Top Three
U.S. Lacks Funds for Fourth Vaccine Dose:
“The Biden administration lacks the funds to purchase a potential fourth coronavirus vaccine dose for everyone, even as other countries place their own orders and potentially move ahead of the United States in line,” the Washington Post reports.
“The United States could yet again find itself with too few Covid-19 tests if Congress fails to authorize new funds and cases surge,” Politico reports.
Increased Diabetes Risk Linked to COVID: Via Axios:
"Those who've recovered from COVID-19 within the past year have a significantly increased chance of being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes compared with people who haven't been infected, a study published Monday in the journal Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology found."
"In the post-acute phase, we report increased risks and 12-month burdens of incident diabetes and antihyperglycaemic use in people with COVID-19 compared with a contemporary control group of people who were enrolled during the same period and had not contracted SARS-CoV-2, and a historical control group from a pre-pandemic era. Post-acute COVID-19 care should involve identification and management of diabetes."
‘We Have Essentially Turned a Blind Eye to Our Own Children for Decades’: Via the Washington Post.
"Much of the evidence that the pandemic has catapulted a generation of children from “normalcy” into a full-scale, broad-based mental health crisis is anecdotal. What statistics we have from the past couple of years actually show a more nuanced story. Different populations of children have experienced the pandemic in different ways: Adolescent girls have fared particularly poorly. Low-income children have, too. The data shows a rapidly evolving situation that looks somewhat different according to when you look at it, how you slice and dice it, and what emphasis you put on the results."
"Theories as to why children’s mental health was so bad pre-covid abound. A prominent subset — popularized most notably by San Diego State psychologist Jean Twenge’s 2017 Atlantic story, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” — blames technology. That theory — regretfully, I’m tempted to add, because it’s one of those ideas that, no matter how wrong, still feel perfectly right — has been extensively refuted."
"The pediatricians, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and researchers I spoke to for this piece — connecting by phone or Zoom with those based in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Brooklyn and New Haven, Conn., and in person with those practicing in D.C. and Bethesda — made it clear that they didn’t have hard numbers to back up their perceptions. But they did have clinical experience with thousands of patients, over many decades. And that accumulation of experience — like the data — told a complicated story about how, during covid, vastly higher levels of both adult and kid distress had essentially poured gasoline on long-simmering pain, acting less as a cause than an accelerant of the children’s mental health crisis."
"Out in the community, it was equally impossible to find psychologists, psychiatrists and licensed clinical social workers who were taking new patients. The wait list was so long to see the psychologists and psychiatrists at the bright, airy and stylishly renovated Children’s National Takoma Theatre outpatient site — reaching nine to 12 months at the worst points — that some providers at times paused adding names because it didn’t seem fair to give families false hope."
"Anyone who has ever tried to find a child psychiatrist in the Washington area, where out-of-pocket appointments tend to run in the ballpark of $250 to $300 (and therapy sessions with psychologists or licensed clinical social workers around $175 to $225) will know how extraordinarily rare this is. High costs and lack of access to in-network providers are a major problem nationally as well. All of that means that mental health care for children — a lifesaving essential service in many cases — is as out of reach for most families as a luxury vacation."
Federal
NAEP: Via EdWeek, "The ‘Nation’s Report Card’ Is Getting an Overhaul: 5 Things to Know"
Soon, NAEP will be given on different devices.
NAEP will experiment with adaptive testing and other innovations.
An important measure of the pandemic’s impact on learning is on the runway.
The NAEP experts will spotlight equity.
NAEP’s architecture will continue to support new research.
More via Peggy Carr and Lesley Muldoon over at Fordham
COVID-19 Research
The Next Covid Wave Is Probably Already on Its Way: Former CDC Director Tom Friden in the NYT.
"Variants spread, cases surge and abate, treatments change and knowledge expands. This means that we — the public, elected officials and public health leaders — need to learn constantly and adapt quickly, acting on the insight that no one policy response is likely to stay effective for long."
"We’ve also learned more about the nature of the threat. It has been an open question whether Omicron is a much less severe variant of the Covid virus than earlier strains, or if it has caused much less severe disease because it had run into a wall of immunity from vaccination and prior infection in the United States, Europe and parts of Asia with high vaccination rates. The deadly outbreak in Hong Kong answers that question: Covid remains ferocious, and Omicron is lethal in an immunologically naïve population, particularly among unvaccinated older people. This has caused the devastating surge in deaths there and helps explain why the United States continues to report around 1,000 deaths per day, the vast majority among people not up-to-date with vaccination."
