Top Three
Pandemic Baby Developmental Delays: Emily Oster digs into the data with her newsletter.
"In reviewing this, I came away with two conclusions. The first is that there should be more high-quality research on these questions. For all that we know about the pandemic’s impacts on children, it’s depressing that there is so little compelling research."
"The second is that the media coverage of many of these studies is extremely problematic. If I look at the three studies of the overall pandemic impacts, the two worse ones, with scarier conclusions, got much more coverage than the better, less-scary paper. There may be reasons for this, but I think one of them is that fear sells. Especially to parents."
How the 100 Largest School Districts are Using Covid-Relief Money for Teachers: Via FutureEd. More via The 74.
FL State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo Issues Mrna COVID-19 Vaccine Guidance: Here.
"This analysis found that there is an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination. With a high level of global immunity to COVID-19, the benefit of vaccination is likely outweighed by this abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death among men in this age group. Non-mRNA vaccines were not found to have these increased risks."
"As such, the State Surgeon General recommends against males aged 18 to 39 from receiving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Those with preexisting cardiac conditions, such as myocarditis and pericarditis, should take particular caution when making this decision."
"Jason Salemi, a University of South Florida epidemiologist, said he supports studying both the risks and benefits of vaccination. But he said the department’s study only focused on the risk. “It’s not a complete picture,” Salemi said. “It’s taking one part of it and using that seemingly in isolation to make a recommendation.”
"The state’s study, which was not peer-reviewed, used death certificate data and information from the state’s reportable disease repository to analyze information on Floridians who died within 25 weeks of receiving an mRNA vaccine."
FL Surgeon General's response to the responses.
Federal
White House: New initiative: Clean Air in Buildings
Covid Research
Very Few Have Gotten Their Booster Shots:
Politico: “By the end of last week, the administration expected between 13 and 15 million people out of 283.4 million Americans aged 12 and up will have opted to get the updated Moderna or Pfizer jab ahead of what officials warn could be another deadly Covid winter.”
“That’s just five percent of the eligible population — a sign of the stark challenge facing a Biden administration that has positioned October as a make-or-break month for the overall success of its booster campaign. Top health officials have downplayed the low takeup, saying the numbers are a good start.”
"It is obviously harder to run a campaign when Congress decides not to fund it,” White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said during a briefing on Friday. “Our media campaign, our campaign with community-based organizations — all of that is going to be more limited because of congressional inaction.”
The FT: “A lack of funding and political will is hampering efforts to develop the next generation of vaccines that could protect millions of people from emerging new pathogens, experts have warned.”
Americans Ignored COVID Precautions or Lied About Taking Them: 4 of 10 Americans didn't follow public health measures or lied about being compliant, mostly because they wanted life to feel normal and exercise their personal freedoms, reveals a survey published in JAMA Network Open. (Press Release)
"The results also suggest that younger participants and those with greater disbelief in science may be more likely to engage in misrepresentation or nonadherence."
24.3% told someone they were with or about to be with that they were taking more COVID-19 precautions than they were, 22.5% broke quarantine rules, 21.5% avoided getting tested when they thought they might be infected, and 20.4% didn't disclose suspected or confirmed infection when entering a doctor's office.
New Wave in Europe: According to hospitalization data.
COVID Jabs for Kids: They’re Safe and They Work — So Why is Uptake So Patchy?: Via Nature.
"Some individuals, especially boys and men aged 16–24, develop inflammation of the heart muscle and its outer lining — conditions known as myocarditis and pericarditis — after receiving the mRNA vaccines. But those cases are rare, generally mild and resolve on their own. Cases in kids aged 5–11 are extremely rare — around one in every million children vaccinated."
"Studies from Singapore2, the United States and Italy find that two shots of the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine offer moderate to good protection against hospitalization in kids aged 5–11 and in adolescents, reducing the risk by between 40 and 83%. Estimates of protection levels vary widely by country and region, depending on factors such as the time elapsed since participants’ vaccination, testing intensity and previous waves of infection."
"Once again, “Omicron changed the game”, says Shamez Ladhani, a paediatric infectious-diseases physician at St George’s, University of London. It meant the vaccines were less potent at preventing infection and onward spread, and any protection waned rapidly. They do offer protection against severe disease, but the risk is lower to begin with, especially in younger children, says Ladhani. For example, a US study of kids aged 5–11, conducted when Omicron predominated, estimated that vaccination reduced the risk of hospitalizations from 19 to 9 admissions per 100,000 infections. “The numbers are so tiny that you lose precision,” says Ladhani."
Evidence Suggests Pandemic Came From Nature, Not a Lab: Science reports on the conclusions of a panel.
“Our paper recognizes that there are different possible origins, but the evidence towards zoonosis is overwhelming,” says co-author Danielle Anderson, a virologist at the University of Melbourne."
"In assembling its report, the task force interviewed researchers who have different perspectives on the pandemic’s origin. It also reviewed the history of RNA viruses, like SARS-CoV-2, that naturally have made zoonotic jumps and triggered outbreaks. And it combed through the scientific literature for papers addressing COVID-19’s origins."
"The PNAS authors say their literature search revealed “considerable scientific peer-reviewed evidence” that SARS-CoV-2 moved from bats to other wildlife, then to people in the wildlife trade, finally causing an outbreak at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. In contrast, they say, relatively few peer-reviewed studies back the lab-leak idea, and Daszak notes much of the argument has been advanced through opinion pieces. “The most parsimonious hypothesis is that the pandemic emerged through the animal market system,” Daszak says. “And while the evidence could be a lot better, it’s fairly good.”
AstraZeneca's COVID Vaccine Suffers a Setback in Nasal Spray Trial: Via Reuters.
"An antibody response in the respiratory mucous membranes was seen in only a minority of participants in the trial, which was in the first of usually three phases of clinical testing, the University of Oxford said in a statement on Tuesday."
"The nasal spray did not perform as well in this study as we had hoped," said Sandy Douglas, chief investigator of the trial at Oxford University's Jenner Institute."
"We believe that delivery of vaccines to the nose and lungs remains a promising approach, but this study suggests there are likely to be challenges in making nasal sprays a reliable option," she added.
COVID-19 Symptoms and Duration of Rapid Antigen Test Positivity: Study which finds "During the Omicron BA.1 period, 5 days after symptom onset, 80% of participants remained positive via a rapid antigen test."
"These findings indicate differences in symptoms in the BA.1 Omicron period vs the pre-Delta and Delta periods, which may be associated with rising population immunity as well as different SARS-CoV-2 variants, and positivity remained high 5 days after symptom onset in the BA.1 Omicron period."
State
Colorado: "In fall 2021, the most recent complete data available, Colorado enrolled 30,803 students in online schools, 50% more than the 20,603 enrolled in fall 2018. Online students now represent about 3.5% of public school enrollment. Although online enrollment declined slightly from 2020-21 to 2021-22, officials expect more steady growth over time."
Maryland: Montgomery County gives out 50,000 laptops to low-income residents following $22 million grant.
Michigan: Competency-Based Education in Michigan: Survey Findings.
Economic Recovery
Recession: ‘This is serious’: JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon warns U.S. likely to tip into recession in 6 to 9 months
How the Pandemic Changed Everything: Axios:
"Women's representation in the workforce grew — from entry level to C-suite — between 2015 and 2020, per McKinsey data. Then came COVID, Axios' George Moriarty writes."
"What happened: As workers began to return to the workforce after the job losses of March and April 2020, the recovery in women’s labor force participation lagged that of men's up until the beginning of this year —though women have more recently caught up."
"Low-wage customer service and retail workers bore the brunt. While frontline workers saw fewer job losses, they still had to balance risks to family."
Resources
Teenagers Are Telling Us That Something Is Wrong With America: Jamieson Webster in the NYT.
"Article after article shows us that America’s teenagers aren’t doing well, without putting their finger on what is wrong beyond issues of individual “mental illness” and the usual bugbears trotted out — social media, video games, the weakening of the family unit. But what are the teenagers telling us is wrong? We seem to have forgotten that adolescents are lightning rods for the zeitgeist. They live at the fault lines of a culture, exposing our weak spots, showing the available array of solutions and insolubilities. They are holding up a mirror for us to see ourselves more clearly."
"I find myself trying to allay teenagers’ inner voices, slow down their rush to action, give room to their anxiety, and buy time to explore what are invariably complicated feelings about themselves and their world, without believing I have any answers. But don’t we live in a country full of aggressive, blaming speech, a preference for quick solutions, and the reduction of real impasses to superficial actionable items, disavowing anxiety while sowing confusion?"
How Much It Will Cost to Fix Pandemic Learning Loss: $700 billion according to a new paper.
Districts Are Ditching COVID Dashboards. Here’s Why: Via EdWeek.
The Crisis of Men and Boys: David Brooks reviews Richard Reeves' new book, "Of Boys and Men."
"If you’ve been paying attention to the social trends, you probably have some inkling that boys and men are struggling, in the U.S. and across the globe."
"They are struggling in the classroom. American girls are 14 percentage points more likely to be “school ready” than boys at age 5, controlling for parental characteristics. By high school, two-thirds of the students in the top 10 percent of the class, ranked by G.P.A., are girls, while roughly two-thirds of the students at the lowest decile are boys."
"Men are struggling in the workplace. One in three American men with only a high school diploma — 10 million men — is now out of the labor force. The biggest drop in employment is among young men aged 25 to 34. Men who entered the work force in 1983 will earn about 10 percent less in real terms in their lifetimes than those who started a generation earlier. Over the same period, women’s lifetime earnings have increased 33 percent. Pretty much all of the income gains that middle-class American families have enjoyed since 1970 are because of increases in women’s earnings."
"Richard V. Reeves’s new book, “Of Boys and Men,” is a landmark, one of the most important books of the year, not only because it is a comprehensive look at the male crisis, but also because it searches for the roots of that crisis and offers solutions."