Top Three
The Unfolding Tragedy From Uvalde: 19 students and two teachers killed.
Remember Them: A thread with the victims. Axios with some of their stories:
Eliahna Garcia, 10, loved to sing, dance and play basketball, AP reports.
Jacklyn Jaylen Cazares, 10, "had the biggest heart," her father, Jacinto Cazares, told ABC 7.
Jose Flores Jr. was a fourth grader who loved baseball and video games.
Uziyah Garcia, 8, was "the sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known," his grandfather said, per AP.
Alithia Ramirez, 10, wanted to be an artist, her father told a local NBC affiliate. She'd submitted an entry to the Doodle for Google contest.
Amerie Jo Garza, 10, was "full of life, a jokester, always smiling," her father told the N.Y. Times.
Xavier Javier Lopez, 10, was a "bubbly" boy who loved to dance with his brothers and mom and was anxiously awaiting a summer of swimming.
Rojelio Torres, 10, “was a very intelligent, hard-working and helpful person,” his aunt said.
Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10, was in the same classroom as her cousin, who was also killed in the shooting, her family said.
Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10, had been eagerly awaiting her last softball game of the season on Tuesday, her family told a local CBS affiliate.
Jailah Silguero loved to dance and had started to imitate TikTok videos, her grandmother told The Daily Beast.
Jayce Carmelo Luevanos was Jailah's cousin and loved making people laugh.
Irma Garcia, a teacher for 23 years, loved to barbecue with her husband and listen to music. She was a mom of four.
Eva Mireles was a teacher for 17 years. She loved to run and hike and her "laughter was contagious," relative Amber Ybarra told AP and NBC's "Today" show.
David Frum: “Every other democracy makes some considerable effort to keep guns away from dangerous people, and dangerous people away from guns. For many years—and especially since the massacre at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School almost a decade ago—the United States has put more and more guns into more and more hands: 120 guns per 100 people in this country.”
Deena Shakir: "Like so many parents, after a sleepless night of outrage and mourning, school dropoff hit extra hard this morning."
Tyler Weyant: “Mass shootings have become America’s copy and paste tragedy. We change the place, the town, the number of dead and injured. But the constant is lives lost, people who cannot be brought back, and the nation is left in a numb daze.”
Axios' Erin Alberty: "I just told my 3rd grader about the shooting. She replied: "Yeah. We had a lockdown drill today. There aren't very many hiding places in our room. The good ones all get taken in like 3 seconds."
Allie Beth Stuckey: "We seem to be horribly failing the young men of this country."
Amanda Gorman: "What might we be if only we tried. What might we become if only we’d listen."
President Obama: “Across the country, parents are putting their children to bed, reading stories, singing lullabies—and in the back of their minds, they’re worried about what might happen tomorrow after they drop their kids off at school, or take them to a grocery store or any other public space.”
Rotherham Reacts: “Yes, another one.”
FBI: 61 'active shooter incidents' reported in 2021, 52% jump from 2020.
The school shooting in Uvalde was the 27th school shooting this year and the 119th since 2018, Education Week reports.
Children exposed to school shootings. Difficult to comprehend graphic from the Washington Post.
Some NC Students Lost More Than a Year's Math Progress: New report from NC's Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration.
COVID Derailed Learning for 1.6 Billion Students: Here’s how schools can help them catch up, via Nature.
"In rich countries, disadvantaged and vulnerable children have fallen behind the most. Those in poorer countries have been the hardest hit, and millions will never go back to school at all. UNESCO estimates that today’s generation of students could lose US$17 trillion in lifetime earnings at current values because of missed learning and skills. “We’re really talking about a generational loss,” says Margarete Sachs-Israel, who leads the Inclusive Quality Education Section at UNESCO in Bangkok."
"But experts point to a number of concerns. The true extent of learning losses in the pandemic is not yet clear; educational research rarely provides simple answers about what to do; and nations might not use this opportunity to make much-needed systemic change. “Every single time there’s been a calamity in the world, we’ve rushed back to the old normal fast,” says John Hattie, an educational researcher at the University of Melbourne. “The biggest travesty of COVID is if we learn nothing.”
"Long before the pandemic, it was clear that one of the most cost-effective approaches is tutoring, either in small groups or one-to-one. The toolkit says this can buy four to five months of additional progress at relatively low cost. And, unlike some other effective methods, tutoring programmes can be ramped up and implemented quickly."
Federal
Federal Tax Receipts Boom: The CBO said "it now expects federal revenue this year to jump by a whopping $800 billion — equivalent to the Pentagon’s annual budget," Politico reports.
“That translates to a 19% increase, the biggest one-year hike in more than 40 years, and it comes on top of an 18% increase last year.”
“Total receipts will amount this year to 19.6% of the nation’s economy, CBO says, which would be the most since 2000 when the Treasury Department was swimming in cash thrown off by the dot-com bubble.”
HHS Leaders: Urge states to maximize efforts to support children’s mental health.
Covid-19 Research
Q&A Boosters for 5-11 Year Olds: Via Katelyn Jetelina:
"Vaccine effectiveness against severe disease is 68% among 5-11 year olds with the two-dose series. A third dose will make this higher.”
