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.

Pandemic Spiraling Out of Control

Four days ago, there were 7 states in the critical Red Zone (over 25 daily new infections per 100,000 residents) averaged over the past seven days, a critical situation which researchers at Harvard say should trigger automatic mandatory lockdowns. In none of these states has a statewide lockdown been implemented. Now there are 11 states in the red zone (as of 7/14/20), with Arkansas and California poised to join this group by the end of the week. Yesterday, the nation broke the world's one-day record with 71,750 new infections, according to Worldometer, while California, Florida and Texas chalked up 9,687, 10,181 and 12,235 new infections respectively.

The number states entering the dangerous Orange Zone, where the Harvard researchers say statewide lockdowns are highly recommended, has also been on the rise. Four days ago, there were 14 states in the orange, or 21 states in the red/orange zones combined. Now there are 26 states in the red/orange zones combined, or more than half the country that should be in lockdown.

Why Do the AAP, NEA and AFT Continue to Demand a Reopening of Schools?

This week (7/10/2020), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the two largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers AFT) released a joint statement calling for the return to live, in-person instruction this fall, even as the number of new covid infections skyrockets throughout the country. “Educators and pediatricians share the goal of children returning safely to school this fall. Our organizations are committed to doing everything we can so that all students have the opportunity to safely resume in-person learning.”

Here is a critique of the AAP’s position and how it is being inappropriately promoted.

The fact they put out this statement now, when daily new cases are rising in 36 states and the country has been recording over 60,000 new cases daily for the past week, shows their complete disregard for the health and safety of the children and teachers for whom they advocate, not to mention a complete disregard for the recommendations of the health experts, and a complete disregard for the health and safety of the students’ family members.

Indeed, pandemic experts at Harvard recommend the immediate lockdown (including schools) of any region recording more than 10 new infections per 100,000 (more than 60% of the states are already at this point). Similarly, pandemic expert, Michael Osterholm, is calling for a complete national lockdown, followed by thorough testing and contact tracing to bring the pandemic back under control and allow for a subsequent gradual resumption of life, as has been effectively accomplished in places like China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Italy. And, more specifically with respect to schools, the CDC has said that reopening the schools is the highest risk for increasing the spread of Covid-19.

If they were truly concerned with the health and safety of children and their teachers and families, why not put out a statement that says, “We will do everything possible to ensure high quality distance learning until it is truly safe to resume live, in-person instruction,” rather than continuing to push for in-person learning this fall, when it is clear that the pandemic will still be raging?

Even if we locked down the nation now, as Osterholm has recommended, it will take months to bring infection rates down to where they were in May, after the first set of lockdowns were implemented, back when infection rates were only a fraction of what they are today. It should also be clear there is no way to resume in-person learning with all the recent budget cuts. With the myriad logistical problems, like lack of space to physically distance students, lack of sufficient custodians to sanitize rooms, lack of soap, paper towels and PPE, lack of nurses, and lack of money to purchase of these resources. With the unwillingness of teachers to come back under the current, unsafe conditions. With the numerous large districts, including LAUSD, the nation’s largest, already stating they will not reopen this fall. With the likelihood that each positive case that arises will result in scores of teachers, staff and students being sent home and placed in quarantine. With the likelihood that schools will be forced to shut down again soon after reopening because of the surge of new infections.

So, why is the nation’s largest association of children’s doctors still pushing this deadly plan, rather than upholding their oath to do no harm? Why are the nation’s teachers’ unions still pushing for a policy that their members oppose? Why continue promoting a criminal proposal that is starting to die on its own because of the intractable logistical impediments to its implementation?

To answer this, one might consider last week’s “School Reopening Roundtable,” hosted by the AFT, where Elizabeth Warren dismissed the worries of teachers over the risks of reopening and told them the best thing they could do was vote for Joe Biden in November. Yet why would voting Democrat change anything? All across the country, Democratic governors (including Maine, California, N. Carolina, Kansas), prematurely reopened their economies when infection rates were still on the rise. And House Democrats overwhelming supported the CARES Act’s multitrillion dollar corporate bailout, funded in part through cuts to education and other social services. And what about Biden’s role in the Obama Administration, which slashed education funding and promoted privately run charter schools? Does anyone really believe that, as president, Biden will restore education funding to its pre-2008 levels?

Ironically, Covid-19 is now inversely related to the markets, thanks to the $3 trillion funneled into the markets by the Fed, a policy supported by nearly every Democrat in their support for the CARES Act. The irrational exuberance of traders hinges upon the criminal drive to get workers back to work, which itself is dependent on getting schools to reopen to provide “free” babysitting.

Maybe the AAP, AFT and NEA are okay with a few thousand kids dying, out of the millions who attend K-12 schools, but what about the millions of vulnerable educators and family members who they will infect? Is their goal to help cull America of its older and medically vulnerable workers, so health insurance companies no longer have to pay for their expensive cancer, diabetes, heart, arthritis and blood pressure medicines? Is their goal to help school districts and corporations reduce insurance costs by reducing their share of higher-risk employees? Is their goal to reduce payroll costs by reducing the number of higher wage veteran employees?

The irony is that the more we let this spin out of control, the longer it will take for the economy to recover.

