TOP THREE
Boosters: ACIP meeting today (Agenda and presentation materials)
Voted unanimously to approve Moderna and Johnson & Johnson booster doses.
"Under the recommendations, mRNA vaccine recipients who are older than 65, adults in long-term care settings and who are aged 50 to 64 with specific underlying medical conditions “should receive” a booster shot."
"The ACIP also advised that mRNA vaccine recipients under 50 with specific underlying medical conditions and under 65 at increased risk of exposure due to their occupation be permitted to receive a booster dose."
Says mix-and-match is fine. "The panel didn’t specify which vaccine should be used as a booster, leaving it up to doctors to decide whether to mix and match the companies’ doses to provide the best protection for patients."
Stat's Helen Branswell live tweeted the meeting all day.
CDC presented a slide showing that vaccination reduces hospitalization by 9 times for those over 65 and 14-15 times for those 18-64.
CDC staff recommends homologous vaccine boosters over "mix and match" heterologous boosters which differs in part from the FDA which took no position.
CDC, Masks, and Vaccines: CDC Director Walensky said the agency would not be changing its guidance that all teachers, students and staff wear masks in schools regardless of vaccination status.
"Others endorse the measure but say it is important to indicate when children can finally take off their masks. “Masks in schools were meant to be a temporary measure. It is good policy and practice to establish off-ramps for interventions that aren’t meant to be permanent,” wrote Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo on Twitter."
COVID-era Learning Challenges LAUSD After School Closures: "A first-of-its-kind Los Angeles Times analysis of data offers a particularly alarming assessment of the impact on L.A. students, showing deep drops in assessment scores or below grade-level standing in key areas of learning. Black, Latino and other vulnerable children have been particularly hard hit."
"The gap in grades that existed before the pandemic between Black and Latino students and white and Asian counterparts widened to as much as 21 percentage points."
"Elementary school reading scores dropped 7 percentage points overall, while gaps between Black and Latino students and white and Asian classmates grew to 26 percentage points or more."
"More than 200,000 students are not meeting grade-level goals in math and reading."
"At the elementary school level, about 21% of all students who were assessed toward the end of the 2020-2021 school year were meeting grade-level goals. For Black and Latino students, it was fewer than 18%, compared with about 43% of Asian students and 34% of white student"
"During the 2018-2019 school year, about 59% of students met University of California and California State University admissions requirements. For the class of 2022, about 46% of students are on track to meet the requirements — with a gap of 17 percentage points or more between Black and Latino students and white and Asian students."
"Ada Mendoza is among the many parents who are anxious and say their children are in urgent need of help. Her now 8-year-old son was excelling in first grade when schools closed their doors. "Now he is in third grade — a time when educators say it’s crucial for students to become proficient readers — and Mendoza sees the deep void in his learning. “I put him down to write and he doesn’t remember his letters,” she said. " I ask him to read and he says he can’t remember how.” “We need help now,” she said."
FEDERAL
ED: Catherine Lhamon was narrowly confirmed for serving as the assistant secretary for civil rights.
Vice President Kamala Harris was needed to break a Senate tie - the 11th time she has had to do so since taking office.
FutureEd has a helpful who's who tracker for ED.
Commerce: Announces first round of awards for American Rescue Plan programs
"24 states were awarded $1 million each in grants through an Economic Development Administration (EDA) program for planning initiatives aimed at tackling states’ recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, creating jobs and supporting economic development."
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Half Doses, Third Doses, Kids’ Doses: Stat News reports that Covid vaccine delivery goes next-level difficult.
"And then there’s Pfizer’s shot for kids ages 5 to 11, a population of 28 million. The FDA’s advisers are meeting to discuss Pfizer’s vaccine for 5 to 11 year olds next Tuesday, which means it could be available soon after that. The vaccine will come in a different vial than the company’s adult shot, and use a smaller needle to deliver the 10-microgram dose instead of the 30-microgram dose used for youths and adults 12 and older."
Large Israeli Study Finds Pfizer Vaccine Kept Teens Safe from Delta: Researchers analyzing data of over 94,000 vaccinated adolescents and the same number of unimmunized finds those who got the shot are 90% less likely to get the coronavirus. More in NEJM.
Scientists Search for Cause of MIS-C: More than 5,200 of the 6.2 million U.S. children diagnosed with Covid have developed MIS-C.
"About 80 percent of MIS-C patients are treated in intensive care units, 20 percent require mechanical ventilation, and 46 have died."
How Will Blue America Live With Covid?: Interesting NYT Ross Douthat column:
"By now, it’s generally understood that we are not going to see the end of Covid on any simple timetable and that what we should expect instead is a world where the disease becomes something that we live with — as an endemic illness transformed by the combination of vaccinations, boosters and immunity from prior infection into a tolerable risk."
