I’m on vacation which is why we’re on a reduced publishing schedule. But it also means that tonight’s update pairs well with one or more Painkillers. Some important developments so we’ll get right to it…
Top Three
Reactions to the Updated CDC Guidance:
Emily Oster: "Updated CDC Guidelines for School and Child Care."
"In general: these new guidelines take a significant step toward a pre-COVID world. They work to eliminate a lot of the COVID-specific disruptions that we do not see for other illnesses."
"This is the big, exciting, change. The new guidelines suggest no quarantine for COVID exposure (this includes both in-school and out-of-school exposure). Prior guidelines suggested a 10-day quarantine or test-to-stay as an alternative. So doing away with this is huge, especially for parents of children under 2, where test-to-stay has been less of an option."
"There is a wrinkle to this: the guidelines suggest that after an exposure, individuals remain masked for 10 days and test after day 5. These guidelines have been in place for everyone for a long period and haven’t changed. I am unsure of the extent to which most schools will enforce this, especially as contact tracing becomes less common. But it did lead to concern from parents of the under-2 set. In particular, since that group cannot mask, the guidelines are a bit ambiguous about whether they still need to quarantine. A lot of you sent me panicked messages about that. I have good news. I wrote to the CDC directly about it, and a CDC spokesperson replied officially:"
"Those who are exposed do not need to quarantine, including those who cannot mask (e.g., children 2 years and younger, students with disabilities who might have difficulty masking). Schools and ECE programs can determine if they would like to use testing in these scenarios. Or, the other options include: masking of those who are able to and would be close contacts or implementing other layers of prevention, including distancing, ventilation."
Katelyn Jetelina: "A reaction to the CDC guidance."
"We see strong evidence (here, here) that an Omicron infection lasts, on average, 8-10 days. Peak infectiousness is around day 4/5, as demonstrated from an FDA study released earlier this week. While the guidance did state to wear a mask after 5 days and/or avoid high-risk people, this narrative has already been lost."
"Unfortunately, this creates a dangerous feedback loop: CDC tries to meet people where they are by saying isolate for 5 days. But then an employer uses this guidance to require employees to be back after 5 days. This forces people who want to stay home but can’t. Then, this drives inequities. Those who have high-wage jobs can stay at home (or continue to work from home), while people with low-wage jobs don’t have this option."
Eric Topol: "‘Living with Covid’ should be countered by containing the virus once and for all."
"Back in late December 2021, with the onslaught of the Omicron BA 1 wave, the CDC came up with a five-day isolation policy without any evidence that it would prevent the spread of infections to others, and without advocating the need for rapid antigen testing."
"Indeed, multiple studies have shown that most people are still infectious after five days, with even rigorous assessment that shows the virus that can be cultured from some people with Omicron infections at two weeks. Ending isolation by arbitrarily picking a short time duration, with or without symptoms, and advocating masking, has undoubtedly promoted the spread of infections. By steadfastly continuing to endorse this flawed CDC guidance, our public health agency has failed its namesake mission of controlling and preventing Covid disease."
"We also need to press on with a universal, variant-proof coronavirus vaccine which would get ahead of potential pathogenic mutations of the virus rather than chasing specific variants, the untenable strategy as the virus continues to adapt faster than our response."
Katherine Wu: "The Pandemic’s Soft Closing."
"The shift in guidelines underscores how settled the country is into the current state of affairs. This new relaxation of COVID rules is one of the most substantial to date—but it wasn’t spurred by a change in conditions on the ground. A slew of Omicron subvariants are still burning across most states; COVID deaths have, for months, remained at a stubborn, too-high plateau. The virus won’t budge. Nor will Americans. So the administration is shifting its stance instead."
"The country has cooked up tests, treatments, and vaccines. By some estimates, roughly three-quarters of the country harbors at least some immunity to recent variants. But those tools and others remain disproportionately available to the socioeconomically privileged. Meanwhile, Planey told me, people who are poor, chronically ill, disabled, immunocompromised, uninsured, racially and ethnically marginalized, or working high-risk jobs are still struggling to access resources, a disparity exacerbated by the ongoing dearth of emergency COVID funds....If wide gaps in health remain between the fortunate and the less fortunate, the virus will inevitably exploit them."
"Now, as recommendations repeatedly describe rather than influence behavior, the country is locked into a “circular feedback loop we can’t seem to get out of,” Ganapathi told me. The policies weaken; people lose interest in following them, spurring officials to slacken even more."
Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation: "Covid isn’t done with us, whatever the CDC says."
