Teachers Are Expendable Commodities for Capital; They Will Be Among the First to Receive New Covid Vaccine

Capitalists make their profits by paying workers less than the value of the goods or services they produce. The math is pretty simple. The less they are given in wages and benefits, the greater the profits. However, bosses can't pay us nothing. If we starve to death, we can no longer produce commodities or earn them profits. Furthermore, if we're dead, we cannot buy their products, either. What about K12 teachers? We don't produce any goods or services that are sold for a profit. But we do two things that are essential for capitalism: (1) we provide free babysitting for other workers and (2) we train future workers to have the basic skills necessary to labor and consume. Hence, the hysterical demands of politicians at all levels of government to immediately reopen K12 schools across the country, despite the high infection rates and regular outbreaks stemming from these openings.

There is, of course, a solution, both to the safety of K12 schools, as well as the economic and health crisis facing the planet: END THE PANDEMIC. 

This can, theoretically, be accomplished with an effective vaccine, which we are supposedly close to having. The Protocols for Equitable Distribution of Covid Vaccine, written up by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, has placed K12 teachers near the top of the list for highest priority to receive the vaccine. Phase 1a would vaccinate high risk health workers. Phase 1b would vaccinate high risk, comorbid members of the community. And Phase 2 would vaccinate all K12 teachers. These groups would be the highest priority Americans to get the vaccine, well ahead of K12 age school kids, their families, and well ahead of other high risk, truly essential workers (e.g., those in the food production and distribution industries).

So, if we are perfectly capable of teaching safely from home, as we have done throughout the country, now, for 5 months (including last spring), why give teachers higher priority than say Amazon warehouse workers (20,000 of them have already been infected), or meat packing workers (dozens of them have already died from Covid).

ANSWER: They want all of us back in the class room for 100% in-person teaching (as they always have) for that free babysitting, so that everyone else can go back to crowded, unsafe indoor jobs (before it is safe to do so) or to jobs that no longer exist.

But why should I complain? As a teacher, I'd get protection well before the rest of the country. I'd be able to go back to my normal life, eat at indoor restaurants, get tattoos and massages, hug strangers, and not feel the slightest anxiety over contracting coronavirus.

Here are some reasons to be concerned:

1. They may be rolling out the vaccine prematurely, before it has been adequately safety tested, as prompted by Trump's demand that it be made available immediately. Originally, experts, like Fauci, were saying that spring or summer 2021 would be the earliest it would be ready. Now they are saying it could be as early as Nov or Dec 2020. So, is it safe? Have they done sufficient testing? If so, why were they originally saying it would take another 6-8 months to adequately safety test it?
2. No vaccine has ever been 100% effective. The rules for this vaccine are that the feds can only approve it if it is at least 50% effective (i.e., 50% of those who receive the vaccine gain full immunity). I have not seen any published reports about how effective any of the covid19 vaccines are that are currently being tested. However, if we are given a vaccine that is only 50% effective and forced back into the classroom before the general public has been vaccinated, 50% of us will still be vulnerable to being infected by our students.
3. I have likewise seen no published data on how long-lasting the immunity is through vaccination. Generally, vaccines produce more robust immune responses than one would get from an actual infection, but what if this vaccine still only provides short-term immunity, like one gets from an actual covid infection?
   
4. Lastly, a full 20% of the public has flatly refused, preemptively, to take the vaccine, while another 31% are unsure if it's safe and leaning toward refusing it (see here , here, and here). The feds have done nothing to educate the public or to sway this 31% who are on the fence. So, even if the vaccine was 90% effective, but only 50% of the public took it, only 45% of Americans would gain immunity.

Therefore, teachers need to stay vigilant and start preparing several defenses: 

1. Demand that no teacher be asked to return to the classroom until EVERY student has been vaccinated and REFUSE entry to ALL students who cannot prove they've been vaccinated (like we currently do with MMR, Pertusus, etc).
2. Demand transparency on the effectiveness of the vaccine (What percentage of vaccinated patients acquire immunity? AND how long does that immunity last?) and its safety
   
3. Demand that the return to in-person teaching be optional (teachers who feel they are at higher risk be given the choice to continue teaching from home)
4. Demand that other safety protocols continue until the pandemic is truly over (masks; social distancing; smaller class sizes; daily health checks at the front desk) and NOT assume that the vaccine has solved the safety problem

Why Aren't the Democrats Fighting Back?

 

Trump has repeatedly said there won’t be a peaceful transition of power if he loses. He’s also said he wants to stay in power 3 or more terms. All of these are clearly unconstitutional. They clearly indicate his desire to rule the country as a dictator. And if it were to pass, it would be tantamount to a coup d’etat.

 

Yet no Democrats are calling for impeachment hearings. None are calling for Trump’s immediate removal from office, or Congressional hearings into the coup plot. They’ve even dropped all attempts to delay the SCOTUS nomination until after the election, which essentially hands Trump the most powerful weapon he has for carrying out his coup: Appealing to the Supreme Court to give him the victory, as they did for George W Bush. The only difference is that the Court was already far more right wing before RBG died than it was in 2000. Add one more right-winger, 3 of whom would be Trump appointees, and the odds in his favor go up even more.

 

Pelosi and Schumer, the 2 top Dems, could barely muster feckless pleas for the Republicans to do the “right thing.” Fat chance, and they knew it. The only Dem to make any speech-length argument on Thursday was Bernie Sanders. But the only solution he could come up with was to beg everyone to vote, arguing that a Biden landslide would make it impossible for Trump to deny the vote. He even told us to drop our fight for “an agenda that works for all, and not just a few” until after Biden is elected, in a desperate appeal to win his base over to Biden, while not alienating Biden’s corporate backers.

 

Of course, nothing makes it impossible for Trump to deny the vote. He denies things daily that are far less controversial. And if he is willing to publicly conspire to violate the constitution, why should anyone believe that the scale of his loss would matter to him? He’ll just say it was rigged.

 

The Sanders argument (which is also being made in editorials and by other politicians), is essentially a concession in advance. Biden only needs to win by 1 electoral college vote for it to be a legitimate victory. Not 200, nor even 1000. The Sanders argument implicitly allows Trump to interpret anything less than a landslide as justification to stay in power if he loses.

 

Even Biden has dropped his earlier arguments that Trump was attempting to create a dictatorship, adopting the naïve and conciliatory stance that it’s all just bluster and there’s nothing to it. But if that was true, then why the rush to get a new right-wing supreme court justice seated before the elections?

 

Ultimately, the Democrats would much rather hold their noses and accept another 25-40 years of a right-wing court, and a potential Trump dictatorship, and along with it, all the violence and death he has threatened to unleash against his opponents and protesters, than face the prospect of a working class revolt that spins out of their control. Indeed, that is exactly what Trump’s threats of post-election state repression are intended to do: suppress any resistance by workers, students, immigrants, middle class liberals.

 

This is why Dems focused on Russiagate in their impeachment attempt, instead of the crimes Trump has publicly confessed to (no chance of workers rising up over this issue). This is why the Democratic Party and its billionaire supporters have all embraced the BLM movement, since it corrals mass public outrage into harmless demands for racial justice that pose no threat to capitalism or their wealth. Even better, its philosophical underpinning, Critical Race Theory, is entirely consistent with the identity politics they’ve adopted to replace their traditional base in the labor movement. We don’t need to pay people more or provide them with healthcare or affordable housing. We just need more woman and people of color in the boardrooms and in Congress.

 

Imagine what might happen if the thousands of people who’ve been protesting in the streets for racial justice were to suddenly start demanding the arrest of the CEOs and corporate boards of Amazon, Tyson, GM, Tesla, and Universities, for profiteering off the pandemic that is disproportionately killing Black, Latino and Indigenous people. Or the arrest of Trump for mass murder, for lying to the public about the dangers of Covid (as confirmed in the Woodward tapes), and his herd immunity policy, which has killed 208,600 Americans (again, disproportionately black and brown). Or if they were to change their chant from “Black Lives Matter” to “Workers’ Lives Matter.” What if, instead demanding the cops stop killing black people, they were to demand that the cops stop killing poor people (the overwhelming majority of victims of cop shooting are poor)? Or, instead of handing over trillions of dollars to Wall Street, they demanded trillions to the unemployed, underemployed, and those who don’t earn enough to support their families? “Not Dying for Wall Street!” And how about demanding that trillions more be spent to ramp up testing, contact tracing and PPE for truly essential workers, and free healthcare for all? Or trillions to convert our infrastructure from fossil fuels to renewables, and the creation of a green new deal with good paying, green union jobs for local communities? And what if they demanded that the money to pay for all this came from the trillions we currently spend on subsidies to corporations? And from higher corporate and capital gains taxes? How about increased taxes on stock market transactions and mineral extraction? And slashing the military budget and making peace with Russia, China, Iran, instead of constantly competing with them for hegemony?

 

While all these are completely reasonable demands, and most are desired by the majority of Americans, they would be interpreted by our leaders, Dems and Repubs, alike, as a threat to their wealth and power, particularly if they were being yelled in the street by mobs. Even more so, if those demands were accompanied by trash fires, vandalism and looting.

 

Our leaders know full well that, as the pandemic persists and likely worsens in the coming months; as more and more people become destitute because of lost jobs, evictions, foreclosures, and death and illness to family bread winners; as people become increasingly desperate to go outside and play, socialize, spend time with friends and family; as climate crises (like deadly fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, floods, droughts and food shortages) become more common and more destructive; people will become more desperate, angry and willing to go out into the streets and protest. And their protests could very well become more aggressive and violent than what we’ve seen so far.

 

This is what both parties of Wall Street fear the most. And what a Trump dictatorship promises to quell, through state violence and the violence of his shock troop supporters.

 

But what if Biden is right and it is all just bluster?

 

Trump could still win legitimately. Or, perhaps Biden will win, despite offering his supporters nothing other than “I’m not Trump.” Either way, there are a lot of quite important things, (possibly the most important things), that simply won’t change. Here’s what we can expect in 2021:

·        a continuation of the herd immunity policy and hundreds of thousands more covid deaths

·        no serious investment in public health or plan to provide free or cheap healthcare for all

·        no effective plan to curtail the climate crisis and, consequently, an increasing number of people displaced and killed because of it

·        no significant change to policing, or reduction in the 1,000 people killed by cops each year, nor even a reduction in the disproportionate number of black people killed by the police

·        no reduction in the number of immigrants deported nor an effective path toward citizenship

·        continuing provocations with China and/or Russia, bringing us closer to nuclear war

·        continued bailouts for Wall Street and the country’s largest corporations; peanuts, or nothing, to the poorest and most destitute members of society

·        a wealth gap that continues to grow worse, increasing class tensions and threat of popular uprisings

·        If we are lucky, we’ll get a vaccine that has an 80% effectiveness, but that still can’t end the pandemic.  Here’s why:

o   51% of Americans have said they would either refuse it, no matter what, or they were scared and unlikely to take the vaccine,

o   Without a public health campaign to educate and encourage vaccine use (and there has been none to date), the best we can hope for would be 40-50% of the public gaining immunity, which is not enough for full herd immunity, as too many people would still be vulnerable and could catch and spread the virus

o   (80% effectiveness x 50% vaccination rate = 40% of the public gains immunity)

Most of California Now in Danger Zone, Newsom Shuts Down Schools

12 California counties are now in the highest alert red zone (as of 7/16/20), with over 25 new infections daily per 100,000 people, while an additional 28 counties are now in the dangerous orange zone (10-24 new daily infections per 100,000 residents), including San Francisco, which shot up from around 7 last week to well over 10 this week. (Data as of 7/16/20, from Harvard's Path to Zero website)

That's 40 counties in the red/orange combined. Governor Newsom has declared 33 of these counties to be on the "watchlist" severely limiting which businesses can be open. Further, he mandated that all schools, public and private, must be closed to in-person learning if located in one of these 33 counties. That means that both Marin and Orange Counties, which had both recently declared schools to be open this fall, will have to back down and close their schools, since they are both on the watch list.

California has been chalking up over 8,000 new infections daily for the past week and is on track to catch up with New York, though their mortality rate is substantially lower.

Why It's Hard for Americans to Trust the Experts

Is it any wonder that Americans don’t trust politicians, American institutions, even scientists? That they continue to go to crowded public places without masks, deny that covid infects children or that they can spread it to vulnerable adults, in spite of the solid evidence to the contrary?

Why should they trust the scientists when the scientists keep changing the “science?”

Certainly, part of the problem is the general public’s lack of understanding of how science works: Scientists makes hypotheses based on current data and then constantly revise and improve those hypotheses as new data comes in. Thus, what was considered the best explanation in February could look significantly different today, now that we have so much more data on how covid-19 spreads and how it affects the body. This can be confusing and frustrating to the lay person, particularly when politicians and the media continue to hype the now discredited preliminary data. Consider how many people still believe that vaccines cause autism, even after this myth has been repeatedly disproven in controlled scientific studies, (an excellent article on this topic here) and even after its main proponent, Andrew Wakefield, had his medical license revoked for publishing the fraudulent data behind this myth.

But there is a bigger problem when supposedly objective scientists make public statements about what is considered best scientific practice that are NOT based on scientific evidence at all, but on the dictates of politicians and capitalists, which is exactly what the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) seemed to be doing this week by buckling to the demands of Donald Trump and agreeing to change their guidelines for how to reopen K-12 schools, thus facilitating Trump’s dictate that ALL SCHOOLS MUST REOPEN ASAP.

In a glaring example, CDC director Robert Redfield said there’s no evidence that children drive the spread of coronavirus. While it is true there are many factors driving this pandemic (e.g., stupid back-to-work policies that force workers and consumers together without adequate PPE; people cramming into bars without masks; poorly trained and equipped employees at assisted living facilities and prisons), to say that children do not drive the pandemic is scientifically inaccurate and misleading. It implies that we don’t need to worry about sending our kids into crowded classrooms, that they are not going to bring the virus home and expose vulnerable family members, and that reopening schools will have little or no effect on the number of new infections.

It is so misleading and dangerous that even Trump’s own controversial health advisor, Deborah Birx, had to back away from Redfield’s statement, saying there isn’t enough data to arrive at that conclusion; the data is complete. Not enough children have been tested.

But we do have compelling evidence that kids catch the virus at the same rate as adults from two different studies, one from Germany and one from China. And this study from Switzerland, published on the CDC’s own website just last week, shows that symptomatic children shed just as much virus as adults, indicating they can, indeed, spread the virus to others. (Which makes one wonder if the CDC director even looks at his agency’s own website, let alone reads the latest scientific studies).

We also have considerable anecdotal evidence of the virus spreading in schools and daycare facilities, including among children. There were 950 infections at Texas childcare centers as of the end of June, with a third of the cases occurring among the children. And, as the UK reopened, schools there quickly become the second leading source of new outbreaks, after home care centers. France and Israel had to close schools soon after reopening because of new outbreaks among kids. There was also a cluster of juvenile infections after a high school swim party in Arkansas. And nearly an entire class in Quebec contracted covid, despite physical distancing and hygiene measures, after an infected student came to class, which strongly supports the hypothesis that children can, indeed, drive the spread.

Many back-to-school proponents argue that kids don’t get as sick as adults and rarely ever die. While this is true, statistically-speaking, it does not justify reopening schools. First, and most significantly, if kids can transmit the disease, and the evidence shows that they can, then they can spread it to vulnerable staff and family members. With one-third of all teachers being at elevated risk of severe symptoms and death due to age and underlying health conditions, not to mention all the children living with grandparents, and all those living with family members who have diabetes, heart disease, cancer, kidney and liver disease, reopening the schools would be criminal!

However, kids do catch the virus and sometimes get quite ill and die. Based on the preliminary and incomplete data we have, in many parts of the U.S. and Europe, mortality rates for children age 10-19 are in the range of 0.1-0.5%. These numbers probably reflect only the minority of infections that were symptomatic and bad enough to require treatment and/or hospitalization. Consequently, the sample sizes are small and the percentages are likely inflated. But if we divide these percentages by 10, since it’s estimated that there are 10 times as many infections as are currently documented, that would bring the mortality rate down to 0.01-0.05%. With roughly 50 million K-12 students in the U.S., if 50% of them contracted the virus, and 0.01-0.05% died, there would be 2,500-12,500 juvenile deaths. This, too, should make us question the safety and efficacy of reopening the schools.

If it wasn’t safe to go to school in May, when most of the nation’s schools were first shut down and infection rates were miniscule compared with today, then why would it be safe to return to school in August and September, when infection rates are going out the roof? Especially with watered down “safety” protocols?

Last night, I watched a San Francisco Unified School District Town Hall Meeting on Reopening, in which an unprepared and incompetent representative from San Francisco’s Department of Public Health bumbled incoherently through a set of talking points on school “safety” measures she clearly had never seen before. The guidelines she read were only recommendations and they only applied when conditions permitted. For example, students were to have 9 feet between them, except when this wasn’t possible. Then they could be as close as 3 feet from each other, which is only half of the standard 6 feet, which is, itself, insufficient to protect against aerosolized particles. Windows were to be opened, except in the numerous rooms that lack windows. Schools could choose to do temperature checks, or trust parents to do it at home. If someone passed the health screening at the beginning of the day, and got sick later, they’d be sent home (but apparently, all those who were in contact with that individual would remain).

It was absolutely appalling to witness SFUSD and the health dept being so ill-prepared on a recorded public forum with thousands of live viewers, but even more so when you consider the stakes. It gave me absolutely no confidence that either institution could be trusted to protect the health and safety of my child, or his teachers and school staff. Many of the families participating asked questions like, “Would the district base its decision to reopen on the recommendations of the CDC?” But if the CDC is weakening its recommendations to appease Trump and Wall Street, then they’re not going to keep our children and their teachers safe either.

The only safe and rational option is to:

·       Keep schools closed to live, in-person instruction until the pandemic is over

·       Provide sufficient teacher training, time and extra pay to develop higher quality remote learning experiences

·       Provide parents training and resources to help them support their children in their remote lessons and with their mental health and social development

·       Keep ALL workers home who are not truly essential for our day to day survival (e.g., workers who help produce food, utility services, emergency services and healthcare), or who cannot be provided a safe, uncrowded, well-ventilated work environment with adequate PPE

·       Provide everyone with the money and resources necessary to survive, including protection from evictions and foreclosures and utilities shut-offs

·       Provide safe childcare options to parents who are essential workers, including support for their children’s remote learning experiences

Join the Pledge to NOT Reopen Schools in the Fall

LAUSD and SDUSD have pledged to NOT reopen in the fall for in-person classes until their budgets are fully restored AND the state implements universal weekly covid-19 testing, contact tracing and quarantines. ALL school districts should join them and here is why:

Racial and Social Justice

As millions of people worldwide continue to risk covid-19 infection, tear gas and beatings in protests demanding racial and social justice, forcing teachers and students back to the classroom would likely have the opposite effect. Consider that the cops kill around 225 African Americans a year, but Covid has already killed around 27,000 African Americans in just three months (roughly 23% of Covid deaths in the U.S. are among African Americans), far higher than their representation in the population. Since African Americans, Latinos and Pacific Islanders are the groups most affected by illness, complications and death from Covid-19, reopening the schools to in-person learning places them at particular risk. For these reasons, reopening the schools would be potentially genocidal.

Another social justice issue in the schools are the rights and the safety of students, staff and teachers with disabilities, many of whom are at increased risk of complications and death from Covid-19, due to age and underlying health conditions (including one-third of all teachers).  Both CDC recommendations for returning to school, and common decency, suggest these people should be allowed to work from home for their own safety. Not permitting this could be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and would certainly undermine the districts’ goal of creating equity and socially just classrooms.

Economic Necessity

School districts across the nation are facing historical budget shortfalls due to the lost tax revenues caused by the pandemic. Up to 300,000 teachers could lose their jobs. Yet all proposals for reopening the schools have included extreme measures of increased hygiene, social distancing and the use of PPE inside the classroom, as well as enforcement of social distancing outside the classroom, temperature checks and screenings before class, and arrival and departure control. All this will require increased staffing and would be impossible with the budget cuts.

In contrast, implementing a 100% Distance Learning (DL) model would save districts tens of thousands of dollars in reduced utility bills and maintenance costs. They would need far less PPE and hygiene equipment and disinfectants. They wouldn’t have to spend any money on screening students and staff and isolating sick individuals.

Furthermore, if one-third of teachers and staff exercised their right to work from home because of their age or underlying health conditions, there would not be enough staff on campus for in-person learning to be possible. Even if the districts had the money to hire more teachers or substitutes and classified staff, there aren’t this many available. On the other hand, if districts compelled teachers and staff to return to their school sites, many might refuse, for their own safety, and the districts would still have a shortage. Or they could sue their districts for violating their rights under the ADA, costing the districts millions in legal expenses at a time they are already facing historic budget shortfalls.

It has been argued by many, most notably Donald Trump and Steve Mnuchin, that the country cannot afford to shut down again. However, just the opposite is true. Without mitigation, the CDC and WHO predict 60-70% of all humans will catch this disease (that’s 196-230 million Americans). At a 3.8% mortality rate, that would be 7.6 million U.S. deaths! Even if only half that number got sick or died, this would still disrupt the production and distribution of food and other basic services because of the lack of sufficient healthy workers, and could result in famine, even here in the U.S.

In contrast, a study of the Spanish flu pandemic showed that regions with the most aggressive social distancing policies had the fewest deaths and the quickest economic recoveries. Keeping schools closed is an essential part of this. The longer you spend indoors with people outside your immediate family, the greater the exposure to germs and the greater your chances of becoming infected. This is true for students and even more so for teachers and aids, who must spend hours inside a potentially infectious room. Studies show that Keeping Schools Closed Significantly Reduces Transmission rates. Closing schools early and keeping them closed is one of the best ways to curtail a pandemic. Keeping them closed reduces infection rates by 40-60%.

Protecting the Mental and Social Health of Our Children

It has been argued that the mental and social health of our children are suffering because of the lock downs, the denial of in-person classes and the opportunity to interact with friends, peers and teachers. It has been further argued that since children do not get as sick or die as often as older people, we are doing them more harm than good by keeping them home.

There are numerous problems with this reasoning, the most significant being that children do get infected and can spread the disease to their teachers, family members and community, thus exacerbating the spread of the pandemic and the devastating social and economic costs, even if they don’t personally die from it. Worse, some of the people who die from the reopening of schools and businesses could be their own family members, turning them into orphans. This would arguably be much worse for their mental and social well being than distance learning.

While it’s true that children tend to not get as sick or die as often as older adults, some still do, particularly if they have underlying conditions. About 3.6% of all U.S. cases have been in children. Their illness can last for up to two weeks, and 20% of them required hospitalization, either of which can severely impair their performance in school. And, of course, there’s the rare, but deadly, Kawasaki-like syndrome that has affected dozens of kids so far.

But even if an individual student made it through the school year without any family members getting sick, it is still unclear that the social benefits of being in the classroom would outweigh the costs. Under the strict rules required for in-person learning, schools will feel unfriendly, scary, and dystopian to children. After waiting in long lines to take their temperatures, instead of being greeted by a warm smile or touch, they will face adults who repeatedly warn them to stay 6 feet apart from their friends and to keep their masks on and their hands away from their faces. They’ll have no idea what their peers or teachers might be thinking or feeling with their faces hidden behind masks. They won’t be able to sit together at lunch, or hug or high five each other. And what about K-5 students? Do we really think they will be able to keep their hands off their own faces, let alone those of their peers and teachers? When they fall down and get hurt, will their teachers stand with their arms crossed, admonishing them to suck it up and get back to work because there can be no touching during a pandemic?

Even if we could make a strong case for reopening the schools, they will almost certainly have to shut down again, well before the end of the semester, forcing everyone back into a full-time distance learning (DL) model. This would be much more disruptive to their learning and social development than starting with DL in the fall and sticking with it until the pandemic ends. We already know this will happen based on the many countries that have tried it. Israel was prompted to reclose their schools because of renewed Covid outbreaks, including 130 cases at a single school. France had a similar experience when they reopened their schools. In the town of Skellefteå, Sweden, a teacher died and 18 of 76 staff tested positive at a school with only 500 students. Preliminary results from an antibody study in Sweden showed high rates of infection among children, suggesting there was significant spread in the schools. And in Montreal, nearly an entire class tested positive after one student fell ill, despite social distancing. Health authorities believe this was a case of classroom transmission.

Frankly, as a teacher and a parent, I am appalled and perplexed that my district has not already announced its intention to implement 100% DL for the 2020-2021 school year. We know we are still at the beginning of this pandemic. We know that it will get worse, particularly when schools and businesses open up further. We know people will continue to die at rates far exceeding seasonal flu. We know that the deaths, critical illness and long-term organ damage will disproportionately affect people of color and poor people and that this will be exacerbated by anything that increases the spread of the disease, like opening schools. And we know our children’s education and social-emotional health will suffer throughout this pandemic, no matter what we do, but will certainly suffer worse if the pandemic spirals out of control because we have irresponsibly and prematurely opened everything up. 

So why aren’t we doing the one thing we know will save lives: Distance Learning?

More False Prophets of Science

At the 6/12/2020 meeting of the San Mateo High School District school board, Dr. Suneil Koliwad, a professor of medicine at UCSF, argued that it is “exceedingly unlikely that schools will be a vector for virus transmission.” He further argued that masks, social distancing and good hygiene were sufficient to keep the R₀ below 1.

So, are his claims credible or valid?

If the goal is to keep the rate of community infection low enough to not overwhelm hospitals, AND if he is right about masks, social distancing and hygiene being sufficient to keep the R₀ below 1, then the answer is maybe. We don’t really know what the R₀ is when the shelter-in-place (SIP) has been lifted and schools reopen. And there are very few localities that ever got their R₀ below 1, even with social distancing, so this question hasn’t really been answered. However, sending teachers and students back to school will bring a lot more people into close, indoor proximity than was occurring during the SIP and, even with masks, distancing and hygiene, this could bring the R₀ back up well above 1, creating a surge that overwhelms hospitals, as is currently happening in Houston, parts of Southern California, and many other regions of the country.

If, on the other hand, we’re talking about preventing children from getting sick, potentially developing the deadly Kawasaki-like syndrome, or spreading it to vulnerable teachers, staff and family members, then the answer is NO—it is NOT safe. If our goal is to keep the R₀ below 1 and prevent an explosion of new cases, as occurred in New York, Italy and Spain, then the answer is NO—it is NOT safe.

Dr. Koliwad seems to think that teachers’ resistance to reopening the schools is entirely about their own delusional fears of death, or that of their students.

It would be tragic for any students or teachers to die (and mostly preventable if we kept the schools closed), and not unlikely, considering one-third of all teachers are at elevated risk for severe covid-19 complications or death due to age and/or underlying health conditions. However, there are far bigger issues to worry about, like the estimated 1.2 million deaths we could see by the end of the year, even with mitigation, or the 6-7 million deaths we could see without mitigation (e.g., sending people back to work and school) if 60-70% of all Americans get infected and the mortality rate holds at 3.8%. Or the famine that we could all suffer because so many farm workers, grocery store workers, meat packers, and fish processors are becoming ill.

While there may not yet be any controlled scientific studies proving transmission between students and staff, there is considerable anecdotal evidence, including numerous school outbreaks that have prompted schools to reclose. Two weeks after reopening their schools, Israel was prompted to reclose them because of Covid outbreaks, including 130 cases at a single school. France had a similar experience when they reopened their schools. In the town of Skellefteå, Sweden, a teacher died and 18 of 76 staff tested positive at a school with only 500 students. Preliminary results from an antibody study in Sweden showing high rates of infection among children, suggest there was significant spread in the schools. And in Montreal, nearly an entire class tested positive after one student fell ill, despite social distancing. Health authorities believe this was a case of classroom transmission.

It should be obvious that in-person learning will be more risky than distance learning. Indoor environments are the riskiest places to be during a pandemic. The longer you spend indoors with people outside your immediate family, the greater the exposure to germs and the greater your chances of becoming infected. This is true for students and even more so for teachers, who will be expected to spend hours inside a potentially infectious room. Studies show that Keeping Schools Closed Significantly Reduces Transmission rates. Closing schools early and keeping them closed is one of the best ways to curtail a pandemic. Keeping them closed reduces infection rates by 40-60%.

Dr. Koliwad argues that schools are like hospitals, but safer, directing us to the article by Atul Gawande, in the New Yorker on how employees at Boston’s Mass General Brigham Hospital have kept their workplace infection rates low. However, despite arguing for the efficacy of face masks, hygiene and following the “six-foot rule,” Gawande concedes that in some cases, infectious droplets can travel at least twenty feet, and that loud talking, as is typical in a classroom, generates significantly more droplets than quiet talking. He also concedes that some activities, like performing in a choir, can be extremely dangerous, like the outbreak in Washington, where 52 out of 60 members of a choir were infected by one infectious person during a single 90-minute practice session. Choir, by the way, is a common course offering at K-12 schools.

Another fallacy in Dr. Koliwad’s argument that schools are like hospitals, but safer, lies in the assumption that in-person learning is an essential service, like hospitals. But a doctor cannot perform surgery remotely on a patient, whereas teachers can teach remotely. Furthermore, while the best examples of distance learning are likely inferior to the best examples of in-person learning, the health of our children, their families and their teachers, is far more important. Even if they missed school entirely for a year or two, it would be preferable to losing one or both parents, or allowing the pandemic to spin so out of control that our food supply was threatened.

Another problem with Dr. Koliwad’s argument is that educators have even less access to effective PPE than medical workers. In hospitals, employees have surgical masks, which Gawande explains are far more effective than the typical two-layer cotton mask worn by most people. The surgical masks create a tighter seal around the face and they breath more easily, making it less likely that wearers will pull them down and expose themselves, or that droplets leak in or out through the gaps. Furthermore, the surgical masks have an electrostatic charge applied to them that helps trap viral particles. Cloth masks lack this feature.

Gawande also talks about how they’ve brought the “stringent antiseptic standards of the operating room into…other parts of our institutions.” Problem is, hospitals are operated by health professionals who are trained in these antiseptic standards and who’ve had years to practice them and make them part of their professional culture. Educators have not had this training, nor this practice. Worse, what about students, particularly K-5 students? It is completely absurd to think that kindergartners are going to not touch their faces, let alone those of their peers and teachers. It’s also hard to imagine the teacher remaining six feet away from a sobbing child who has fallen down and hurt herself, while gently admonishing her, through his mask, to suck it up and get back to work because there can be no touching during a pandemic.

Part of this change of culture, according to Gawande, includes calling out colleagues when they have lapses in protocols. That might work in a hospital setting, with the common training and understanding employees share regarding hygiene, but not in a school, where students regularly defy teachers, refuse to follow rules, and sometimes get loud and belligerent when called out for misbehavior. And we’ve all experienced moments in public where someone has called out a neighbor or stranger for walking too close, spitting or committing some other violation of the rules of hygiene.

Like so many other scientists and doctors who are jumping on the back-to-work bandwagon, Dr. Koliwad is allowing the confirmation bias to direct his thinking, even at the expense of violating his commitment to do no harm. He repeatedly referred to evidence that supported his desire to have students return to in-person learning, while providing no examples of this evidence (the Gawande article, didn’t actually support his claims). And while one could argue that distance learning is also doing harm to students, I don’t see how anyone could argue that it’s doing more harm than 116,000 deaths so far, particularly when in-person learning under the conditions of social distancing, mask wearing, health screenings, etc., will not come close to approximating the conditions of school prior to the pandemic. Particularly when you consider that students will not be able to see the smiling faces of their teachers or peers, or sit together at lunch, or hug or high-five each other, or even work collaboratively in teams and at lab benches.

Careful Which Health Experts You Follow—Many are Charlatans

America has a long history of misology (hatred of knowledge). Our anti-intellectual streak goes back to the colonial days, with the lynch mob murders of accused witches, and our forebears’ love of snake oil, and it continues to this day with climate-deniers, anti-vaxxers, and most of all with President Trump and his followers.

Perhaps at no time in our lives, though, as there been a greater urgency for reason, and evidence to support it. Yet quacks, fakes and posers are coming out of the woodwork to tell us that it’s safe to go back to school and work, that Covid-19 is just a “bad flu,” that maybe we can just inject bleach or irradiate ourselves to overcome this plague.

So How Do We Distinguish Real Experts From Fakes?

Sophisticated thinkers know to examine the credentials of so-called experts to determine whether they have standing or credibility on the subject. Obviously, if both a pharmacist and a basketball star are discussing the safety and effectiveness of a prescription medicine, the pharmacist has more  expertise on the subject. But we need more than credentials to really trust an expert. Scientists and doctors are humans. They are subject to the same biases, fears, and political, economic and religious influences that affect the rest of us. Consider the scientists who’ve shilled for Big Tobacco.

I have an acquaintance with a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who has done years of biomedical research, who told me that “the stats” indicate Covid-19 is like a “new flu,” not a “virus of unparalleled danger.” Clearly, this is someone who should know better. The absurdity of his statement is obvious when one considers that in a bad flu season (Oct-April), 60,000 Americans die, but Covid-19 has already killed 80,000 Americans in just 3 months.

Is he stupid? No. Does he want his personal liberty restored? Yes. He told me as much.

What I think is happening is that he is cherry picking his evidence and experts to support his desires. This is known as the Fallacy of Incomplete Evidence, and it’s completely understandable, even sympathetic, at a time like this, as it gives one the perception of safety and security when surrounded by so much fear and uncertainty.

Much less sympathetic are all the charlatans and snake oil peddlers making it onto mainstream media, since they are potentially tricking millions of Americans into supporting or doing dangerous and stupid things.

Dr. David Katz is one of these quacks and he has found success on both right wing Fox and liberal Bill Maher’s Real Time show on HBO, precisely because his lies and distortions promote hope that the worst of our fears are unwarranted and that it is safe to return to our normal lives.

Katz sounds like he has valid credentials. The Bill Maher program starts by discussing his volunteer work at a front line Bronx Covid ward, and the fact he’s a Yale professor and physician. However, about 20% of the way into the broadcast, they flashed on the screen that he is founder and CEO of Diet ID Inc., which ought to draw everyone’s suspicions. When I looked deeper into who this Katz character was, I discovered that the overwhelming bulk of his professional career has been dedicated to nutrition and how lifestyle influences health, not the epidemiology of infectious diseases. Another red flag is that he promotes himself with 5 or more acronyms after his name. Nobody who is really good at what they do bothers to mention the lesser degrees and affiliations. At a certain point in one’s career, the high school diploma and bachelor’s degree gets dropped. More importantly, nobody who is really good at what they do has time for 5 fields of expertise.

This is an example of the False Authority Fallacy. David Katz is so desperate to get us to trust him that he tacks acronyms and degrees onto his name like medals on a general's breast. But he is NOT an authority on infectious diseases, nor pandemics.

But let’s look at the meat of what he has to say, since one doesn’t have to be an expert to have something valid to say.

Like Trump, Boris Johnson and many Wall Street leaders, he has suggested that the “cure is worse than the disease.”

Worse for whom?

The “Cure” of sheltering in place is bad for profits, but it will also save thousands, possibly millions of lives. How could staying home from work and surviving be worse than going to work and dying?

He argues that flattening the curve doesn’t reduce the number of deaths; it only delays when people die. This is a Straw Man Fallacy (defeating an argument that was never made; vanquishing a false enemy). The primary goal of flattening the curve is to reduce the burden on hospitals and the medical system so they aren’t overloaded and can continue treat patients, not to prevent deaths. So, to claim it doesn’t reduce deaths is blaming it for something it was never intended to do, at least not as its primary objective.

However, flattening the curve does save lives indirectly, because when the medical system is overloaded, people die from neglect and abandonment, as happened in NY, Italy, Spain, even Detroit, where patients were triaged and allowed to die because there weren’t enough hospital beds and ventilators. So, flattening the curve does save some lives, even if that isn’t the main goal.

He says that flattening the curve doesn’t allow people to gain immunity, but there’s no indication that people gain any lasting, robust immunity to this disease. It may turn out they do, but so far, the data does not show this to be the case. Low level, short-term immunity might be enough to slow down the pandemic, or it might not. We won’t know for a long time, probably years. Therefore, letting the disease run rampant could result in millions of deaths. That’s just plain cruel and, for young people like Dr. Katz, selfish, too, since he’s less likely to die from it. But it’s also stupid and short-sighted, because if millions of people get sick, even healthy young people with mild cases will still suffer from mass shortages and possibly famine.

Bill Maher, his interviewer, says that Sweden, which did not implement strong social distancing policies, had numbers that weren’t much different from countries that locked down, but this is not true. If you look at the data from Worldometer (as of 5/8/2020) Sweden had 314 deaths/million people and 2500 infections/million people, more than triple the mortality of Denmark, and nearly 8x the mortality of Norway. (Denmark had 90 deaths/million people and 1764 infections/million people. Norway had 40 deaths/million people and 1489 infections/million people. And Finland had 47 deaths/million people and 1036 infections/million people. Clearly, Sweden is being hit much harder than its neighbors who implemented social distancing policies.

In his attempt to get us all to relax and learn to love Covid-19, Katz says “There are risks we willing take on each day.” This is another fallacy. Sure, we take risks getting into car or planes, but it’s our own choice, not one forced upon us by the president, our employer, or our desperation to put food on the table. We could choose to take public transit, instead, which is much safer than driving ourselves, or choose not to vacation by plane. Also, a good driver has a lot more control over their own safety than they do in the workplace, where so much of their safety depends on the boss’ willingness to provide safety equipment, and on coworkers respecting safety and social distancing protocols.

Katz argues that people should be allowed back to work because “We don’t want to destroy people’s lives and livelihoods.”

Of course not, but it is not an either/or choice. We should be looking first at people’s survival needs. Contrary to common belief, work and income are not necessary for survival. Food, housing, and medicine are. These 3 necessities can be given to people, even in a system that lacks money or “work.” People’s jobs, businesses, lifestyles, can be rebuilt after the pandemic is over. Dead people cannot be brought back to life. More importantly, though, if too many people get sick or die, everyone’s survival is threatened anyway. This is why suppression of the pandemic is necessary.

Katz suggests that we should all want to get the disease and get over it so we’re immune and can go out, live our lives, without worry, but there is no evidence that people who’ve recovered from Covid-19 have robust, lasting immunity that protects them from catching it again. Worse, there IS evidence that the newer mutant strain that evolved in Europe and has become the dominant strain worldwide, is both more infectious AND makes people prone to 2^nd infections.

His “middle road” hypothesis of only protecting the most vulnerable, and forcing the rest of us back to school and work, is based on the premise that both extremes are wrong (i.e., letting the pandemic run its course, unmitigated, versus a complete lockdown). This notion is NOT supported by scientific data, which shows that 20% of hospitalizations in the U.S. are among people aged 20-44,  and that people from any age group can die. It is premised on the cynical and selfish idea that it’s okay to sacrifice people other than himself, since he presumably wouldn’t die due his youthfulness and good health.

The “middle road” hypothesis is based on another fallacy, that extremism is inherently bad and that moderation is inherently preferable. This is the same argument that gets millions of Americans to vote for the “lesser evil” every four years, instead of for what they really want.

So, are the extremes in this case inherently bad?

Well, locking things down has resulted 30 million unemployed Americans, and mass hunger, despair, fear and uncertainty. The quality of education online is most likely worse than if kids were able to learn in person. But the other extreme of sending them back into schools and workplaces while the pandemic is still running rampant, without PPE, mass testing, contact tracing and quarantines, is genocidal. It will cause infections and mortality rates to skyrocket. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions will die.

Is Katz’ “middle road” the best alternative? NO! 

First, what does he even mean by protecting the most vulnerable? Will everyone over 70, or with an underlying health condition be allowed to continue sheltering in place? If so, that’s a lot of people. Obesity is a risk factor for dying from Covid-19. There are 70 million obese Americans, nearly a quarter of the population. There are 34 million Americans with diabetes and nearly half of all Americans have heart disease. If all of them continue to shelter in place, how much more productive would the economy become?

Katz argues that the middle way minimizes deaths and averts economic ruin. But it doesn’t. Any return to work without first having significant declines in infections, and ongoing testing, contact tracing, quarantines, risks causing new surges in infections and deaths, and potentially far worse economic outcomes than we’ve seen so far. We could easily get to a point where the economy collapses purely from too many people being sick to work and shop.

Extremism is not inherently a bad thing. We are in the worst crisis the world has experience in generations. When all is said and done, this pandemic could turn out to be far deadlier, and far more economically devastating than the Spanish flu. Under such conditions, extremism is exactly what’s needed. It’s the only possible way to slow this thing down and possibly stop it.  Furthermore, if we did ramp up testing to weekly universal tests, combined with contact tracing and quarantines, we could theoretically isolate the vast majority of infections and stop the pandemic that way, or at least slow it down long enough to allow us back to work and give scientists the time to find a vaccine to prevent future outbreaks.

Remdesivir: Panacea for Wall Street or Sick Americans?

Remdesivir has been fast-tracked by the FDA to be used as a "frontline" treatment against Covid-19. In an emergency-use authorization, they claim the benefits of using the drug, without having complete data from the NIH clinical trial, far outweigh the risks. Keep in mind, the NIH study upon which their decision is based is only one of many Remdesivir studies currently going on, and they made their decision before all the data was even released. A recent study from China, published in The Lancet, showed no difference between Remdesivir and a placebo. Experts say the results from a single study, like the NIH study, are rarely game changers and safest approach is to pool data from several equally rigorous studies, which has not happened yet.

So, what are these benefits?

The only benefit that has been shared from the study, as of this posting, is that patients hospitalized with severe symptoms had a 31% faster recovery time than patients who received a placebo (11 days versus 15 days). There was a statistically negligible improvement in mortality.

Of course we'd all like to be sick for a shorter period of time when we are sick. But this drug does nothing to prevent us from catching Covid-19, and it does little to nothing to reduce our chances of dying from it. It does nothing to flatten the curve, reduce the infection rate or make the world a safer place. It does nothing to lower the risks associated with a premature return to work or relaxing social distancing policies.

And there are risks, though these get little mention in the press. For example, many patients dropped out of the Chinese study because of side effects and adverse reactions. The drug is toxic to both the liver and kidneys.

So, what's the real benefit? Why fast track its approval before all the data are in? Particularly when the drug is produced by a private company, Gilead, which expects to turn a handsome profit on the drug, meaning many people who need it won't even be able to get it?

1. Big profits for Gilead and their investors
2. A propaganda victory for Trump (See, we've got a drug to keep you safe. So, go to work. Go get your tattoos and massages.)
3. Shorter recovery possibly means less time away from work, assuming the sick person had a job in the first place and still has one now

Once all the data are in, Remdesivir may, in fact, become a "game-changer" for sick patients, but the real game-changers will be drugs that cure people quickly and reduce mortality. Even better, how about a vaccine that is effective against the entire coronavirus family? 

While we don't know if the latter is even possible, the need is urgent. Epidemiologists have known for a while now that Coronaviruses and Influenza viruses were the most likely culprits in causing the next deadly pandemic. And they believe another deadly pandemic, like the current one, is likely.

One reason is that both virus families are spread easily through the air and remain viable on surfaces, making them easy to spread from person to person, even by strangers in public places, in contrast to Ebola and HIV, which require fairly intimate contact with sick individuals. Another reason is that both virus families reproduce by RNA, rather than DNA, and the enzymes used to replicate RNA make far more mistakes than the DNA enzymes, resulting in highly mutable viruses. Consequently, even if you gain immunity to one strain, either through illness or vaccination, you could still be susceptible to next year's strain. This is why we need to get a new flu vaccine each year.

A third problem is that there are already 50 new coronaviruses discovered in bats that have the potential to cause deadly pandemics in humans. Due to climate change and habitat destruction, humans are coming into contact with wild animals far more now than in the past, causing a rapid increase in zoonoses.

While we don't know which, if any, of these new coronaviruses will jump species and cause a pandemic, we certainly should be prepared. If SARS and MERS weren't sufficient warning, Covid-19 certainly is. A corona-family vaccine, effective against all coronaviruses, might be the best hope against a repeat of what we're going through now.

Whatever the final results of the NIH study show us, and regardless of how the emergency use authorization plays out for sick individuals, we still need to continue with social distancing, drug and vaccine research and development, rebuilding the health infrastructure to prepare for the next wave, produce sufficient PPE for frontline workers, and provide a much more effective and generous safety next for the millions of Americans who are struggling to survive.

Stop Trump's Genocide Against America

As Trump, state governors, and other world leaders callously and selfishly send us back to school and work, experts are predicting that the Covid-19 pandemic will last another 18 months to 2 years, until 60-70% of the population has been infected and developed some degree of immunity. This prediction is similar to what we saw with the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.

In the United States, where there are 328.2 million people, that would translate into at least 197 million infections (at the 60% rate). At the currently accepted mortality rate of 3.2%, that would translate into 6.3 million deaths in the U.S., alone. But even if the mortality rate were an order of magnitude lower, let's say 0.3%, it could still result in 600,000 deaths.

Trump's argument that we've survived the worst of the pandemic and that it's safe to return to work and school are clearly not true. But is he simply ignorant or naive, as some have argued?

No!

The butcher knew full well that reopening the economy would result in a massive death toll. He ordered 100,000 body bags on April 21, in anticipation of the mass casualties that he knew would occur from "opening" the economy. Additionally, FEMA has order 200 refrigerated trailers to store the corpses because the morgues will be so backlogged. So, maybe he is a little naive, or simply can't do math, since this won't come close to covering 600,000 dead Americans, let alone 6.3 million.

At least the Veterans Administration, that bastion of corruption and incompetence, has done their math.  They've bought $12 million worth of body bags. If they paid a similar price to FEMA, that would get them around 250,000 body bags, plenty to cover their 9 million patients.

So, are we left with only these two miserable choices: (A) go back to work and school, get sick, and watch millions of our friends, relatives and neighbors die from Covid-19; or (B) continue sheltering in place and struggle not to starve to death?

Of Course Not! 

We could do what health experts, including Anthony Fauci, keep telling us to do, and what South Korea has effectively done: 

1. Universal repeated testing of Everyone
2. Contact tracing of all infected individuals
3. Mandatory quarantines of all infected individuals and their contacts

These 3 measures, according to Fauci, and anyone with an ounce of common sense, will help make the next wave LESS deadly and make it less dangerous to return to work and school. They will not prevent a 2nd wave. They will not eliminate the risk of infection and death. And they should be accompanied by the following:

1. Continued social distancing whenever and where ever possible (ie, no concerts and live sporting events; no tattoos and massages; continued restrictions on the number of people entering stores and classrooms)
2. Rebuild the medical infrastructure, purchase PPE for everyone who needs it, increase hospital capacity, continue developing and testing vaccines and anti-viral drugs, 
3. Give everyone what they need to survive, including sufficient cash and food