Top Three
COVID.GOV: New website providing one-stop access to community risk levels, treatments, testing, and vaccines. White House Fact Sheet.
Why Kids’ COVID-Vaccine Results Don’t Look Like Adults’: Katherine Wu in The Atlantic. It’s a long piece but well worth reading. Some excerpts:
"An infant-and-toddler COVID vaccine, perhaps even two, could debut by summer’s start, if the FDA and the CDC give their official nods. But those long-awaited shots may not be met with much fanfare. “If this were January, I’d be like, Oh my god, get me whatever,” says Stephanie Langel, an immunologist at Duke University, whose son will turn 2 in July. Now that cases have come down, and Omicron has all but guaranteed that our original-recipe shots won’t deliver the same perks they once did, the decisions are tougher for everyone involved."
"Each company then ran much larger trials, to see if the antibody data—the information they’d need to present to the FDA—would hold, and to keep monitoring for bad side effects. At this juncture, both companies say they’re meeting safety criteria."
"But in the antibody realm, two doses of Pfizer’s three-microgram dose, which is still in trials, fell short in the 2-to-4-year-old group, prompting the company to add a third shot for all kids younger than 5. Moderna’s two 25-microgram doses for the under-6 crowd, however, did eke out enough antibodies to go toe-to-toe with adults."
"If antibodies were the end-all-be-all, Moderna’s infant-and-toddler vaccine might, in theory, be a total shoo-in. But alas, they are not. When efficacy numbers are available, they tend to trump all else—and during Moderna’s trials, enough infections, many of them caused by Omicron, swept through the kids enrolled in the study that the company suddenly had sufficient data to calculate the vaccine’s bigger-picture performance. And there, some might argue, is where the shot started to fall short."
"The numbers for infants and toddlers haven’t been … the best. “No one would argue that 40 percent protection is great,” Chandy John, a pediatrician at Indiana University, told me. Here, it’s tempting to blame the dose: Maybe just a little more mRNA would have nudged Moderna’s numbers right over the edge… Perhaps immunobridging actually led each company to slightly undershoot their dose size."
"That said, Levy and the other experts I spoke with tend to more strongly implicate another culprit: the virus itself. Realistically, with kids’ trials running two doses of original-recipe vaccine during the Omicron era, the shots were probably never going to generate the knockout numbers that the adult shots did."
"Forty-ish percent efficacy against symptomatic illness may be about as good as we can get with two doses of mRNA vaccines without sacrificing safety. Maybe a bigger dose for kids would budge the numbers up, but “we have to consider the downside in terms of adverse events,” says Kathryn Edwards, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University. (Edwards is a former adviser to the FDA on vaccines, and sits on a safety-monitoring board for Pfizer’s shot.)”
“Fevers in the littlest kids are an especially big concern because they can cause (self-resolving) seizures, so, even if rare, they could pose a major hurdle to clearing a new shot for use. Myocarditis, too, could be a problem: Moderna’s vaccine, which includes more mRNA in each injection, appears to have produced slightly higher rates of the rare heart-inflammation issue than Pfizer’s in young men. (No cases of myocarditis were picked up in Moderna’s under-6 trials.)"
"Some experts said they were already thinking about 40-ish percent as a sort of interim efficacy; third shots for kids now feel more or less inevitable. Ahead of its request for emergency use authorization for its under-6-shot, Moderna is already considering asking the FDA to okay a pediatric booster somewhere down the line, Kate Cronin, the company’s chief brand officer, told me in an email."
"Vaccination is a series of judgment calls by institutions and individuals alike: authorizing a new shot, recommending a booster, deciding to sign up for any dose at all. Data can help inform these decisions, but these choices ultimately depend, in part, on the goal they’re meant to further, which might be shielding against severe disease alone—or blocking as many infections as possible. Policies in the U.S. still aren’t clear about what the ultimate aim of COVID vaccination is."
It’s Time to Rethink When We Should Reimpose Covid Restrictions: Shira Doron, Westyn Branch-Elliman and Elissa Perkins in the Washington Post.
"Time and again, the fast-moving pandemic has shown us that predictions age poorly. Scientific knowledge evolves, and metrics set at one fleeting moment have often proved ineffective to guide policymaking in the real world."
