Acceptable Amount of Death

The CDC, politicians, pundits and school leaders continue to use the word "safely return" to school. This is impossible during a pandemic. "Safely" implies that mitigation efforts are successfully preventing transmission. In reality, they are, at best, only reducing transmissions. Even the 2 reports cited by the CDC to support their back-to-school plan showed some transmission still occurring, in spite of mitigation efforts.

What the CDC, politicians, pundits and school leaders are ACTUALLY calling for is not a "safe" return to school, but one that they know will result in some degree of transmission, serious illness and potentially death (if not among students and staff, then at least among their family and community members, when they bring the virus home). Therefore, they are not offering us a truly safe to return. What they are really telling us that if we follow their plan, there will be an ACCEPTABLE number of hospitalizations and deaths that are DELIBERATELY part of that plan.

Of course, they won't say this publicly because it is so horrific and damning, and it shows their utter disregard for human life.  Perhaps some of the folks promoting a rapid return to school are just plain naive or delusional, and really believe that it can be done without a single transmission occurring at any of our schools, without any spread to the homes and communities of students and staff. But they would have a much harder time believing this naive or delusional viewpoint if we were more honest up front and called it what it really is: An ACCEPTANCE of some risk of transmission and death.

CDC Warps the Science to Support the Demands of Capitalism

 

CDC Warps the Science to Support the Demands of Capitalism

 

Joe Biden promised all schools would reopen within his first 100 days in office. The major teacher unions have jumped on board, mandating that their affiliates subordinate the needs and concerns of their members to those of the Democratic party. Consequently, we have seen Chicago, the 3^rd largest school district in the nation, forced back into operation by its own union, even though many teachers say they have no functioning air filtration systems in their classrooms and that their own administrators are so ill-informed about the safety protocols that they’re asking the teachers to explain them.

 

On Friday, the CDC published their latest update on “safe” school reopening, demonstrating their willingness to subordinate science and the public’s health to the demands of capital. In this publication, they insist on using the word SAFE (as in “schools can safely open”) even though this is impossible to assert. In a pandemic, even in communities with low infection rates, it is still easy for an asymptomatic or presymptomatic student or staff member to squeak past the ubiquitous wellness checks and potentially infect dozens of students and staff members. It only takes one person to die or suffer serious complications for the claim of “safe” to be proven false. Furthermore, it is not just a question of whether kids and/or staff members get seriously ill or die. If a child catches the virus at school, then takes it home and a family or community member gets seriously ill or dies, that, too is evidence that reopening the school was not safe.

 

Semantics aside, the meat of the CDC’s plan should give pause to anyone who has been paying attention to the Covid news over the past year. First, they say that even when communities are at 100 or more new daily infections per 100,000 residents (i.e., completely out-of-control spread), K-5 schools can still safely open with proper mitigation. But there is no mitigation that can keep the highly infectious asymptomatic people out of school. Young kids can still transmit the virus readily to family and community members. Even if no K-5 children die, their teachers and their family and community members can. The more people congregate in crowded indoor environments during a surge, the worse the surge gets and the longer it lasts. And with the highly infectious UK variant expected to become the dominate strain in the U.S. by mid-March, it seems scientifically irresponsible and criminal to be encouraging any sort of indoor gatherings, including K-5 schools. Indeed, Michael Osterholm and many others are predicting another new surge to start in the next week or two, and that it will be worse than the last one because of these new variants.

 

The CDC also strongly encourages communities with infection rates as high as 10-49 new daily infections per 100,000 residents to “fully open” for in-person learning (i.e full classrooms). This implies that physical distancing measures will be abandoned and it's an internal contradiction. If physical distancing is considered one of the keystone mitigation measures, how can a school “safely” open with proper mitigation if they have classrooms filled with 30-40 students, sitting elbow to elbow?

