Opening schools
Important questions from my friend
Paula W……..
! Listen up world!
Betsy DeVos, we have a few questions for you:
• If a teacher tests positive for COVID-19 are they required to quarantine for 2-3 weeks? Is their sick leave covered, paid?
• If that teacher has 5 classes a day with 30 students each, do all 150 of those students need to then stay home and quarantine for 14 days?
• Do all 150 of those students now have to get tested? Who pays for those tests? Are they happening at school? How are the parents being notified? Does everyone in each of those kids’ families need to get tested? Who pays for that?
• What if someone who lives in the same house as a teacher tests positive? Does that teacher now need to take 14 days off of work to quarantine? Is that time off covered? Paid?
• Where is the district going to find a substitute teacher who will work in a classroom full of exposed, possibly infected students for substitute pay?
• Substitutes teach in multiple schools. What if they are diagnosed with COVID-19? Do all the kids in each school now have to quarantine and get tested? Who is going to pay for that?
• What if a student in your kid’s class tests positive? What if your kid tests positive? Does every other student and teacher they have been around quarantine? Do we all get notified who is infected and when? Or because of HIPAA regulations are parents and teachers just going to get mysterious “may have been in contact” emails all year long?
• What is this stress going to do to our teachers? How does it affect their health and well-being? How does it affect their ability to teach? How does it affect the quality of education they are able to provide? What is it going to do to our kids? What are the long-term effects of consistently being stressed out?
• How will it affect students and faculty when the first teacher in their school dies from this? The first parent of a student who brought it home? The first kid?
• How many more people are going to die, that otherwise would not have if we had stayed home longer?
30% of the teachers in the US are over 50. About 16% of the total deaths in the US are people between the ages of 45-65.
We are choosing to put our teachers in danger.
We’re not paying them more.
We aren’t spending anywhere near the right amount to protect them. And in turn, we are putting ourselves and our kids in danger.
(Please copy, paste and share.)
CGTN @CGTNOfficial
The White House has blocked CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield and other officials from testifying before a House Education and Labor Committee hearing on the reopening of schools next week, as the debate over sending children back to school intensifies in the country.
6:38 PM · Jul 17, 2020
The answer is no to all these questions if it meant that Betsy O, Donald J, or any of theirs had to pay $1 more in taxes. Public School teachers, students, staff, and their families are Expendables.
PAY one parent to stay home and care for their kids with online schools. Hell, we should have done this before Covid-19. Professional teachers man the help desk and paid stay at home parents learn why handling their brats is so much trouble. MAPA. Make Americans Parents Again.
Teacher’s Union Leader: Federal Govt. Gets an “F” | Amanpour and Company
NEA Prez: ‘I Double Dog Dare Donald Trump To Sit In A Class Of 39 Sixth Graders And Breathe’
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/07/nea-prez-i-double-dog-dare-donald-trump
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/upshot/coronavirus-school-reopening-private-public-gap.html
July 16, 2020
In the Same Towns, Private Schools Are Reopening While Public Schools Are Not
Private schools have always had more flexibility, and usually more money, but never has that disparity made a bigger difference than now.
By Claire Cain Miller
In Honolulu, nearly all public schools are planning to allow students to return for just part of the week. But at Punahou, a private school for grades kindergarten through 12, school will open full time for everyone.
The school has an epidemiologist on staff and is installing thermal scanners in the hallways to take people’s temperatures as they walk by. It has a new commons area and design lab as well as an 80-acre campus that students can use to spread out. There were already two teachers for 25 children, so it will be easy to cut classes in half to meet public health requirements for small, consistent groups.
The same thing is happening in communities across the country: Public schools plan to open not at all or just a few days a week, while many neighboring private schools are opening full time.
Private schools may reverse course if there are outbreaks in their communities, and governors could still shut down all schools if they determine that local infection rates call for it. Some families and teachers won’t feel comfortable returning. But the ways in which private schools are reopening show it can be done with creative ideas — and the money to carry them out.
Public schools, which serve roughly 90 percent of American children, tend to have less money, larger class sizes and less flexibility to make changes to things like the curriculum, facilities or work force.
“The virus is this huge stress test on our education system,” said Robert Pianta, dean of the school of education at the University of Virginia. “It has exposed a great deal of inequity, and we are going to see this only exacerbated in the coming months, not years. Certain kids in certain systems, depending on the resources, are going to get much closer to what looks like a typical high-quality education than others.”
Gretchen Hoff Varner, a lawyer in Alameda, Calif., and the mother of two elementary schoolers who will go to school part time this fall, said public school educators had done a heroic job with what they have. But the fact that they cannot fully open while independent schools can, she said, represents “a failure of political will and resources.”
“If we were a country interested in saving schools the same way we’ve saved airlines and banks, then this is a problem we could solve,” said Ms. Hoff Varner, who was the P.T.A. president at her children’s school last year.
Some public districts have developed plans to open full time for most students. They include smaller, wealthier suburban districts as well as urban ones like those in Durham, N.C., and Charlottesville, Va.
But over all, fall reopening plans are just another way the pandemic has widened gaps in education. Private schools were able to offer much more robust online learning last spring, and research suggests that school closures have widened achievement gaps. Now, as private schools move forward with reopening plans, it’s the children who most need to attend in-person school — those lacking the necessary technology for online learning, or with parents unequipped to oversee it — who will tend to be the least likely to do so.
The biggest challenge for schools is how to maintain physical distance, as required by guidelines from state governments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most countries where schools have opened after reducing infection levels and imposing distancing measures have not had outbreaks.
It generally means capping classes at around a dozen. Public school buildings in the United States are often old, with small classrooms, cramped hallways and outdated ventilation systems. Independent schools (private schools not run by a for-profit company or religious organization) are more likely to have smaller class sizes to begin with, and money to hire additional teachers.
Public schools faced a funding crisis even before the pandemic. K-12 schools received $13.5 billion from the federal coronavirus relief package in March (though Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has required that it be shared with private schools). School officials and education policy researchers say that the money was not nearly enough, and that because states are facing budget shortfalls because of lockdowns, schools would need a huge federal infusion of cash to reopen for all students….
https://www.wsj.com/articles/israelis-fear-schools-reopened-too-soon-as-covid-19-cases-climb-11594760001
July 14, 2020
Israelis Fear Schools Reopened Too Soon as Covid-19 Cases Climb
Outbreaks in schools had infected at least 1,335 students and 691 staff by Monday since the reopening in early May
By Felicia Schwartz and Dov Lieber – Wall Street Journal
TEL AVIV—Some Israeli public-health officials are blaming the country’s decision to reopen schools in May for helping fuel a large new wave of coronavirus infections that has prompted authorities to shut down sections of the economy once again….
July 17, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 47,459)
Deaths ( 392)
Deaths per million ( 43)
——————————–
July 4
Israel
Cases ( 29,170)
Deaths ( 330)
Deaths per million ( 36)
Using the approach of China, Israel appeared to have severely limited the spread of the coronavirus by June. Israel then chose to broadly open and from school openings infections have spread.
These last days the United States has been experiencing more than 70 thousand new coronavirus cases a day. Though we have no data, these new cases are community spread and we know they are broadly spread. Looking to the cautions of other countries in schooling, with far fewer infections per capita and far less broad spread infections, my sense is that the opening of schools here will take far more caution than the administration understands or admit to.
CNN Breaking News @cnnbrk
Eighty-five infants under the age of 12 months have tested positive for coronavirus in one Texas county
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/18/health/texas-infants-coronavirus-trnd/index.html
85 infants under age 1 tested positive for coronavirus in one Texas county
Eighty-five infants under age 1 have tested positive for coronavirus in one county in Texas — with local officials imploring residents to help stop its spread as the state becomes one of the newest…
7:39 AM · Jul 18, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/opinion/republicans-keep-flunking-microbe-economics.html
July 18, 2020
Republicans Keep Flunking Microbe Economics
Getting other people sick isn’t an “individual choice.”
By Paul Krugman
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida said something remarkably stupid the other day. I know, I know: it’s probably harder to find a day on which DeSantis didn’t say something stupid than a day on which he did. But this particular piece of thickheadedness, I’d argue, helps us understand why America’s response to the coronavirus has been so disastrous compared with other wealthy nations.
Florida has, of course, become a Covid-19 epicenter, with soaring case totals and a daily death toll now consistently exceeding that of the whole European Union, which has 20 times its population. But DeSantis won’t contemplate any rollback of the state’s obviously premature reopening; he even refuses to close venues that are perfect coronavirus incubators.
In particular, he insists on letting gyms — closed spaces full of people huffing and puffing — stay open. Why? Because “if you are in good shape you have a very low likelihood of ending up in a significant condition.”
Actually, this isn’t true. Even healthy people can suffer terribly from Covid-19. And if you’ve ever actually gone to a gym, you know that not everyone there is young and fit.
But all this is beside the point. The reason we need to close gyms isn’t to protect the people working out, it’s to protect the other people they might infect. Even gym rats have families, friends, and co-workers; the guy lifting weights might be OK, but the senior citizens who get sick because he spent time hanging out in a petri dish might well die.
This should be obvious. Yet five months and almost 140,000 deaths into this pandemic, many Republicans still can’t or won’t grasp the point that choices have consequences beyond those to the individual who makes them.
Take the insane resistance to wearing masks. Some of this is about insecure masculinity — people refusing to take the simplest, cheapest of precautions because they think it will make them look silly. Some of it is about culture wars: liberals wear masks, so I won’t. But a lot of it is about fetishization of individual choice.
Many things should be left up to the individual. I may not share your taste in music or want to do the same things you do with consenting adults, but such matters aren’t legitimately my business.
Other things, however, aren’t just about you. The question of whether or not to dump raw sewage into a public lake isn’t something that should be left up to individual choice. And going to a gym or refusing to wear a mask during a pandemic is exactly like dumping sewage into a lake: it’s behavior that may be convenient for the people who engage in it, but it puts others at risk.
Again, this should be obvious. It’s common sense; it is also, as it happens, basic economics. Econ 101 has lots of good things to say about free markets (probably too many good things, but that’s a discussion for another time), but no rational discussion of economics says that free markets, left to themselves, can solve the problem of “externalities” — costs that individuals or businesses impose on others who have no say in the matter. Pollution is the classic example of an externality that requires government intervention, but spreading a dangerous virus poses exactly the same issues.
Yet many conservatives seem unable or unwilling to grasp this simple point. And they seem equally unwilling to grasp a related point — that there are some things that must be supplied through public policy rather than individual initiative. And the most important of these “public goods” is probably scientific knowledge.
Some readers may be aware that Senator Rand Paul — who proclaims himself a libertarian — has been doing a lot of sniping at Dr. Anthony Fauci. Back in May he denounced Fauci for warning that premature reopening might lead to a surge in new Covid-19 cases. More recently, apparently undaunted by the fact that Fauci was right, he demanded that Fauci show “humility” and display some “optimism.”
What struck me, however, was the way Paul justified his attacks on epidemiologists’ recommendations: by invoking the free-market doctrines of Friedrich Hayek. “Hayek had it right: Only decentralized power and decision-making, based on millions of individualized situations, can arrive at what risks and behaviors each individual should choose.”
Whatever you think of Hayek (as you might guess, I’m not a fan), this is bizarre. Decentralized decision-making can do lots of things, but establishing scientific truth isn’t one of those things. And even conservatives used to understand both that expertise matters and that promoting scientific research is a legitimate and necessary role of government.
But conservatives, and Republicans, have changed. The modern American right is all about denying that people have any responsibility for each other, and muzzling experts who try to tell people in power things they don’t want to hear.
And the fact that selfishness and willful ignorance are now guiding principles for much of our political establishment is a large part of the reason America is failing the Covid-19 test so spectacularly.
July 17, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,770,012)
Deaths ( 142,064)
July 18, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 49,204)
Deaths ( 400)
Deaths per million ( 43)
[ An increase in Israeli coronavirus cases of 3.7% on July 18. Showing the risks of opening too quickly and failing to immediately respond to new community infections. ]
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
A horrifying but not surprising tick-tock. Four years ago, would you have imagined that American health experts would fantasize about we could have been Italy? (our current death rate is 10X as high)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-response-failure-leadership.html
Inside Trump’s Failure: The Rush to Abandon Leadership Role on the Virus
The roots of the nation’s current inability to control the pandemic can be traced to mid-April, when the White House embraced overly rosy projections to proclaim victory and move on.
3:04 PM · Jul 18, 2020
July 18, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,807,731)
Deaths ( 142,568)
July 18, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,807,731)
Deaths ( 142,568)
India
Cases ( 1,076,576)
Deaths ( 26,826)
Mexico
Cases ( 331,298)
Deaths ( 38,310)
UK
Cases ( 294,066)
Deaths ( 45,273)
Germany
Cases ( 202,442)
Deaths ( 9,162)
Canada
Cases ( 109,993)
Deaths ( 8,848)
China
Cases ( 83,644)
Deaths ( 4,634)
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
They want us to die quietly
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/07/18/white-house-testing-budget-cdc-coronavirus/
Trump administration pushing to block new money for testing, tracing, and CDC in upcoming coronavirus relief bill…
3:49 PM · Jul 18, 2020
What testing, tracing and isolation mean is that a community coronavirus cluster found in Beijing on June 11 was followed by tracing and testing more than 11 million residents of Beijing by July 6, with isolation of all detected cases, so that the city had returned to no new cases by July 6.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-18/Beijing-reports-no-new-COVID-19-cases-for-12-straight-days-SdzoTt5Q3K/index.html
July 18, 2020
Beijing reports 0 new COVID-19 cases
Beijing recorded no new domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases on Friday for the 12th day in a row. The total number of cases since a cluster outbreak was discovered at Xinfadi market on June 11 stands at 335, the municipal health commission said on Friday.
One new asymptomatic case was reported on Friday. A total of 18 asymptomatic people are still under medical observation, the health commission said.
Thirteen patients have recovered, taking the total to 190. All severe and critical COVID-19 patients in the city have recovered to normal conditions.
As of Saturday, only one area in Beijing remains at a medium risk level of coronavirus transmission, as all other areas in the city are now at low-risk of COVID-19, said Gao Xiaojun, spokesperson for the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, at a press conference.
As the recent coronavirus outbreak eases in Beijing, the city will move forward with plans to reopen theaters, cinemas, and business sites providing internet access services, Li Sufang, deputy director of the city’s development and reform commission told reporters.
Li added that the work-resumption rate among enterprises in Beijing has come to the level reported in early June, prior to Xinfadi market’s cluster infections.
[ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcUAiKXVAAApdzB?format=jpg&name=4096×4096 ]
The Hill @thehill
Trump blocks CDC director from testifying before House committee on reopening schools during pandemic
http://hill.cm/6blTyxf
4:13 PM · Jul 18, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html
July 18, 2020
Older Children Spread the Coronavirus Just as Much as Adults, Large Study Finds
The study of nearly 65,000 people in South Korea suggests that school reopenings will trigger more outbreaks.
By Apoorva Mandavilli
July 18, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 49,365)
Deaths ( 401)
Deaths per million ( 44)
[ An increase in Israeli coronavirus cases of 4.0% on July 18. Showing the risks of opening too quickly and failing to immediately respond to new community infections. Opening schools absent proper precautions has evidently contributed to the spread of these community infections.
This, after Israel was containing the virus. ]
July 18, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,829,952)
Deaths ( 142,833)
The spread of the coronavirus through the winter of the southern hemisphere is ongoing and needs to be in our minds looking ahead. Remember that winter months are flu months, and there is a complicating factor.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-anti-vaccine.html
July 18, 2020
Mistrust of a Coronavirus Vaccine Could Imperil Widespread Immunity
Billions are being poured into developing a shot, but the rapid timetable and President Trump’s cheerleading are creating a whole new group of vaccine-hesitant patients.
By Jan Hoffman
Vaccines are the thing that allows anti-vaxxers to be anti-vax.
July 19, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,854,368)
Deaths ( 143,012)
India
Cases ( 1,106,135)
Deaths ( 27,428)
Mexico
Cases ( 338,913)
Deaths ( 38,888)
UK
Cases ( 294,792)
Deaths ( 45,300)
Germany
Cases ( 202,747)
Deaths ( 9,162)
Canada
Cases ( 109,999)
Deaths ( 8,848)
China
Cases ( 83,660)
Deaths ( 4,634)
July 19, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,854,368)
Deaths ( 143,012)
[ I was just remembering singing “the cheese stands alone” in camp. ]
Looking to public healthcare systems, compare the workings of the Dominican Republic and Cuban systems, while considering that since 1970 per capita GDP growth in the Dominican Republic has been faster than any country in the Western Hemisphere, let alone not being constrained by continual sanctions as has the Cuban system.
July 19, 2020
Coronavirus
Dominican Republic
Cases ( 52,855)
Deaths ( 981)
Deaths per million ( 90)
Cuba
Cases ( 2,446)
Deaths ( 87)
Deaths per million ( 8)
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-19/Chinese-mainland-reports-16-new-COVID-19-cases-13-in-Xinjiang-Sfd7HhOnlK/index.html
July 19, 2020
Chinese mainland reports 16 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
A total of 16 new COVID-19 cases were registered on the Chinese mainland Saturday, of which 13 were cases of domestic transmissions, the Chinese health authority said Sunday.
The 13 domestically transmitted cases were reported in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the National Health Commission said in its daily report.
No deaths related to the disease were reported on the Chinese mainland on Saturday.
The commission said 17 patients were discharged from hospitals after recovery on the Chinese mainland Saturday, bringing the total number of recovered cases to 78,775.
The total number of confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland stands at 83,660 and the cumulative death toll at 4,634, with 147 asymptomatic patients under medical observation.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-19/Chinese-mainland-reports-16-new-COVID-19-cases-13-in-Xinjiang-Sfd7HhOnlK/img/79f766599b664a349a58eca128c2c670/79f766599b664a349a58eca128c2c670.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-19/Chinese-mainland-reports-16-new-COVID-19-cases-13-in-Xinjiang-Sfd7HhOnlK/img/190681e9895c491797d8ff896e91ae36/190681e9895c491797d8ff896e91ae36.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-19/Chinese-mainland-reports-16-new-COVID-19-cases-13-in-Xinjiang-Sfd7HhOnlK/img/2682223e1dad43af8ae403d6b682608f/2682223e1dad43af8ae403d6b682608f.jpeg
July 19, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,875,609)
Deaths ( 143,175)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/us/coronavirus-texas-rio-grande-valley.html
July 19, 2020
Vulnerable Border Community Battles Virus on ‘A Straight Up Trajectory’
In the Rio Grande Valley, poverty and chronic illness are aggravating the coronavirus outbreak. Ambulances stack up outside emergency rooms, where patients wait for beds.
By Caitlin Dickerson
Photographs by Lynsey Addario
July 19, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,886,278)
Deaths ( 143,226)
[ What we should consider is the extent to which the experience of this epidemic reflects institutional weakness much beyond the failing of leadership. ]
For some reason or another, the word “hecatomb” keeps coming up.