Let Them Eat Vaccines, The Slaughter Will Continue

The vaccine is good news, but it will have little effect on infection rates (averaging around 220,000 per day in the U.S.) or deaths (averaging over 2,500 per day) for many months, or even a year, because it will take that long to get it to all the Americans who say they are willing to take it. Even then, only 71% in U.S. Now Say They'll Get the Vaccine, which is a huge increase over just a few months ago, but possibly still not enough for us to reach herd immunity. Furthermore, if we don’t Vaccinate The World, the virus will persist and continue to be reintroduced into the U.S., starting new outbreaks.

 

But there is a more immediate problem, and it is one that can easily be solved: the government continues to encourage businesses to operate, employees to go into crowded indoor environments, and children to crowd into classrooms, in a deliberate attempt to infect as many people as possible and keep profits high. According to University of Washington’s IHME, there could be 770,000 Deaths By April 1, Even With the Vaccine, If Leaders Don't Impose Mask & Distancing Rules. (Or, a still staggering 540,000 deaths if they do impose new restrictions). Either way, the Covid-19 pandemic could soon become the deadliest event in the history of the country. (The previous record was held by the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919, which killed 675,000 people, followed by the Civil War, which killed 618,000 Americans over the course of four years).

 

One problem with the hypothesis that we can keep the mortality down to a still horrific 540,000 by April 1, by imposing mask and distancing mandates, is that it is too vague and would likely have no teeth. By imposing mask and distancing rules, they most likely mean telling the public to wear masks and keep their distance from others, which they’ve been telling us for the past ten months. These rules have never been enforced with any kind of consistency, or teeth, anywhere in the country. When states like California tried it back in April, morbidity and mortality did, indeed, plummet, but the governor relaxed restrictions way too soon and morbidity and mortality jumped back up again. For the past week or two, we’ve been averaging over 30,000 infections per day in CA, more than almost any other country!

 

People are sick and tired of the restrictions, the social isolation, their businesses floundering, and getting little or no help from the government. And, in many people’s eyes, restrictions don’t work. The 30,000 new infections per day seem to confirm this. Consequently, only 49% of Americans Say They Will Shelter in Place, If the Government Recommends It. I predict that thousands will defy the new rules and travel for Christmas and/or continue to flaunt mask and distancing recommendations, and we’ll see either a continued surge or a bigger one in January.

 

The bigger problem with this hypothesis is that it seems to be universally interpreted by politicians and the media as a mandate to control our voluntary social behavior (e.g., travel, parties, restaurant dining, bars, church). But this just blames the victims and ignores the main cause of the surge: forcing people to return to crowded indoor work environments (e.g., Amazon warehouses, automobile assembly plants, meat processing plants) and classrooms.

 

Yes, the 50 million Americans who travelled for Thanksgiving exacerbated the spread of the disease and those who travel for Christmas will continue that trend. And yes, not wearing a mask and behaving irresponsibly also spread the disease, but why were so many people getting infected prior to the holidays? The answer is: school and work. The 50 million people who travelled for Thanksgiving is a small compared with the number of people still working indoors and attending indoor classes. Furthermore, a majority of those who travelled (or who will travel) had been working in indoor environments and attending indoor classes prior to their travel, thus taking the germs they picked up at work and school and spreading them to family members at holiday gatherings. Swapping indoor air is the number one way to catch the disease (see the Stop Swapping Air campaign). (See also  Studies Show Crowded, Indoor Spaces are High Risk for Covid).

 

To see just how significant this problem is, consider that Meatpacking Plants Have Been Linked To 6-8% of All Covid Infections & 3-5% of Deaths, nationwide. A single indoor Boston Biotech Industry Convention Spread Covid to 245,000 People. And nearly 400,000 Covid Infections have occurred on U.S. College Campuses, as of December. Those who still believe that children don’t catch and spread the virus, should keep in mind that over 150,000 New Juvenile Covid Cases occurred just in the Last Week of November, Bringing the Total to More than 1.3 Million Kids Infected Since January. Michael Osterholm, the nation’s leading pandemic expert says the Data is Clear: It is Unsafe for Kids Age 10-19 to Be in School because they contract and spread the disease at the same rate as adults. One study Found that 40,600 Lives Were Saved By Closing Schools in March. Another study found that School Closures Reduced Transmission by 40-60%.