 

The CDC cited 2 studies (schools in North Carolina and rural Wisconsin) that suggested that infection rates within schools was lower than the rate of community infection, as if this proved schools were safe. But this reasoning is fallacious on two counts: First, no one can get infected at school unless at least one person who is already infected (i.e., picked it up in the community) brings it to school. Therefore, it is irrelevant if school infection rates are lower than community infection rates. Both are places were Covid spreads. People infected at school can bring it back to the community and vice versa. If our goal is to reduce infections, flatten the curve, get this pandemic under control, then, logically, we should be reducing our number of indoor interactions with those outside of our household. We should be reducing all indoor contacts (see Stop Swapping Air campaign), including school. Opening schools, regardless of the reasons why, only serves to increase our indoor air exposure and, thus, our risk of getting sick, which is the opposite of safety.

 

Second, if anyone gets infected at school, even just one person, we have, by definition, proven that the school was NOT safe. For, if it truly was safe, if all the mitigation efforts were working, no one would catch it from the individual(s) who brought it in from the community. Yet, in the North Carolina study, 32 kids still got infected at school, proving that the schools failed to prevent kids from getting infected (i.e. failed to keep them safe).

 

Both studies were also biased in a significant way. The studies were done between August and October, when community infection rates were comparatively low. In North Carolina, there were ~14 new daily cases per 100,000 in mid-September. While this would still be within the most restrictive Purple Tier if it were in California, it is far lower than the infection rates the CDC cited as safe for reopening. And it is only logical to assume that with higher community infection rates, there will also be higher school infection rates, since it would be easier for kids to get infected outside of school and then bring it with them to school. So, even if school infection rates are lower than community infection rates, that does not mean that schools are safer. Schools simply add yet another crowded, indoor environment in which to swap germs and spread the disease.

 

There are other problems with the claim that school infection rates were lower than the community infection. First, if a community is doing little to mitigate spread (e.g., not enforcing mask and distancing mandates, allowing in-person activity in crowded indoor environments, like gyms, salons, retail stores), then it stands to reason they will have higher infection rates. But what about in communities, like the San Francisco Bay Area, where community mitigation is fairly strict and well adhered to? Opening schools in places like this could see the inverse occurring, with kids spreading the virus in schools and then bringing it back home, precipitating new community outbreaks. Indeed, a recent Canadian study found that recent community outbreaks there were caused by schools. And this study found that that Covid transmission among kids is NOT a consequence, but a cause of community outbreaks.

 

Another problem with these studies is that they represent only a few schools from only two states. It is a form of data cherry-picking. With millions of public school children in the U.S., it stands to reason there’d be many examples in which a school seemed to reopening “safely.” However, it would be scientifically and ethically irresponsible to extrapolate the results of these two studies to all schools and districts throughout the nation, as many scientists and pundits are doing. First, kids did get contract the virus at school in these studies and we don’t know the extent to which they infected family and community members, or how many people subsequently suffered severe illness or death. Second, these two studies may represent anomalies. In science, we cannot confirm a hypothesis without considerable data. Furthermore, the results must be consistent, even when the study is repeated by other researchers. Yet, there are ample cases where the results have been different, where lots of kids and staff members were infected by school outbreaks. While not exactly the same scientific methodology, there is this example, where, despite social distancing, Nearly an Entire Class Contracted Covid. Or this one: Schools Are Now the 2nd Biggest Source of New Covid Outbreaks in England.

 

The CDC identified “five key mitigation strategies” which they claim make in-person learning safe: Universal and correct use of masks; physical distancing; handwashing and respiratory etiquette; cleaning and maintaining healthy facilities; and contact tracing in combination with isolation and quarantine, in collaboration with the health department.

 

Yet how can we expect any, let alone all, schools to adhere to these? Administrators are notoriously weak in the enforcement of discipline. Indeed, at my own school, our union rep told us that if kids refuse to wear their masks, admin will be applying a “3 strikes” rule. But how can that be considered “good mitigation” when it allows people to break the rules 3 times before getting some form of discipline. We’re talking about a deadly disease. Even if they were expelled from campus, that would still provide 3 opportunities for them to get infected or to infect others. Would we give a kid three chances with a loaded weapon? With the current moratorium on suspensions and expulsions that are occurring in many school districts in the name of racial equity, it is likely that students who break the rules will not even be sent home, let alone the principal’s office. Additionally, many teachers (like the Americans, in general) are conflict adverse and will go to great lengths to avoid calling students and peers out for misbehavior. This also suggests that many of these “safety” rules will be routinely violated.

