COVID-19 Policy Update #212
COVID-19 Policy Update
THURSDAY 3/4
TOP THREE
NPR Interview with Secretary Cardona: Transcript
"I can tell you from my experience in Connecticut, where over 90 percent of the students have an opportunity to learn in person today, and many students were learning in person before the vaccine was even approved. It can be done with a careful adherence to the mitigation strategies and close monitoring and where necessary, quarantining and closing — if the numbers escalate to the point where you can't safely assure students are in schools. However, we know that vaccination is a strategy that can just accelerate safe school reopening."
"We would be missing an opportunity if our goal was to be what we were on March 10th of last year. We would be shortchanging the students of America if we did that, if that was our bar. We really have to move forward."
"And this is a fresh opportunity for us to convene educational stakeholders, people that are in the classrooms, parents, students, to really reimagine and say, 'What do we want our system to look like and how can we ensure a system that meets every child's ability where they are and gives them the same opportunity for success in life?"
AAP President: In an CNN oped, "The pandemic is taking an alarming toll on children."
"Mental and behavioral health concerns in children and teens were on the rise even before the pandemic. Despite advances in diagnosis and treatment, suicide had reached a record high -- becoming the second-leading cause of death for those ages 10 to 24 in 2017."
"Many pediatricians have told me in the last month that their offices seem more like mental health clinics for both children and their parents."
"Though it is not in itself a solution, returning children to in-person school is one essential way we can begin to address this crisis. The CDC's latest guidance reinforces what pediatricians have long been saying: If schools are following good public health precautions, there is very low spread of Covid-19."
'When Will It End?': Reuters interviewed18 specialists who are tracking the pandemic
"Many described how the breakthrough late last year of two vaccines with around 95% efficacy against COVID-19 had initially sparked hope that the virus could be largely contained, similar to the way measles has been."
"But, they say, data in recent weeks on new variants from South Africa and Brazil has undercut that optimism. They now believe that SARS-CoV-2 will not only remain with us as an endemic virus, continuing to circulate in communities, but will likely cause a significant burden of illness and death for years to come."
"Murray said if the South African variant, or similar mutants, continue to spread rapidly, the number of COVID-19 cases resulting in hospitalization or death this coming winter could be four times higher than the flu. The rough estimate assumes a 65% effective vaccine given to half of a country’s population. In a worst-case scenario, that could represent as many as 200,000 U.S. deaths related to COVID-19 over the winter period"
FEDERAL
COVID Relief Package:
The Senate voted to begin consideration of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill on Thursday afternoon, putting it on course pass before March 14.
List of changes to the Senate package. Some notable ones:
Provides $175 million to the CPB for support related to COVID to continue programming.
Provides $7.172 billion for the E-rate
Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund:
Requires states to subgrant funds within 60 days
Includes two new mandatory one percent reservations at the State level for implementing evidence based summer enrichment and afterschool programs. And a mandatory 2.5 percent reservation at the State level for education technology.
Council of Nonprofits sent a list of their requests for the package.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
COVID Children Cases May Be Higher: A CDC-supported study in Mississippi found the actual number of children infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 might have been much higher than the number of cases reported.
Serologic testing of residual blood specimens collected during May–September 2020, from 1,603 children under the age of 18 suggests that approximately 113,842 (16.3%) of 698,420 young persons in Mississippi might have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by mid-September 2020.
However, only 8,993 confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases among young persons had been reported to the Mississippi State Department of Health by August 31.
COVID Vulnerability Data: COVID Act Now's dashboard now included vulnerability data from Surgo Ventures.
"This index measures a community's likelihood of suffering more severely from COVID, including higher cases and deaths, and recovering more slowly from the physical and economic harm caused by COVID."
"Surgo Ventures created a metric called the COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index (CCVI). It looks at 40 socioeconomic and epidemiological factors, such as a community members’ income, age, and underlying health, as well as their access to transportation and health care."
Vaccine Distribution: Long but very good piece from USA Today on how tech challenges that hindered vaccine distribution.
"Operation Warp Speed $16 million on Tiberius, a high-tech system meant to not only track the shipments of the vaccines but guide local decisions of where to send them."
"Tiberius, which took Star Trek Capt. James T. Kirk's middle name, would allow “granular planning” all the way down to the doctor’s office, provide “a ZIP code-by-ZIP code view of priority populations,” and “ease the burden” on public health officials."
"Adapted from Palantir’s Foundry platform, which is software used for supply-chain data management, Tiberius promised to track doses in real time when they left manufacturing facilities; where they sat in warehouses, pharmacies and doctor’s offices around the country and how many arms they eventually ended up in."
"Then, Tiberius would pool vaccination administration data to give decision makers a holistic picture – like a giant, computerized game of Risk – of how the effort was going and where doses should go next."
"Tiberius does play a critical role in allocating vaccines. Each week, state public health officials must check the system’s dashboard to learn how many doses are heading their way. States decide where the doses will go and Tiberius tracks those shipments directly to providers."
"Tiberius also houses dozens of digital dashboards to track data associated with allocations, orders and shipments, inventory, priority groups, storage and providers."
Swedish Professor Who Quit COVID Research Over Backlash Stands by School Study's Findings: Story is at Newsweek but you can see some of the back and forth here.
"His research letter, published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on January 6, found that 15 children under the age of 16 were treated in an intensive care unit for COVID-19 or multi-inflammatory syndrome, which has been linked to COVID-19, from March 1, 2020, until June 30."