 

Osterholm, who is Biden's Covid Adivisor, Proposed a 6-Week National Lockdown (which, of course, Biden flatly rejected). Yet, if we kept all nonessential workers home, infection rates would plummet. If we get infection rates down to 1 new daily infection per 100,000 people, it becomes possible to do contact tracing and quarantining to prevent small outbreaks from spreading, as they’ve successfully done in China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia, each of which has kept total infections down to around 1,000 per 1 million residents, or less. “Essential worker” needs to be defined as literally essential to survival (medical workers; emergency responders; food production workers). No one will starve to death or bleed to death if teachers, bankers, autoworkers stay home. But, of course, they must be paid so they aren’t forced to defy the stay at home orders to prevent starvation. Small business owners must be paid to keep their empty properties afloat until the pandemic ends. Renters must be given money for rent or extended a rent moratorium until the pandemic ends. Landlords must be given mortgage relief if they were relying on rental income to make their mortgage payments. Essential workers must be provided adequate PPE and their workplaces modified to reduce infection (e.g., fewer workers on site; more spread out; HVAC systems that adequately filter the air). And everyone must be given free health care, since so many would lose their employer-paid healthcare while sheltering at home. Paid Sick Leave Helped Reduce Covid Infections, According to this Study.

 

Until we have reached herd immunity (i.e., enough people have immunity that the virus can no longer spread in the community), these other measures are still necessary in order to save tens of thousands of lives, to keep the healthcare system from collapsing,  and to prevent thousands from suffering the long-term and possibly permanent organ damage that often occurs with Covid-19.

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)

Do Educators Die of Covid? Yes They Do! Do Children Die of Covid? Yes, They Do, Too!

Chalkbeat reports that 78 educators have already died from Covid in NYC, just from the first wave of the pandemic to hit the city. Health experts are warning that NY will likely see a resurgence, like the rest of the country, threatening the lives of countless more educators.

Of those 78 deaths, 38% were among paraprofessionals, even though paraprofessional represent only 17% of the education workforce. They are also disproportionately people of color.

And in Arizona, 3 teachers caught Covid after sharing a classroom for Summer School & one of them died.

Despite the mounting evidence that kids, even very young ones, not only catch covid at the same rate as adults, but can also transmit it to others, and despite averaging close to 10,000 new covid infections daily for the past week, Florida has mandated that all schools be open for live, in-person instruction in the fall. A seventeen-year old has already died of the virus in Florida, and more are likely to die as Governor Desantis allows the pandemic to rage out of control in his state. Florida is also seeing rising numbers of the deadly multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) in children, a problem that will also likely rise with the reopening of schools and the failure to initiate a mandatory state-wide shelter in place, as recommended by many health experts.

In New York, over 80 kids were diagnosed with MIS-C as of early May, and 5 had died. If they reopen their schools to live, in person lessons in the fall, they, too, will likely see a tragic increase in MIS-C diagnoses and deaths, as well as the deaths of more teachers and paraprofessionals.

When to Be Skeptical of the Experts

As the “reopen” movement forges blindly ahead, we are seeing more and more health experts coming out of the woodwork to support the drive back to work and school. Contrary to their own recent arguments in support of social distancing and sheltering-in-place (SIP), many are now claiming it is safe, though nothing has changed to make it so. Their messaging is irrational, inconsistent and risks undermining people’s trust in science at a time when evidence-based decision making is most critical, and at a time when people have already lost trust in so many other social institutions.

I am not talking about the quacks and snake oil peddlers whom I discussed in my piece, Careful Which Health Experts You Follow. Here I’m talking about well-respected experts in the fields of epidemiology, infectious disease and pandemics, like Dr. Thomas Frieden, former head of the CDC, one of the most trusted scientific institutions in the U.S., and Dr. Scott Morrow, Health Officer for the County of San Mateo, California, (the epicenter of the region’s biotechnology industry).

Rule #1: Be Skeptical of Science in the Service of Capital

Dr. Morrow, who is a physician with degrees in Public Health and Business, is reopening San Mateo County with the express purpose of “increasing the immunity of the population” [and to] “minimize economic damage." This move is in complete disregard for the lack of scientific evidence to support the efficacy of a Herd Immunity policy and, worse, in complete disregard for the lives of all the higher-risk people who will die as a result. But it is clearly in service of capital, as his stated goal is to diminish the economic damage caused by the SIP.

