Top Three
Vaccine for Under 5s As Soon As Feb. 21: The CDC plans to roll out 10 million doses in three phases as soon as the FDA authorizes the Pfizer and BioNTech shot for children 6 months to 4 years old.
State and local health officials started preordering the first doses this week and will begin receiving vaccine shipments on Feb. 21, which is Presidents Day.
The first roll out will prioritize areas where children are at higher risk for severe COVID-19 disease.
Open Everything: End COVID Restrictions: Yascha Mounk in The Atlantic.
"At the beginning of the pandemic, we were too slow to adapt to changing circumstances. Now we are once again in danger of prolonging the status quo more than is justifiable. It is time to open everything."
"In many parts of the country, children and teachers continue to wear masks in the classroom. Exposure rules keep kids at home for days on end."
"None of these sacrifices is prohibitively onerous on its own. But some, such as the requirement for children to wear masks for much of the day, do significantly decrease the quality of life. And together they create a deep sense of societal malaise."
"Accepting restrictions that weaken our social ties when they seemed temporary was one thing. Putting up with them indefinitely is quite another."
"Some future COVID variant may prove much more dangerous than Omicron to the functioning of society. If a return to social-distancing measures should once again prove necessary, I’ll be among the first to say so. But at this point, the restrictions still shaping everyday life in America have become unnecessary. It is time to draw the logical inference—and end our pandemic purgatory."
"Children should be allowed to take off their mask in school. We should get rid of measures such as deep cleaning that are purely performative. Politicians and public-health officials should send the message that Americans should no longer limit their social activities, encouraging them to resume playdates and dinner parties without guilt."
"Our current attitude toward the unvaccinated makes little sense. Even as we heap scorn on the unvaccinated, we make sacrifices on their behalf. The unvaccinated are subject to immense pressure and moral indignation. Governments and private institutions are doing what they can to make their everyday lives difficult."
"At the same time, the unvaccinated are, implicitly, the main justification for ongoing restrictions—in that the pro-restriction camp points to the persistently high death toll from COVID-19 and these deaths are heavily concentrated among the unvaccinated. That attitude is also wrong. We need not put our lives on hold for the indefinite future because others have decided to risk theirs."
Mask Mandates:
"Our advice to every school district is to abide by public health guidelines. It continues to be at this point that the CDC is advising that masks can delay, reduce transmission. There are also a number of other mitigation measures that we put in place, but that continues to be CDC guidance," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
Randi Weingarten says mask rule rollback should be tied to student vaccine rates.
Public health experts agree that school mask mandates should not last forever, but differ on whether the time has come to remove them.
Boise to consider lifting its mask mandate in schools.
Gov. Pritzker will lift the Illinois mask mandate by Feb. 28 - but not for schools.
The school mask mandate in Massachusetts will end on Feb. 28, Gov. Baker said but the state would support individuals who continue to choose to wear masks in schools, and that they should feel comfortable doing so.
“Blue state governors and state health officials who most vigorously embraced pandemic restrictions are pivoting toward a new era, using Omicron’s decline to dial back precautions that have become a hallmark of the last two years,” Politico reports.
“I think we are certainly at a point where we’re living with Covid,” said Meredith Allen, vice president for health security at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “But I think it really is hard to predict out what may or may not come in the future.”
Federal
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston: Economist Susan Collins becomes first Black woman to lead a Fed bank.
COVID-19 Research
Fauci: Dr. Anthony Fauci told the Financial Times that the United States is heading out of the “full blown” pandemic phase of Covid-19, as he predicted a combination of vaccinations, treatments and prior infection would soon make the virus more manageable.
"Fauci added that there would be an end to all pandemic-related restrictions in the coming months including mandatory wearing of masks."
“As we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase of Covid-19, which we are certainly heading out of, these decisions will increasingly be made on a local level rather than centrally decided or mandated. There will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus.”
"The Next Culture War" — Vaccines for Young Kids: Via Axios.
"In a Harris poll of 306 parents of kids under 5 provided exclusively to Axios, 73% of vaccinated parents said they're likely to vaccinate their kids under 5, while only 35% of unvaccinated parents would."
"On the flip side, 65% of unvaccinated parents said they are unlikely to get their kids under 5 vaccinated, while just 27% of vaccinated parents agreed."
"Harris found that more women (47%) said they were unlikely to want their kids to get the shot than men (31%)."
"Almost half of the suburban respondents (49%) said they were unlikely to want the shot for their kids — almost as high as people from rural areas (57%) — compared to just 25% in urban areas."
"More of those identifying as independents (57%) than Republicans (38%) or Democrats (26%) said they were unlikely to want the shot for their kids under 5."
Track How Full ICUs Are With Covid Patients: Hospital ICU stress, a measure designed to help hospitals plan and manage their surge capacity, was a concept introduced by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine. The scale is based on the share of ICU hospital beds used by Covid patients. Low-stress hospitals have less than 10 percent of critical care beds occupied by Covid patients; high-stress hospitals have 30 to 59 percent.
State
Illinois: Illinois teachers union urges schools to wait to change their COVID safety plans with respect to masks and quarantines.
Maryland: School districts could each receive millions of dollars for implementing an array of evidence-based practices to help students recover academically from the pandemic. The seven strategies that the effort highlights are:
Grow-your-own staffing programs to develop teaching talent in-house
Staff retention programs that improve teachers’ schedules, boost mentorship opportunities and give pay incentives for those who stay from one year to the next
“Science of reading” approaches that systematize literacy acquisition
High-quality tutoring during the school day for students that fell behind during the pandemic
Restructuring schedules to allow for afterschool learning, summer programming and more effective family engagement
Collaborations with industry leaders and higher education institutions to prepare students for college and careers
Community school models that engage families and connect them with needed social services
Virginia: A 10-year-old girl died of covid after her teacher appointed her the ‘class nurse.’ Her parents want answers.
"Days earlier, the teacher had made Teresa the “class nurse,” putting the Virginia girl in charge of walking sick classmates to the nurse’s office, waiting for them to be treated and, at times, returning to the classroom to retrieve their backpacks if Hillpoint Elementary School officials sent them home, her father, Jeff Sperry, told The Washington Post."
"Those worries mounted when, days later, Teresa returned home from school with a headache and a day later, hit a 102-degree fever. Within a week, she was dead."
"On Sept. 27, Teresa became one of the first children in Virginia to die of covid-19. Her death certificate states that she died of cardiac arrest caused by coronavirus complications."
"My daughter was 10, and the vaccine wasn’t out” yet for children, Sperry, 41, told The Post. “Of all the people in the world who could have done that job, she was unprotected.”
International
Hong Kong: Only 1 in 10 parents are willing to allow young children to receive Covid-19 vaccine.
Singapore: Children aged 5 to 11 have highest Covid-19 infection rate.
Economic Recovery
Pandemic Parenting Gaps: Recruiters are beginning to see a new type of career gap on resumes as people return to the workplace following stints of caretaking.
LinkedIn introduced "stay-at-home mom,” “stay-at-home dad” and “stay-at-home parent" as official titles.
A 2021 LinkedIn survey of over 2,000 respondents revealed that the stigma surrounding career gaps is fading:
79% of hiring managers today say they would hire a candidate with a career gap on their resume.
59% of hiring managers are interested in learning about any transferable skills you have learned, and 58% are interested in lessons that can be applied to a particular job.
Resources
Data Shows Potentially Historic Turnover Among Superintendents Since March 2020 and Dramatic Gender Gap: Via ILO Group:
Since March 2020, 186 (37%) of the 500 largest school districts in the country have undergone or are currently undergoing leadership changes.
154 (83%) of those 186 districts have completed their transitions and appointed a new superintendent. The other 32 districts have either appointed an interim superintendent or are in the process of finding a replacement.
In the 154 districts that have completed their transitions:
70% of newly appointed superintendents have been men.
The cumulative proportion of male leaders in these districts increased from 65% to 69%.
Of the 51 female superintendents who left during the pandemic, 39 (76%) were replaced by men. Of the districts where there are outgoing superintendents but no interim or permanent has been named, there are still two women who are outgoing, so this number could increase.
Rebalancing: Children First: New report from AEI-Brookings
"Since 2019, scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution have convened a working group of leading experts to study the challenges and opportunities facing children in America."
"The members of this working group represent a wide range of academic disciplines, views on the proper roles and effectiveness of government programs, understanding of the current condition of American life, and opinions on how public policy should properly weight competing goods, such as personal responsibility and economic security."
"The working group found significant agreement for the following proposals: supporting policies to strengthen and encourage marriage; increasing the generosity of the Earned Income Tax Credit— a proven pro-work and antipoverty program; making the Child Tax Credit available to households with no earnings; expanding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by 20 percent for families with children ages 5 and younger; and, providing a broader system of support for child health and education."
Zooms: In 2020, 2021, and 2022.
A few clips below - but make sure to check out the links above.