TOP THREE
Covid-19 Testing Is Keeping Some Students in School and Out of Quarantine: Via WSJ
"One pilot study, not yet peer-reviewed, found that daily rapid testing of school-related close contacts didn’t lead to a substantial increase in Covid-19 transmission compared with quarantine among students at some 160 schools and colleges. Less than 2% of close contacts who were exposed eventually tested positive."
"Health and education officials in states including Massachusetts and Illinois are leveraging existing testing infrastructure to offer frequent testing as an alternative to quarantine"
After Tracking Covid Spread in Kids, Israeli Researchers Urge Vaccination: A new study comparing how Covid spread in more than 21,000 children up to 9 years old before and after Alpha’s emergence found that transmission rates doubled but hospitalization rates fell. More via Stat
"Those results mirror what happened in adults: The virus was more contagious but didn’t necessarily lead to more severe illness."
"The researchers point out that that greater spread happened despite adults’ vaccine uptake, “highlighting the importance of making Covid-19 vaccine available for young children."
"Nonpharmacologic measures such as lockdown and school closure could not account for the difference in transmission since they were used during both periods.”
Australian Study Finds Children Less Likely to Spread COVID-19 in Schools: The National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) examined the 51 NSW schools and childcare centres that had COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the Delta outbreak from June 16 to July 31. More via the Guardian. Study here.
Despite a five-fold increase in the spread of COVID-19 in NSW schools, only 2% of infected children required care in hospital.
"The highest rate of spread was actually amongst unvaccinated adult staff, and particularly unvaccinated adult staff in childcare centres," Professor Macartney said. "The spread of virus also occurred from adults to children, but the spread between children themselves was very low."
FEDERAL
AmeriCorps and CDC Launch Public Health AmeriCorps: And seek proposals to build a new generation of public health leaders.
CTC: New TPC paper suggests an expanded Child Tax Credit would reduce child poverty to below 10 percent in nearly all states.
Reconciliation:
Manchin backs as little as $1 trillion of Biden's $3.5 trillion plan, Axios reports.
"House Democrats are privately clashing with their Senate Democratic counterparts and the White House... around permanently funding the Affordable Care Act -- Obamacare -- as well as potentially expanding both Medicare and Medicaid." "House Democrats floated a new proposal on Tuesday night that Senate Democrats and White House officials privately believe will cost more than $3.5 trillion overall," Punchbowl reports.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Children and COVID-19: State Data Report from AAP
Nearly 252,000 children tested positive for COVID-19 last week, marking the largest increase of pediatric cases in a week since the pandemic began.
Boosters: WHO urges Covid vaccine booster moratorium until 2022.
Americans Losing Confidence In the CDC: A new Gallup poll finds just 32% of Americans think that the CDC has communicated a clear plan of action in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Association Between School Closures and Child Mental Health During COVID-19: Study in JAMA
"In this survey study of 2324 adults with at least 1 school-aged child, a small association between school closures and worse child mental health outcomes was observed, with older children and children from families with lower income experiencing more mental health problems associated with school closures."
"Children from lower-income families, along with children of Black and Hispanic parents, were much less likely to attend school in person than their peers from higher-income families or with White parents, consistent with prior research"
"Attending school remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with disproportionate mental health consequences for older and Black and Hispanic children as well as children from families with lower income."
Have We Reached Delta Peak? Trevor Bedford with a good analysis over on Twitter. A few takeaways:
"We see a striking pattern in which most states have a moderate spring wave comprised of a mix of Alpha and other variants, but show a large Delta wave in the summer"
"At this point, it seems highly likely that the next impactful variant will emerge as a sub-lineage from within Delta diversity, bearing additional mutations on top of Delta's mutations. Consequently, I would urge that the regulatory process for vaccine updates begin"
"I would guess that school term forcing won't be enough to flip Rt above 1, but school term + seasonality + waning may well be enough to do so. This would suggest case loads picking up again later in the fall, but I'd expect some decrease in the intervening weeks."
