COVID-19 Policy Update #157
COVID-19 Policy Update
MONDAY 11/30
Turns out a lot can happen over a holiday weekend. A mysterious monolith was discovered in a remote part of Utah. Just as suddenly, it disappeared only to have another appear in Romania. Even stranger was the Denver Broncos playing the Saints without a QB. But in 2020, this is all a normal Thanksgiving.
Tonight's update pairs with a wine introduced to me by Bror Saxberg at SxSW a few years ago. Pick up a bottle (it's a long update) of Mollydooker Enchanted Path 2017 or a Mollydooker The Boxer Shiraz 2017. The magic/science comes in the form of the "Mollydooker Shake." (FAQs here and more here).
TOP THREE
CDC: Dr. Anthony Fauci on ABC's This Week:
“Close the bars and keep the schools open is what we really say. Obviously, you don't have one size fits all. But as I said in the past … the default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to get them back to school."
“Look at the data, the spread from children and among children is not very big at all, not like one would have suspected”
COVID Shake Ups: Via the Christensen Institute: COVID-19 shakes up the interface between home and school in both challenging and promising ways.
Make real-time learning progress transparent.
Leverage communication technologies wherever possible.
Create more time for connection
Give guidance on learning at home
Rethinking Resilience: McKinsey with ten priorities for governments. One item on education:
"Unleash a learning revolution. Governments have been forced to rethink learning and education systems to combat the effects of school and university closures and spikes in unemployment. Best practices include adopting hybrid learning models, building skills-based learning modules, funding continuous learning courses, and creating virtual resource centers. A “next practice” could include making the world’s top teachers accessible to students anywhere and focusing in-person instructional time on exercises that contribute to a holistic education. Governments and employers can also foster an effective reskilling ecosystem that includes micro-credentialing for lifelong learning."
FEDERAL
Federal Budget: Lawmakers have to pass legislation to fund the government, including education programs, by Dec. 11 to avert a shutdown. Congress will adjourn for the year on Dec. 10 and the Senate on Dec. 18. That leaves between eight and 15 working days. Not much time to get to a deal.
Economic Relief:
Sen. McConnell expressed support for passing another round of relief. One new reason he offered for the urgency - vaccine distribution. “There’s no reason not why we should not deliver another major pandemic relief package to help the American people through what seems poised to be the last chapters of this battle. If Operation Warp Speed remains on this historic trajectory, we need to continue investing in a system that will distribute these vaccines around our country."
Some Democrats open the door to smaller coronavirus relief deal.
Biden on Reopening Schools: His comments during an NBC interview on what it would take to re-open schools start at the 7:03 mark.
ED:
Due to COVID Pandemic, NCES to delay the NAEP assessment. Rep. Scott (D-Va.) and Sen. Murray (D-Wash.) said in a joint statement that postponing NAEP was “unfortunate” but also “understandable” given the circumstances. And Sen. Alexander said it was “the right decision” and that Congress should act quickly to provide the one-year delay.
The National Blue Ribbon Schools program released a collection of distance learning strategies for schools.
SCOTUS: There has been a lot of discussion over the Supreme Court's decision last week that granted requests from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and two Orthodox Jewish synagogues to block enforcement of a New York executive order restricting attendance at houses of worship. SCOTUS Blog has the best summary and analysis to help unpack the decision.
Transition:
Economic Team Bios Here.
Neera Tanden, OMB Director
Wally Adeyemo, Treasury Deputy Sec
Cecilia Rouse, CEA Chair
Jared Bernstein, CEA
Heather Boushey: CEA
Communications Team Bios Here:
Elizabeth E. Alexander, Communications Director for the First Lady
Kate Bedingfield, White House Communications Director
Ashley Etienne, Communications Director for the Vice President
Karine Jean-Pierre, Principal Deputy Press Secretary
Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary
Symone Sanders, Senior Advisor and Chief Spokesperson for the Vice President
Pili Tobar, Deputy White House Communications Director
Some notes: It's a stellar team. More centrist/establishment than perhaps some progressives would like. I had the privilege of being on an IIF panel with Wally discussing the future of work and had the chance to talk with a few times since. He's incredibly smart and genuinely an incredibly nice and gracious person. He's been President of the Obama Foundation for the last few years. Bernstein's nomination also signals likely continued support for Opportunity Zones given his involvement in the initial policy development. And the all female Communications team is also impressive with their experience and backgrounds. The most controversial nominee of this group is likely Neera Tanden who several Republican Senators have already signaled they would oppose. She has also deleted 1,600 tweets which is garnering additional attention/scrutiny.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine: We shared last week that Oxford-AstraZeneca announced their vaccine had 62% efficacy but that there was a twist in that some patients who received a lower dosage actually had seen a higher efficacy rate. We learned over the weekend that the lower dose was actually given by mistake. Data will be published this week but we might also see regulators tell Oxford-AstraZeneca to restart their Phase 3 trial to be sure of the results. The CEO has signaled they may do additional testing, "Now that we’ve found what looks like a better efficacy we have to validate this, so we need to do an additional study." Despite the questions, the British government’s Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance said on Thursday the main point about the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 was that it worked.
