TOP THREE
WHO Recommends the First Ever Malaria Vaccine: Has nothing to do with COVID or U.S. schools, but this is historic. More to the point - it will save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in sub-Saharan Africa.
The vaccine, Mosquirix, was developed by GlaxoSmithKline.
Since 2019, 2.3 million doses of Mosquirix have been administered to infants in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi in a large-scale pilot programme coordinated by the WHO. The majority of those whom the disease kills are aged under five. That programme followed a decade of clinical trials in seven African countries."
"Clinical trials of RTS,S suggested where used, the vaccine reduces the risk of contracting malaria by 40% and the risk of being admitted to hospital for severe malaria — a development that carries a high risk of death — by 30%"
"The vaccine... is the first developed for any parasitic disease. Parasites are much more complex than viruses or bacteria, and the quest for a malaria vaccine has been underway for a hundred years."
COVID Vaccine for Children:
Via Roll Call, "FDA’s internal turmoil could impact boosters, shots for kids."
"Signs of internal turmoil at the Food and Drug Administration are raising concerns among former agency officials as widely anticipated deadlines on COVID-19 boosters and vaccines for children near."
"The chaos in the vaccines office also underscores the fact that, nine months into the Biden administration, the FDA lacks a permanent leader. The White House has yet to nominate a commissioner."
"Peter Marks is not a vaccine expert,” said Norman Baylor, president of Biologics Consulting Group and former director of the FDA’s vaccines office. “He doesn’t have the years of regulating vaccines or understanding vaccinology like Phil and Marion.”
Speaking of Dr. Marks, "Dr. Peter Marks said EUA wasn't the obstacle to accelerating development of vaccines for children, saying in hindsight: "as soon as we had evidence of real effectiveness back in November of 2020 ... we probably should have hit the pedal to the metal, so to speak"
"Sweden and Denmark are pausing the use of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine for younger age groups after reports of possible rare cardiovascular side effects."
"Denmark said that, while it used the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine as its main option for people aged 12-17 years, it had decided to pause giving the Moderna vaccine to people below 18 according to a "precautionary principle".
"The Danish Health Authority said it had made the decision even as "heart inflammation is an extremely rare side effect that often has a mild course and goes away on its own".
School Quarantines Keep Too Many Kids at Home — With Barely Any Effect On Covid: Argues Jeffrey Vergales and Monica Gandhi in the Washington Post.
"With a pathogen as contagious as the delta variant of the coronavirus, there is a place for quarantines in the public health tool kit. But it’s important that they pass a basic cost-benefit test: The risks of quarantine, in a given situation, must be outweighed by the risk of contracting the virus."
"But in many cases, quarantines are probably doing more harm than good — given the well-documented costs, intellectual and social, of keeping children out of school and the low rates of transmission of the coronavirus within schools."
"These low transmission rates contrast starkly with the significant spread demonstrated in informal indoor gatherings or households. And these school transmission studies were conducted well before widespread vaccination of adults (who originated the majority of in-school transmission)."
"This may be a testament to the layered mitigation strategies that schools have implemented in this country — including masking, physical distancing and testing. (Although studies from around the world, examining school systems with vastly different approaches to masking, testing and distancing — including in Norway, Canada, Germany, France, Ireland and Australia — affirm that in-school transmission remains rare across multiple contexts.)"
"...a mere 0.2 percent of L.A. students sent home to quarantine tested positive for the coronavirus."
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Rapid Tests:
"The U.S. government is committing to purchase an additional 180 million rapid COVID-19 tests for $1 billion, adding to the $2 billion test buying plan it announced in September, a top U.S. health official said on Wednesday."
How Many COVID-19 Hospitalizations and Deaths Can Be Averted if States Immediately Accelerate Their Vaccination Efforts?: New modeling/forecast study.
"The model predicts that through the end of March 2022, increasing daily COVID-19 vaccination by 50 percent starting in September would prevent a total of approximately 19,500 hospitalizations and 6,900 deaths across the 10 states studied."
"The total number of estimated hospitalizations potentially averted by the end of March 2022 ranges from 65 in New Hampshire to 5,056 in Texas. The total number of estimated deaths potentially averted ranges from 10 in New Hampshire to 1,441 in Florida."
Children and COVID-19: AAP's State Data Report
5.9 million total child COVID-19 cases reported, and children represented 16.2% of all cases
173,469 child COVID-19 cases were reported the past week from 9/23/21-9/30/21 and represented 26.7% of the weekly reported cases
Children were 0.00%-0.26% of all COVID-19 deaths
Cases are falling in the south, dipping in the west, but rising in the midwest and northeast.
Covid-19 Infections in Kids Are Lower in States With Higher Vaccination Rates: Great must read long piece from the Washington Post
STATE
California:
Doug Lemov Op-Ed: Pandemic learning loss is real. Schools must follow the science to make up for it
Disturbing video of parents opposing vaccines confronting parents walking their kids to Hawthorne Elementary School.
Georgia: Atlanta school leaders scramble to meet high demand for virtual learning
Illinois: CPS shortens quarantine time from 14 to 10 days.
"More than 15,000 CPS students had been traced as close contacts of someone found to be in a school while they were infectious with COVID-19. But of those students, only 1.6% have tested positive for the virus."
"Surveillance testing, for those without symptoms, was at about a 0.2% positive rate"
Tennessee: OpEd: "Communities in Schools program connects resources with rural students in need."
Texas: Plano ISD has more than 1,100 students (approximately 2% of all students) in its Virtual Academy
RESOURCES
Flush With COVID-19 Aid, Schools Steer Funding to Sports: Via the AP
"When school officials in Whitewater, Wisconsin, learned they would be getting $2 million in pandemic relief this year, they decided to use most of it to cover their current budget, freeing up $1.6 million in local funding to build new synthetic turf fields for football, baseball and softball."
"In September, the Pulaski County school board in Kentucky allocated $1 million in pandemic aid to resurface two outdoor tracks. Superintendent Patrick Richardson called it a health-and-wellness project that falls within the scope of the federal funding, saying it will “allow our students to be taken out for mask breaks, by class, in a safe environment.”
"Federal officials failed to provide clear funding guidelines, while state education departments didn’t police their schools’ spending, said Terra Wallin, an associate director of the Education Trust. She also questioned whether districts spending on athletics have considered what’s best for students."
Immigration, Education, Entrepreneurship: Udemy filed for an IPO. The founder's letter in Udemy's S-1 is amazing - and inspirational.
SESP Launches New Research-Practice Partnership with $5.8-Million Grant: "Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy (SESP) received a $5.8-million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support an innovative partnership that links University researchers and Curriculum Associates."
Great Segment: When Virginia Waller-Torres was caught in a flash flood last month in DC, she prayed for help. Shortly after, out of nowhere, a group of Marines arrived. They were Marines known as the "Body Bearers" from Arlington National Cemetery. Steve Hartman tells the story.