Top Three
The Latest Coronavirus Variants Show Reassuring Early Signs: Washington Post Editorial Board.
"Nationwide, the BA.5 variant that was prevalent in recent months has now shrunk to 29.7 percent of total infections... In its place is a “soup” of new variants, some of which contain mutations that in laboratory experiments proved far more evasive of antibodies than earlier variants."
"In particular, BQ.1.1 and its offshoots now amount to 44.2 percent of total infections and are growing. But as professor Eric Topol has pointed out, “worry about this highly immune evasive” variant “has not played out” with a significant wave of new cases. New York state, which is experiencing the nation’s highest level of BQ.1.1 infections, has not seen a parallel rise in hospitalizations."
"This could signal the pandemic has reached the phase in which infections still spread, but do not claim such an enormous toll as did the omicron and delta waves."
"The roller coaster of the pandemic has taught a simple lesson: always be ready for the unexpected. While it would be wonderful to discover the novel coronavirus is becoming less of a threat, it makes sense to stay vigilant."
Virtual School Enrollment Kept Climbing Even As COVID Receded: CRPE in The 74
"On average across 10 states, virtual school enrollment rose to 170% of its pre-pandemic level in 2020-21, then nudged up further to 176% in 2021-22."
“It looks like it’ll stick,” said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. “In some states, the numbers went up temporarily and came back down a bit. But overall, if [families] are staying for a couple of years, I would expect that they would keep it going.”
Omicron BA.2 Tied to More Symptoms And, Rarely, Brain Swelling in Kids: CIDRAP
"A UK study suggests that Omicron BA.2 is tied to more symptoms and greater disruption in daily activities than BA.1, and Taiwanese researchers describe fatal cerebral edema in six children hospitalized for BA.2."
"Imperial College London researchers tracked SARS-CoV-2 transmission and symptoms among 1,542,510 randomly selected English adults, including 17,448 COVID-19 patients, from May 1, 2020, to Mar 31, 2022."
"A greater proportion of BA.2 patients (75.9%) reported at least one of 26 symptoms, compared with 70.0% of those with BA.1, 63.8% with Delta, 54.7% with Alpha, and 45.0% with the wild-type virus."
"In Taiwan, researchers examined clinical records from six BA.2-infected children diagnosed as having acute fulminant cerebral edema (usually fatal, rapid-onset brain swelling) from Apr 13 to Jun 30, 2022. All six initially had shock and significantly elevated inflammatory biomarkers, with five rapidly progressing to multi-organ failure and diffuse blood-vessel clotting and three developing acute respiratory distress."
Federal
White House: Will seek $10 billion in Covid funding in the Lame Duck session.
Covid-19 Public Health Emergency to Stay in Place: “The Biden administration gave no signal to state officials on Friday of plans to end the Covid-19 pandemic’s status as a public-health emergency, in turn leaving the designation in place past January,” the WSJ reports.
Covid Research
NEJM’s Disappointing Decision to Publish the Boston School Mask Study: Via Tracy Beth Høeg
"The first thing that jumped out at me when I read the study was Figure 1, which curiously shows the case rates started to increase in the blue (unmasking) districts independent of when they dropped the mask mandate. This suggests there is at least one factor independent of masking leading to the rise in cases in the unmasking districts. The second thing that stood out from this figure was the district that dropped the mandates at the second time point had higher case rates post lifting of the mask mandate than the district that dropped them first despite these districts having indistinguishable case rates prior to lifting the mandates. There is a lack of dose-response effect here."
"There was also a pronounced difference in pediatric vaccination rates, with the district that unmasked second (& also had highest rates having the highest city/town pediatric vaccination rate and the district that never lifted mask mandates had the lowest pediatric vaccination rate."
European Medicines Agency Panel Backs Pfizer-BioNTech Bivalent COVID-19 Vaccine Booster for Children: Reuters.
Moderna: Data suggest new Covid booster is more effective against Omicron variants. Stat
COVID-19 and Diabetes — Where Are We Now?: Via Nature.
"As emerging clinical analyses suggest an increased risk of new-onset diabetes following COVID-19, a causal link and underlying mechanisms are yet to be established."
"Given the bi-directional relationship between COVID-19 and DM, where DM is a comorbidity associated with more severe outcomes but may also be a consequence of infection itself, it will be crucial to thoroughly understand the underlying mechanisms to enable targeted interventions and reduce the likely rising high healthcare burden in the ongoing pandemic."
How to Prepare for the Next Pandemic: Good collection of McKinsey articles including:
Measuring preparedness: Are public health systems ready for the next pandemic?
Federal funding may boost social determinants of health infrastructure
The gathering storm: The affordability challenge of endemic COVID-19
Pandemic to endemic: Where do US public-health systems go from here?
State
Arkansas: One-third of Arkansans vaccinated against COVID-19 reported some level of vaccine hesitancy during a study conducted by researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Office of Community Health & Research.
"Study participants reported that cultural influences — such as musicians, celebrities, media outlets and influential community members — as well as guidance from health professionals and employer mandates were key motivators to get the vaccine."
"Other motivators included influence and encouragement from family and social networks; the idea of returning to a “pre-pandemic sense of normal”; and stark COVID-19 outcomes, such as rising deaths and hospitalization due to COVID-19 infection."
North Carolina: Burlington school district combatting teacher shortage with virtual instructors.
Economic Recovery
Labor Market Mystery: Where Are the Older Gen Z Workers? Via the WSJ:
"The exodus from the labor force in the pandemic’s early months has mostly reversed, but one group remains oddly absent: people in their early 20s."
"Economists cite several possibilities for why so many people in their early 20s have stayed on the sidelines. One is graduate school. Another: Some might have dropped out of school in the early days of the pandemic when they were high-school seniors and become disconnected from the labor force. Finally, some 20-somethings might simply be waiting for the right job opportunity to come along, a luxury afforded by the ease of finding a job in the still-tight U.S. labor market."
College Board and JFF Unite With a Mission to Foster Informed Career Exploration: College Board.
Resources
Study Finds Huge Increase in Children Going to the Emergency Room With Suicidal Thoughts: CNN on a new study.
"The study found that visits to the ER with suicidal thoughts increased 59% from 2016-17 to 2019-21. There was a corresponding increase in cases in which suicidal ideation was the principal diagnosis, which rose from 34.6% to 44.3%. Hospitalizations for suicidal thoughts increased 57% between fall 2019 and fall 2020."
"There is a nationwide shortage of beds for kids who need mental health help, research shows. A 2020 federal survey found that the number of residential treatment facilities for kids had fallen 30% from where it was in 2012."
What 14 Edtech Research Studies Showed Us About The Need for Formative Research: Via LeanLab.
How My District Overcame Our Dire Bus Driver Shortage: Chesterfield County public schools superintendent Mervin Daugherty in EdWeek.
"When schools opened in mid-August, the district still had a severe shortage of drivers. Our first solution was to ask parents (via this video message) to drive their children to and from school. Our hardworking bus drivers took on double runs at assigned schools, bringing some students to school early in the morning and taking them home late in the afternoon. We opened our schools earlier each morning to accommodate early arrivals and used county police officers for traffic control."
"The process to become a school bus driver is extremely challenging; at each step in hiring, some potential drivers are eliminated. Applicants must complete application paperwork and an interview, undergo background and driving-record checks, pass medical and drug screenings, and when classroom work is completed, pass the commercial driver’s license test and take behind-the-wheel training."
"To streamline the process, we changed our recruiting practices and procedures with job fairs, where we handled fingerprinting, background checks, Department of Motor Vehicles checks, applications, and interviews on site. We moved away from panel interviews and in some cases interviewed by phone. Taking care of these hiring aspects all at once cut down on phone tag and simplified the process for applicants and for recruiters. We also consolidated applicants’ medical appointments into one trip for a medical exam, drug screening, and a TB test."
Election 2022:
Jonathan Last on how Covid deaths may have contributed to Republican losses: “So again, lots of factors were at play. Including one that doesn’t get talked about much: excess Covid deaths. There’s been an ongoing study of the Republican resistance to the Covid vaccines and the preliminary findings suggest that post-vaccine, Republicans accounted for about 80 percent more of the excess deaths than Democrats. Part of this is because of vaccine hesitancy; part of it is because of the age profile of voters... To take just one example: between January 2021 and this month, 9,400 people in Nevada died of Covid. The data suggests that the majority of these people would have been Republican voters. Keep that number in mind.”
Bruce Mehlman is out with his latest deck: 2022 Midterm Elections: Outcomes & Implications.
Building Toward Effective High-Dosage Tutoring Programs: Lessons Learned From 3 Successful Districts: Via ERS.
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