COVID-19 Policy Update #161
COVID-19 Policy Update
FRIDAY 12/4
TOP THREE
Transition:
Biden says he will ask Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days he's in office.
From Politico: Ex-teacher’s union boss makes play to be Biden’s Education chief. Andy Rotherham reacts.
School Supported Pods: Lake County Office of Education offers assistance in creating Early Learning Pods
COVID:
States reported 1.8 million tests, 210,000 cases, and 2,706 deaths. There are 101,000 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19. Both case and hospitalization counts from today are all-time highs.
10 states broke case records today: AK, AR, AZ, DE, IN, MA, ME, NJ, PA, RI, and VT.
FEDERAL
ED: IES is receiving SBIR applications:
One is a request for proposals for up to $200,000 for 8-months for the research and development of prototypes of education technology products in one of the following priority areas:
Products that apply emerging technologies to support student learning and relevant education outcomes; or
Products to modernize assessment and support student learning and relevant education outcomes; or
Products used by educators or administrators to inform decision making; or
Products to prepare existing evidence-based interventions to be used at scale in education settings; or
Products for informal learning to reverse learning loss for the lowest performing students
A second is a request for proposals for up to $200,000 for 8-months for the research and development of prototypes of special education technology products in one of the following priority areas:
Products to support infants, toddlers or students with, or at risk for, disabilities, or educators (or other instructional personnel, related services providers, or family members); or
Products to Prepare Existing Special Education Interventions With Evidence to be Used at Scale in Education Settings
Economic Relief Package: Speaker Pelosi said she sees “momentum” in coronavirus stimulus talks, and hopes to attach relief to a must-pass government funding bill.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
IHME: Weekly Briefing.
Their model estimates that by April 1, 2021, 9,000 lives will be saved by the projected vaccine rollout. If rapid rollout of vaccines is achieved, a further 11,000 lives will be saved. Rapid rollout targeting high-risk individuals only could save, compared to the reference scenario, 14,000 lives.
Map below shows the estimated proportion of adults open to receiving a vaccination.
Brutal Months Lie Ahead: Via Washington Post: “A new national ensemble forecast — an aggregation of 37 models sent to the CDC — projected that 9,500 to 19,500 people would die of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, in the week encompassing Christmas. [Christopher] Murray’s institute, meanwhile, has been putting the final touches on a new forecast that he said would show an increase from its Nov. 19 projection of 470,000 deaths by March 1"
Vaccine Prioritization: STAT interview with the CDC advisory panel’s lone dissenter on why long-term care residents shouldn’t receive Covid-19 vaccine first. Well worth reading the entire interview but some clips:
"We need to quit assuming that these vaccines work and actually design them and test them in this population and use them appropriately."
"I fear a loss of confidence in the vaccine. That the vaccine will actually truly be safe, but there will be temporally associated events and people will be scared to use the vaccine. And we won’t be able to get our kids back in school and people back at work — the things that are important."
A Wrinkle With the Vaccines: Pfizer chairman: We're not sure if someone can transmit virus after vaccination.
Deploying Big Data to Determine How Well Vaccines Work: By Scott Gottlieb and Mark McClellan: As the initial rollout starts, it’s time to start planning a registry to monitor health outcomes.
"The vaccine is likely to reduce the odds of serious or symptomatic infection. But will vaccinated patients be less likely to be infected at all? Do the vaccines confer, as preliminary evidence suggested, “mucosal immunity,” in which immune cells in the respiratory tract can help reduce the chance of spreading the virus? If so, parts of the country with low spread and high rates of vaccination may be able to ease up on mitigation measures like wearing masks and distancing."
"Public-health authorities also need to monitor which patients received a particular vaccine and make sure they follow up for the second dose that most of these vaccines require to be fully effective."
"One way to handle this is for the federal government to set up secure data links for health plans and clinicians. Another approach is through Medicare. The federal government is paying for all vaccines, but Medicare expects to receive claims paperwork that will include some information on everyone who receives a vaccination. Medicare could pass along this data to the health plans in Medicare Advantage and the prescription-drug plans in Medicare Part D, as well as to the primary care providers of Medicare patients. States could also use their registries to provide similar information to Medicaid plans and providers."
Find Your Place in the Vaccine Line: Pretty incredible interactive tool from the NYT.
STATE
Illinois:
Data show that schools are not COVID-19 superspreaders.
“It’s safe to keep schools open,” said Dr. Daniel Johnson, chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
"In all, there were 16 schools statewide in the past month — including six in the suburbs and two in Chicago — that were identified as having experienced an outbreak of COVID-19. Of those 16 schools, which serve a combined less than 9,000 students, two saw a cluster of between 11 and 16 connected cases and the rest had less than 10."
