Top Three
Incidence Rates and Clinical Outcomes With the Omicron and Delta Variants in Children Younger Than 5 Years: New study in JAMA.
"Results of this cohort study suggest that the incidence rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection with Omicron variant was 6 to 8 times that of Delta variant in children younger than 5 years, but severe clinical outcomes were less frequent than with Delta variant."
This cohort study included a total of 651 ,640 children younger than 5 years.
"Incidence rate of Omicron infection was higher in children aged 0 to 2 years than in those aged 3 to 4 years."
"Omicron cohort was younger and with fewer comorbidities than Delta cohort, but differences were eliminated after matching."
Nearly Half of LAUSD Students Have Been Chronically Absent This Year: Via LA Times
"Nearly half of Los Angeles Unified students — more than 200,000 children — have been chronically absent this school year, meaning they have missed at least 9% of the academic year, according to data provided to The Times by the district in response to a public records request."
"In the three years just before the pandemic the district’s chronic absentee rate, already considered high, averaged about 19%. This school year it has been about 46%, according to the data provided to The Times in mid-March."
"Like almost all education hardships wrought by the pandemic, the impact of missed school is being borne most heavily by the most vulnerable student groups. For Black students the chronic absence rate is nearly 57%. For Latinos, it is 49%. For homeless students it is 68%."
CDC Announces Plans To Revamp Agency: Via the Washington Post.
"In an agency-wide email sent shortly after 1 p.m., Walensky said she has hired a senior federal health official outside of the Atlanta-based agency to conduct a one-month review to “kick off an evaluation of CDC’s structure, systems, and processes.”
“Over the past year, I have heard from many of you that you would like to see CDC build on its rich history and modernize for the world around us,” she wrote in the email. “I am grateful for your efforts to lean into the hard work of transforming CDC for the better. I look forward to our collective efforts to position CDC, and the public health community, for greatest success in the future.”
Federal
COVID Supplemental: The Senate announced an agreement on a bipartisan $10 billion COVID-19 Supplemental Appropriations package that will provide needed funding to purchase vaccines and therapeutics, maintain access to testing, and accelerate work on next generation vaccine research.
Capitol: A fox has been hanging around.
CDC: Announced Friday it will revoke Title 42, the policy that allowed immigration officials to quickly expel migrants at the southwest border.
"Federal officials expect the policy change, which will go into effect on May 23, to draw thousands more migrants to the southwestern border every day, in addition to the already high number of people who have been arriving over the past year from Latin America and across the globe," the NYT reports.
"The Biden administration’s Title 42 decision is not going down well among moderate Senate Democrats," Punchbowl reports.
COVID-19 Research
Cardiac Complications After SARS-CoV-2 Infection and mRNA COVID-19 Vaccination: CDC MMWR: The risk of heart complications was higher after having COVID-19 than after getting 1 or more mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, among males and females of all ages.
"The incidence of cardiac outcomes after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination was highest for males aged 12–17 years after the second vaccine dose; however, within this demographic group, the risk for cardiac outcomes was 1.8–5.6 times as high after SARS-CoV-2 infection than after the second vaccine dose."
Projecting COVID-19 Mortality as States Relax Nonpharmacologic Interventions: New study.
"With the high transmissibility of current circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants, the simulated lifting of NPIs in March 2022 was associated with resurgences of COVID-19 deaths in nearly every state. In comparison, delaying by even 1 month to lift NPIs in April 2022 was estimated to mitigate the amplitude of the surge."
What a Single Metric Tells Us About the Pandemic: Via the Intelligencer
"Our experience of the pandemic has been littered with bad-faith argumentation and instigation, but most of these narrative reversals are not that, or even signs of what Harvard’s William Hanage has called the “motivated reasoning” of the pandemic."
"One narrative replacing another is one description of the scientific method, and among the many astonishing features of this pandemic is how quickly science was able to process and respond — perhaps without adequate speed, but at least fast enough for vaccines to be designed within two days, manufactured within two months, and rolled out to the vast majority of the world within two years."
"There is one data point that might serve as an exceptional interpretative tool, one that blinks bright through all that narrative fog: excess mortality. The idea is simple: You look at the recent past to find an average for how many people die in a given country in a typical year, count the number of people who died during the pandemic years, and subtract one from the other. The basic math yields some striking results, as shown by a recent paper in The Lancet finding that 18.2 million people may have died globally from COVID, three times the official total."
"According to The Economist, Europe, Latin America, and North America have all registered excess deaths ranging from 270 to 370 per 100,000 inhabitants; excess mortality in Asia is estimated between 130 to 330; in Africa, the range is 79 to 220. These numbers are not identical, but, all things considered, they are remarkably close together. The highest of the low-end estimates is barely three times the lowest; the highest of the high-end estimates is not even twice as high as the lowest."
"If the U.S. had the same cumulative excess mortality of Germany, it would have had 600,000 fewer deaths. If it had the excess mortality of Iceland, it would have had a million fewer deaths — and would have only lost about 100,000 Americans in total."
"The U.S. drove an unprecedented vaccine-innovation campaign in 2020, which empowered much of the world to turn the page on the pandemic’s deadliest phases, then, in 2021, utterly failed to take advantage of its power itself. But what is perhaps even more striking is that American vaccination coverage isn’t just bad, by the standards of its peers, but getting worse."
"About two-thirds of Americans have received two shots of vaccine, a level that is in line with Israel and not far off from the U.K., though below many other wealthy countries. (And even in the U.K., vaccination was more effectively directed toward the old.) But over the last six months, the country has had an opportunity to make up that gap with boosters and has simply not taken it. Only 29 percent of Americans have had a booster shot of vaccine, which puts us behind Slovenia, Slovakia, and Poland and means that less than half of those people happy to be vaccinated a year ago have chosen to get a third shot through Delta and Omicron."
Vaccination Rates and COVID-19 Outcomes Across US States: Via AEI.
Distribution of Coronavirus Tests May Have Helped Blunt the Delta Surge in Two Michigan Cities: New study (and NYT article).
International
UK: Very high infection rates among the elderly and children in the UK.
China: China drafts in the military as Shanghai ordered to test 25 million residents for Covid
"Though the case numbers are small by international standards, the fast-spreading outbreak has placed Shanghai on the front lines of China's uncompromising battle with the virus, as the government doubles down on testing, mandatory lockdowns, and controversial isolation policies that have seen young children separated from their parents if they test positive."
Economic Recovery
Jobs Report: On Friday, BLS announced that the US economy added a solid 431,000 jobs in March, a bit below expectations. Unemployment rate fell to 3.6% Wage gains: +5.6% in past year.
Resources
District Strategies to Reduce Student Absenteeism: EdResearch for Recovery report which outlines a tiered set of strategies districts should consider to help ensure that students are able to attend school.
The First Five Years Fund:Released findings from a poll of likely voters in seven battleground states.
Federal Broadband Funding Opportunities: Super helpful chart from Common Sense Media.
To Close Pandemic Academic Gaps, Experts Point to a ‘Cascade’ of Skills Young Kids Will Need To Work On: Via The 74.
Free: John Legend performed Free at the Grammys along with Lyuba Yakimchuk, Siuzanna Iglidan, Mika Newton, and a choir.