Scientists do NOT know whether individuals who’ve been infected with Covid-19 gain a robust or lasting immunity, drawing into question whether herd immunity is even possible. According to the CDC, “it remains uncertain whether individuals with antibodies (neutralizing or total) are protected against reinfection with SARS-CoV-2, and if so, what concentration of antibodies is needed to confer protection.” If our immune response to Covid-19 is similar to seasonal coronaviruses, the prognosis is not good, since there is evidence of people being reinfected by seasonal coronaviruses in as little as 80 days.

Even if herd immunity was possible, it might not be achievable through deliberate social mixing. Most experts believe we would need 70-80% of a population to have been infected. Nowhere on the planet have we come close. Even in New York City, the hardest hit region to date, less than 20% of the population has been infected, suggesting that the city could suffer more severe outbreaks in the coming months. London is estimated to have a 17.5% infection rate and Madrid has a 11.3% rate. But we do know that encouraging direct social interactions (e.g., work and school) will cause a surge of infections and deaths, which is highly unethical and contrary to the concept of “do no harm.” In New York City, there have been 16,877 deaths to date from Covid-19, and this is with an outbreak so severe that the healthcare system was on the verge of collapse, with people dying because of a lack of ventilators and ICU beds.

Rule #2: Be Skeptical of Scientists Who are “Woke”

As the protests over police violence continue, numerous health experts have come forward saying things like social justice matters more than social distancing and that it’s okay to for large groups to gather, if they’re fighting for a good cause. For example, Dr. Thomas Frieden (former head of the CDC) said the threat to Covid control from protesting outside is tiny compared to the threat to Covid control created when governments act in ways that lose community trust. And Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, said that in this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.

However, if being in crowds was dangerous for gun-toting Republicans at the Michigan statehouse, how can it suddenly be safe for progressives to mass protest against police violence now? The risks of mass gatherings do not physically change based on the motivation of the participants. If anything, the anti-police brutality protests might be more dangerous than other mass gatherings, since the use of tear gas by the police could exacerbate the spread of droplets containing Covid-19, while also damaging people’s respiratory systems and making them more vulnerable to infection. Furthermore, while Frieden thinks the benefits of the protests outweigh the risks, the current CDC chief thinks the protests will spur new outbreaks and that all protesters should get tested.

The argument that social justice matters more than social distancing is not a binary choice, nor necessarily true. You can fight for social justice in dozens of ways that are consistent with social distancing. But if we don’t continue to socially distance, there will be a surge of new infections and deaths which, based on recent trends, will disproportionately affect poor people and people of color, thus worsening social injustice. Plus, social distancing provides immediate protection against a deadly disease, including immediate benefits for people of color, whereas social protesting does not necessarily result in any social change or improved health outcomes, let alone immediate ones. 

Contrary to Nuzzo’s claim, the health consequences of not protesting cannot be worse than the health consequences of the virus. If the health of people of color was compromised by racism before the pandemic, it continues to be so now, but with the additional risk of illness or death from Covid-19. Unless the protests somehow caused an immediate reduction in the illness and death caused by racism, which they can’t, we are likely to see an increase in mortality for poor people and people of color precisely because the large gatherings could increase the infection rate of Covid-19. Interestingly, Black Lives Matters, Seattle, has explicitly cautioned against attending mass protests for this reason.

Yet, even if we take a more long-term view and presume that the protests will result in significant changes in policing and race relations, how much will that improve the health and longevity of African Americans? Consider that the cops kill around 225 African Americans a year, but Covid has already killed around 25,000 African Americans in just three months (roughly 23% of Covid deaths in the U.S. are among African Americans). Thomas Frieden suggests that the protests will somehow help in Covid control (presumably by reducing the racism that causes a disproportionate number of African American Covid deaths), but it’s hard to see how. The high rate of black covid deaths are happening primarily in poor communities and may be due as much to poverty as systemic racism. The same is true of police murders, which occur overwhelmingly in poor communities. Indeed, roughly the same percentage of African Americans die at the hands of cops as live in the poorest communities in America.

