COVID-19 Policy Update #222
COVID-19 Policy Update
THURSDAY 3/18
TOP THREE
High School Football Transmission: CDC Study
A cluster of cases linked to a football team.
CDC found the factors contributing to the transmission:
Infrequent mask use in the weight room or during practice;
Inadequate physical distancing and air ventilation on buses transporting players (windows remained closed);
Infrequent cleaning and disinfection of locker rooms, weight room equipment, and communal areas before and after practices; and
Insufficient sanitizing of shared hydration system drinking nozzles between uses.
Minimal Transmission With Mitigation Strategies in Place: CDC Study
New Jersey grade 9–12 boarding school with 520 full-time resident students, 255 commuter students, and 405 faculty and staff members.
Mitigation measures included universal masking, testing, upgraded air-handling equipment to improve ventilation, physical distancing of ≥6 ft, contact tracing, and quarantine and isolation protocols to prevent and control transmission of SARS-CoV-2 among students, faculty, and staff members. Mandatory twice-weekly screening
"A total of 19 (5%) of 405 faculty and staff members and eight (1%) of 775 students received positive test results."
"Only two identified cases were plausibly caused by secondary transmission on campus." 25 of 27 (93%) cases was likely off-campus contacts.
COVID Experiences Survey: From the CDC
Survey of parents of children aged 5–12 years conducted October 8–November 13, 2020
45.7% reported that their children received virtual instruction only, 30.9% in-person only, and 23.4% combined virtual and in-person instruction.
Public school parents more commonly reported that their children received virtual instruction (47.6%) compared with parents of children enrolled in private school (20.3%).
Virtual instruction was also more commonly reported by Hispanic parents (65.9%), non-Hispanic other/multiracial parents (64.0%), and non-Hispanic Black parents (54.9%) than by non-Hispanic White parents (31.9%).
Parents of children receiving virtual instruction were more likely than were parents of children receiving in-person instruction to report that their children experienced decreased physical activity (62.9% versus 30.3%), time spent outside (58.0% versus 27.4%), in-person time with friends (86.2% versus 69.5%), virtual time with friends (24.3% versus 12.6%), and worsened mental or emotional health (24.9% versus 15.9%).
Parents of children receiving virtual instruction were also more likely than were parents of children receiving in-person instruction to report loss of work§§ (42.7% versus 30.6%), job stability concerns (26.6% versus 15.2%), child care challenges (13.5% versus 6.8%), conflict between working and providing child care (14.6% versus 8.3%), emotional distress (54.0% versus 38.4%), and difficulty sleeping (21.6% versus 12.9%)
FEDERAL
ARP Resources:
EdTrust: Summary of the equity implications
FutureED: Perspectives on How Schools Should Spend Covid Relief Aid
TeachPlus: Teacher Recommendations for Spending Stimulus Funds
COVID-19 RESEARCH
AstraZeneca: The European Union’s top pharmaceutical regulator on Thursday concluded the vaccine was safe. (Video of the press conference)
“The committee has come to a clear scientific conclusion: This is a safe and effective vaccine. Its benefits in protecting people from Covid-19 with the associated risks of deaths and hospitalizations outweigh the possible risks. The committee also concluded that the vaccine is not associated with an increase in the overall risk of thromboembolic events or blood clots."
Covid’s Partisan Errors: Great piece from David Leonhardt: Republicans tend to underestimate Covid risks — and Democrats tend to exaggerate them.
"A survey of 35,000 Americans by Gallup and Franklin Templeton finds that both liberals and conservatives suffer from misperceptions about the pandemic — in opposite directions."
"Democrats are also more likely to exaggerate Covid’s toll on young people and to believe that children account for a meaningful share of deaths."
"The states with the highest share of closed schools are all blue states: California, Oregon, Maryland, New Mexico, Hawaii, Nevada, Massachusetts and New Jersey. “I think in many ways it’s based on the fact that these voters are misinformed about the risks to young people and they’re misinformed about the risks generally,” Rothwell said."
"Republicans’ underestimation of Covid risks helps explain their resistance to wearing a mask — even though doing so could save their own life or that of a family member."
STATE
Michigan: Pilot study reduces social distancing rules for Kent County schools to 3 feet.
"Hoganson said three weeks into the pilot program, districts are not seeing an uptick in the number of students with COVID-19."
New Jersey: Gov. Murphy says schools should reopen "now."
Rhode Island: More than half (200) of Woonsocket High School seniors are in danger of not graduating.
Texas: Nearly a third of El Pasoans surveyed have coronavirus antibodies
"Preliminary study data reveals a higher prevalence of antibodies in children than in adults. About 30% of children ages 5 to 19 have antibodies, the study found. Most children were asymptomatic."
"“I think that a lot of the community transmission that occurred in El Paso and elsewhere is actually due to drivers within the home that are hard to mitigate,” Mena said. “I think household transmission often drives community transmission, as opposed to businesses, for example.”
Virginia: An antibody study conducted from July to October by Inova Health System, the Virginia Department of Health and George Mason University. Press Release / Study.
"The overall antibody positivity rate in children ages 0 to 19 was 8.5%. Two thirds were asymptomatic."
"The Inova study analyzed blood samples from more than 1,000 children, with those of Hispanic origin found to have the highest rate of antibody positivity, 26.6%."