 

One could argue that I’m being unduly suspicious and negative. However, I have taught high school for 23 years and these observations are what I have seen at both low-income urban districts and wealthy suburban districts in which I’ve taught. Furthermore, it is more prudent to assume that violations will occur and have a plan, than to assume everything will workout and be unprepared when it does not. Take masks, for example. How can we expect students or staff to keep them on for 8 hours a day, especially in rooms with lousy HVAC systems or during hot spring months? How can we expect kids, who’ve been denied live social interactions with their peers for the past year to always keep 6 feet apart and refrain from handholding, fist-bumping and high-fiving each other? And I’m just talking about teenagers here. The idea of 6-7-year-olds refraining from hugging and taking masks off is just plain delusional. And, of course, there are many special needs students for whom these rules will be particularly difficult to enforce.

 

According to the Covid Monitor (2/13/21), which tracks Covid outbreaks at schools, there have been 643,610 school infections, 382,264 of which occurred in students. This can hardly be considered “safe” or an indication of success. Evidence indicates that household spread is common. Therefore, while many of the infected individuals likely picked up the virus at home and then infected peers at school, we can safely assume that thousands of others were infected at school and then brought the virus home. If we traced all the people who contacted the students who got their infections at school, and all the contacts of those contacts, those 600,000 school infections likely led to millions of other infections. This, too, can hardly be defined as “safe.”

 

The CDC guidelines say that contact tracing and quarantining need to be part of the mitigation plan, but these have rarely been consistently done anywhere in the country, at any time during the pandemic. The guidelines say nothing about where the funding would come from. Indeed, perhaps if the funding existed, these programs would have been in place last year and we could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

 

Another problem is that schools vary dramatically in terms of the age and safety of their facilities. A US Government Accountability Office report from June 2020, said that 54% of public school districts needed to update or replace their HVAC systems. This is a significant factor in Covid mitigation. How will dilapidated old schools in the midwest or east coast keep the students warm in snowy winter months while maintaining a safe airflow with broken down, ancient HVAC systems? Even in my wealthy district, many classrooms have dysfunctional HVAC systems that keep the rooms in the 90s, even when it’s a cold winter day, or that have broken air filtration systems.

 

Contrary to the CDC’s recent proclamation that schools can be safely opened, there is considerable evidence that the opposite is true, that keeping schools closed is far safer than opening them. Here are just a few examples:

·        Osterholm Says the Data is Clear: It is Unsafe for Kids Age 10-19 to Be in School

·        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.

But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that it is possible to operate schools “safely” during a pandemic, assuming full compliance with every one of the CDC’s mitigation recommendations. But why should anyone believe that full compliance will happen at all, let alone most of the time? Schools are bureaucracies with lots of competing interests within them. Compliance requires the full cooperation of dozens to hundreds of individuals who must all be fully versed in the logic behind the rules and provided the power to enforce them. Yet there are countless examples over the past year where this has failed. Dozens of districts and entire countries that have insisted they were doing it safely, only to see surges in new infections occurring at school. The following are just a few of the many examples of these failures, but they should be sufficient to make everyone skeptical that it will somehow be done right in their own community, with their own children or adult family members who work in schools.

·        70 New Infections Causes France to Reclose Schools After Only 1 Week.

·        Covid Outbreaks Force Israel to Close  Schools Immediately After Reopening 

·        Canadian Study Finds That Schools Were Cause of Recent Community Outbreaks

·        Study of 41 Countries Finds Closing Schools Reduced Covid Spread by 38%

·        3 Arizona Teachers Shared a Room for Summer School & Caught Covid, 1 Died

·        NY Has 78 Educator Covid Deaths So Far

·        Even the CDC said that Reopening Schools is Highest Risk for Spreading Covid (but this was back in July, before they were under as much pressure from the politicians and Wall Street to justify reopening the schools)

·        3 More Teachers Die

·        Over 2,000 UK Schools Have Covid Outbreaks

·        45% of All UK Covid Infections Linked to Schools

·        Reopening German Schools Leads to Explosion of infections

·        1 Student in Israel Infected 25 Teachers

·        Leaked emails Show Sweden Knew in March That Schools Would Spread Covid

·        8 More Teacher Deaths

·        99 School Outbreaks in Michigan

·        2/3 of French Outbreaks are Occurring in the Schools

·        2 Days After Opening, 81 Students Quarantined in Escondido

 

It is also important to recognize that while kids have a lower risk of serious complications and death, they can get seriously ill and die. Indeed, many have. Furthermore, they can also spread the disease as easily as adults. So, even if they aren’t getting seriously ill or dying, they may be contributing to other people’s serious complications and deaths.