It is understandable that doctors and scientists, like most of the rest of the country, are outraged by the daily police murders in this country; the persistence of institutional and overt racism; the government’s complete disregard for our health, safety and social wellbeing in the face of the pandemic; the mass economic suffering; the anxiety and fear about the future; and should want to express that outrage in the streets. However, they’ve known for some time that racism, poverty, and other social inequities have serious negative impacts on life expectancy, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, not just from the obvious reasons (e.g., less access to good healthcare, healthy diets, clean environments), but from the long-term destructive effects of cortisol, which is overproduced in people who are subjected to chronic stress. (For an excellent explanation of the biology of stress and the effects of cortisol, watch the PBS Documentary: Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick).

If this is what Frieden and Nuzzo are talking about, why weren’t they leading or calling for social protests for each of the 1,004 people fatally shot by the police in 2019, or the hundreds killed by police in 2020, prior to George Lloyd? Why haven’t they been leading or calling for protests for the 275 people a day who die from their work-related injuries? Or the 120,000 people who die each year from workplace stress? Or the 90,000-360,000 who die yearly from air pollution?

None or this is to say people shouldn't protest. There are plenty of excellent reasons to do it, including the hope it will inspire positive changes, but the scientists should be honest and let people know that doing so increases their risk of contracting coronavirus, and the risk of intensifying community spread. It is great that they are starting to identify racism as a cause of the disproportionately poorer health outcomes in African Americans, instead of the tired and scientifically unsubstantiated notion that it is genetics. But it's time for them to do the same with class.

Why All Schools Should Remain Closed During the Pandemic

The following letter, written by a teacher and parent to the superintendent and school board members of his son's school district, clearly and articulately explains how dangerous it would be to reopen the schools in the fall and makes a compelling case both for keeping them closed during the pandemic and increasing funding.

Dear Superintendent and School Board Members,

I am a father of a middle school student and a teacher of high school Biology. Before I was a teacher, I was a scientist at the University of California San Francisco, in the Infectious Diseases Department. For more than a decade I have been teaching my students about Pandemic Preparedness as part of my unit on Human Body Systems and the Immune System. As a result of this curriculum, several of my students expressed to me that they felt less scared and anxious during the Shelter-in-Place (SIP) because they had a better scientific understanding of what was happening and how we could protect ourselves.

Please read carefully each of the arguments I lay out below. Any one of them, alone, should be sufficient justification to keep the schools physically closed and continue Distance Learning (DL) for the 2020-2021 school year. Contrary to the all the hype and propaganda we are hearing about “safety” and returning to normal, there is no truly safe way to return to school or work while a pandemic is happening.

1The most significant reason to continue DL is to help prevent this tragedy from becoming much worse. The pandemic is not going to end any time soon. The only way to slow it down or contain it is with continued SIP/DL, combined with universal weekly testing, PLUS contact tracing and quarantining. Anything short of this, we will see surges, like in NY, Italy and Spain, where people died because there weren’t enough ICU beds, ventilators or even sufficient doctors and nurses. Unfortunately, we are not seeing these requirements met anywhere in the U.S., including the Bay Area, and we are unlikely to by August.

·        A recent study by researchers at the University of Washington predicted there could be 1.2 million U.S. deaths by the end of the year, even if states continued to SIP.

·        Without mitigation, this could easily surpass the death and economic devastation of the Spanish Flu, or even the Black Death. Consider that 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, more than 10 times that of the Spanish flu, and more than 200 million deaths worldwide.

·        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. The UN has already warned of multiple famines of biblical proportion in the poorest war-torn nations. What we’re experiencing now would seem like a cakewalk in comparison.

·        There have already been surges in many of the states that have relaxed their SIP, including California. In contrast, studies indicate that starting SIP sooner could have reduced mortality by 55%.  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.

·        Therefore, keeping the schools closed not only protects students, staff and their families, it protects the entire community and helps prevent this pandemic from spiraling into a cataclysm.

2

•         One of the most effective ways to slow down a pandemic is by shutting schools.

·        Indoor environments are the riskiest places to be during a pandemic.

·        The infection rate indoors is 19 times higher than it is outdoors.

·        The longer you spend indoors with people outside your immediate family, the greater the exposure to their germs and the greater your chances of becoming infected. This is true for our students and even more so for our teachers, who will be expected to spend hours inside a potentially infectious room.