"COVID-19 antibodies were found in 8.2% of white children, 5.3% of Black children, 5.7% of Asian children, and 16.2% of children with multiple racial origins."
"Broken down by age groups, the rate was 13.7% in young children (0-5 years), 7.5% in elementary school-age (6-10 years), 5.1% in early adolescents (11-15 years) and 10.8% in older adolescents (16-19 years)."
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
UBI: Cities are piloting UBI programs.
Workforce Acquisition: Opportunity@Work announced that it acquired LaborX
Colleges, McKinsey and Strada Start Task Force on Higher Education and Opportunity: Inside Higher Ed here and group's website here.
RESOURCES
Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma: Emily Oster says parents should bet on vacations with their kids this summer.
"But the best available research indicates that families with young children don’t, in fact, have to live like it’s 2020 until 2022. Parents can go ahead and plan on barbecues and even vacations. The explanation for why lies in the resilience of kids to COVID-19, and in herd immunity."
"Children are not at high risk for COVID-19. We’ve known since early in the pandemic that they are much less likely to fall ill, especially seriously ill. Although scientists don’t quite understand why, kids seem to be naturally protected. As a result, you can think of your son or daughter as an already vaccinated grandparent."
"Think about a grandmother who’s received, say, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Trial research indicates that the second shot reduces her risk of serious illness by about 95 percent. Her risk of death goes way down too, although the trials were not geared toward reaching a conclusion on that point. (The Pfizer control group recorded zero deaths.)"
"Now think about your child. The CDC has published some risk assessments by age. For comparison’s sake, I’ll phrase the findings the way I would the results of a vaccine trial: Being a child aged 5 to 17 is 99.9 percent protective against the risk of death and 98 percent protective against hospitalization. For children 0 to 4, these numbers are 99.9 percent (death) and 96 percent (hospitalization)."
3 ft vs 6 ft:
“As soon as our guidance came out, it became very clear that six feet was among the things that was keeping schools closed,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday. “And in that context, science evolves.”
"Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said a decision to relax the guidance is premature without studies in urban areas, where buildings are older and classrooms were more crowded from the start. She planned to make her case to CDC officials directly on Wednesday."
“They are compromising the one enduring public health missive that we’ve gotten from the beginning of this pandemic in order to squeeze more kids into schools,” she said. “I think that is problematic until we have real evidence in these harder-to-open places about what the effect is.”
"And a review of research published in The Lancet last year supported physical distancing of at least 3 feet, provided that people use proper face coverings."
"Mask-wearing is key. Walensky noted, in response to McMorris Rodgers' questions, that a smaller distance would require 100 percent mask compliance. A CDC survey published in February found that just 65 percent of middle and high school students said their classmates wore masks at all times."
Dr. Robert Murphy, a professor of infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said that as long as people are not singing or shouting or otherwise emitting a lot of respiratory droplets, a physical distance of 3 feet appears to be safe, as long as people are masked. "Is 6 feet better? Yes!" Murphy said. "But so is 100 feet."
"But one major stakeholder, the American Federation of Teachers, is staunchly opposed to changing the recommendation now and is planning to try to persuade the agency not to take that step. “The problem is, it is a debate about convenience, not a debate about safety,” Ms. Weingarten said."
“All of a sudden, because we can’t squeeze in every single kid if it’s six feet, that miraculously there’s now studies that say three feet are fine,” she said. “And what’s going to happen is, people are just not going to trust it.”
"Ms. Weingarten, who said her union has asked for a meeting with Biden administration officials on the issue, said that instead of reducing distancing, districts should instead find additional space to accommodate students six feet apart."
Why Black Parents Aren't Joining the Push to Reopen Schools: Via MotherJones
Burbio Founder: Interview with The 74
Unfinished Learning: New report from Curriculum Associates. Some findings:
Students of color are more likely to be remote than their White peers.
Majority Black and Latino schools saw the greatest increases in the number of students who are not prepared for the work of their grade in math and reading.
Declines in reading and math proficiency rates are steepest for students in schools in zip codes where the median household income is below $50,000 annually.
Winter reading proficiency rates are down when compared to historical averages, with especially acute declines in early elementary grades (i.e., Grades 1–3). For example, the percentage of first grade students who were prepared to do grade-level work was 36 percent—a decrease of 10 percent when compared to the historical average.
Winter math proficiency rates saw even greater declines when compared to historical averages, with losses greater in elementary grades. For example, the number of fourth grade students who were prepared to do grade-level work was 36 percent—a decrease of 16 percent compared to the historical average.
Students More Positive about Online Learning: Youth Truth Survey and coverage in The Journal
"The survey project queried 63,000 secondary students in fall 2020 and compared the results to 20,000 students from spring 2020 as well as "pre-COVID" data from 447,447 students collected between 2009 and 2019."
"61% of students said they learned "a lot almost every day," up from 39% in the spring."
Give a Dog a Bone: New study suggests spending money on pets promotes happiness.
"A field study demonstrated that pet owners who were randomly assigned to spend $5 on their pet reported greater happiness than those who were assigned to spend on themselves or another person – an effect specific to feelings of happiness rather than to mood more generally."
Bentley would like to see much more research testing this theory.
Daniel Dae Kim: On Asian hate crimes.