COVID-19 Policy Update #422
Wednesday 1/26
Top Three
The Case Against Masks at School: Via Margery Smelkinson, Leslie Bienen, and Jeanne Noble in The Atlantic.
"Now, however, two years into this pandemic, keeping unproven measures in place is no longer justifiable. Although no district is likely to roll back COVID policies in the middle of the Omicron surge, at the top of the list of policies we should rethink once the wave recedes is mandatory masks for kids at school."
"We reviewed a variety of studies—some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting, and others touted by media to the same end—to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination. We came up empty-handed."
"This isn’t to say that these studies conclusively demonstrate that masks have no benefit in schools, but that any effect they have, if they have one, is tangled up in these other variables."
"Comparisons of counties in California that did and did not have mask mandates showed that vaccination rates were highly predictive of hospitalization rates, but mask mandates were not."
"To justify mask requirements in school at this point, health officials should be able to muster solid evidence from randomized trials of masking in children. To date, however, only two randomized trials have measured the impact of masks on COVID transmission. The first was conducted in Denmark in the spring of 2020 and found no significant effect of masks on reducing COVID-19 transmission. The second is a much-covered study conducted in Bangladesh that reported that surgical masks (but not cloth) were modestly effective at reducing rates of symptomatic infection. However, neither of these studies included children, let alone vaccinated children."
"Imposing on millions of children an intervention that provides little discernible benefit, on the grounds that we have not yet gathered solid evidence of its negative effects, violates the most basic tenet of medicine: First, do no harm."
What Now? How Pandemics End: Via Katelyn Jetelina
What's next?
Omicron infection will help, but we don’t know for how long
The virus will mutate, but we don’t know how.
There has to be a global response.
How do we prepare?
Increase vaccine uptake.
Continue to wear masks. "Masks, on average, reduce transmission by 56%."
Invest in better filtration systems.
Scale up antigen testing
Increase supply of therapeutics
Strengthen surveillance
Communicate. "We desperately need top down communication. The CDC needs to come out from hiding and let their experts talk. We need weekly updates. But, more than that, we need a plan. We need to develop and communicate offramps and goals. If public health officials don’t, then other people will. And, when we don’t like their plan, we have no right to complain."
SCOTUS: Justice Breyer will retire at the end of the term.
Who might President Biden nominate? Axios and David Lat have ideas. The Hill also has a good list.
Via Punchbowl, "Secondly, before you go crazy over this, a senior Biden administration source says the president won’t nominate Vice President Kamala Harris for the Supreme Court. So let’s squash this one before the speculation even gets started. We were told by a senior White House source that the nominee will be a judge."
Via Politico, "Democrats’ razor-thin majority will have to make history to confirm Stephen Breyer’s successor to the Supreme Court. A 50-50 Senate has never done it before."
Federal
ED: Is hosting a "COVID Testing in K-12: A “How To” Webinar on Jan. 28 and Feb 4.
FCC: Commits another $240 million in Emergency Connectivity Funding. Total commitments to date are supporting over 10,500 schools, 860 libraries, and nearly 120 consortia for nearly 9.6 million connected devices and nearly 4.9 million broadband connections.
COVID-19 Research
UK Study Suggests Two Thirds Infected With Omicron Had COVID Before: Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission Findings out of the UK: Among the 3,582 swab-positive individuals reporting whether or not they had had previous infection, 2,315 (64.6%) reported confirmed previous COVID-19."
Israeli Study Finds The Rate of Heart Problems In Vaccinated Boys Is Slightly Higher Than Expected: "Boys between 12 and 15 years of age have a small but increased risk of heart problems after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Israeli researchers reported on Wednesday."
"Myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, occurred in 1 of 12,361 boys of this age group within a week of receiving the second dose, the study found. The cases were mild, and the side effect remains uncommon."
FDA Limits Use of Regeneron and Lilly COVID Antibody Treatments: In its new advisory to health care providers, the FDA said Regeneron is 1,000 times less effective against Omicron than against previous variants.
"Because data show these treatments are highly unlikely to be active against the omicron variant, which is circulating at a very high frequency throughout the United States, these treatments are not authorized for use in any U.S. states, territories, and jurisdictions at this time. In the future, if patients in certain geographic regions are likely to be infected or exposed to a variant that is susceptible to these treatments, then use of these treatments may be authorized in these regions."
It’s worth nothing that both Regeneron and Eli Lilly say they agree with the FDA that these drugs aren’t effective against Omicron.
But, via Scott Gottlieb, "Lilly has substantial supply of phase III ready antibody with preserved activity against Omicron. We need a paradigm to allow new antibodies to be authorized quickly based on clinical safety data and in vitro evidence of effectiveness against new variants"
"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis immediately condemned the move, calling it a "haphazard decision," and demanded the Biden administration reverse course."
