TOP THREE
CDC Updates Quarantine Guidance: Here.
They reiterate that those who come into close contact with someone with COVID-19 should immediately quarantine for 14 days unless "they receive different instructions from their school official or a public health official."
People who are fully vaccinated do not need to quarantine if they come into close contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19. They should:
Get tested 3–5 days after their last known exposure—even if they don’t have symptoms.
Wear a mask indoors in public for 14 days following their last exposure or until their test result is negative.
Monitor for symptoms of COVID-19 for 14 days and get tested and isolate immediately if they develop symptoms of COVID-19.
Multicomponent Strategies to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Transmission — Nine Overnight Youth Summer Camps: New CDC report. More from NYT and some observations from Stat:
Summer camps in 2021 that took advantage of vaccination, testing, mask-wearing, social distancing, and other methods to prevent transmission of Covid-19 succeeded in controlling spread.
Among more than 7,000 campers and employees at nine overnight camps, there were only nine cases and no secondary infections.
Vaccine coverage was high, at 93% of eligible people and testing was frequent, with more than 38,059 tests before and after arrival at the camps.
“These findings highlight important guiding principles for school and youth-based Covid-19 prevention protocols."
NSBA Asks President Biden to Combat ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Toward Educators/School Boards: The letter / The 74 / EdWeek / NPR
The National School Boards Association said the country’s schools and educators are “under an immediate threat” and urged the federal government to “investigate, intercept and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against public school officials through existing statutes,” including the Gun-Free School Zones Act and the PATRIOT Act.
Washington Examiner editorial
'At the same time, we should be cautious about broad strokes here. There is a complicated, at times politically toxic, conversation happening about schools right now. The issues range from masks and vaccinations to how and what to teach about American history and longstanding debates about sexuality and curriculum. There are those – on the left and right – who would rather shut those debates down than engage them."
"It’s not hard to see how the invocation of “domestic terrorism” will fuel the impulse to shut down rather than work through. Protecting your members is one thing, but this is playing with matches and open letters released to the media are not the only way to engage government officials."
FEDERAL
Senate Hearing: School Reopening During COVID-19: Supporting Students, Educators, and Families.
Secretary Cardona’s testimony; Secretary Becerra’s testimony; Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA); Ranking Member Richard Burr (R-NC).
Is It Fair to Call Biden’s $3.5 Trillion Plan Another New Deal?: Interesting article and visualizations from the Washington Post.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Myocarditis Study Withdrawn: A widely circulated study that linked heart inflammation with the COVID-19 vaccines has been withdrawn by researchers at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute because of a math error.
The original, now withdrawn study said falsely that around one in 1,000 patients who got the vaccines develop a heart condition called myocarditis and suffer an increased death rate.
Canadian health officials said Friday that the risk of heart inflammation is higher after being infected with COVID-19 then it is after taking the vaccination.
Israeli Data on Teen Vaccines: New data shows few cases of heart inflammation after vaccination.
According to Israeli Health Ministry data, 331,538 children aged 12 to 15 received one dose of the vaccine, and 255,444 received two doses. The ministry says 12 children contracted myocarditis after two doses, but there is no clinical proof that links the vaccine with the condition since, for example, there were about 10 to 20 cases of myocarditis per 100,000 young people in the U.S. before the pandemic and vaccines.
Johnson & Johnson: Reports suggest they will seek FDA authorization for a booster shot.
this was coming since the FDA announced on Friday - ahead of J&J making the request - that they would hold an advisory committee meeting on Oct. 14 to consider this.
Stat's Helen Branswell notes, "This is not normally how things get done."
Pfizer: Submits preliminary data to Health Canada for kids' 5-11 COVID-19 vaccine.
Why People Who Don’t Trust Vaccines Are Embracing Unproven Drugs: Good piece at Vox.
“At that moment of cognitive dissonance, they want to resolve that dissonance and make sense of it all,” Van Bavel said. “They’re looking for anything.”