"Also found that the ICU rate among schoolteachers was about 19 in 100,000 for the period he studied."
"Sweden was one of the few countries to allow schools to remain open during the pandemic, and Ludvigsson saw it as a "unique opportunity to examine the health consequences."
"Critics argued that data from the Swedish Public Health Agency found that 48 percent of the 967 outbreaks reported in a one-month period were attributed to schools, thereby contradicting Ludvigsson's findings. In his response, Ludvigsson said schools were likely to account for a high proportion of outbreaks because household outbreaks aren't registered."
STATE
Arizona: The Governor ordered schools to reopen to in-person learning by March 15
California:
Lawmakers approved a $6.6 billion plan aimed at pressuring school districts to return students to the classroom before the end of the school year.
$2 billion will be used to support schools that reopen for in-person instruction by the end of March.
School districts have until May 15 to decide. Districts that resume in-person learning after that date won’t get any of that money.
The Mercury News Editorial: No more teacher excuses, time to return to the classroom
Colorado: 75% of teachers are vaccinated.
Hawaii: Will have all teachers vaccinated before April. #Aloha
Maine: Will open vaccine eligibility to school staff regardless of age
Maryland:
A Baltimore student passes just 3 classes in four years, ranks near top half of class with 0.13 GPA
Proposed legislation would allow the state, a county or public higher education institution to create a tuition-free virtual public school program. Students would be able to attend any public virtual school in the state regardless of where they live.
Virginia: The Department of Education announced it had received a $1 million grant to measure the impact of COVID, including allowing researchers to study student attendance, grade-level retention, enrollment in advanced courses.
INTERNATIONAL
France: The country has managed to keep children in school – and return women to the workplace.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
$2.9 Trillion: Consumers in the world’s largest economies have $2.9 trillion in extra savings during COVID-related lockdowns, a vast cash hoard that creates the potential for a powerful recovery from the pandemic recession.
Half that total — $1.5 trillion and growing — is in the U.S. alone
KFF Tracking Poll: With some data on economic hardship
More than a third (37%) of Americans say that someone in their household has had trouble paying basic living expenses over the past three months
1 in 4 (23%) who say they have fallen behind on their credit card bills, and 1 in 6 who say they have had trouble paying for food (17%) or who have fallen behind on their rent or mortgage (16%).
Tax Credit Reform Calculator: From the Niskanen Center:
"The Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are among the most powerful anti-poverty programs in the United States today, lifting over 10 million adults and children out of poverty every year."
"By clicking ‘customize parameters,’ users can design and test proposals for reforming either credit, or replacing them altogether, while automatically generating charts that illustrate the net-effect of the reform on household incomes and Effective Marginal Tax Rates (EMTRs)."
State-by-State Analysis of High School Work-based Learning Policies: From American Student Assistance and Bellwether Education Partners.
Remote Workers Spend More On Housing Than Those Who Commute: The Economist based on this NBER paper.
LEARNING PODS
How Bilingual Learning Pods Are Helping English Language Learners: Via The 74, good coverage of a group of learning pods in Cleveland.
RESOURCES
The National Student Support Accelerator: Launched a new website that includes a summary of current tutoring research, a toolkit to make it easy to launch a new tutoring program or improve an existing tutoring program, and a tutoring program database, along with updated information on the Accelerator’s pilot sites and state level policy recommendations.
Rockstar: Rolling Stone on How Economist Emily Oster Ended Up at the Center of the Fight Over Schools Reopening
"With CDC data now available from one full semester of schools in a range of states, employing a range of mitigation strategies, it seems that Oster was largely correct when looking at the early data from the dashboard in October: Schools have not been associated with substantial community transmission."
"But whatever new challenges the coming months bring, Oster’s advice probably won’t change, either: Understand the risks, figure out if there is a way to avoid them, weigh them against the benefits, and make a choice you can feel confident in. At the end of the day, she says, “when you make these choices, you kind of need to put the risks in context of other risks, and recognize that by living, you are taking some risks.”
Nurse Shortages: Could make it more difficult to reopen schools.
One Year In: Innovative Approaches to Learning During a Pandemic: Reflections from NSVF:
"Parents, especially those from underserved communities, will keep demanding change. Educators and schools that fully engage parents as true partners in this new reality will unlock ways to support and accelerate student learning."
"The pandemic has laid bare the disconnect between what students are asked to do and the relevancy or meaning that these tasks have on their lives."
"The power of a strong educator cannot be underestimated, and that is even more true in a remote context."
Community Schools: A blueprint from Brookings.
Tutoring: Could fill pandemic education gaps
Reopen Schools Data: New from CRPE:
More than two-thirds of the 100 districts they reviewed (71%) are offering instruction fully or partially in person in February — nearly double the rate from just two months earlier (44%).
Districts located in states that prioritized teachers for early vaccinations were not significantly more likely to reopen schools.
Just 59% of the districts in states that prioritize teachers to receive the vaccine early (36 of 61 districts) are learning in-person.
By contrast the vast majority — 89% — of the districts in states not prioritizing teachers (32 of 36 districts) are operating in-person.
Randi Weingarten: On CNN.
She emphasizes three things needed to reopen schools (1) employing the CDC mitigation measures; (2) COVID testing, such as those used by the NFL, and (3) vaccinations.
"My union has been trying to reopen schools since last April."
"Summer school should be more like camp. Think of summer as a place for joy...for enrichment. That will be a net plus. If it is for remediation or a tutor, it will be a net minus."
A Baby Elephant: Chasing birds.