COVID-19 Policy Update #180
COVID-19 Policy Update
THURSDAY 1/14
This is a long one tonight so apologies in advance. Per our agreement, long updates come with a drink pairing. Tonight's update pairs well with The Stimulus from the Americano in Phoenix.
TOP THREE
Biden Unveils American Rescue Plan: Summary here. Total of $1.9 trillion:
Overall Highlights
Direct payments of $1,400 to most Americans, which when combined with Dec.'s $600 brings the total relief to $2,000
Increasing the federal, per-week unemployment benefit to $400 and extending it through the end of September
Increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour
Extending the eviction and foreclosure moratoriums until the end of September
$350 billion in state and local government aid
$50 billion toward COVID-19 testing (a portion of which will be for schools and universities)
$20 billion toward a national vaccine program in partnership with states, localities and tribes
Making the Child Tax Credit fully refundable for the year and increasing the credit to $3,000 per child ($3,600 for a child under age 6)
$25 billion for childcare
Extending the 15% increase in SNAP benefits through September.
Education Specific: $170 billion for K-12 schools and institutions of higher education
$130 billion to help K12 schools to safely reopen. Funds can be used to:
Reduce class sizes and modify spaces so students and teachers can socially distance;
Improve ventilation;
Hire more janitors and implement mitigation measures;
Provide personal protective equipment;
Ensure every school has access to a nurse;
Hire counselors to support 6 students as they transition back to the classroom;
Close the digital divide
Provide summer school or other support for students that will help make up lost learning time this year;
Create and expand community schools.
Funds will also include provisions to ensure states adequately fund education and protect students in low-income communities.
Districts must ensure that funds are used to not only reopen schools, but also to meet students' academic, mental health and social, and emotional needs
Funding can be used to prevent cuts to state pre-k programs.
A portion of funding will be reserved for a COVID-19 Educational Equity Challenge Grant, which will advance equity- and evidence-based policies to respond to COVID-related educational challenges and give all students the support they need to succeed.
Couple of observations:
This is the first of two packages. The Biden team is expected to announce an infrastructure package in Feb.
The education funding seems to cover this school year through the summer, including strategies to address learning loss.
It's significant that the proposal extends several of the benefits through September (the current eviction moratorium, for example, expires this month).
Remember how we've discussed the thin margins in the House and Senate? It's difficult to see how this gets 60 votes in the Senate or even 51 if done through reconciliation. A number of members will balk at the size given that Dec's funds haven't even begun to be used. That said, we saw it took months between CARES Act and the Dec package. So the Biden team is starting the discussion now understanding that it may not pass until the Spring or later.
Remember impeachment? This is one of the reasons the Biden team was more hesitant with impeachment since a Senate trial eats up time that could be spent confirming nominees and debating/passing these packages.
The Pandemic is Raging: The U.S. is now averaging nearly 250,000 new coronavirus cases per day.
Hospitalizations: Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Delaware, South Carolina and Virginia are currently experiencing record hospitalizations.
COVID Deaths Per Capita: Map here. The five hardest hit states are:
New Jersey — 227 people dead per 100K residents
Massachusetts — 196
Rhode Island — 188
South Dakota — 186
Connecticut — 182
FEDERAL
ED: Released the $21.2 billion for institutions of higher education that was part of the Dec. COVID relief package.
Transition:
Additional White House staff announced today:
Stefanie Feldman, Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the Director of the Domestic Policy Council
Catherine Lhamon, Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council for Racial Justice and Equity
Carmel Martin, Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council for Economic Mobility
Tyler Moran, Special Assistant to the President for Immigration for the Domestic Policy Council
Esther Olavarria, Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council for Immigration
Sameera Fazili, Deputy Director, National Economic Council
Nadiya Beckwith-Stanley, Special Assistant to the President for Budget and Tax Policy
Lessons from former US cabinet members. McKinsey panel with several former cabinet (including two Secretaries of Ed). But this chart struck me - Ed Secretaries are confirmed the fastest and stay the longest.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
IHME: Weekly briefing:
Expect that 141 million people will be vaccinated by May 1. With faster scale-up, the number could reach 179 million people.
Estimated 567,000 cumulative deaths on May 1, 2021. This represents 192,000 additional deaths from January 11 to May 1
COVID Testing:
The Rockefeller Foundation launches a $30 million Advance Market Commitment to purchase and distribute COVID tests for 23 states.
Good Bloomberg article on how Minnesota emerged as a leader in COVID testing.
Vaccination Credential Initiative: Coalition with CARIN Alliance, Cerner, Change Healthcare, The Commons Project Foundation, Epic, Evernorth, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, MITRE, Oracle, Safe Health, and Salesforce are working to establish standards to verify whether a person has had their shot and prevent people falsely claiming to be vaccinated. Press Release. More at the FT.
Children's Vaccine Trial: Moderna struggles to find 3,000 adolescent volunteers needed for COVID-19 vaccine trial.