"When the vaccines showed up, it made sense to see them as unnecessary and untrustworthy,” Robb Willer, director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab at Stanford University, told me. “Once this situation crystallized, Republican leaders and media ... started to follow and play to anti-vaccine sentiment in the Trumpist base of the Republican Party, which helped to further crystallize anti-vaccine sentiment.”
"This online community has become a source of solidarity and serves, from a psychological perspective, to deepen the person’s commitment to their worldview."
“Ostracism is so threatening to people. They create an insular community, relying on them for information and relying on them for belonging,” Van Bavel said. “They get social support. If they hear the news come out and defend the vaccine, other people rally around them.”
Coronavirus Vaccine Mandates Are Working — For Now: Says Axios.
Student Athletes Become the Latest Target for School Vaccine Mandates: Via Politico
Is It Flu or Covid-19? It’s Harder to Tell the Symptoms Apart This Year: Via WSJ
"Many symptoms of flu and Covid-19 are similar. Fever, fatigue and achiness can occur with both. The often-milder symptoms of a Covid-19 breakthrough infection in vaccinated people—sometimes including a runny nose or sneezing—can make it even harder to distinguish between the two illnesses, or from a cold or allergies."
US Mask Guidance for Kids is the Strictest Across the World: Via NY Post.
School Disruptions: Burbio reports 2,238 school closures across 561 districts (up from 549 last week) across 45 states (up from 43).
U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Surpasses 700,000: Story and data visualization via the NYT.
Giant Eagle to Hold Vax Clinic at Rolling Stones Concert: Concertgoers can get a Moderna or Pfizer vaccine. For those wanting J&J, You Can't Always Get What You Want. Given that some are on their 19th Nervous Breakdown, they may be open to One More Shot. I told Angie about it but She Never Listens to Me.
STATE
Alabama: Isn't reporting school COVID outbreaks, contact tracing.
California: LAUSD and teachers union announce an agreement on several COVID-19 related safety issues and online learning support, including regular testing, masking and air filtration.
Georgia: Parents sue Cobb County Schools, alleging violation of children's disability rights with insufficient COVID protocols
Guam: GDOE looks to maintain online program as a long-term option.
Hawaii: Parents say DOE's effort to create distance learning for Hawaiian immersion is overdue.
Kansas: "A school pandemic workgroup established by Gov. Laura Kelly received data from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment showing that in about a quarter of the state’s counties, less than 20% of vaccine-eligible children ages 12 to 17 had received at least one dose as of Sept. 24."
Missouri: More Black families have switched to homeschooling, and not just because of COVID
New York:
Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor denies appeal of NYC school vaccine plan
As the NYC vaccine mandate takes effect, about 95% of all full-time school employees have received at least one dose, including 94% of non-education staff, 96% of teachers and 99% of principals.
"About 43,000 doses total have been administered since the mandate was announced in late August, including more than 18,000 shots that were given to staff members since Sept. 24."
NYC health commissioner pushes COVID vaccine for kids, stops short of mandate.
Ohio: What hybrid learning taught northeast Ohio schools
"Administrators worked to find ways to switch up the monotony of the virtual school day. Urban Community School broke up that monotony with Whole Child Wednesdays, an all-day virtual celebration featuring special lessons based around yoga, music, dance, cooking and exercise, among other topics."
"Reduced the number of instructional blocks while another was including mandatory offline, project-based learning blocks to limit the amount of screen time."
"My daughter has a lot of allergies and would miss school when she got sick, and now it’s not like she is missing because she can log in remotely,” says Caraballo. “I had even more contact with teachers, and they constantly reached out and let me know if my daughter was struggling. It seemed like they were even more available than during a typical school year.”
"Along the lines of communication, one way Hebrew Academy successfully implemented its hybrid program was to set up a tech support system with pointers for parents."
Vermont: The state department released Test to Stay protocols which includes home testing.