"The CDC still recommends indoor masking in counties with high community transmission — where about 60% of the U.S. population lives. However, it no longer recommends testing in most cases and ends “test-to-stay” programs in schools, which allowed students exposed to a known infected person to avoid quarantine as long as they were asymptomatic and continued to test negative. This relegates important public health tools to the sidelines."
Stat: "CDC eases Covid-19 quarantine and testing guidelines as it marks a new phase in pandemic"
The FDA Recommends Repeated At-home COVID Tests to Avoid False Negatives: Via Yahoo News.
"The FDA issued a statement warning that at-home rapid antigen tests can deliver false negative results and people who need tests should plan to do so more than once to make sure they are not “unknowingly spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus to others.”
"The FDA now advises that people who plan to use at-home tests get several of them so they can test more than once. For people with COVID-19 symptoms who test at home and receive a negative result, the agency recommends taking a second at-home COVID-19 test, 48 hours after the first, for a total of at least two tests."
"For those who suspect a COVID-19 exposure but have no symptoms, the FDA now recommends up to three tests, each separated by a 48-hour period."
What Americans Really Think: Via Axios, "Self-silencing" — people saying what they think others want to hear rather than what they truly feel — is skewing our understanding of how Americans really feel about abortion, COVID-19 precautions, what children are taught in school and other hot-button issues" according to a new Populace study led by Todd Rose.
"For people between the ages of 30 and 44, the two biggest public-private gaps both relate to education. First, the vast majority (74%) of people in this age group privately think parents should have more influence over public school curriculums, but only 48% are willing to say so publicly. Second, while in public a majority (60%) say discussing gender identity in public schools is inappropriate for young children (K-3), in private this is not the majority view (only 40% privately agree)."
Federal
White House: Fact Sheet: BACK TO SCHOOL 2022: Giving Every School the Tools to Prevent COVID-19 Spread and Stay Safely Open All Year Long.
First Lady: "First Lady Jill Biden has tested positive for Covid-19, is experiencing mild symptoms and has started Paxlovid. She's with President Biden in South Carolina at a private residence "and will return home after she receives two consecutive negative COVID tests," her office says."
ED: Via the 74, "Conservative Lawsuit Pushes Back Start of Ed Dept. Parent Council."
"Under the law, there are three ways to establish a federal advisory committee — by statute, presidential order or through a federal agency. The agency involved has to place a notice in the Federal Register, appoint an administrator to the committee and establish a charter outlining the group’s purpose and how often it will meet. The department hasn’t taken those steps."
"But Edelman countered that the group will function more as a “sounding board” for the department, that membership will change over time and that the council won’t weigh in on specific policy."
CDC: The NYT reports: "Walensky, Citing Botched Pandemic Response, Calls for C.D.C. Reorganization"
"In a meeting with senior staff, Dr. Walensky outlined in broad terms a plan to reorganize the agency’s structure to prioritize public health needs and efforts to curb continuing outbreaks, and to put less emphasis on publication of scientific papers about rare diseases."
"The changes Dr. Walensky described include the appointment of a former Obama administration health official, Mary K. Wakefield, to lead the C.D.C.’s shift to a stronger public health focus. Two scientific divisions will now report directly to Dr. Walensky’s office, and the agency will cut down review time for urgently needed studies. The agency is also altering its promotion system so that it rewards efforts to make an impact on public health and is less heavily based on the number of scientific papers published."
"A new executive team will be created to set priorities and make decisions about how to spend the agency’s annual budget of about $12 billion, “with a bias toward public health impact."
More via the Washington Post. “CDC is a very academic organization — and I think Dr. Walensky recognized that when she says that they need to change the reward structure, so people aren’t rewarded for publications but for operational execution,” Scott Gottlieb said. He also praised Walensky for vowing a new communications approach, adding that her plans to simplify CDC’s language and publish data more quickly would better reach people confused by the agency’s guidance. “They have to learn how to put out bottom-line information,” Gottlieb said."
Axios reports the efforts will also include "Restructuring the CDC's communications office and revamping its websites to make public health guidance clearer and easier to find."
Covid-19 Research
How We Got Herd Immunity Wrong: Via Stat
"The idea that vaccinating a certain percentage of the population would stop transmission of SARS-CoV-2 was a seductive but unhelpful description of herd immunity. This understanding comes from the so-called sterilizing immunity provided by infection or vaccination against diseases like measles. Sterilizing immunity means an individual can no longer be infected or infect others. Reach a certain percentage or “threshold” of this immunity in a population (around 95% for measles) and transmission comes to halt and the virus is eliminated."