An Interview with Zeynep Tufekci about Lessons from the Pandemic and the Crisis of Authority: Good piece over at Stratechery
"I think it got worse over the past year, actually. I think we’ve gotten even more confused because with the polarization and the sort of turbulence around information got worse, not necessarily better over the whole year."
"Right now what we’re having is in the U.S., the administration has just put out a press release saying they’re going to do boosters for people in the U.S. for third boosters starting as early as September 20th. There was just a meeting by the actual committee that would decide this, and they were like, “We don’t have any such data, and Pfizer says they will file something around October and then we’ll look at it.” So you’ve just had the situation in which instead of becoming more credible, you have these Twitter fights between people who agree with, “Yeah, let’s go ahead and do it,” and people who really disagree with it for a bunch of reasons. I’m not going to comment on who I think is right, because that’s completely irrelevant to the question, which is that we shouldn’t be having this kind of confusion 18 months into a pandemic on do we need a third booster."
COVID Trends Among Kids: By Your Local Epidemiologist, Katelyn Jetelina
"The first graph is the Winter wave; the second graph is the Delta wave."
"The order of colors is drastically different. Before Delta, kids were at the bottom. During Delta, 12-17 years olds are at the top. Followed closely by 5-11 year olds."
STATE
California: Tracking the coronavirus in LAUSD schools.
Florida:
Florida judge rules to set aside stay, allowing mask mandates in schools.
St. Johns County public schools recorded 881 COVID cases — more than 25 times the number of cases in the district after the first 14 school days of the 2020 school year.
Georgia: Griffin-Spalding County school system goes virtual after 3 bus workers die.
"Officials said about 45 drivers were protesting Tuesday. That’s about 20% of bus drivers in what is Georgia’s largest school district outside metro Atlanta, with 36,000 students. School officials say they’ve pressed other employees into driving buses but acknowledged “the possibility of delays.”
Louisiana: Jefferson Parish may not be able to reopen public schools until October. 30 campuses sustained major damage in Hurricane Ida; two might be destroyed.
Michigan: Therapy dogs comfort kids on first day of school.
New York: There's now a prediction market on if NYC schools will remain open by Oct 15. The market is suggesting 85% yes, schools will be open.
Quick aside, here's some background on prediction markets which is also covered in the great book, Wisdom of the Crowds.
Oregon: To keep K-12 open amid COVID-19, Oregon’s schools chief asks students to try not to gather outside school hours.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Record Job Openings: “U.S. employers posted a record job openings for the second consecutive month in July — more affirmation that the labor market is bouncing back from last year’s coronavirus recession,” the AP reports.
“Job openings rose to 10.9 million in July, up from the previous record of 10.2 million in June.”
There are more jobs than people looking for jobs - 8.7 million of those out of work in July were looking for jobs.
RESOURCES
Learning Engineering Tools Competition: The competition will award at least $3 million in prizes to education technologists, researchers, students and teachers. Key themes for this year will include:
Accelerated learning
Assessment
Tools that support research-driven experimentation
Adult learning
How Will America Recover From a Broken School Year? A NYT discussion with
Brian Coleman is the chairman of the counseling department at Jones College Prep, a selective public high school in Chicago. In 2019, he won the award for National School Counselor of the Year.
Andrea Hunley is the principal of Center for Inquiry School 2, an award-winning public magnet school in Indianapolis for kindergarten through eighth grade.
Meira Levinson is a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and former middle-school teacher in the Atlanta and Boston public schools.
Pedro Martinez is the superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District.
Jenny Radesky is a developmental behavioral pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School.
Penny Schwinn is the education commissioner for Tennessee.
Many Schools Are Buying High-Tech Air Purifiers. What Should Parents Know?: ViaKHN.
To Quarantine or Not: The Hard Choices Schools Are Leaving to Parents and Staff: Via KHN.
Parent Survey: Latest results from the EdChoice/Morning Consult poll. Summary / Parent Crosstabs
Jump! Wisconsin fans ‘Jump Around’ for the first time in two years.