·        Studies show that Keeping Schools Closed Significantly Reduces Transmission rates.

·        This study shows a 40-60% reduction in infections when schools are closed.

·        And this one, by pandemic expert Dr. Howard Merkel, shows that closing schools early and keeping them closed is one of the best ways to curtail a pandemic.

·        In contrast, if we do reopen the schools in August, we will almost certainly have to close them again well before December, when the 2^nd wave hits concurrently with flu season. This would be far more disruptive than simply starting with DL and continuing with it for the duration of the year. As you may have read, they had to close down schools in France only one week after reopening them because of a surge of new infections.

3.      It is NOT true that kids don’t get this disease.

·        Studies show a similar infection rate among kids and adults.

·        Thus, even if the kids die at a lower rate, they can still spread it to their older teachers and family members who are at greater risk of severe complications and death.

·        Furthermore, young people are still getting acutely ill in significant numbers. 20% of U.S. hospitalizations for Covid-19 have been in people under the age of 44.

·        And what about the rare, but frightening Kawasaki-like syndrome? How many kids have to come down with that before a lawsuit bankrupts the school district?

4.      Clearly, in-person learning is better than DL. Children benefit from the social interactions with their peers and the one-on-one personal attention from their teachers. However, the way in-person learning will have to be implemented during the pandemic will undermine many of those benefits. Consider that the main route of transmission is droplets and aerosols that fly out of people’s mouths and noses when coughing, sneezing, talking, singing and breathing heavily. All of these activities increase the volume, velocity and distance infectious materials travel in the environment.

·        Therefore, we’d have to cancel band and orchestra (where students are blowing heavily into instruments); choir (where students are expelling virions with every syllable sung—remember the choir outbreak in Washington State?); athletics (where students are panting heavily with exertion and are in close contact with teammates and competitors)

·        However, even sitting still at a desk will be risky, (less so if it is done in silence), because speaking increases the release of potentially infectious droplets 10-fold. Only 5 minutes of face to face speaking would be enough to infect someone nearby.

·        Students will NOT be able to collaborate face to face at tables or lab benches without violating the 6-foot rule.

·        Likewise, teachers will not be able to kneel beside students’ desks to assist them. K-5 teachers will not be able to hug students who are distraught or hurt

·        Many of the social activities that create and sustain healthy school cultures and children’s relationships will not be possible with social distancing (e.g., most sports, band, choir, assemblies, dances, eating together at lunch, giving each other hugs and high-fives).

·        And where will the extra staff come from to police students to make sure these things aren’t happening outside the classroom, when we are faced with enormous budget cuts?

5.      Not all social interactions that happen at school are necessarily healthy and positive.

·        Here is an interesting editorial by a teen from NY who loved having her school close and doing DL at home because it allowed her to work at her own pace, at her own hours, and avoid some of the fraught and disruptive interactions that can happen at schools.

·        In my own experience this year, I had at least a half-dozen students who had D’s or F’s prior to March 16 because of absences and failure to make up the assignments. Yet during the SIP, they completed every single assignment and even went back and made up work from earlier in the semester and are now passing. Upon chatting with them, many had similar experiences to the NY teen who wrote the editorial.

6.      There are intractable logistical problems with Blended-Learning models where students attend class 2 days a week, with social distancing, and then continue doing DL at home the remaining 3 days a week

·        The CDC guidelines for reopening schools state that each cohort of students should remain in the same room with the same teacher all day to reduce social mixing, not switch rooms, like secondary schools traditionally do.

·        The CDC says no devices, tools or equipment should be shared, which means 1 chromebook per student (not class sets).

·        The CDC says students should eat in their classrooms and not congregate in hallways, cafeterias and yards. Will we hire more security to ensure students aren’t congregating?

·        Many districts’ proposals for blended learning suggest that custodians will disinfect rooms in between classes, but this is not feasible without hiring a lot more custodians. And with the severe budget cuts all districts face due to tax revenues lost because of the pandemic, this is highly unlikely, as they are doing much more firing than hiring

·        If student arrivals and departures are staggered to reduce social mixing, it could add significant time to the school day and seriously delay when classes can actually start.