"But in reality, thresholds to change covid policies are always somewhat arbitrary, and the context is constantly changing. By the time preset measures are triggered, they are often out of date."
"Last summer, for example, Massachusetts set a simple off-ramp for mask mandates in schools: If a school had an 80 percent vaccination rate in the building, then its leadership could apply for a mask waiver. We supported this plan, arguing that a high vaccination rate would provide strong protection against outbreaks of severe disease in schools, even in the face of the delta variant."
"But few schools applied for the waiver, and even fewer lifted the mandate. Why? Because some local health and district leaders opposed it, arguing that because the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for 5-to-11-year-olds would soon be available when the metrics went live, they felt they should wait “just a bit longer.” Then omicron arrived, and the vaccine was no longer as effective for preventing infections (though it was still highly protective against severe disease). In other words, the context of the pandemic changed."
"So what can be done to plot out future strategies? First, public health authorities should incorporate up-to-the-minute scientific information, while being transparent about what is uncertain and acknowledging that things might rapidly change. This will require further investment in the public health infrastructure to ensure robust, real-time surveillance and data analysis."
"Second, decision-makers should demand continuous reassessment of policies that acknowledge past successes and failures. They should also opt for strategies tailored to local situations, rather than one-size-fits-all standards, and work to collect scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of metrics for achieving a policy goal."
"Finally, we should set clear goals of any intervention and update those goals along with metrics in real time."
Federal
White House: President Biden received his second booster today.
COVID-19 Research
U.S. Vaccine Guidance Falls Apart: “The choose-your-own-adventure vibe of the pandemic response is spreading to booster shots, with Americans 50 and older now having the option to get a fourth dose — without explicitly being encouraged to do so,” Axios reports.
"Many experts say yesterday's FDA authorization makes sense as a precautionary measure, but the policy could create more confusion around the long-term vaccination strategy."
J&J and Boosters: The CDC weighed in on vaccine effectiveness of different matchups following a primary J&J vaccine. Their report suggests all booster strategies — whether a second J&J shot or mix and match — worked better than a single J&J dose when measured by protection against needing emergency or urgent care visits and hospitalizations during Omicron’s predominance.
Here’s how vaccine effectiveness added up:
After 1 J&J dose: 24% visits; 31% hospitalizations
After 2 J&J doses: 54% visits; 67% hospitalizations
After 1 J&J and 1 mRNA dose: 79% visits; 78% hospitalizations
After 3 mRNA doses: 83% visits; 90% hospitalizations
Based on this, the CDC said adults who got two J&J shots at least four months ago may now receive a second booster using an mRNA vaccine.
Study Conspiracy Theories With Compassion: Interesting essay in Nature.
"The societal forces that drive people to join a belief system matter more than the specifics of what they believe."
"Conspiracy theories are more about values than about information. Debunking statements might occasionally be effective, but does little to tackle their root cause. When investigators ask only about knowledge, they tend to see only ignorance as the root of the problem."
"Conspiracy theories do not exist in a vacuum. They amplify existing fears and ideas about people’s place in the world. Researchers should consider what rallying around such theories says about fears over global power struggles or scientific advances, or about indignation over the status quo or societal changes."
"But much of this ‘us versus them’ framing has to do with researchers’ motivations. Many, myself included, want to defend democracy and science, so it is easy to define those who embrace conspiracy theories as a threat or enemy. But that deflects researchers’ attentions to individuals and their beliefs, and stops them looking at the systems that push people towards conspiratorial circles."
"A focus on individuals’ perceived deficits diverts attention from the social realities — displacement, alienation, repression — that make false theories resonate."
Black Coalition Against COVID: Released a new report detailing massive disparities, including:
Black Americans between 65 and 74 were five times more likely to die than white Americans.
Between April 2020 and June 2021, 1 in 310 Black children lost a parent or caregiver compared to 1 in 738 white children.
Learning time lost by students who were Black or in other racial or ethnic groups was estimated to be one year, compared to four to eight months for white students.
New Test: Hopkins researchers say they’ve developed a better way to test for COVID, other viruses.
"Johns Hopkins University researchers say they have developed a simple sensor that could quickly and accurately detect the virus that causes COVID-19 in saliva."