"Leaders need to redouble efforts to get more Americans, particularly older adults, vaccinated and boosted. Also, people who are older or immunocompromised and those around them should consider masking with a more protective N95 or equivalent mask. Increasing access to rapid testing could blunt the case increase by isolating people faster and linking those who test positive to rapid treatment with medications which drastically reduce the risk of severe illness."
Former Takeda Vaccine Chief to Lead New COVID Antiviral Venture Aerium: Big congratulations to my friend and former colleague Rajeev:
"Aerium Therapeutics, a venture-backed startup, on Tuesday announced industry veteran Rajeev Venkayya will lead the company and released data that showed its two experimental monoclonal antibodies neutralized coronavirus variants, including Omicron and its fast-spreading subvariant BA.2, in lab studies."
COVID-19 in Pregnancy Tied to Poor Maternal Outcomes, Preterm Birth, Fetal Death: Via CIDRAP.
In the first study (Press Release), published in JAMA Internal Medicine, Kaiser Permanente Northern California researchers analyzed the electronic medical records of 43,886 pregnant women who delivered from Mar 1, 2020, to Mar 16, 2021. After adjustment for demographic characteristics, underlying medical conditions, and smoking status, infected women were at double to triple the risk for severe illness such as acute respiratory distress syndrome and sepsis, birth at less than 37 weeks gestation, and venous thromboembolism (blood clots).
The second study identified 47 cases of placentitis, or inflammation of the placenta, caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, 8 of them from 2020 and 39 from 2021.
The Future Standard of COVID Surveillance: Via Axios.
State
DC: Federal judge blocks DC law allowing kids to get vaccinated without parental consent.
Indiana: Indianapolis Public Schools has too few students for the number of buildings in the district.
"The analysis also found the district has the capacity to serve around 46,600 students at IPS-owned buildings but only enrolls 28,100 students -- a 60 percent utilization rate."
New York: "At $30 million a month, is NYC’s in-school COVID testing program still worth it?," asks Chalkbeat.
Washington: Seattle students walk out of school, demand mask mandates be reinstated.
Economic Recovery
Women Are Winning the Biggest Pay Raises From U.S. Labor Boom: Via WSJ.
"Female wages were up 4.4% in February from a year earlier, compared with a 4.1% rise in male wages, according to the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s wage tracker. That marks the sixth straight month that women’s wage growth outpaced men’s. Female wage gains exceeded male gains by 0.5 percentage point in December, matching the widest margin for records tracing back to 1997."
"One factor behind the gender pay gap: Women tend to occupy jobs that pay less, on average. Women account for more than 75% of workers in eight of the 20 occupations with the lowest median weekly earnings, according to a March Labor Department report."
"Several factors are converging to draw women back, including higher wages, an easing pandemic and fewer child-care disruptions. The labor-force participation rate for prime-age women—or the share of women ages 25 to 54 working or seeking a job—climbed to 75.8% in February, up from 74.9% a year earlier."
Wage Increases Not Keeping Up with Inflation: Axios on a new Urban Institute analysis.
Resources
Chronic Absenteeism Has Skyrocketed during the Pandemic: Joanna Smith-Griffin in The 74.
"Early data from California found that chronic absenteeism almost tripled from 11.2% in October 2019 to 27.4% in October 2021 — after the peak of the Delta variant. As schools scramble to reverse this trend, they must be careful not to fall back on traditional punitive responses."
"The way schools should improve attendance going forward is not by rewarding attendance. It’s by re-establishing a compassionate relationship with families and reassuring them that school is a safe, effective space for learning."
The Benefits and Costs of a U.S. Child Allowance: NBER paper.
"We produce core estimates of the benefits and costs per child and per adult of increasing household income by $1,000 in one year; these can be applied to value any cash or near-cash program that increases household income."
"Using microsimulation, we then apply these estimates to determine net aggregate benefits of three child allowance policies, including the expanded Child Tax Credit as enacted for the year 2021 in the American Rescue Plan (ARP)."
"Our estimates indicate that making that expansion permanent would cost $97 billion per year and generate social benefits with net present value of $982 billion per year."