Top Three
How Long is COVID Infectious? What Scientists Know So Far: Via Nature:
"When the CDC halved its recommended isolation time for people with COVID-19 to five days back in December, it said that the change was motivated by science. Specifically, the CDC said that most SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs early in the course of the illness, in the one to two days before the onset of symptoms and for two to three days after."
"The facts of how long people are infectious for have not really changed,” says Amy Barczak, an infectious-disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “There is not data to support five days or anything shorter than ten days [of isolation].” Barczak’s own research, published on the medRxiv preprint server, suggests that one-quarter of people who have caught the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 could still be infectious after eight days."
SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination Elicits Robust Antibody Responses in Children: Study in Science.
"Although children have been largely spared from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants of concern (VOC) with increased transmissibility, combined with fluctuating mask mandates and school re-openings, have led to increased infections and disease among children."
"These data indicate that both the 50 μg and 100 μg doses of mRNA vaccination in children elicits robust cross-VOC antibody responses and that 100 μg doses in children results in highly preserved omicron-specific functional humoral immunity."
"Similar to results with the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccine trials in teenagers, here we found that the Moderna mRNA vaccine was highly immunogenic in 6 to 11 year old children, generating a humoral response superior to that seen following viral exposure."
"Together, these findings support vaccination of children with mRNA-1273 as a safe and effective strategy to protect children against COVID-19, MIS-C, and long-COVID."
Schools Choose Cheaper Ventilation Options as BA.5 Subvariant Spreads: Via WSJ:
"A federal study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found nearly two-thirds of schools aren’t planning to replace or upgrade their heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems."
"Instead, about 70% of schools in the CDC survey reported low-cost steps to increase student safety, including relocating activities outdoors, inspecting and validating existing HVAC systems, and opening doors and windows."
Federal
NTIA: Announced it has awarded the first five grants as part of the Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program (CMC). "These grants, totaling $10,642,577.03, will be used to fund internet access, equipment, and to hire and train information technology personnel."
Covid-19 Research
BA.5: This study "shows that the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5 lineage is associated with higher odds of reinfection compared with Omicron BA.2, regardless of the vaccination status. Although less effective compared with BA.2, COVID-19 booster vaccination still offers substantial protection against severe outcomes following BA.5 infection."
"Among those infected with BA.5, booster vaccination was associated with 77% and 88% of reduction in risk of COVID-19 hospitalization and death, respectively, while higher risk reduction was found for BA.2 cases."
Masks for Prevention of Respiratory Virus Infections, Including SARS-CoV-2, in Health Care and Community Settings: Update in Annals in Internal Medicine.
"This is the eighth update alert for a living rapid review on the use of masks for the prevention of respiratory virus infections, including SARS-CoV-2, in health care and community settings."
"In previous updates, the evidence for mask use versus no use for prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection in community settings was assessed as low to moderate strength favoring mask use, based on 2 RCTs and 8 observational studies."
"For this update, 2 new observational studies were consistent with prior evidence finding mask use associated with reduced risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection."
State
Arizona: Judge tosses Gov. Ducey's lawsuit challenging Biden administration over limits on COVID-19 relief funds.
"In a ruling earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Steven Logan concluded it was reasonable for the Biden administration to say that the money couldn’t be spent on efforts that would undermine compliance with COVID-19 prevention guidelines. The judge said a program that requires noncompliance with guidelines may worsen the pandemic and create more negative effects, which goes against the purpose of the relief fund."
California: LAUSD's Carvalho says families leaving the state or choosing to home-school.
"California’s K-12 enrollment decline of more than 270,000 students since the pandemic began is largely attributable to people leaving the state, not enrolling children in transitional kindergarten or kindergarten, or deciding to home-school their children but failing to file the paperwork to account for them."
“In Los Angeles, in a very, very obvious and evident way, the greatest loss was in (transitional) kindergarten and kindergarten students,” LA Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told a gathering of education journalists. “You have to really accept that parents made a decision, ‘I’m not going to send my kid to pre-k or kindergarten."
