COVID-19 Policy Update #176
COVID-19 Policy Update
FRIDAY 1/8
TOP THREE
California: Moving teachers to the front of the vaccine line might not be enough to reopen schools
“We cannot safely and fully return to face-to-face instruction without putting our public-school workers at the top of the (vaccine) priority list,” said said Claudia Briggs, spokeswoman for the California Teachers Association. “But remember, right now there’s no research evidence that the vaccine alone eliminates or reduces transmissions. It reduces illness.”
Studies on Schools and COVID:
The NIH funded ABC Science Collaborative is coordinated by the Duke School of Medicine and the Duke Clinical Research Institute working with 50 school districts in North Carolina.
They collected and analyzed data on cases in eleven school districts with 100,000 students during the first nine weeks of in-person schooling.
They found that while community spread had been high, there had been just 32 cases of in-school transmission. None of the cases involved a child infecting an adult.
The researchers concluded, “Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 was rare in North Carolina schools that reopened last fall and utilized face coverings, distancing and hand-washing”
4 in 5 infections among children do not happen at school.
A large majority of infections (more than 80%) among pupils and staff took place outside the school, and fewer than 20% infections probably took place at school.
Jobs Report: Weak jobs report.
Nonfarm payrolls fell by 140,000 in December. Economists had forecasted a gain of 50,000.
Most of the job losses were in the businesses most impacted by COVID, such as restaurants and hotels.
15.8 million people said they had been unable to work because their employer had closed due to COVID, up from 1 million in November.
Rough estimates suggest that the economy has only recovered 55% of jobs lost in March/April
FEDERAL
ED: Released details on the $2.75 billion for the Emergency Assistance for Non-Public Schools (EANS) program
PPP: Will re-open the week of January 11 for new borrowers and certain existing PPP borrowers.
FCC: Is seeking public input on the $3.2 billion broadband discount program included in the recent economic stimulus package. The program will provide discounts of up to $50 on monthly broadband bills for households eligible for food stamps or who have lost a substantial amount of income during the pandemic. Comments are due by Jan. 25, with reply comments due Feb. 16.
Next Stimulus Bill: Biden is reportedly working on a package that would include:
Extend unemployment insurance
Providing funding for state/local stabilization
Funding to improve vaccine distribution
"Tens of millions of dollars for schools" (wondering if that's a typo from the Post and it's billions)
Rent forbearance
Assistance to small businesses
As an example of how thin the governing margins are, the prospects of $2,000 direct cash benefits are at risk not because of Republicans but because Senator Manchin (D-WV) said he would ‘absolutely not’ support a new round of checks.”
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Speeding Up Vaccine Distribution: Biden said they would release all the vaccine doses when he takes office. Instead of reserving half the supplies for a second dose, it would allow more people access to a first dose. The announcement received widespread, bi-partisan support.
US Variant: NBC News is reporting that the White House coronavirus task force said there could be a new variant of the coronavirus that evolved in the U.S. and may be 50% more transmissible.
Pfizer/BioNTech Vaccine: Appears effective against the new variants of the coronavirus.
Vaccine Distribution: NYT series on ways to fix the rollout:
Make it a Lottery
Target Hotspots
Don't Pressure the Vaccine Hesitant
Write Better Algorithms
Vaccine Hesitancy in Rural America: New polling from KFF.
Rural residents are among the most vaccine hesitant groups, along with Republicans, individuals 30-49 years old, and Black adults.
Individuals living in rural areas in the U.S. are significantly less likely to say they will get a COVID-19 vaccine that is deemed safe and available for free than individuals living in suburban and urban America.
"For rural residents, getting a COVID-19 vaccine is seen more as a personal choice (62% ) than as part “of everyone’s responsibility to protect the health of others” (36%)."
"A large majority of rural Americans (86%) say they trust their own doctor or health care provider to provide reliable information about a COVID-19 vaccine."
The Best Evidence for How to Overcome COVID Vaccine Fears: Via Scientific American:
"To determine what kinds of reminders work best, Milkman and her colleagues Angela Duckworth and Mitesh Patel have conducted studies with Walmart pharmacies and with two regional health care systems to field-test a variety of text messages designed to nudge people toward getting the influenza vaccine. The team is still scrutinizing its data, but early analyses of vaccination records from the health care systems suggest that simple reminders to request a flu shot, sent days or hours before a doctor’s appointment, appear to be “really valuable”
“One thing that we’ve learned very clearly is not to correct misperceptions because people feel as though we are being dismissive,” she says. In fact, a large 2014 study led by Nyhan found that informing parents that there were no credible data linking autism with the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella and providing facts about the very real dangers of these diseases had no impact on their intention to vaccinate a child. Instead such a strategy actually hardened negative views among the most vaccine-averse."