·        48% of all teachers have their own children living at home with them. If all schools move to a blended learning model, what happens to those of us with younger children who have to stay home 2-3 days per week for their own schools’ DL? Will those teachers have to get substitutes and lose 60% of their income? Or will they have to hire babysitters? Clearly, the simplest solution is for all districts to continue with DL for the entire school year.

7.      Most back-to-work models include some form of screening at the beginning of the work day. While this was quite effective for SARS, where infectiousness coincided with the onset of symptoms, like fevers, it is virtually useless with Covid-19, where 44% of infections are caused by people who are asymptomatic. It also could give a false sense of security that could lead many people to engage in riskier behaviors and not respect the social distancing and hygiene rules. Also, the CDC recommends creating an isolation room for any suspected cases and a Covid-19 point person at each site who follows and reports on community trends to staff and the authorities. Where will the funding and humans come from for this, particularly if districts are cutting staff and struggling with budget shortfalls?

8.      According to Ed Week, one-third of all teachers are at elevated risk for severe covid-19 complications or death due to age and/or underlying health conditions.

·        Nearly 30% of all teachers are older than 50, which is a much higher risk group than those under the age of 50.

·        Because of the enclosed indoor work environment, and the significantly higher rate of social contacts compared with other adults, teachers are at much greater risk of contracting the disease.

·        The virus can remain viable in the air for up to 3 hours, which means that teachers, who must be in their classrooms all day, will have much greater exposure to any germs.

·        The CDC says that anyone with an underlying health condition should be allowed to self-identify and be allowed to telework (or continue teaching DL). It would be much easier to implement this if the entire district did DL from the start.

·        Will there be enough substitutes to cover this many sick teachers?

9.      The pandemic and the SIP are stressful to everyone, students, teachers, and their families. Right now, everyone needs more free time, not less, in order to manage the increased challenges, stress and time demands of the pandemic, like waiting in long lines to shop, sanitizing homes, spending extra time with children and family members to help calm and soothe them.

·        Reconfiguring in-person curriculum and classroom structure to accommodate social distancing could double teachers’ workload. However, teachers will be expected not only reconfigure what they do in the classroom, they will also have to create and assess DL lessons, potentially tripling their workload.

·        Considering that most teachers were already working far more than their contractual hours prior to the pandemic (most teachers come in early, stay late, and/or work weekends and holidays), where will all this extra time come from?

·        Rather than providing teachers with more time to take care of their families and their own mental health, the Blended Model could cause an epidemic of fatigue, stress, depression and even absenteeism among teaching staff.

10.   One final note: Continuing with DL for the entire 2020-2021 school year could save districts a lot of revenue when they are already facing severe budget shortfalls. By keeping schools closed, there would be much lower energy bills; less maintenance costs; and quite likely fewer teachers and staff on the payroll.

In a pandemic, no one is safe unless we are all safe.

Teachers, Students-Do NOT Go Back to School!

In California, Governor Newsom has extended the Shelter-in-Place (SIP) through May, but at the same time, he wants to reopen schools early, in July. This would be a deadly mistake and should be opposed by everyone.

What should happen before anyone is sent back to work:

1. Infection rates need to decline to 1 new case per million residents, as prescribed by epidemiologists at UW. California is currently at 1,289 cases per 1 million residents. So, we're not even close. This low infection rate is required both to ensure that the medical system is not overloaded, like we saw in New York and Italy and Spain, AND to ensure there is sufficient time, resources and human beings to implement #2, below
2. Universal testing, contact tracing and mandatory quarantines of all infected people and their contacts. This is the only way to significantly reduce the chances that infected people don't show up at schools and work and infect others. But to do this, we'd need 20 million tests per day, and we're currently only at 150,000.

So far, there has been no serious attempt to achieve either of these goals. California is certainly flattening the curve, but we're still seeing over 1000 new cases a day. We're definitely not yet on a downward trajectory. Consequently, there's no way it'll be safe to go back to work or school in July or August.

The current proposals to "safely" reopen the schools are pathetic and absurd, and FAR FROM SAFE. Indeed, even Anthony Fauci has said that massive testing, contact tracing and quarantining will only help ensure the second wave is LESS DEADLY. Not risk-free. There will still be a second wave. There will still be more infections and death.

People are talking about blended learning systems with 10 kids per class, so that social distancing can be continued at school, and continued online learning for the 2-3 days per week students aren't in school. But why not stick with SIP and online learning for everyone, every day? Logistically, it's much easier and it's obviously safer.