Illinois: Chicago school board to consider $85 million COVID testing contract renewal.
Maryland: Baltimore City and County school systems scramble to hire 1,200 teachers.
Texas: "It’s not just COVID-19: Why Texas faces a teacher shortage."
"Since the 2011-12 school year, Texas’ attrition rate has hovered around 10%. That number dipped to about 9% during the 2020-21 school year but is going back up — rising to almost 12% during the 2021-22 school year."
"Teacher retirement is up as well. About 8,600 teachers retired in fiscal year 2021, an increase of about 1,000 teachers from the previous year... Texas has been averaging about 7,500 retired teachers since the 2018 fiscal year."
"For the 2021-22 school year, Texas employed 370,431 teachers — the most it has ever had. The state certified almost 26,000 new teachers in 2020-21."
"In a Charles Butt Foundation poll of 919 Texas teachers last year, 68% said they seriously considered leaving the profession in 2021, an increase of 10 percentage points compared with the year before. In the same poll, teachers said they felt undervalued and underpaid."
Virginia: "Since April, an online tutoring service has been made available to more than 180,000 students, 25% of whom are Latino. All Fairfax County Public Schools students can connect with a tutor in real time, 24/7, through FCPS’s “Schoology” site. The online portal ultimately connects them to personnel from Tutor.com."
International
Growing GeoPolitical Risk: Via the NYT
“The Biden administration has grown increasingly anxious this summer about China’s statements and actions regarding Taiwan, with some officials fearing that Chinese leaders might try to move against the self-governing island over the next year and a half — perhaps by trying to cut off access to all or part of the Taiwan Strait, through which U.S. naval ships regularly pass."
“The internal worries have sharpened in recent days, as the administration quietly works to try to dissuade House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from going through with a proposed visit to Taiwan next month.”
"Chinese officials have strongly asserted this summer that no part of the Taiwan Strait can be considered international waters, contrary to the views of the United States and other nations. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said in June that “China has sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait.”
"And one school of thought is that the lesson is ‘go early and go strong’ before there is time to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses,” Mr. Coons said in an interview on Sunday. “And we may be heading to an earlier confrontation — more a squeeze than an invasion — than we thought.”
Economic Recovery
Difficulty Paying Bills Tops Pandemic High in US Census Survey: Via Bloomberg.
"Four in ten adults said it has been somewhat or very difficult to cover usual household expenses in a poll conducted end of June and early July. That’s the highest since the Census started asking the question in August 2020. It implies that more than 90 million families are struggling, up from about 60 million a year ago."
Resources
School in the Time of Covid: Shamik Dasgupta in Monash Bioethics Review:
"This article argues that extended school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic were a moral catastrophe. It focuses on closures in the United States of America and discusses their effect on the pandemic (or lack thereof), their harmful effects on children, and other morally relevant factors. It concludes by discussing how these closures came to pass and suggests that the root cause was structural, not individual: the relevant decision-makers were working in an institutional setting that stacked the deck heavily in favor of extended closures."
A Closer Look at Three State-Level Broadband Advancement Efforts: Via Government Technology.
The Email No Parents Want to Get This Summer: Camp Is Canceled: Via WSJ: "Several camp directors say between a quarter and a third of their staff, including counselors, kitchen workers and leadership, have tested positive during June and July. To some, this came as a relative surprise, because many camps emerged from summer 2021 having had zero or very few cases of the virus."
Sorrow in Choco Taco Town: Hasn’t 2022 already taken enough from us?
“Klondike confirmed Tuesday that the summer treat is being pulled from ice cream trucks, convenience stores and grocery shelves.”
"A tech millionaire offered to buy it. A U.S. senator suggested that the government should force manufacturers to make it."
"But so far, Klondike isn’t budging from its plan to discontinue the Choco Taco."
Here's To The Courageous: