Covid-19 Policy Update #664
Covid-19 Policy Update #664
Friday 6/9
I hope everyone had a good week. Remember our chat last month about closing the chapter on the Covid Policy Update? Given that the Global Health Emergency and the U.S. Covid National Emergency have ended, it seems like the right time to make that move. And yes, even Dr. Jha is on to new adventures.
We're planning to send off the Covid Policy Update in style on June 27th. Not only will this be the last update, but we're also going to mark the occasion with a happy hour here in DC. I’ll send out the details next week, but for now - hold the early evening of the 27th.
Hope you have a great weekend.
All the best,
—John
Top Three
No Concerning Side Effects Found in Young Children Who Received the COVID-19 Vaccine: New study in Pediatrics.
"In this interim analysis of children aged 5 years and younger, safety surveillance of more than 245 000 COVID-19 mRNA vaccine doses over 9 months did not detect a safety signal for any outcome during the 21 days after vaccination. Importantly, no cases of myocarditis or pericarditis occurred after vaccination."
"This safety profile is consistent with results from phase 3 clinical trials and other vaccine safety monitoring systems."
"Researchers also examined patient records for 23 serious and potential side effects, including blood clots, seizures, stroke, and brain inflammation. No safety concern for any of the serious side effects were found. In particular, the study found no concern for seizures after vaccination, something occasionally seen following other routine childhood immunizations in children under 2 years old."
Educators Beware: As Budget Cuts Loom, Now Is Not the Time to Quit Your Job: Via Katherine Silberstein and Marguerite Roza in The 74.
"Portland and Auburn, Maine issued a hiring freeze this spring. Hartford, San Francisco, and Baltimore County are eliminating unfilled positions. Fort Worth and Seattle are already doing layoffs."
"And this is just the beginning. Last month, at an education finance training we conducted at Georgetown University, we heard from dozens of school officials from all over the country whose districts were already making similar moves or are poised to in the next year."
"In the last few years, the hiring bonanza has been fueled by a flood of federal pandemic relief funds (ESSER). Districts across the country used that money to add staff that they wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. Now, that funding is set to disappear by the fall of 2024, which means districts are paying for more employees than they can afford."
"To make matters worse, during the same time period, districts have been losing students. That means that state and local dollars (which tend to be driven by enrollment counts) are unlikely to make up the gap."
How COVID Changed High School Seniors' Plans About College and Their Future Careers: Via USA Today.
"Of this year’s graduating class, who were ninth graders when the health crisis began, more than 40% of students changed their thinking about their college major or future career because of COVID, according to new research published Wednesday from the ACT."
"One-fifth of the students (20%) in the low-income group even indicated that the pandemic made them think about whether to attend college at all. One low-income student gave a clear reason for not attending: “My family’s small business was heavily impacted by the pandemic. I didn’t think I would have the finances to attend college.”
"They also reported how social isolation led to loneliness and depression and affected their thoughts: “The pandemic really unmotivated me with being successful. There was so much negativity in the world going on and the focus on social media had become huge because of how lonely we all felt from being isolated.” “I developed very strong depression to the point where I was not sure I would make it to college applications, much less worry about which colleges I could get into.”
Federal
White House: Ashish Jha is stepping down from his role as White House Covid-19 response coordinator on June 15 to return to his job as dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
CDC: CDC comes under fire for inadequate information about its Covid response.
ED:
Opens Grant Application for $73.8 Million to Raise the Bar for Student Well-being through Full-Service Community Schools
Announces Grant Opportunities to Address Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Career Advancement.
Justice Department Charges Trump in Documents Case: Via NYT
CNBC: "Thirty-one counts charge that Trump willfully retained national defense information, a violation of the Espionage Act. The other six allege that Trump caused false statements to be made, concealed documents from investigators, obstructed justice and allegedly conspired to do these things."
"The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”
Boxes containing classified info in "a ballroom, a bathroom & a shower, an office space, his bedroom and a storage room." These were docs from the CIA, Pentagon, NSA, Geospatial Intelligence, National Reconnaissance Office, and Energy.
Trump indictment cheat sheet: What to know about the classified documents case.
Playbook: The United States v. Donald Trump: "But try, for a moment, to consider the genuinely undiscovered terrain we’ve entered as a country in the last 24 hours. For the first time in American history, a former president has been indicted by a U.S. Department of Justice that, less than 900 days ago, was housed in the executive branch he controlled. He could face years in prison if found guilty."
Covid Research
FDA Grants Marketing Authorization for Cue OTC, At-Home COVID-19 Test: FDA: "This test is the first at-home over-the-counter (OTC) test for COVID-19 to be granted marketing authorization using a traditional premarket review pathway and the first ever at-home test authorized using a traditional premarket review pathway for any respiratory illness."
How the Mixed Messaging of Vaccine Skeptics Sows Seeds of Doubt: Via KFF.
"Vaccine skeptics run the gamut from individuals with scientific credentials who nevertheless oppose public health policies from a libertarian perspective to individuals endorsing theories about widespread adverse events, or arguing against the need for multiple shots. VAERS is a favorite topic among the latter group. When one witness testifying during the May 11 hearing attempted to defend covid vaccination policies, Taylor Greene cited the number of reports to VAERS as evidence of the vaccines’ lack of safety."
"In a March hearing focusing on school reopening policies, Democratic members of the panel and a witness from a school nurses association frequently touted the important role covid vaccines played in enabling schools to reopen. Wenstrup offered generalized skepticism. “I heard we were able to get more vaccines for the children,” he said. “We didn’t know fully if they needed it. A lot of data would show they don’t need to vaccinate.”
Menstrual Changes Due to COVID Vaccines Minimal: CIDRAP on a new study.
"Menstrual cycles may lengthen by up to 1 day following COVID-19 vaccination, but the effect is temporary and vaccination makes little difference in cycle regularity, bleed length, heaviness of bleed, or menstrual pain."
State
Kansas: Families are eligible to receive $1,000 to remedy pandemic learning loss.
Minnesota: Minneapolis Public Schools looks to one-time funds to help cover $97 million gap in proposed budget.
Ohio: CPS summer school attracts about half the school year enrollment.
International
School Closings During Pandemic Affected Parents' Work Schedules: According to a new German study.
"For example, parents whose children had at least partial access to care or schooling in attendance worked about 1.5 to 2 hours more per week than parents whose children still had to completely do without care or attendance."
China’s Rolling COVID Waves Could Hit Every Six Months: Via Nature.
Resources
National Polling: From EdChoice/Morning Consult.
About 6 in 10 school parents are at least somewhat supportive having their child’s school move to a four-day school week – a level much higher than the support expressed by non-parents.
Parents are much more optimistic about K-12 education locally – by more than 20 percentage points – compared to how they view K-12 education nationwide.
About half of school parents are concerned about a violent intruder entering their child’s school. This proportion has remained consistent for the past few months.
National Study of 1.8 Million Charter Students Shows Charter Pupils Outperform Peers at Traditional Public Schools: Via The 74.
"Gains amount to 16 additional days of English and 6 of math a year. But CREDO finds that sector lags in special education and virtual instruction."
"Black students attending charter schools gained 35 days of growth in reading and 29 days in math — as if they’d attended school for an extra 1.5 months over a single school year. Hispanics enjoyed 30 extra days of reading and 19 in math. By comparison, white and multiracial students lost the equivalent 24 days of annual math learning in charter schools."
"Poor students saw much higher gains in charters than in traditional public schools (23 extra days of reading growth, 17 extra days in math), as did English learners (six extra days of reading, eight in math); students with overlapping designations (such as both African American and low-income, or both Hispanic and English learner), also made considerable strides."
"The new study focuses on charter school performance in 29 states, as well as Washington, D.C., and New York City, incorporating standardized test scores between 2015 and 2019. All told, over 80 percent of tested public school students were included in CREDO’s data set. More than 1.8 million charter students were each paired with a “virtual twin” (i.e., a nearby pupil possessing similar demographic traits and prior test scores) enrolled at the district school that the charter student otherwise would have attended."
Kids Grappling With Mental Health Crisis Made Worse By The Pandemic: 60 Minutes
What Do We Know about New Schools in the United States?: New paper via the Carnegie Corporation.
"Of the 93,502 public elementary and secondary schools operating in the 2019–20 school year, 31,912 (34%) did not exist 30 years earlier."
"These new schools are attended by nearly 17 million students, or one-third of all public school students."
"The data show that new school creation peaked in the late 1990s through the first decade of the 2000s, concurrent with education reform efforts that prioritized new schools."
The Funding Districts Will Fall Back On When Stimulus Dollars Go Away: Via EdWeek: A survey of district leaders found that, for many, there are no funding sources to make up for federal stimulus funds.
45% say their district will have to reduce expenses.
40% say they will use general funds.
27% say they will use state funding.
25% say they will use Title I funding.
Nearly 68% of respondents say their schools will review all products and services purchased with stimulus dollars to judge their alignment with the district’s strategic goals.
Map of Donut Federations: Via the Washington Post.
AI:
Marc Andreessen: Why AI Will Save The World.
Vicki Phillips: Intelligent Classrooms: What AI Means For The Future Of Education.
Vice News: “AI-generated political ads are officially here. And no one—including the campaigns themselves, let alone the voters—are prepared to handle this new reality.”
Wolfram Prompt Repository: A collection of ~200 basic and advanced LLM prompts for accomplishing tasks that range from fun to technical.
Study: GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers.
"Our findings reveal that these detectors consistently misclassify non-native English writing samples as AI-generated, whereas native writing samples are accurately identified. Furthermore, we demonstrate that simple prompting strategies can not only mitigate this bias but also effectively bypass GPT detectors, suggesting that GPT detectors may unintentionally penalize writers with constrained linguistic expressions."
Microsoft will make it possible for users of its Azure Government cloud computing service to access artificial intelligence models GPT-3 and GPT-4 from OpenAI.
The potential applications are important: sorting through paperwork; providing 24/7 customer support on permitting, tax, DMV, etc issues; etc as well as building custom applications using natural language to query proprietary data models and rapidly generate code documentation.
Related: "The Book I Wish Every Policymaker Would Read"
Google Cloud: Generative AI support on Vertex AI is now generally available.
Google Bard: Is getting better at mathematical tasks, coding questions and string manipulation through a new technique called implicit code execution. Plus, it has a new export action to Google Sheets.
Meta released MusicGen, a simple and controllable model for music generation.
You Made It To The Weekend!: Shake it. And just Shake It Off.
Mark Rober Address to MIT Class of 2023: The popular YouTuber, engineer, and inventor (remember this?) who works to engage young people in science and technology while encouraging curiosity and resilience, gives this year's Commencement address to the MIT Class of 2023.