"Another reason access can be a problem for people of color is that they are less likely to have health insurance and an existing relationship with a provider."
"For Black Americans, health authorities will need to address heightened concerns about vaccine side effects. In the KFF survey, 71 percent of vaccine-hesitant Black respondents reported this was their number-one issue with COVID immunizations, whereas 59 percent of all people disinclined to get the shot did so. Black respondents were also twice as likely to worry they might get COVID-19 from immunization."
"Scheufele suggests that more Republicans might be persuaded if health authorities framed vaccine messages in ways “that resonate with their core values.” Such messages might emphasize that the sooner the American public is vaccinated, the sooner we can fully open restaurants, hotels, gyms, and churches and return to an economy that allows businesses to thrive."
STATE
Illinois: State Superintendent of Education Ayala proposed schools extend the school year, a proposition that Chicago Teachers Union leaders for the first time have suggested could be amenable if it would put off mandatory in-person teaching until educators are vaccinated for the coronavirus.
Michigan:
Gov. Whitmer encourages Michigan public schools to reopen for in-person learning by March 1
University of Michigan students start free online tutoring service for low-income families
New Jersey: Newark Teachers Union opposes plan to reopen classrooms. Last month, Union President John Abeigon Abeigon called on the district to require students to test negative for the virus before returning to school, as teachers are required to do. Abeigon went further this week, saying in an interview that he does not believe schools should reopen at all given the city's high COVID-19 transmission rate.
Ohio: Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper said even if the vaccine is offered to educators, making return-to-school mandatory could be dangerous.
“If it is offered to all, but only 50-60% take it, it may not be safe to reopen."
She argued that teachers should still receive priority for vaccination even if they are not teaching in schools.
“Please understand that early vaccinations are certainly not wasted if they are given to educators and school staff without the precondition of opening schools,” Cropper said. “Keep in mind our teachers are still educating students when not in buildings. These vaccines will reduce the amount of missed time for educators, helping to maintain consistency.”
Pennsylvania: Elementary school students in communities with substantial spread of COVID-19 should return to a hybrid model of remote and in-person instruction in late January, according to new state rules.
Utah: Salt Lake City School District will delay reopening its junior high and high schools in early February as planned, postponing any in-person return to classrooms until after teachers can get both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Virginia: Alexandria School Board member Margaret Lorber tonight, when presented with stories of many students struggling with virtual learning tonight said: “Do you want your child to be alive or do you want your child to be educated?” Video.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Understanding Income, Spending, and Savings During COVID: Great NYT piece. Important to understand this argument to understand some of the resistance among economists for higher direct cash checks:
"Salaries and wages fell less, in the aggregate, than even a careful observer of the economy might think. Total employee compensation was down only 0.5 percent for those nine months, more akin to a mild recession than an economic catastrophe."
"So how can the number of jobs be down 6 percent but employee compensation be down only 0.5 percent? It has to do with which jobs have been lost. The millions of people no longer working because of the pandemic were disproportionately in lower-paying service jobs. Higher-paying professional jobs were more likely to be unaffected, and a handful of other sectors have been booming, such as warehousing and grocery stores, leading to higher incomes for those workers."
"The arithmetic is as simple as it is disorienting. If a corporate executive gets a $100,000 bonus for steering a company through a difficult year, while four $25,000-per-year restaurant workers lose their jobs entirely, the net effect on total compensation is zero — even though in human terms a great deal of pain has been incurred."
"For all the attacks on the CARES Act that Congress passed in late March, the degree to which it served to support the incomes of Americans, especially those who lost jobs, is extraordinary."
"When it’s all tallied up, Americans’ cumulative after-tax personal income was $1.03 trillion higher from March to November of 2020 than in 2019, an increase of more than 8 percent."
"From March through November, personal savings was $1.56 trillion higher than in 2019, a rise of 173 percent. Normally the savings rate bounces around in a narrow range, around 7 percent just before the pandemic. It spiked to 33.7 percent in April, its highest level on record dating to 1959."
Top Skills: Burning Glass report listing the tech skills that are growing fastest:
AI and Machine Learning
Cloud Technologies
Connected Technologies (Internet of Things and connected physical tools, as well as the telecommunications infrastructure needed to enable them, such as 5G)
Fintech
IT Automation
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Parallel Computing
Proactive Security
Quantum Computing
Software Development Methodologies (Agile, DevOps, and related approaches to developing software more rapidly)
Diversify and Grow AmeriCorps for an Equitable COVID-19 Recovery: Good piece from The Next 100.
RESOURCES
Blending Home and School: Good piece from Mike McShane on hybrid homeschooling.
How Portable Learning Records Will Unlock Education And Employment Opportunities: From Tom Vander Ark.
Goals: 2020 vs 2021