Covid-19 Policy Update #571
Monday 9/19
Top Three
President Biden Says the Pandemic Is Over: Via 60 Minutes:
President Biden: “The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lotta work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one's wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it's changing."
"Biden’s insistence on Sunday night that the pandemic is over caught several of his own health officials by surprise. The declaration was not part of his planned remarks ahead of the “60 Minutes” interview, two administration officials familiar with the matter told POLITICO."
WSJ: "The administration has also continued to renew a public-health emergency despite criticism from some Republicans who say it is no longer necessary. The declaration has provided the White House with additional flexibility to combat Covid-19.... Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) said on Twitter that if the pandemic is over, “all of the President’s emergency powers predicated on a pandemic [and] the emergency powers of every governor” should be voided."
The President also made news on Taiwan and inflation:
Pelley: "[W]ould U.S. forces defend the island?"
Biden: "Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack."
Pelley: "So unlike Ukraine — to be clear, sir — U.S. forces, U.S. men and women would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?"
Biden: "Yes.
Covid Shots for Young Kids Arrived in June. Few Have Received Them: Via the Washington Post.
"Even in places with strong pro-vaccine sentiments, few young children have received shots, including in the District, which has the highest percentage vaccinated. In D.C., barely 21 percent of children 6 months to 4 years old have received one shot, and just 7.5 percent have received both doses, according to the CDC."
"In Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi — which occupy the bottom of the list — the rates are even more dismal: less than 0.2 percent. Health officials worry that the lackluster vaccination uptake might leave the nation vulnerable to coronavirus clusters in the fall and winter."
"Rubin, the pediatrician, said he wishes there had been more robust promotion of vaccines by public health officials across platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. “I don’t see a strong presence from governing agencies to promote for kids under 5 and to debunk these myths,” he said."
Scientists Debate How Lethal COVID Is. Some Say It's Now Less Risky Than Flu: Via NPR.
"We have all been questioning, 'When does COVID look like influenza?''' says Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. "And, I would say, 'Yes, we are there.'
"So unless a more virulent variant emerges, COVID's menace has diminished considerably for most people, which means that they can go about their daily lives, says Gandhi, "in a way that you used to live with endemic seasonal flu."
"We are now seeing consistently that more than 70% of our COVID hospitalizations are in that category," says Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease specialist at the Tufts Medical Center and a professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine. "If you're counting them all as hospitalizations, and then those people die and you count them all as COVID deaths, you are pretty dramatically overcounting."
"If deaths were classified more accurately, then the daily death toll would be closer to the toll the flu takes during a typical season, Doron says. If this is true, the odds of a person dying if they get a COVID infection — what's called the case fatality rate — would be about the same as the flu now, which is estimated to be around 0.1%, or perhaps even lower."
"I'll probably feel more comfortable saying something like, 'Oh, COVID is similar to the flu' when we actually see a pattern that resembles that," says Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in the division of health policy and public health. "We're sort of just starting to see that, and I haven't really seen that in a sustained way."
Federal
ED: K12 Dive reports, Sec. Cardona sent a letter to state education leaders clarifying how states should distribute funds from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Priority for funding should go to districts with high rates of poverty and one of the following:
“A high student-to-mental health professional ratio.”
“High rates of chronic absenteeism, exclusionary discipline, and/or referrals to the juvenile justice system, bullying/harassment, community and school violence, or substance abuse.”
“Students who recently experienced a natural disaster or traumatic event.”
HHS: "After Launching National Tour to Strengthen Mental Health, HHS Releases Roadmap Based on Patient and Provider Feedback."
HHS: Biden administration announces the intention in "near future" to release Head Start from mandatory toddler/staff masking rule that contradicts CDC.
Energy: The Advancing Equity Through Workforce Partnerships will award $10 million for the development of collaborative workforce programs that will facilitate the rapid deployment of solar energy technologies while supporting an inclusive workforce with opportunities for union membership.
NTIA: Launches updated federal broadband funding guide.
Covid-19 Research
Potent New Covid Boosters Are Here. Will Weary Americans Bother?: Via NYT.
"The new boosters are one of the last remaining weapons in America’s arsenal against the coronavirus, now that the country has scrapped most requirements to mask, quarantine or distance as the smoldering pandemic has faded into the background for many. The push for a new vaccine — barely noticed so far by some people — will test how the country responds at a time when the sense of crisis over Covid has abated."
"But health experts said the urgency around Covid had faded as deaths and infections dipped to lower levels. To many, the message about a new, different booster simply was not penetrating."
“Is there a booster campaign? Where is it? Because I can’t find one,” said Drew Altman, president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. “I don’t mean to be cynical, but there’s no reason to expect a huge turnaround and all of America to run out and get boosted.”
COVID is Still Killing Hundreds a Day, Even as Society Begins to Move On: Via LA Times.
"Americans have been urged to learn to live with the coronavirus, but this summer, hundreds were still dying from it each day. The death toll has fallen from the grim peaks of past surges, but has persisted in recent months, averaging more than 400 lives lost a day from June through August."
