their EBT cards to buy groceries online, including Amazon and Walmart. The number of beneficiaries shopping online has increased 50x since April to over 1 million.
Heated Streets: A Michigan downtown has unveiled its “Heat in the Street” experience to help restaurants and shops survive the winter months during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. They'll use heated stands and pods throughout the streets designed by a company from Germany.
How Apple Is Organized for Innovation: Loved this HBR article:
"Apple relies on a structure that centers on functional expertise. Its fundamental belief is that those with the most expertise and experience in a domain should have decision rights for that domain."
"Apple competes in markets where the rates of technological change and disruption are high, so it must rely on the judgment and intuition of people with deep knowledge of the technologies responsible for disruption."
"One principle that permeates Apple is “Leaders should know the details of their organization three levels down,” because that is essential for speedy and effective cross-functional decision-making at the highest levels."
"The dual-lens camera with portrait mode required the collaboration of no fewer than 40 specialist teams: silicon design, camera software, reliability engineering, motion sensor hardware, video engineering, core motion, and camera sensor design, to name just a few. How on earth does Apple develop and ship products that require such coordination? The answer is collaborative debate. Because no function is responsible for a product or a service on its own, cross-functional collaboration is crucial."
For managers, "Some of those will fall within their existing core expertise (what they still need to own), and some will require them to learn new areas of expertise. Activities that require less attention from the leader can be pushed down to others (and the leaders will either teach others or delegate in cases where they aren’t experts)."
Amazon: How they turned every major cost into a source of revenue. (Key slide below, entire deck here). One interesting area is how Amazon is attacking the shipping/logistics segment. Amazon Transportation Services (ATS) has 30,000 53ft trailers; 80 leased cargo jets; and 69 package sorting centers. Amazon is catching up to established rivals: they delivered 2.3 billion of its own packages in 2019, compared to 3.1 billion by FedEx, 4.7 billion by UPS, and 6.2 billion by the U.S. Postal Service.
LEARNING PODS
Minneapolis: Allina Health is donating office space that will help up to 80 students participate in learning pods.
RESOURCES
Data Privacy: "Advocates worry how NYC will safeguard student data in the remote school era." Leonie Haimson makes an appearance: “We have no idea what’s happening with the data that is flowing out of kids’ iPads and computers,” Haimson said. “We don’t know whether the contracts are protective of student privacy or not. We don’t really know if anyone at DOE is paying attention to this issue in a way they should be.”
Investment: R-Zero, a San Francisco-based developer of UV lamps for disinfecting rooms, raised $15 million in Series A funding with DBL Partners, Bedrock Capital, and HAX/SOSV. Schools are one of their use cases.
School Reopening 2020: The Surge That Never Happened: Alexander Russo: "Even the most traditional reporters often seemed to buy into the notion that community infection rates and cases necessitated schools to be closed, though it’s not at all clear that’s true."
Frank Luntz: On insights he's learned from surveying parents. Parents don't want a return to normal and there is support for reforms such as ESAs.
Absolutely The Craziest Thing You'll See: This hole in one is ridiculous. Very 2020.