"The sensor isn’t on the market yet, but soon could revolutionize testing, the researchers say. It could be stationed at the entrances of hospitals, airports and schools, and potentially be put into handheld and even wearable devices."
"In testing, the sensor was as accurate as PCR tests, the current gold standard in testing during the pandemic that requires lab processing. It also was as fast as rapid antigen tests, the at-home kits that have become prevalent but aren’t as good at picking up cases."
The Power of Ventilation and Filtration: Via Katelyn Jetelina.
State
Colorado: Colorado plan aims to connect higher ed, workforce.
Florida:
“Florida has overstated how many residents are vaccinated against COVID-19 by more than half a million people," a Palm Beach Post analysis shows.
Duval Schools offered its employees $200 vaccine incentives — 56% of employees accepted.
Georgia: Gov. Kemp signed legislation that allows parents who don’t want their children wearing masks to opt out of any school district mandates.
New Jersey: Sobering test scores show Newark students struggling to recover from learning loss, Chalkbeat reports.
"Based on mid-year assessments, no more than 6% of students in any grade from 3-7 are expected to reach the “proficient” level on the state math tests slated to begin next month, according to data that Newark Public Schools officials shared last week."
"By contrast, 27% of students in grades 3-8 met the state’s benchmarks on the annual math tests in 2019, before the pandemic shut down schools and drastically curtailed learning."
"Reading scores on the mid-year tests, which students in grades 1-7 took in February, were only slightly higher. In each of the tested grades, about 10% of students or fewer are expected to meet state English standards this year, the data show."
"In math, just 6.4% of second graders and about 20% of seventh graders made the expected amount of progress from fall to winter. In reading, the percentage of students who met growth projections ranged from 10% of first graders to about 22% of seventh graders."
International
UK: Via the Guardian, "Why is the UK seeing near-record Covid cases? We still believe the three big myths about Omicron."
"We’re living in two realities: one in which people have returned to living life as if Covid is over, and the other in which we are approaching record levels of infections, with an estimated 4.26m cases last week."
"Admissions with Covid are only 2% below the first Omicron peak two months ago and still rising. While about half are currently admitted primarily for other reasons, numbers are rising in primary Covid admissions too and admissions in over-65s are now 15% higher than their January 2022 peak."
"Each variant of concern has spawned several offshoots – like our current BA.2 wave – but most gamechanging new waves we’ve seen have come from variants that have evolved completely independently from each other. Omicron did not evolve from Delta and Delta did not evolve from Alpha, Beta or Gamma. There has been no progression through successive variants, and no building towards “mildness”
"As the world is increasingly either vaccinated, infected or both, the way the virus will evolve to improve transmission is by becoming better at evading our immune system, like Omicron did. This means that existing vaccines (targeted to old strains) and previous infection will become less able to protect us from new infection, as tens of thousands of people are finding out with their second (or more) Covid infection. As Prof Danny Altmann argues, instead of relying on frequent boosters of the same vaccines, we must develop better and longer lasting ones."
Economic Recovery
Inflation: Will mean the average U.S. household has to spend an extra $5,200 this year ($433 per month) compared to last year for the same consumption basket, according estimates by Bloomberg Economics.
New Workers, New Normal: Morning Consult report.
Resources
The School Hall Pass Is Going Digital. Is That a Good Thing?: Via EdSurge
Toward a Better Measure: It’s Time to Rethink Free and Reduced-Price Lunch as a Measure of Student Need: Via DQC.
ASU-GSV: Excited to be heading out to San Diego next week for ASU-GSV. A few sessions I’m participating in:
ESSER Funding Cliff: What happens when the funding dries out?
Daniel Domenech (moderator), AASA
John Failla, Pearl
Heather Tow-Yick, Mukilteo School District
Ashley Andersen Zantop, Cambium Learning
Erin Covington, Alvarez & Marsal
Me
The Political Currents Shaping Education and the Workforce
I’m moderating this one. Send me questions to ask!
Robert Blizzard, Public Opinion Strategies
Brian Stryker, Impact Research
Kai Chen Yeo, Echelon Insights
Whatever You Do: Don't let the balloon touch the ground.
Finding Confidence: Kelsie Dolin - who has never performed on a stage before - had to overcome some stage fright.