More importantly, the 10 kids per class proposal is predicated on the assumption that the disease spreads entirely through droplets and that 6 feet distancing is sufficient protection. But we know the virus aerosolizes and remains viable in the air for up to 3 hours. So, even after an infected student or teacher leaves the room, and there is no one to stay 6 feet away from, the germs are still present and could still infect students and teachers in that room for the next few hours. 

Also, what about desks, doorknobs and lab benches? Who is going to disinfect them? Are custodians going to clean each classroom between every class period? And what about K-5 students? Are they going to suddenly behave with the maturity and punctiliousness of doctors with respect to washing their hands and not touching people's faces?

Administrators and politicians will be able to hide in their offices and make video announcements. Teachers will be forced to spend hours inside of potentially infected rooms. They will not be given N95 masks because there aren't any to give. Probably the same with gloves. And even if they did, these PPE are designed for brief interactions in uncrowded conditions and to be replaced often with clean, uncontaminated ones. And what about shoes and clothes? Are teachers going to have to "suit up" in special work clothes before they get out of their cars and then decontaminate before getting into them again at the end of the day?

Also discussed in some of the planning phases has been how school districts can avoid liability. This implies that they know full well they are forcing students and employees into a dangerous, potentially deadly environment. They should not be allowed to do this and certainly not without any accountability. If children are going to become orphans because their parents were forced to work in unsafe conditions, then the employer should be held liable.

Speaking of compensation, what about sick leave? If teachers or classified staff catch covid-19, they could be out for more than 2 weeks, much longer than the amount of paid sick leave most school employees are given. And what about other leave, like staying home to care for sick family members? Are school districts going to increase the amount of paid sick leave provided to their employees, or are they going to be jettisoned, like so many other workers, and left without income when sickened with covid-19?

And what about work hours? If teachers have to teach both in person and online, if they lengthen the work day or the school year to compensate for the reduced in-person learning, are they going to double or triple teachers' pay to compensate for all the extra work? Many districts are laying teachers off because of lost revenues. Where's the money going to come from to pay teachers more? 

Even if they paid teachers double to work year round, this would not be desirable. Summers are when teachers develop their curriculum for the following year, something that will be even more urgent and critical if schools reopen before the pandemic is truly over. Teachers need time to reconfigure their curriculum and develop new curriculum compatible with these new conditions.

And what about teachers' own children? If all the schools move to a blended learning model where students attend classes in person for 1-2 days per week and do online learning at home the rest of the time, who will look after teachers' children when they have to go into work? Many teachers have children who are too young to leave at home, unsupervised. Are they going to force teachers to subordinate their own children's health, safety and education to those of their students, by placing them in overcrowded childcare settings at public libraries and recreation centers, or bringing them to work with them? 

It's complete madness to be talking about reopening schools under these conditions. The only sane option is to continue with distance learning until the pandemic truly ends. Education is one of the few industries that can be done remotely. It's not ideal. Learning in a live classroom is far superior, as children benefit from the social interactions and there are countless important learning opportunities that cannot be replicated as effectively or efficiently remotely (e.g., labs).  But children are a major vector driving this pandemic, spreading it to older people with underlying health conditions. Sending children back to school too soon risks turning them into orphans, as they spread the disease to older family members.

Politico says the CTA opposes a July reopening, and that both the NEA & AFT would authorize strikes if teachers were sent back before it was safe. Problem is, there is phenomenal pressure on unions, politicians and even the health experts to get everyone back to school and work, and to say whatever they have to convince us it's safe. It would be naive to trust that the unions will continue to oppose July or August starts.

This whole thing is a terrible tragedy. Frankly, it scares the hell out of me and I see no quick way out of it. But as terrible as it is now, both in terms of deaths and economic and social hardship, this is truly just the beginning. It is likely to get far worse, even if California continues with the SIP. Too many other states have already "reopened." Infections and deaths are going to go up in those states. And in fall, when influenza picks up again, the deaths and economic problems will worsen further, possibly to the point of mass food shortages and even starvation, if too many people in the food industry get sick (as we have already seen on a small scale at Tyson, JBS and Smithfield).

Keeping the schools closed is not just about protecting students, teachers, and their families. It is a necessary tool for protecting all of us.