·        31,000 Children Have Covid in Florida, 23% Spike in Juvenile Hospitalizations

·        74,000 Kids Infected In 1st Two Weeks of August, 21% Increase

·        Increasing # of Severe Inflammatory & Cardiac Symptoms in Kids With Covid-19

·        Study Indicates That Kids & Adults Have Similar Infection Rates

·        Spike in Fatal Kawasaki-Like Symptoms in Children with Covid-19

·        61,000 Children Infected With Covid Last Week

·        Asymptomatic Patients May Still Have Significant Organ Damage 

·        Another Study Indicates Children Can Transmit Covid as Well as Adults

·        Preliminary Data Indicates Children are Just as Likely to Catch Covid 19 as Adults

·        Surge of Deadly Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Kids (See here & here & here & here & here)

 

It is very clear that the drive to reopen the schools is based almost entirely on the demands of capitalism. Everyone must go back to work now, regardless of whether it is safe for them and regardless of whether there is any work to go back to. Reopening the schools is considered the primary strategy to meet this demand, as teachers provide free (tax-funded) babysitting for parents. But it should also be clear that reopening the schools while the pandemic is still raging out of control will only perpetuate the current surge and doing so, even when we’re back in the orange tier, will only contribute to new surges and perpetuate the needless hospitalizations and deaths.

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.

Why A Covid Vaccine Will NOT Lead to a Return to Normal

First, there has been considerable socioeconomic and political fallout from the pandemic and the failure of governments to protect their citizens, both physically and financially, that will forever change how people interact and earn a living. Many businesses have gone under and will never return. It’s been estimated that 50% of all U.S. restaurants and museums will never come back. Many businesses are realizing they function just as effectively with their employees working from home, so why return to office building and continue paying rent and utilities?

But from a purely medical perspective, the idea that a vaccine will suddenly or even slowly allow us to gather in large crowds without masks may be pie in the sky, and here’s why:

1.      For things to truly go “back to normal,” which I believe, for most people, means being able to gather in large groups, indoors, without masks, without obsessive handwashing, without anxiety that anyone in the room might be another super spreader, AND being able to send their kids back to daily, 100%, in-person school, there would have to be enough immunity in the population for the virus to die out and disappear completely. Experts use the term “Herd Immunity” to refer to this condition.

2.      We have fully achieved herd immunity with Smallpox, which is now considered extinct, through a combination of an incredibly effective vaccine and an incredibly effective worldwide collaboration to distribute and administer the vaccine. We’ve come close to eradicating Polio. The reason we have not is due to several factors, including governmental policy failures in several countries, but also because Polio immunity is much more complex than Smallpox immunity and creating effective vaccines has been much more difficult. Similarly, with mumps, measles, rubella, diphtheria and many other deadly scourges of past centuries, we’ve come close, but because of anti-vax hysteria (people refusing the vaccines for their children out of the irrational and scientifically debunked fear that the vaccine was more dangerous than the disease), outbreaks continue to crop up.

3.      To reach herd immunity, we need 60-80% of the population to be immune. Herd immunity means that enough people have acquired immunity that the virus can no longer take hold in the community, even though some people may still be susceptible.

