Top Three
Our Playbook to Fight Covid-19 is Outdated. Here Are 10 Updates for 2022: Joseph Allen in the Washington Post.
“Fully vaccinated” should mean you’ve received a booster shot.
Stop equating all control strategies.
Where all people are vaccinated, we should do away with mask mandates and distancing requirements.
Yes, ventilation still matters.
The CDC must update metrics for when to mask.
One-way masking is fine.
Make rapid antigen tests the gold standard for testing instead of PCR tests.
Isolation periods should be reduced from 10 days to five.
Close contacts should not be sent home for quarantine.
Masks for kids in schools should be optional in the new year.
Where Are The Students?: For a second straight year, school enrollment is dropping, NPR reports.
"We compiled the latest headcount data directly from more than 600 districts in 23 states and Washington, D.C., including statewide data from Massachusetts, Georgia and Alabama."
"New York City's school enrollment dropped by about 38,000 students last school year and another 13,000 this year."
"In Los Angeles, the student population declined by 17,000 students last school year, and nearly 9,000 this year."
"In the Chicago public schools, enrollment dropped by 14,000 last year, and another 10,000 this year."
"The National Association of Independent Schools comprises private, non-parochial schools. They report a net enrollment growth of 1.7% over the two pandemic years. There's a particularly big rebound in private preschool enrollment in the NAIS sample. That number dropped dramatically between 2019-20 and 2020-21, but then grew 21% this fall for a net growth of 6% over two years."
"In New York City, the KIPP charter school network opened three new schools this fall, fueling an enrollment jump of 11 percent. In fact, KIPP schools in the city grew during both pandemic years, to a total of 7,150 students."
Covid’s Deadly Trade-offs, By the Numbers: How Each State Has Fared in the Pandemic: Via Politico.
"States that imposed more restrictions such as stay-at-home orders and mask requirements did experience lower rates of death and hospitalizations. But they also tended to have worse economic and educational outcomes."
"States whose economies are heavily dependent on tourism suffered the most economically, with Hawaii and Nevada hit hardest."
"Overall, rural states tended to fare better than more urbanized states on economic and educational outcomes."
Omicron
Omicron and Children: “Preliminary data from South Africa suggests that children have a higher risk of hospital admission from Omicron than from previous waves of infection with other variants,” says Professor Lawrence Young, of Warwick University.
"The research Professor Young pointed to was a new real-world study from the South Africa Medical Research Council (SAMRC) and insurance firm Discovery Health suggested children have a 20% higher risk of hospital admission after infection in this wave than in the first wave."
Mild Omicron Could Still Be Bad: Via Politico: "Mild Covid-19 can still cause a whole lot of illness, a whole lot of economic disruption, a whole lot of strain on health care systems around the world."
“I’m very worried,” said Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer at the American Society of State and Territorial Health Officials."
"For instance, if the fatality rate for Omicron turned out to be only one-fourth of that for “original” Covid, but Omicron infected four times as many people, then the same number of lives would be lost. “It’s the math,” said Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at NYU."
Challenges in Inferring Intrinsic Severity of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant: New study and thread.
"We specifically consider the additional impact of existing population immunity on estimates of intrinsic virulence, using the example of early evidence of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 emerging in South Africa."
"Without accounting for vaccination rates and prior infections, among other factors, the true risk of severe infection will be systematically underestimated."
"At the time of writing it is premature to consider Omicron infections to be intrinsically milder that those caused by preceding variants."
Fauci Says Omicron-Specific Booster Not Needed: Via Axios, "Dr. Anthony Fauci said that there is “no need for a variant-specific booster” at this time because research shows that the current U.S. booster vaccine programs are effective against Omicron."
“If you are unvaccinated, get vaccinated, and particularly in the arena of Omicron, if you are fully vaccinated, get your booster shot.”
WHO: "Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant. We're concerned that people are dismissing omicron as mild. Surely we have learned by now that we underestimate this virus at our peril."
Who Has What? Omicron Raises Stakes for Quick Covid Sequencing: Via Bloomberg.
“If we end up in a place where there’s a serious mix of delta and omicron in various parts of the country then it might require a rapid genome test” to figure out which variant each patient has and which drugs to use, outgoing National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said in an interview. “We need to develop ways to do that without having to have a high-tech laboratory in every clinical facility.”
"That’s far from being a reality now. Even after U.S. President Joe Biden pledged some $1.7 billion toward sequencing efforts, the country still lags nations such as the U.K. in identifying new varieties of the coronavirus. Going from a Covid-19 swab to a reported mutation in the U.S. can take anywhere from 10 days to three weeks."
UK: Reports 78,610 new coronavirus cases, by far the biggest one-day increase on record.
‘Tip of the Spear’: As New Variant Spreads, One Campus All But Shuts Down Amid Covid Surge: Via Chronicle of Higher Education
"Cornell University shut down all campus activities on Tuesday and moved final exams online after more than 700 students tested positive over three days. In a campus message, President Martha Pollack said there was evidence of the omicron variant in a “significant” number of samples," the AP reports.
"Hours later, Princeton University moved its exams online and urged students to leave campus “at their earliest convenience” amid a rise in cases. On Wednesday, New York University canceled all non-academic events and encouraged professors to move finals online."
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra: “Hinted on Tuesday that the Biden administration may need to ask Congress for more money to fight the coronavirus pandemic, depending on the scope and severity of a potential new wave of infections fueled by the Omicron variant.”
HHS Forecast Shows Omicron Stretching U.S. Covid Testing Supply: Via Politico
"Internal modeling developed by the HHS Department’s Testing and Diagnostic Working Group projects that the nation's supply could be stretched by the need to conduct 3 to 5 million tests per day by late January or early February — a sharp increase from current daily levels of more than 1.6 million."
Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies Overcome SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Antigenic Shift: New study comparing all the vaccines. I labeled them so it’s easier to compare.
Sinovac Biotech's Vaccine: "The vaccine made by Sinovac Biotech Ltd., one of the most widely used in the world, doesn’t provide sufficient antibodies in two doses to neutralize the omicron variant and boosters will likely be needed to improve protection, initial lab findings showed."
"Among a group of 25 people vaccinated with two Coronavac doses, none showed sufficient antibodies in their blood serum to neutralize the omicron variant, said a statement from a team of researchers at the University of Hong Kong released late Tuesday night."
"The picture improved somewhat when a booster shot was added into the mix, with Sinovac’s lab results showing that among a group of 48 people who had received three doses, 45 of them, or 94%, had sufficient antibodies to neutralize omicron, the company said."
Federal
White House: I missed this, but the President put out an unusually rare statement yesterday about Pfizer's antiviral pill that is pending authorization by the FDA.
“If this treatment is indeed authorized — and once the pills are widely available — it will mark a significant step forward in our path out of the pandemic.”
Build Back Better:
“President Biden and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) are locked in a disagreement over how long programs in the Build Back Better agenda should be funded,” Axios reports.
Via Punchbowl:
"Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) hasn’t committed to voting for the $1.7 trillion package, or even beginning debate on it. Some of the Senate panels have yet to meet with the parliamentarian’s office to begin vetting their committee titles to make sure they’re in compliance with the Byrd Rule, which controls consideration of reconciliation bills. And Democrats don’t have consensus on the state and local tax deduction (SALT), a major issue for blue state Democrats like Schumer, who is also up for reelection this cycle."
Vox, "Unless Congress passes the Build Back Better Act, the child tax credit will end in December."
COVID-19 Research
U.S. Hits 800,000 Covid Deaths 22 Months After the First: Statista.
At 5pm tonight, the Washington National Cathedral tolled its mourning bell 800 times -- once for every 1,000 dead.
The U.S. COVID-19 Vaccination Program at One Year: How Many Deaths and Hospitalizations Were Averted?: Via The Commonwealth Fund.
"In the absence of a vaccination program, there would have been approximately 1.1 million additional COVID-19 deaths and more than 10.3 million additional COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. by November 2021."
"Without the U.S. vaccination program, COVID-19 deaths would have been approximately 3.2 times higher and COVID-19 hospitalizations approximately 4.9 times higher than the actual toll during 2021."
"If no one had been vaccinated, daily deaths from COVID-19 could have jumped to as high as 21,000 per day — nearly 5.2 times the level of the record peak of more than 4,000 deaths per day recorded in January 2021."
Will We Always Need Covid-19 Boosters?: Great article over at Stat.
“If you wait six months or more between a priming and boost, what you see is not just a boosting of the immunity that you got from the first vaccine, but you see a broadening of the immune response so that it recognizes other viruses or other variants. Your immune response becomes much more cross-protective,” said David Topham, an immunologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center and director of the New York Influenza Center of Excellence."
“What I think could ultimately happen is that by a prime, second, and then a third boost and who knows, maybe a fourth boost, you get a level of protection that would sort of transform all of this to overwhelmingly an asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic infection. So that it starts to drift much, much more towards the common cold coronaviruses,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease."
Sanofi’s Vaccine Showed Promise as a Booster: Via NYT.
Cost of COVID Hospitalizations: A new study by FAIR Health reported first in Axios.
New Jersey had the highest average in-network cost for COVID hospitalizations, at an average of $128,650.
Maryland had the lowest average in-network cost, at $49,127.
"The median length of stay for patients with a complex hospitalization for COVID-19 decreased from a high of 13 days in April 2020 to a low of 7 days in July 2021."
"Patients with zero comorbidities constituted nearly half (49.4 percent) of all patients diagnosed with COVID-19"
State
California: California mask mandates are back amid omicron's rise. Here's how well they fared vs. delta.
"How stringent a county's COVID-19 restrictions were appears to be correlated to the county's vaccination rates, with counties with higher vaccination rates also appearing more willing to enact policies like mask mandates."
"When analyzing that middle portion of the graph, it's difficult to come away with the takeaway that mask mandates led to lower peak case rates."
"Take for instance, Stanislaus County and San Bernardino County, both of which have a total population vaccination rate of 53%. Stanislaus reinstated an indoor mask mandate while San Bernardino did not, but still saw a much higher case rate (56 cases per 100,000 residents to 39.1 cases per 100,000 residents)."
"Even when comparing neighboring counties with similar vaccination rates, the trend of the county without the mandate having the lower peak case rate continues. Orange County (no mask mandate) had a peak per capita case rate of 24.7, while Los Angeles County (mask mandate) had a peak rate of 32.1. Furthermore, Placer (no mandate) had a peak rate of 48.7 while Nevada (mandate) had a rate of 70.6."
Maryland: Prince George's County Public Schools closes three schools until Jan. 3 due to rising COVID cases.
Minnesota: Surgery delays grow severe amid COVID-19 hospital crowding.
"Delayed surgeries are a downstream consequence of the pandemic and the pressure it has placed on Minnesota's hospitals, which on Monday reported 1,636 COVID-19 cases in inpatient beds and only 21 open adult intensive care beds."
"COVID-19 patients made up 21% of the 7,794 hospitalizations in Minnesota on Monday, the highest share all year."
Montana: School districts get $2.7 million for COVID surveillance programs.
Wisconsin: School district moves to distance learning due to bus driver shortage.
International
UK: "Boris Johnson suffered the biggest rebellion of his leadership last night as nearly 100 Conservative MPs voted against plans for Covid passes."
Economic Recovery
Producer Price Index: Which measures what suppliers are charging their customers — increased 9.6% year-over-year in November, the largest such figure on record since the data was first collected in 2010.
"The higher-than-expected producer-price numbers suggest that consumer inflation... will stay elevated into 2022 as price pressures persist," the WSJ reports.
Leveraging Registered Apprenticeship to Build a Thriving and Inclusive Economy: Via NGA
Resources
The Pandemic Hit Vulnerable Students Hardest. Now, Schools Have to Reckon With the Effects: Via EdWeek.
Is Hybrid Learning Killing Teaching?: Via Robert Pondiscio.
Broadband:
White House wants universal broadband by 2030, but funding could take years to deliver, CNBC reports.
Biden’s ambitious broadband funding has a key impediment: an outdated map of who needs it, via Washington Post.
Bear vs Reindeer: I feel like there's some sort of a metaphor here...