Vaccine Misinformation: Google commits $3 million to fight COVID-19 vaccine misinformation
The Magical Extra Doses: As pharmacists began administering the Pfizer vaccine some of them discovered that it was possible to extract a 6th or even 7th dose from a standard 5-dose vial. Where were the extra doses coming from? Turns out it was low dead-volume syringes which leave less vaccine trapped between the plunger and needle — the “dead volume” — after a shot is given. Thus, less vaccine was wasted in the syringe and more available for putting into arms using the low dead-volume syringes.
STATE
California: OpEd from Carl Cohn former member of the California State Board of Education and superintendent of the San Diego Unified and Long Beach Unified school districts:
"To help get kids back in school, California should temporarily suspend local collective bargaining."
"Yes, this is an out of the box and unconventional proposal, but it may be what’s needed if we’re really serious about reopening schools in a timely way this school year. Without getting into the weeds of a pact that is to be negotiated by the parties, the agreement should include guarantees with regard to cases, testing and contact tracing, vaccinations for all school employees, PPE, and thorough cleaning and sanitation of all school facilities on a regular basis."
Maryland: Citing dramatic learning losses, Baltimore Superintendent Santelises expands in-person learning.
"In grades six through twelve, for example, 60% of students failed one or more classes last fall compared to 38% one year prior. And over two-thirds of ninth graders had at least one failing grade."
Santelises said the district has “exceeded CDC regulations” to ensure student and staff safety.
By the end of this month, the district’s website will host a dashboard showing the ventilation measures available in each school.
"But the Baltimore Teachers Union leaders and others who staged last night’s car rally outside district headquarters said they have no faith in the school system’s safety protocols."
North Carolina: The N.C. Association of Educators (NCAE) called on Gov. Cooper to “make a difficult” decision to tighten COVID-19 restrictions to slow community spread so that schools can operate safely.
Oregon: Portland Public Schools aims for limited reopening as soon as Jan. 25
Pennsylvania: Allentown School District to remain in online learning through third quarter
West Virginia: The West Virginia State Board of Education has voted to mandate in-person instruction in classrooms for students Pre-K to 8th
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Unemployment Claims: First-time jobless claims totaled 965,000 last week. Overall, 18.4 million Americans are on unemployment.
2021 Global Mayors Challenge: Bloomberg Philanthropies is inviting mayors to describe their COVID recovery plans. They plan to award 15 winners with $1 million grants each.
2020 VC Surge: U.S. startups raised $130 billion last year, topping the prior high of $120 billion set back in the dot-com craze of 2000. PitchBook estimated a slightly higher 2020 total ($156 billion)
Online Shopping: Online shopping became essential in 2020, increasing by about 20% from the previous year, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach said during a CES session today.
"Years of digital acceleration have been kind of compressed into months," Miebach said.
Best Buy CEO Corie Barry, who said at a separate CES keynote that customers will also want to keep options like curbside pick up.
RESOURCES
Calls to Reopen Classrooms Grow as Teachers Get Vaccinated: Via the AP
The Dynamics of Distortion: How Successive Summarization Alters the Retelling of News: Fascinating study that found "when news is repeatedly retold it undergoes a stylistic transformation termed disagreeable personalization, wherein original facts are increasingly supplanted by opinions and interpretations, with a slant toward negativity."
"Specifically, the central thesis of the work is that, when retellers believe that they are more (vs. less) knowledgeable than their recipient about the information they are relaying, they feel more compelled to provide guidance on its meaning, and to do so in a persuasive manner. This enhanced motivation to guide persuasively, in turn, leads retellers to not only select the subset of facts they deem most essential but, critically, to provide their interpretations and opinions on those facts, with negativity being used as a means of grabbing the audience’s attention."
Sidenote: I'm sensitive to this which is one of the reasons I always try to link to original studies and not just a news article.
The Reality and Tragedy of COVID: You may have seen the video of CNN's Sara Sidner who broke down on live TV after visiting several families who lost loved ones to COVID. She wrote a moving essay explaining what led to the moment. Read the whole thing, but some excerpts:
"I was on air to talk about Juliana Jimenez Sesma. Her story knocked me down. She left her job in real estate to take care of her mother, who was dealing with a lung condition.But in a deprived area of Los Angeles, the whole family became infected, including Sesma's brother and his family who lived next door. The younger ones survived but Sesma lost her stepfather and then her mother in the space of 11 days."
"I met her at her mother's funeral. It was a most disturbing scene. An open casket in the corner of a parking lot -- the only place available and safe for people to gather -- with flowers perched on the asphalt below."
"Listening to Sesma's voice as the story played on air well before the LA dawn, I realized that she would wake up without her mom and stepdad because of coronavirus. She will do this every day for the rest of her life. A double shot of pain every day. Pain that may go from a searing agony to a dull ache, but it will never leave."
"And then I thought about where she would wake up. In South Los Angeles, there are no convenient urgent care clinics. The community has 10 times fewer doctors per resident than the rest of California."
"The most frequently done surgery at the community hospital is amputation due to diabetes."