COVID-19 Policy Update #150
COVID-19 Policy Update
MONDAY 11/16
Tonight's pairing is a 2016 Château Branaire-Ducru, a Bordeaux Saint-Julien wine that takes the edge off the colder temperatures November brings. Also, I'm pleased to share that we've hired an Executive Editor for the Policy Update. His profile is included at the end of tonight's issue.
TOP THREE
Charleston Pods: Great article:
School board members approved a measure in early September allowing district officials to partner with nonprofits, churches and other community groups to create “instructional support groups."
“So, this is really getting back to the roots of what used to be so common in the Black community. We really wanted to be a part of that bedrock foundation of helping children learn and families grow,” said Senior Minister Antwan Brown."
New York:
NYC to stick with 3% threshold before closing schools. But Cuomo on Monday continued to press for the Mayor to reexamine its policy. "Add to your calculus, a positivity rate in the school... Because if the school is not spreading the virus, or if the school has a much lower positivity rate than the surrounding area, then the school is not part of the problem. And you could argue keeping the children in the school is part of the solution rather than the children spending time on the street in the neighborhood where the infection rate is higher.”
The NYT digs into what led to the 3% threshold and finds it was less to do with science and more to do with appeasing the teachers union. We covered this a bit in the given the different numbers coming from the WHO, Governor, Surgeon General, and the city.
More than 10,600 NYC children are now being homeschooled - up 36%.
WSJ Editorial Board: "New York’s Kids Aren’t All Right":
"Mr. de Blasio said Friday the city’s seven-day testing positive rate had hit 2.83% and is on the brink of exceeding the 3% threshold the city had set in the summer for shutting schools. This benchmark is based on the city population, not schools. Merely 0.074% of students have tested positive over the last two months, and 0.0011% on Nov. 11."
"If New York City’s 1,126,000 million student population was its own metro region, it would have among the lowest per-capita case rates in the U.S. Only 955 of the 150,000 or so public school employees have tested positive since mid-September."
"School closures will also burden lower-income parents who can’t work from home or afford backup child care. Congratulations, Mr. de Blasio, for making poor families poorer."
Vaccine: Moderna announced that early data shows its vaccine is nearly 95 percent effective in preventing the coronavirus. There were no severe cases among people who got the vaccine, compared with 11 in volunteers who received placebo shots. Moderna’s vaccine can also be kept in standard freezer storage for up to six months and refrigerators for up to 30 days - an advantage over Pfizer's vaccine which needs to be stored at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (My note: roughly the average temperature of an AMC movie theater).
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Warp Speed: Dr. Slaoui said the U.S. will be able to vaccine 20 million in December and 25-30 million per month after that.
Vaccine Update: Good time to review the NYT vaccine tracker:
Vaccine Distribution: HHS announced 60% of pharmacies were approved to distribute a vaccine when approved, including Albertsons, Kroger, Publix, Walmart and Wegmans. Also, the NYT: Missing From State Plans to Distribute the Coronavirus Vaccine: Money to Do It
COVID Forecasting Tool: The Harvard Global Health Institute and Google announced an update to their COVID-19 Public Forecasts which projects COVID-19 cases, deaths, ICU utilization, ventilator availability, and other metrics for U.S. counties and states. The models have been updated based on public data from Johns Hopkins University, Descartes Labs, and the Census Bureau.
State Mask Mandates: From Axios: Useful map and links to each state's requirements.
The Surprise on Grey's Anatomy: No, not Derek Shepherd return. But the Xenex's LightStrike Germ-Zapping Robot which has a peer reviewed study showing it can disinfect surfaces of COVID in under 2 minutes. Schools have used some of the previous models in the fight against the season flu.
STATE
Delaware: The Governor announced a partnership with Nemours Children’s Health System, the Delaware Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and other pediatric care providers in Delaware to make rapid COVID-19 tests available for children.
Florida: FLVS said enrollment is up 27% and the number of courses taken has nearly tripled.
Maryland: Five things to know about the state's new school coronavirus dashboard. Also - +1 for this best practice of making the data open and machine readable.
Michigan: Officials announced Sunday that in-person learning will be closed for college and high school classes for three weeks but elementary school classes will be allowed to continue. "Of the 200 outbreaks that we are currently investigating ... 49% of them are associated with high schools," MDHHS Chief Medical Executive Dr. Joneigh Khaldun said. "Of the total number of individual cases associated with these outbreaks, almost two-thirds of those are associated with high schools."
Minnesota: School districts are dialing back in-person learning due to staff shortages.
INTERNATIONAL
Africa: Great AP article on schools reopening across Africa.
Austria: Is closing schools due to a surge of cases.
Germany:
School holidays accounted for up to half of the increase in COVID-19 infections over the summer.
Merkel pushes stricter COVID measures, but schools to remain open.
The Government's new COVID commercials encouraging people to stay home are quite good.
"The fate of this country lay in our hands... So, we mustered all our courage and did what was expected of us, the only right thing. We did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Being as lazy as raccoons."
The third one is good too: "Laziness could save lives... and I was the master of that."
Kenya:
Schools close and student pregnancies rise in lockdown Kenya.
Scotland: Teachers are being asked if they would consider strike action over school safety concerns.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Student Loan Forgiveness: Obama CEA Director Jason Furman said today, "Student loan debt forgiveness likely has a multiplier close to zero. Forgiveness is taxable. If this negative cash flow effect outweighs interest savings would even be net negative. And wealth effects small in the short run. Arbitrary/regressive $1T for ~$0 GDP, not a great idea.” Meaning that there might be other possible policy reasons to do debt forgiveness, but it isn't likely to have an economic stimulative effect.
Making the Case for Additional Economic Relief: CBPP with a new report, "Weakening Economy, Widespread Hardship Show Urgent Need for Further Relief." In addition, adults in households with children were more likely to report difficulty paying for usual expenses: 40%, compared to 29% for households without children.
Mobility Pathways:
Brookings' Workforce of the Future initiative has created a new tool — Mobility Pathways — that visualizes data on thousands of real job-to-job transitions, tracing the common pathways into and out of 441 occupations across 130 industries at the national and city levels.
"Recent jobs data show that low-wage workers are also having the hardest time getting back to work largely because COVID-19 has disproportionately disrupted high-contact occupations (e.g., cleaning, hospitality, and food services), which tend to pay low wages."
"Today’s high-demand occupations like software engineering have not typically absorbed workers from the occupations currently under pressure. This mismatch suggests that many of today’s unemployed workers may find it harder than in the past to find new jobs and advance through the labor market."
Workers Moving to Smaller Cities/The Heartland: Data from Redfin point to a large percentage of out of state homebuyers. In Louisville, net inflow increased by 113% and in Buffalo it increased by 107%. More over at the Hechinger Report.
Remote Work Impacting Transit: FT covering the massive changes transit systems have seen and what it means for the future.
The Trade-offs of Remote Work: New report from AEI:
"Employers and employees face positive and negative trade-offs with remote work. Employers may be able to increase productivity and compete for top talent, but they also risk eroding organizational culture and hurting non-remote workers. On the flip side, employees may find that remote work improves job satisfaction and makes them healthier, but the boundaries between work and life may fade while a sense of social isolation grows. Employers and employees will have to find a way to balance these trade-offs to maximize the utility of remote work for business operations and workers."
"There are notable barriers that need to be addressed to ensure an equitable and effective shift to remote work. These include expanding broadband and computer access, closing the corporate digital divide, and equipping workers with the work spaces and tools they need to be effective."
Effects of Welfare Reform on Parenting: NBER study: "We found that welfare reform had adverse effects on engagement in parent-child activities, children feeling close to their mothers, and mothers knowing their children’s whereabouts, with the effects generally concentrated among boys... We found no evidence that the effects of welfare reform on parenting operated through the mother working more than full time, having multiple jobs, working in a service job, or having a non-standard work schedule."
The Rise of the MOOCs: How Coursera is retraining the American workforce for a post-COVID economy.
RESOURCES
Biden COVID-19 Adviser: Indoor dining "far riskier" than schools for virus transmission.
McKinsey COVID Briefing: Their updated deck.
CRPE's Reopening Checkup: Nearly three-quarters of the 100 school districts in their analysis were teaching students remotely. Now fewer than half are fully remote. Much more in their report.
School Rankings: Framing (Slightly) Differently: Via Emily Oster
Will Edtech Empower or Erase the Need for Higher Education? Coursera, Podium and Eruditus are all signaling a future where universities could be getting a plug-and-play model of asynchronously taught curriculum.
Back in School Buildings: One school district’s experience in 10 weeks
Here's How Experts Say Joe Biden Could Fix Pandemic Schooling: Via Time.
Blue States and Red States are Both Doing School Reopenings Wrong: Says Vox. Benjamin Linas, an associate professor of epidemiology and an infectious disease physician at Boston University School of Medicine, has ideas for how to do it better.
COVID-19 Policy Update's Executive Editor: Meet our new editor - Teddy. He's a 9 week old Bernese Mountain Dog who loves long walks, eating, and annoying his big brother Bentley.