4.      Problem #1: we still don’t know how effective the Covid-19 vaccine will be. If it’s 70% effective (meaning 70% of those who get it will develop immunity) and 80% of the population receive it, the result will be 56% of the population develops immunity (70% x 80% = 56%)—probably too low to reach herd immunity.

a.      The FDA has said it will accept any vaccine that proves to be safe and at least 50% effective. Yet no manufacturer has yet completed their studies and published any data on their vaccine’s effectiveness, so this is still a big unknown.

b.      50% effectiveness won’t get us close. Even if 100% of Americans get a vaccine that’s only 50% effective, we’d end up with only 50% of the population acquiring immunity

5.      Problem #2: In the U.S., over 20% of the population has vaccine hysteria and has said they will refuse any vaccine, period, end of story. Another 30% is still on the fence. According to CIDRAP, roughly 51% of Americans said they’d get the vaccine. And in the most recent studies of people's willingness to take the vaccine, researchers found that only 51% of people would take the vaccine if it's only 50% effective, and only 61% if the vaccine was 90% effective. Both of these rates are too low to create herd immunity. So, if we do nothing to change this (as we’ve done so far), that leaves only 40-50% of the population that would get vaccinated. So, even if the vaccine is 100% effective (and no vaccine is), we will end up with only 50-60% of the population acquiring immunity, which is far too low to reach herd immunity. This could change, easily, with an effective and vigorous public health outreach campaign (e.g., TV, billboards, social media, etc, promoting how the road to normalcy is developing herd immunity, and the quickest way to herd immunity is for everyone to get vaccinated), combined with strong public health policies (e.g., no one is allowed into school or the workplace without proof of having been vaccinated).

6.      Problem #3: We don’t yet know if the covid-19 vaccine will produce full or partial immunity. Coronaviruses, in general, and covid-19, specifically, tend to produce partial, short-term immunity in those who have been infected. Consequently, people can, and have, caught Covid-19 twice. And the second bout can actually cause worse symptoms than the first one. Vaccines tend to produce more robust immune responses than actual infections, due in part to dosing and the use of adjuvants. Even so, the covid-19 vaccine might still only produce partial or short-term immunity and/or require regular boosters. If this is the case, it would be much hard to reach herd immunity, as people would have to remember to go in for their regular boosters.

7.      Problem #4: Coronaviruses are RNA viruses (they contain no DNA), which tend to mutate and evolve at a much higher rate than DNA viruses (like pox viruses). Consequently, we may be faced with new strains and even new species of deadly coronaviruses each year, requiring completely new vaccines each year, as is the case with influenza. Many of the vaccines currently under testing for covid-19 are designed to recognize the spike protein common to all coronaviruses, which, theoretically, would protect us against all new coronaviruses, but it remains to be seen if this will in fact be true. It is entirely possible that covid-19, or some other coronavirus, will evolve the ability to evade the vaccine.

8.      Problem #5: Vaccines often have varying degrees of efficacy in different age and health cohorts. For example, the covid vaccine might be 80% effective for healthy 20 to 50-year-olds, but only 40-50% effective for infants and toddlers or for those over the age of 80.

9.      Problem #6: Even if one of the vaccines completes its clinical trial by the end of the year, it could take another 6-12 months before enough can be produced and distributed to the general public. So, even if it turns out to be 90% effective, and even if 70-90% of the population agree to take it, masks and distancing will not be going away soon. Some experts are saying we should brace for another 2-3 years of masks and social distancing.

 

The System is NOT Failing Children

The System is NOT failing children, as Heather Knight implies in her piece "The system is failing all these children" (San Francisco Chronicle, 10/23/20). On the contrary. By shutting down our schools, we have saved thousands of lives, including those of our children and their family members. It is true that distance learning is inferior to in person learning and that it is more accessible and effective for some groups than others. This is not fair and needs to be rectified. However, opening schools in the middle of a pandemic, especially as we head into winter, is the wrong solution. A recent study out of Columbia University says between 130,000 and 210,000 lives have been lost unnecessarily because we failed to implement sufficient social distancing, masks and shutdowns. Researchers at University Of Washington predict we could start losing 3,000 lives per day as we head into winter, unless such measures are fully implemented. All across the country, new outbreaks are occurring where schools are reopening. Just look at the Covid Monitor website and it's clear: negligible school-related outbreaks in California, where many school districts are doing distance learning, and rampant school outbreaks in parts of the country with widespread school openings, like Texas, Iowa and Florida.

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

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

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.