"But for areas with high vaccination rates, especially, a crucial question is what happens when we get there. What does adapting permanently to endemic Covid look like in places — especially blue states, and especially their most liberal enclaves — that have relied on stringent measures whenever cases surge?"
"The endpoint of this path is an equilibrium with more voluntary masking every winter (against the flu as well as Covid), maybe some mask requirements for holiday-season travelers, but none of the permanent-emergency measures that libertarians have feared from the start."
But I can also imagine other scenarios. Last week the virologist and prolific pandemic-era tweeter Trevor Bedford speculated that the United States could see 40,000 to 100,000 deaths annually from endemic Covid. That range is vastly lower than the pandemic death rate, but it’s moderately higher than estimates for the seasonal flu and probably high enough to keep case and fatality numbers in the headlines in 2022 and beyond."
"Especially since the culture of deep-blue America is caught up in the same toxic feedback loops of polarization as deep-red America. If certain forms of Republican insouciance about Covid are forged in the fires of cultural resentment, in which you reject Faucian micromanagement by ditching masks and refusing the vaccine, certain forms of liberal overregulation seem forged in fear of red American contagion — in which we just have to mask our kids indefinitely, even though many other developed countries aren’t doing it, because we need to set an example of seriousness to shame all those red-state anti-maskers."
STATE
California: Florida: Gov. DeSantis will convene a special session to combat coronavirus vaccine mandates.
Georgia: Atlanta Public Schools offers $3,000 bonus to recruit virtual teachers.
Hawaii:
Nearly 60 public schools are part of surveillance COVID testing program.
Teachers union rallies at DOE headquarters over COVID safety concerns at schools.
Maryland: "FOX45 News filed a public records request with Baltimore, Howard, Anne Arundel, Harford and Carroll County Public Schools. We asked each school system for student achievement and grading data similar to the numbers that Baltimore City gave us."
New Jersey: Parent group continues to press Gov Murphy on virtual school option.
Virginia: 7News goes one-on-one with Virginia gubernatorial candidates McAuliffe and Youngkin. There's a lot of interest in this race and what it means for the 36 gubernatorial races next year. It's useful to watch these interviews to understand the debate around CRT, vaccine mandates, and other education issues.
INTERNATIONAL
Australia: Most of the Covid-19 spread in schools and early childcare centers during Australia’s Delta wave was driven by staff, new research suggests..
"In NSW, the highest transmission risks were between staff members and from staff to children."
New Zealand: The New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) has criticized the Government’s plan to reopen schools for senior secondary students, arguing the decision doesn’t align with previous public health advice.
UK: The "Covid Generation" face a lifetime loss of earnings as a result of the disruption to their education by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Children now in school are likely to lose between £16,000 and £46,000 each ($22,000 to $63,000) over the course of their working lives, around 1-3% of the total they could expect to earn.
This amounts to a total loss of earnings of between £78bn to £463bn ($107bn to $637bn), according to a report published today by the Education Policy Institute (EPI). (not the EPI we know in US).
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Western Governors University and NGA Announce Strategic Partnership: The partnership will focus on four areas:
Skills Ecosystem: WGU is supporting states to learn about, develop, and implement the newest workforce technologies through NGA’s State Strategies for Skills and Lifelong Learning Systems conference.
The Workforce Innovation Network (WIN), partially funded by WGU, will provide grants to select states to advance digital skill development for equitable economic participation in alignment with state workforce and economic development goals.
Broadband Access: WGU and NGA will create best practices for states to advance policies to make broadband ubiquitous, affordable, and accessible so all people can participate in modern education and work.
NGA Chairman’s Initiative: WGU will support the NGA and Chairman Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas to promote best practices in education that include computer science as an imperative for the security of states and the country and as a path to thriving careers for individuals.
Amazon: Is now a bigger shipper in the U.S. than FedEx.
How Working From Home Could Change Where Innovation Happens: Via WSJ
"This shift has profound implications for where and how innovation will happen. Tech-company engineers and other professionals moving farther from the office could bring tech expertise to places that have long sought to add it. And big companies in coastal hubs now have the ability to tap into talent pools farther afield."
"According to a survey commissioned by the Atlantic, 35% of working Americans, or about 50 million people, were working remotely at the peak of the pandemic-era work-from-home trend, in May 2020."
RESOURCES
Tip for Implementing School Covid Testing: From AASA
New Study Shows Reading Remediation in Middle School Led More Students to Attend College and Earn Degrees: Via The 74
"The study, accepted for publication at the Journal of Public Economics, finds that Florida middle schoolers who were assigned to complete a year of remedial instruction in English earned higher scores in state testing; those effects diminished over time, but the same students saw an impressive range of benefits as time went on, including higher rates of college enrollment and degree attainment."
Post-Pandemic Schooling Emphasizing Social Emotional Learning: Report from Tyton Partners, CASEL, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Easy On Me: Adele's new song covered by the Ndlovu Youth Choir