"DeSantis’ response was tame compared to that of his press secretary, Christina Pushaw, who retweeted this claim from conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich: “The FDA is trying to make it so that people in Florida die of Covid. They’ll kill people to harm Republicans. Steel yourselves for the evil that is being unleashed." The Dispatch reports.
Why Omicron Is Putting More Kids in the Hospital: Via Scientific American.
"Rong Xu, a data scientist at Case Western Reserve University, analyzed health records from nearly 80,000 children under age five who developed COVID-19 before and after the emergence of Omicron. She found that the risk of hospitalization in those who became sick when that variant was dominant was one third of what was observed when Delta reigned supreme (1 percent versus 3 percent)."
"So why the jump in hospitalized children? “The risk of hospitalization is not zero,” Xu says. “So if you multiply it by a big number—if more kids are getting infected—you are going to see a lot more kids in the hospital.”
State
Arizona:
A for Arizona Launches $6 million grant opportunity for Innovative Public Schools
Via The 74, "As COVID Closed Arizona’s Classrooms, Black Mothers Launched Their Own Microschools With Focus on Personalized Learning, Ending School to Prison Pipeline"
Maryland: The Maryland Department of Health launched a campaign - "Real Kids-Because I Said So" - to encourage parents to get their eligible kids vaccinated against COVID-19.
Massachusetts: I didn't realize this, but Boston has a dashboard of air filtration, ventilation and CO2 monitoring for all their schools, down to the classroom in some cases. Brilliant way of providing not only transparency to parents/teachers but also monitoring for COVID risk.
Michigan: Via Chalkbeat, "Why low COVID vax rates in Detroit led to more online learning."
Missouri: Attorney General sues 40 schools over mask mandates.
Texas: Starting next fall, Dallas ISD will be rolling out a full-time virtual school for 3rd through 9th graders.
Virginia:
"In fact, a lot of parents are looking for that option. So many that Chesterfield’s Virtual Learning Academy (VLA), an online option for grades K-8, had a waitlist of nearly 500 students at the start of 2022."
Parents react: VA Gov. Youngkin repeals mask mandate in schools.
Glenn Youngkin oped: Virginia’s parents can decide what’s best for their children.
Economic Recovery
What Should the White House Do To Combat Inflation? Experts Weighed In With 12 Ideas: Via The Washington Post.
Inbound and Outbound Moving: Axios reporting on United Van Lines data.
Resources
The Voice of a Silenced and Suffering Generation: Via AEI's Max Eden on a teenager who spoke out regarding masks:
"Schools don't really teach that witch-hunting was not as much a Christian phenomenon as a village phenomenon. Villagers didn't persecute young women for actual witchcraft, but rather because of the bewitching power of their oppositional intelligence. Youthful, oppositional intelligence poses a threat to the sacred order."
"Any intelligent teenager must be acutely conscious that America's woke village elders have arrogated and perverted the moral authority of God. The Book of Numbers says: "The LORD is slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness, forgiving iniquity and disobedience, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the sins of the fathers on the children."
Schools Should Normalize Pauses for Coronavirus Safety: Washington Post OpEd by three physicians.
"Each variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has presented its own challenges, and sole reliance on mitigation strategies developed for prior variants may be inadequate."
"As the coronavirus pandemic evolves and continues to change shape, we must adopt strategies that allow us to safely change with it. As with snow days — both necessary and unexpected — we advocate for implementing coronavirus-related “pauses” to allow schools time to assess and enact changes responsive to new variants. That time would facilitate ensuring robust testing, planning for staffing shortages with input from teachers and facilitating interactive virtual options for those in-need."
"To be clear, we oppose extended closures. Rather, we advocate for adopting brief (less than one week) pauses to implement necessary risk-mitigation and education-promoting strategies to ensure that in-school environments are safely accessible for all students and staff and that options are made available for those in need."
The End of K-12 Contact Tracing? Some Schools Say Symptoms, Not Exposure, Should Spur Tests: Via The 74
Teach Plus: Names Kira Orange Jones CEO
'My Freshmen Are More Like 7th Graders': Inside the Omicron-Era Classroom: Via Esquire with some really interesting interviews with teachers.
Social Connectedness, Sleep, And Physical Activity Associated With Better Mental Health Among Youth During the COVID-19 Pandemic: NIH report.
America’s Parents Express Overwhelming Support for Teachers, Their Unions and Public Education: According to a new AFT survey.
I Think We Found The Cause of the Lumber Shortage: His name is Wrigley.