"This, however, is neither the exclusive nor even the most common understanding of herd immunity — and it is misleading for Covid-19. SARS-CoV-2 is not like the measles virus, but more like influenza, a virus that does not produce sterilizing immunity, returning every season like clockwork."
56% of Omicron-infected Adults Didn't Know They Were Contagious: Study, "Among the 210 participants, median age was 51 years, 65% were women, 44% knew they had a recent Omicron infection, and 56% said they didn't know they were infected. Of the 118 participants who were unaware of their infection, 12 (10%) said they had symptoms but had attributed them to a common cold or other non-COVID infection."
State
California: L.A. Unified officials knock on doors, urging chronically absent students to return.
"Nearly half of the district’s students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 10% or more of the school year. In pre-pandemic years, about 19% were chronically absent — a number that was already considered high."
"On Friday, almost every parent of a chronically absent student said COVID-19 quarantines kept their children home for prolonged periods. One mother said her car stopped working, so she struggled to take her small children to their different schools. A 17-year-old girl said she felt stressed and overwhelmed by the amount of work."
Colorado: Jefferson County Public Schools invest over $1.6 million in mental health. "Among the investments in students' mental health, according to Dorland, are a $1.6 million investment in telehealth services in all of the district's 155 schools and trained staff manning vestibules at school entrances. Those telehealth services are in partnership with Hazel Health, a San Francisco-based company that specializes in telehealth services for children and students."
Maryland: Parents question whether Baltimore County special education students will get needed services amid staffing shortage.
Nevada: Clark County School District confirms their first case of monkeypox.
New Jersey: Gov. Murphy lifts COVID testing mandate for unvaccinated teachers and day care workers.
Texas: 48% of parents surveyed said that they either definitely will get or have already gotten their children ages 6 months and older vaccinated. That’s up from 38% of parents who said the same in May for their children ages 5 and older, and a one point increase from 47% of parents who said the same in February.
Virginia: Secretary Aimee Guidera, "Virginia’s education future is now on the right track."
West Virginia: The state is providing free COVID tests, vaccines at schools.
International
China: China's financial hub Shanghai said on Sunday it would reopen all schools including kindergartens, primary and middle schools on Sept. 1 after months of COVID-19 closures.
Sweden: "No learning loss in Sweden during the pandemic: Evidence from primary school reading assessments."
"The COVID-19 pandemic has led to worldwide school closures, with a risk of learning loss. Sweden kept primary schools open, but it is unknown whether student and teacher absence and pandemic-related stress factors affected teaching and student progress negatively."
"Results showed that word decoding and reading comprehension scores were not lower during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic, that students from low socio-economic backgrounds were not especially affected, and that the proportion of students with weak decoding skills did not increase during the pandemic."
UK: Becomes the first country to approve a dual Covid vaccine targeting omicron.
Resources
Low Parent Interest in COVID-recovery Interventions Should Worry Educators and Policymakers Alike: Morgan Polikoff over at Brookings
In the spring of 2022, only 38% of parents said their school offered summer school and 43% said they offered tutoring.
Less than one quarter (23%) of parents were interested in summer school, and just over a quarter were interested in tutoring (28%).
"At schools that do not offer summer school and tutoring, 45% and 60% of parents (respectively) report that their academically struggling child would participate if offered."
Khan & NWEA Study: The MAP Accelerator tool developed by Khan Academy and NWEA helped boost scores across all grades, races and poverty levels in grades 3-8. (Study)
"For example, fifth-grade students who used MAP Accelerator for 30 minutes per week grew an average 18% more than projected, gaining 1.7 points above pre-pandemic norms."
How Below Grade-Level Work is Holding Students Back in Literacy: Study from ReadWorks and TNTP. More via The 74.
"Analyzing data from 3 million students assigned lessons through a widely used literacy program, the nonprofits ReadWorks and TNTP found that during the 2020-21 school year — the first full year after the start of the pandemic — students were assigned work below their grade level a third of the time. Children in high-poverty schools were given less challenging materials more often than their affluent peers — even when they had already mastered grade-level assignments."
New Lures for Teachers: Via Axios.
"Des Moines Public Schools is offering a $50,000 incentive to teachers, nurses and administrators who are nearing retirement to stay with the district through the 2022-2023 school year. At least 58 have taken the offer so far, according to records obtained by Axios."
"Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) signed legislation last month to allow people without a bachelor’s degree to start training to become teachers, and complete their training while also finishing their degree."
When Both of Your Parents Are News Anchors: You get these kinds of updates.