West Virginia: Governor says there's "no chance" of COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students.
INTERNATIONAL
Belgium: "The official body that coordinates Belgium’s various paediatric organizations has called for the current coronavirus measures to be dropped in schools for children under 12 years old."
"Testing children, imposing mouth masks and quarantine go against the principle of ‘primum non nocere’ (first, do no harm) which is included in the Hippocratic Oath that doctors took,” the Belgische Academie voor Geneeskunde (Belgian Academy for Medicine) wrote in the statement.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
The Market Value of Various College Degrees: Axios on a new Bankrate.com survey.
"Graduates of the No. 1 "most valuable" major, architectural engineering, earn a median annual salary of $90,000 and enjoy a low unemployment rate (1.3%)."
"The percentage of architectural engineering majors with an advanced degree is relatively low — 29.3% — meaning they are less likely than others to have to shell out for an advanced degree."
"In the "least valuable" major — visual and performing arts — the median salary is $35,500, the unemployment rate is 3.6%, and 28.7% have an additional degree."
RESOURCES
Healthy Minds Campaign: PTA launches a new campaign to help families prioritize mental health (Website here).
The Allstate Foundation is enabling the creation of SEL and service-learning resources for parents and families.
CDC Foundation is equipping families with tools and resources to address student's mental health during COVID-19 recovery and beyond.
GoGuardian is supporting the development of resources and programming on pressing mental health topics.
The New York Life Foundation is supporting programming focused on addressing grief and loss and building resiliency among students and families.
Conversations with Kids: Walking the Road to Reinvention: New resources from Transcend, including an outreach toolkit.
The Pandemic Will Spur the Worldwide Growth of Private Tutoring: Via the Economist.
"A boom in private tuition could undo some of the damage inflicted by the pandemic. A recent study in England found that before the pandemic children who used Kumon’s after-school maths programme were about seven months ahead of peers from similar backgrounds by the age of 11."
"Other research shows that poor children who attend high-quality test-preparation classes benefit more than richer pupils, says Steve Entrich of the University of Potsdam. That suggests that after-hours classes can be “a tool to bridge the learning gap” between richer and poorer kids, he says. That gap that has been exacerbated by covid-19."
"In most cases top-up schooling will widen inequality. In Britain the Sutton Trust, a charity, found that 34% of the richest parents (calculated on the basis of questions about things like car and computer ownership holidays and the number of bathrooms in their homes) had ever paid for extra classes, compared with 20% of the poorest ones."
After Years of Steady Increases, Homeschooling Enrollment Rose Dramatically During COVID: Via Pioneer Institute.
Addressing Learning Loss: Nathan Storey and Qiyang Zhang: Younger students were among those most hurt during the pandemic
"Our analysis of these studies confirmed that the pandemic had the most serious impact on students in grades K-2, who lost 0.10 more years of learning than upper-grade students."
"The results from our analysis also pointed to more adverse effects for U.S. students than for many of their European counterparts: They’ve lost twice as much as international students, perhaps due to longer periods of school closures in the U.S."
DNA Virus Creates Computer Virus: Nothing to do with COVID or education, I just found this fascinating (and a bit terrifying):
"…a group of researchers from the University of Washington has shown for the first time that it’s possible to encode malicious software into physical strands of DNA, so that when a gene sequencer analyzes it the resulting data becomes a program that corrupts gene-sequencing software and takes control of the underlying computer."
15 Years Ago: Friday Night Lights premiered. It ended with this voiceover from Coach Taylor (listen to it here).
"Give all of us gathered here tonight the strength to remember that life is so very fragile."
"We are all vulnerable, and we will all, at some point in our lives... fall. We will all fall."
"We must carry this in our hearts... that what we have is special."
"That it can be taken from us, and when it is taken from us, we will be tested."
"We will be tested to our very souls. We will now all be tested."
"It is these times, it is this pain, that allows us to look inside ourselves."