“We don’t know if protection is waning because hospitalizations are a relatively rare event, so our confidence in the rate at which effectiveness is (or is not) waning is not strong. The data is just too noisy to have a clear picture. We do have stronger data suggesting the vaccine is slightly waning for 12-17 year olds and, theoretically, there’s no reason to believe this would be different for 5-11 year olds."
"If I had a 5-11 year old, I would get them boosted now regardless of previous infection. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m getting tired of overthinking things with this pandemic.”
“If the decision is paralyzing, be sure to talk to their pediatrician and just know you’re already doing a great job protecting your child by getting the original series. You won’t screw it up, regardless of what you do decide about the timing for dose 3."
InteliSwab: OraSure Technologies announced that its InteliSwab COVID-19 Rapid Test has been selected by HHS to be distributed to schools nationwide.
Open and Shut Case – The Benefits of Good Ventilation in Schools: An article, by Professor Cath Noakes from the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds and Dr Heny Burridge from Imperial College London, said: “It would be remiss to ignore ventilation and its importance in schools – especially if we really are ‘learning to live’ with COVID-19 or looking to boost attendance.”
COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Against Omicron (BA.2) in England: Study shows reduced effectiveness with hospitalizations. Eric Topol notes:
10-14 weeks: 70.2% vs 85.4%
15+ weeks: 56.5% vs 80.4%
Study Shows Fourth Dose of Pfizer Wanes Faster Than Third: CIDRAP on a new study out of Israel.
"The added relative vaccine effectiveness of a fourth dose against infection quickly decreased over time, peaking during the third week at 65.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 63.0% to 67.1%) and falling to 22.0% (95% CI, 4.9% to 36.1%) by the end of the 10 week follow-up period, the authors said."
Vaccines May Not Prevent Many Symptoms of Long Covid: New study (and Washington Post article) which is part of a series of studies by the Department of Veterans Affairs on the impact of the coronavirus, and was based on 33,940 people who experienced breakthrough infections after vaccination.
"The data confirms the large body of research that shows vaccination greatly reduces the risk of death or serious illness. But there was more ambiguity regarding long covid."
"Altogether, the findings suggest that vaccination before infection confers only partial protection in the post-acute phase of the disease; hence, reliance on it as a sole mitigation strategy may not optimally reduce long-term health consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection."
The Anti-Vaccine Movement's New Frontier: Long piece over at the NYT.
State
Missouri: 4,400 incoming and current kindergarteners and first graders are getting books to take home over the summer for the Superintendent’s new Summer Reading Challenge.
Texas: Richardson ISD hosting summer camp inspired by NASA mission to Mars.
Virginia: Charlottesville City Schools is ending its virtual learning program, directing families wishing to stay online to the state’s virtual learning platform, Virtual Virginia.
Economic Recovery
CBO Forecasts Soft Landing: CBO forecasts U.S. economic growth “will exceed 3% in 2022, while roaring inflation has topped and will cool each month to around 2% by some point in 2024,” CNBC reports.
“The upbeat tone of the report appeared to include an implicit prediction that the Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank in charge of managing inflation, will be able to raise interest rates throughout 2022 and 2023 without tipping the U.S. economy into a recession.”
Real GDP: 3.1% in 2022, 2.2% in 2023, and 1.5% in 2024.
Inflation (measured by CPI): 4.7% in 2022, 2.7% in 2023 and 2.3% in 2024.
Unemployment rate: 3.7% in 2022, 3.6% in 2023 and 3.8% in 2024.
Federal funds rate: 1.9% in 2022, and 2.6% in 2023.
Resources
More Teens in Mental Crisis Boarded in Hospital ERs During Pandemic: UPI story on a new study.
"Many kids found themselves being "boarded" in emergency departments as they awaited care, according to a new study conducted at Boston Children's Hospital. The average wait was nearly five days without specialized treatment."
Between March 2020 to February 2021, nearly 3,800 children aged 4 to 18 were admitted to the emergency department or inpatient units for mental health concerns. About eight in 10 were aged 12 to 18.
"In the year before the pandemic, 50% of kids who were admitted to the hospital had suicidal ideation or made suicide attempts. This number rose to 60% during the first year of the pandemic."
"Growing numbers of kids were housed for days in the emergency department due to mental health problems the first year of the pandemic. The average boarding time increased from 2.1 days pre-pandemic to 4.6 days during the pandemic, the findings showed."
"More than 8 in 10 (84%) psychologists who treat anxiety disorders said they have seen an increase in demand for anxiety treatment since the start of the pandemic, compared with 74% a year ago. Demand for treatment of depression is also up, with 72% of psychologists who treat depressive disorders saying they have seen an increase, compared with 60% in 2020.
Some Universities and Schools Are Reimposing Indoor Mask Mandates: Via NYT.
Show Me the Data 2022: Via DQC.
"This year is the sixth time that DQC has reviewed report cards from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Our review uncovered a commitment to compliance rather than the courage to share information, even if the report card shows that students have fallen behind.”
“Despite flexibility on 2021 report card timelines, timely information on student academic performance is the bare minimum that states should be including on their report cards. States largely failed to provide context for how schools are supporting students during recovery and, if data is not available, explain why."
Warriors' Steve Kerr: Gave emotional speech before Game 4: "I'm so tired of the moments of silence"