Chicago Public Schools will reopen in January even if only a small fraction of students opt to return to classrooms.
Minnesota: Surging cases have pushed 47 of 50 largest MN school districts into distance learning.
Ohio: Schools top 23,000 COVID-19 cases this year as increases trend downward.
61% (14,036) of Ohio’s school cases are students and 39% (9,016) are staff members.
Interesting way to see the cases:
Sept. 17: 319
Sept. 24: 739 (+420)
Oct. 1: 1,274 (+535)
Oct. 8: 1,870 (+596)
Oct. 15: 2,739 (+869)
Oct. 22: 3,826 (+1,087)
Oct. 29: 5,058 (+1,232)
Nov. 5: 7,068 (+2,010)
Nov. 12: 9,876 (+2,808)
Nov. 19: 14,593 (+4,717)
Nov. 26: 19,302 (+4,709)
Dec. 3: 23,052 (+3,750)
Texas: 42% of HISD students are failing one or more classes.
INTERNATIONAL
Upgrade Education Post-Pandemic: Op-Ed from Amel Karboul:
At the Education Outcomes Fund (EOF), we’ve pioneered a model that brings the public and private sectors together to support long-term, systemic impact – ultimately driving better outcomes for children around the world. It’s a game-changing approach. A new way for donors, governments, impact investors and education organizations to achieve positive impact through an alternative model to supply funding and evaluate programmes.
Germany: Study that found face masks considerably reduce COVID-19 cases in Germany. Also this week was another German study 1,500 children and 500 teachers from 13 schools that concluded, “Schools do not play a crucial role in driving the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in a low prevalence setting. Transmission in families occurs very infrequently, and the number of unreported cases is low in this age group. These observations do not support school closures as a strategy fighting the pandemic in a low prevalence setting.”
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Jobs Report: Via BLS
The economy added 245,000 jobs in November, 200,000 less than economists were expecting. Also the slowest pace yet and a red flag that momentum is slowing.
The official unemployment fell from 6.9% in October to 6.7% in November but for all the wrong reasons- 400,000 people left the labor force.
The number of workers unemployed 27 weeks or more surged to 3.9 million in November. Over one-third (36.9%) of the total unemployed are long-term unemployed.
Overall, roughly 56% of jobs lost in the spring have returned.
And the Washington Post
Childcare Funding As Stimulus: Via AEI. Short clipping:
"The pandemic has yielded devastating results for mothers’ employment, the long-term effects of which are still unknown. Research suggests stimulus efforts could do a lot to hasten the recovery by helping mothers reenter the labor force. Congress should consider increasing childcare and school funding in the coming months."
SEC: The Cheesecake Factory became the first public company charged by the SEC with misleading investors about the pandemic's financial impact on its business.
"The SEC claims that the sugar slinger reported "materially false" information in its March 23 and April 3 filings by saying that it was "operating sustainably" by shifting to pickup and delivery."
Can Student-Centered Income Share Agreements Improve Economic Opportunity and Equity? Report from the Aspen Institute's Future of Work Task Force. Principles for providers:
RESOURCES
DreamBox CEO: Broadband should be seen as a utility. Watch the whole event here.
COVID-19: How Should We Handle the Schools, and the Challenges of Vaccine Distribution: Webinar recording. Emily Oster of Brown University, an expert on schools and Covid, and UCSF’s George Rutherford, an epidemiologist and public health authority, discuss the challenges around school openings. Additional presenters include: Erica Pan, a UCSF pediatric infectious disease faculty member who, as Acting State Health Officer, is leading California’s vaccine distribution effort, Desi Kotis, UCSF Health’s chief pharmacy executive, and George Rutherford. The session is moderated by UCSF Department of Medicine chair Bob Wachter.
How 700 Epidemiologists Are Living Now, and What They Think Is Next: Via NYT.
Schools Aren't Doing Enough to Protect Their Networks: "Only 2,000 of the 13,000 U.S. school districts have signed up for free membership in the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center, which offers government organizations, including school systems, network vulnerability assessment, cyberthreat alerts and other related services. Only about 120 schools are using a no-cost federal service called "malicious domain blocking," which helps prevent IT systems from connecting to harmful web domains." More at EdWeek.
How Schools Are Keeping Families Afloat During the Pandemic: Great The 74 article on how the Cleveland school district is sustaining its work to offer “wraparound” services to students and families alive through the pandemic.
Op-Ed: Social justice begins with open schools and school choice, by Sen. Bill Cassidy.
Memo to the Biden Administration: Please recruit Dr. Gerba to be head of vaccine administration based on this video and this one. Or at least please make sure he's available for my vaccination.