Moderna Vaccine: Announced the final results of the 30,000-person efficacy trial. They reported an efficacy of 94.1%. More impressive, their candidate had 100% efficacy against severe disease.
Vaccine Timing: The Surgeon General Adams said this weekend: Pfizer expects to submit its EUA on Dec. 10; Moderna on Dec. 18; The government aims to "start sending out vaccines ... within 24 to 48 hours" after the EUA submissions; "We'll have 40 million doses of vaccine by the end of this year."
ACIP to Discuss Phased Allocation of COVID-19 Vaccines: You can watch the meeting on Dec. 1 here. The advisory panel had previously recommended two priority groups:
Phase 1A: Will include people who work in “hospitals, long-term care facilities, outpatient home health care, pharmacies, emergency medical personnel, and public health workers.”
Phase 1B: Includes “essential workers, people with high-risk medical conditions, and adults 65 years and older. Essential workers include people who work in food and agriculture, food service, transportation, education, energy, police, firefighters, manufacturing, IT, communication, water and wastewater. People with high risk medical conditions include obesity, and severe obesity, diabetes, (cryptogenic organizing pneumonia), heart condition, chronic kidney cancer, smoking, solid organ transplant, and sickle cell disease.
Testing Works: The initial results from a massive experiment that conducted 3 million tests at New England colleges: "The data show that asymptomatic testing does work," says Dr. Paula Johnson, president of Wellesley College and a leader of the group that put together the partnership. "And it works in terms of identifying cases quickly, paired with aggressive contact tracing. You identify a case, you identify the contacts. You pull them out of the system. And that really helps to prevent the spread."
More on Testing: A UCLA and Harvard study analyzes three hypothetical protocols for federally funded screening programs that test large swaths of the mostly asymptomatic population every 4, 7, 14 or 30 days. "Any one of the scenarios would induce GDP growth that generates more than enough additional tax revenue to pay for the testing costs"
STATE
Colorado: Students at this Aurora school are learning to teach themselves new skills. "This semester, each of the 30 students in the class could spend up to $100 for materials needed to learn a skill. The students picked a variety of projects. One is creating a board game, another is mastering baking skills. Another is learning to edit videos."
Georgia: Atlanta school board asks parents to "discern need from want"
"Board members asked parents to weigh whether their child’s learning needs were critical enough to claim a seat in reopening classrooms. Families had to make the decision — and distinction — by Monday, and it was not easy, based on the public discussion among many Atlanta parents."
Maryland: Baltimore City Schools was hit with a ransomware attack. The attack was significant enough to close schools last week and this week. The district estimates it could take weeks to restore the systems.
Massachusetts: Most COVID-19 cases at Falmouth Public Schools involve remote learners
Missouri: Missouri schools will be involved in an CDC and Washington University study to “understand the impact of our mitigation strategies in school transmissions.”
Montana: Teachers' Union urges stricter COVID measures in schools
New York: NYC will begin reopening preschools, kindergartens, and elementary schools on Dec. 7. The city will also abandon that arbitrary 3% threshold and increase Covid-19 testing for students. Under the new approach, 20% of every student body will be tested every week. This should be welcomed news, but was met with frustration and anger by parents and teachers who have yet again have to change their schedules and expectations.
Rhode Island: Article on how the state is shutting bars and gyms but not schools.
Tennessee: TN SCORE's David Mansouri is out with an op-ed: Tennessee must create new opportunities for high school graduates. Recommendations include:
Using Tennessee’s robust data system to quickly assess and understand the pandemic’s effects on students, their learning loss and their transition from high school to college or career.
Ensuring every graduating senior has access to a dedicated college and career adviser, a coach, mentor or point of contact to support them during their transition to college.
Ensuring that every high school has some form of high-quality credential program, so that students have the ability to graduate from high school with both a diploma and a workforce-relevant credential.
Creating a common college application in Tennessee to make the point of entry into college as easy as possible.
Wisconsin: Parents across Dane County launch grassroots efforts to get students back in school.
INTERNATIONAL
France: Fascinating graph, showing the dynamics of the second wave in France that began with 20-29 year olds.
Germany: How the country is planning for winter:
The government and states said that "in person teaching at schools continues to have the highest priority in these decisions. The right to education can best be guaranteed by learning and teaching face-to-face".
"It was also agreed that masks would be compulsory in lessons from seventh grade onwards, also depending on the regional coronavirus figures."
Japan: More people died from suicide last month than from COVID in all of 2020. And women have been impacted most. This is something we'll need to watch in the US with deaths of despair and other deaths associated with the COVID restrictions.
UK:
Prime Minister Johnson said Nadhim Zahawi will serve as the "Vaccines Minister" overseeing the country's biggest vaccine program in decades.