"At that rate, COVID still amounts to one of the biggest causes of death in the U.S., even as public officials herald the availability of vaccines and treatments. The coronavirus “no longer controls our lives,” President Biden declared this spring and again this summer. His COVID-19 coordinator has stated that most COVID deaths are now preventable."
"Yet in Los Angeles County, more people died of COVID between May and July this year than during the same months last year. The virus claimed the lives of nearly 800 people in L.A. County in those months, compared with nearly 500 a year earlier. Elderly people bore the brunt of that increase, with a death rate that had tripled among people who had reached their 80th birthday."
Advances in Treating the Sickest Covid Patients Have Stalled. Why?: Asks Stat.
Omicron Sublineage BA.2.75.2 Exhibits Extensive Escape from Neutralising Antibodies: Study.
"In recent serum samples from blood donors in Stockholm, Sweden, BA.2.75.2 was neutralised, on average, five-fold less potently than BA.5, representing the most neutralisation resistant variant evaluated to date. These data raise concerns that BA.2.75.2 may effectively evade humoral immunity in the population."
BA 2.75 is only 1% of all U.S. cases right now.
State
Alabama: U.S., Alabama academic recovery from pandemic too slow, must accelerate, report says
A+ Education Partnership gathered educational practices that have shown to accelerate learning and shared them in what they’re calling the Advocate Toolkit.
California: Via The 74: "California Poll Finds Parents Leaving Traditional Public For Charter Schools."
"The poll found a higher percentage of school switches among Democrats, white parents, families with English as a primary language and households earning more than $150,000 per year."
"Among parents surveyed that switched their child’s school, the 52% that originally attended traditional public schools dropped to 41% – an 11 percentage point decline. In contrast, the 15% that attended charter schools grew to 23% – an 8 percentage point increase."
"38% of parents decided to switch schools because they wanted a different educational experience for their children. The poll also found 31% of parents dissatisfied with COVID-related safety measures at their childrens’ school and 30% dissatisfied with mental health support or one-on-one learning help."
Ohio: New study: "Academic Achievement and Pandemic Recovery in Ohio" and tweet summary.
"Although the ELA gains have been broad-based, they have not eliminated the achievement gaps that were exacerbated during the first year of the pandemic."
"Overall, ELA achievement remains between one-third and two-thirds of a year’s worth of learning lower than in the pre-pandemic period, depending on the grade."
"If the current pace of recovery can be sustained, ELA achievement could return to pre-pandemic levels within the next two to three years in most grades."
"By contrast, math achievement levels remain between one-half and a whole year’s worth of learning lower and if the current pace of recovery in math persists, it will take considerably longer for achievement to recover to pre-pandemic levels."
New York:
New York Post reports,"The city Department of Education has axed another 850 teachers and classroom aides — bringing the total to nearly 2,000 school employees fired for failure to comply with a vaccine mandate increasingly struck down in court."
The state is no longer releasing COVID-19 case numbers by school district, closing down the COVID-19 School Report Card, which had been a source of local statistics for two years.
Reading Aloud Can Remedy Covid Learning Loss: Meghan Cox Gurdon in the WSJ.
California's New Age Rules for Sites and Apps Raise a Ruckus:ViaAxios.
"The bipartisan California Age Appropriate Design Code Act, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday, requires online platforms to consider the best interest of users under 18 when designing their services."
"Sites that are likely to be accessed by children and teens will be prohibited from using their personal information, collecting location data or profiling them by default."
"Websites and apps must estimate the range of age of their user population to determine whether they are likely to be accessed by teens and kids, and implement measures to protect those users."
"The age estimation requirement has sparked an outcry that the law will alter how users navigate the web by forcing them to prove their age before accessing a site. This could mean websites or apps will require users to upload government IDs or require facial scans to prove ages, Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University Law School and critic of the measure, told Axios."
"The bill focuses on establishing a floor of safety and security for young people," Nicole Gill, co-founder and executive director of Accountable Tech, which supports the legislation, told Axios. A wide swath" of sites and apps "just isn't going to fall under that," she says, because they don't engage in practices the bill prohibits deploying for child users, such as targeted advertising or storing location data."
Class Act: Clemson beat Louisiana Tech, 48-20 but what happened off the field moved Tigers Coach Dabo Swinney to call Tech players a “class group.”
Each one of them hand wrote a letter for Bryan Bresee, the Clemson defensive tackle who missed the game after the death of his 15-year-old sister, Ella, from medulloblastoma, the most prevalent of brain cancer in children.
Swinney brought a box of the letters to the podium as he addressed the media after the game, calling the gesture “a beautiful thing.”
Remembering Queen Elizabeth: Kirsty Young delivers an emotional monologue as she signs off the BBC’s eleven days of coverage.
“She made history, she was history. Queen Elizabeth II has gone, but she will surely never be forgotten.”
Queen Elizabeth II Has Completed Her Final Journey to St George’s Chapel: Where she will be laid to rest alongside her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