Imperial College London released a study that suggested there was a 30% drop in infections in England during the second national lockdown.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Amazon Hiring Spree: Amazon added 427,300 employees between January and October, pushing its workforce to more than 1.2 million people globally, up more than 50 percent from a year ago.
The Children of HOPE VI Demolitions: National Evidence on Labor Market Outcomes: NBER paper that found"that children who resided in HOPE VI projects earn 14% more at age 26 relative to children in comparable non-HOPE VI projects. These earnings gains are strongest for demolitions in large cities, particularly in neighborhoods with higher pre-demolition poverty rates and lower pre-demolition job accessibility. "
A Growing Number of Americans Are Going Hungry: According to new Census data, 26 million American say they don't have enough to eat.
More than 1 in 6 adults in households with children say they don't have enough.
22% of Black U.S. households reported going hungry in the past week, nearly twice the rate faced by all American adults and more than two-and-a-half times the rate for White Americans.
My New Podcast: I've launched a new podcast series at AEI called TechEnabled.
Technology is enabling new business models, ways of delivering government services, and models of education. But technology is also enabling deeper - and often real time - insights that can help us better understand the trends within our society.
Each episode, we feature a conversation with leaders from the tech community and public policy to explore new ways of understanding our communities and how we can create broader economic opportunities. We’ll also explore some of the new tensions that technology introduces into public policy debates.
We have some great guests lined up including how CMU is using data from Google and Facebook to forecast where COVID infections are headed, PolicyMap's ability to map trends and reveal disparities, EMSI and BurningGlass's real time labor markets insights, and some of the emerging issues with autonomous driving vehicles.
Last week's episode featured SafeGraph whose data is helping governors and researchers understand how people are responding to shelter-in-place orders. This week, we discussed the incredible work of the US Digital Response team in helping states modernize their web services during the pandemic.
You can subscribe at AEI, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcasting platforms.
LEARNING PODS
Student Privacy and Learning Pods: New resource from CDT.
Hybrid Learning Hubs: Modesto students were failing under home study. How in-person learning hubs brought them back. "Across the school district, about 95 learning hubs were rolled out, serving just over 1,100 students. Every school has had at least one hub, and some have had a general-education hub and a special-education one."
Tutoring: Without a school building Schools of Hope adapt its community tutoring program online.
The Pandemic Has Changed Education. Now Let’s Change How We Fund Education: Via Adam Peshek.
RESOURCES
Negative News Coverage: NBER paper that found U.S. news coverage of COVID has been more negative than in other countries. "91% of stories by U.S. major media outlets are negative in tone versus 54% for non-U.S. major sources and 65% for scientific journals."
"Our Crippled Schools Won’t Hurt Advantaged Parents’ Children Much": Jay Matthews Op-Ed
What Teaching in a Pandemic Looks Like: Via NYT:
“Superintendents have always had to deal with conflicting interests, but it’s never been this kind of life-and-death balance,” said Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of large, urban public school systems across the country. “To have interests and decisions changing week to week, day to day, makes this situation unlike anything public education has ever faced.”
“We’re not just being obstructionist; we’re obstructing the district from putting people’s lives at risk,” said Diamonté Brown, the president of the Baltimore Teachers Union."
"The actions of Baltimore’s private schools during the pandemic have weighed heavily on Ms. Santelises. Those students have clearly had an educational advantage, and one of them is her daughter. Two of her other children attend public charter schools that are closed."
Reopening Schools: Tom Frieden President & CEO of Resolve to Save Lives and former CDC Director: "If community transmission isn't widespread, many schools can stay open safely as long as they take precautions. But we have to reduce spread of the virus to protect both those in school and in the community."
From DC Chancellor to Edtech Founder: Kaya Henderson on her new venture in culturally-relevant education.
Remote Learning Is Not Going Away Soon. This Is How to Make It Better: Via EdSurge.
AFT Randi Weingarten Interview: Video here.
Training Module: Privacy and Equity in the New School Year: New training module from CDT.
Scale Up Tutoring to Combat COVID Learning Loss for Disadvantaged Students: Via Scientific American: "I and my colleagues recently analyzed 96 randomized evaluations of different tutoring models and found that 80 percent of the studies led to markedly improved outcomes, with more than half of the studies reporting large gains as a result of these programs."
What Do Parents Think About K-12 Education During & After COVID-19? #MoreFromManno
"One Sector is Flourishing During the Pandemic: K-12 Private Schools": Op-Ed: "In a survey of 160 independent schools over 15 states and the District of Columbia, almost half of schools (78) surveyed report they have experienced higher enrollment in the current school year, relative to the prior year."
Remote School is Leaving Children Sad and Angry: Via the Washington Post: To gauge the struggle, The Washington Post asked parents nationwide to share stories and artwork produced by youths participating in the mandatory home-school experiment, garnering more than 60 responses from families living in 18 states.
It's December: 2020 is 91% complete. That's worth a little celebratory dance. Perhaps during your daughter's Seesaw recording. "What is wrong with this family?"