Everyone wants a return to normal, but not at the risk of death. Everyone agrees that live, in-person education is better than remote, online learning, but not when a pandemic is raging out of control.

Unfortunately, we are going to have to suck it up for a while longer and continue living lives of social isolation and privation. It means schools and teachers’ unions must start planning for better quality distance learning than was provided last spring, even though this should have started months ago, as it did with the University of California and CSU systems. It means the pediatricians need to start advocating for ways to improve children’s mental and physical health while sheltering in place, instead of wantonly trying to force them into apocalyptic schools where they won’t be able to see any smiles, touch anyone, get close to anyone, get hugs when they’re hurt, share toys and equipment, interact with friends and family members in other classrooms. Where they’ll have to stand in line daily for temperature checks and have adults constantly warning them to put their masks back on and get away from that person they’ve gotten too close to. It means the politicians, including the Democrats, must commit to providing everyone with the money and resources they need to survive until the pandemic ends, and ensure there is sufficient PPE and safety protocols in place for all truly essential workers. It means implementing a national lock down and mandatory mask-wearing, and spending the money to dramatically increase testing and contact tracing, so that once the infections start to decline, quarantines can be implemented to prevent new flare-ups from turning into full blown outbreaks.

Continued Worsening: 8 States Now in the Red; CA & NV Poised to Join Club

Data from 7/11/20

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.

Nearly 50% of California is Orange or Red-Why Isn't It Under Lockdown?

A new Covid tracker from Harvard maps out the number of new daily infections U.S. counties per 100,000 residents. Regions with at least 25 new daily infections per 100,000 people are designated code-red and stay-at-home orders are necessary. Regions with 10-24 new daily cases per 100,000 residents are designated code-orange and it is highly recommended that they, too, implement stay-at-home orders. 

Looking at this map of California, it is clear that nearly half the state is in the orange or red zone (24 counties), while 34 are in the yellow or green (as of 7/2/20). However, of the counties in the yellow, four of them are at 9.5 or higher, and are therefore very close to slipping into the orange zone. In all, six counties are in the 9.0-9.9 range, putting them at risk of slipping into the orange.

Race to the Bottom-36% Spike in New Covid Infections

On Saturday, 6/12/20, there were over 140,000 new Covid infections worldwide, the largest single day spike to date, and the U.S. is leading this ghoulish race to the bottom.

A leaked CDC Document shows that the U.S. had a 36.5% spike in new Covid-19 infections between June 6 and June 9, by far the worst spike of any country in the world. The next worst hit countries, India, Russia and Peru, all showed spikes of less than 5%, while Brazil, Spain, Italy and Germany showed declines. 

21 states have reported increased infections, and 9 are seeing increased rates of hospitalizations, including California, the hardest hit state in the country, where new infections have surpassed 2,500 nearly every day since Memorial Day. Yesterday (June 12, 2020), California had 3,627 new cases, according to worldometer. Over the past 2 weeks, there have been nearly 500 new cases in San Mateo County (61.6 new cases per 100,000), more than double the Governor’s benchmark for reopening (e.g., less than 25 per 100,000 over a 2-week period). In San Francisco, there have been 404 new cases over the past 2 weeks (46 per 100,000 residents), which is nearly double the Governor's benchmark. LA, which is the hardest hit county in the state, chalked up nearly 19,000 new cases over the past 2 weeks for a rate of 186.7 per 100,000, nearly 7.5 times the Governor's benchmark. San Diego County had nearly 1900 new cases over the past two weeks, for a rate of 57 per 100,000.

It is clear that the surges of new infections have been caused primarily by the reopening of businesses and the lifting of Shelter-In-Place (SIP) restrictions. Scientists also believe that Memorial Day outings contributed to the spikes and that the anti-police brutality protests likely did, as well.

Loud yelling (as occurred at the protests) is known to increase the spread of droplets and likely undermined the moderate protections afforded by masks. This fact is particularly relevant to schools, where speaking in a “teacher voice” would also increase airborne droplets, and where students, who sometimes get frustrated or angry, may yell at each other or staff.

According to Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, continuing to open things up will cause an additional 100,000 deaths by September (and that’s before flu season has even begun, when the compounding effects of the two diseases will likely cause the daily death toll to go out the roof).

Now is NOT the time to reopen schools. Keeping students and teachers home is one of the best documented ways to slow the pandemic AND save lives (for evidence of this, read here, and here, and here). Furthermore, if we care about racial justice and equity, then we must keep the schools closed. African Americans, Latinos and Pacific Islanders are the groups most affected by illness, complications and death from Covid-19. Reopening the schools to in-person learning will put these members of our community at particular risk. However, let’s not forget that one-third of all teachers are at elevated risk, regardless of ethnicity, due to age and underlying health conditions.

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.

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.

Disease Far Worse Than Cure-Just Look At the Numbers

In their attempts to reopen economies and relax social distancing measures, many people (including Trump, Boris Johnson, Dr. Michael Katz, Thomas Friedman) make unfounded claims like Covid-19 is not that dangerous, it's like a bad flu, you can't hide from germs, you're going to catch it eventually, anyway, so why not just go out and get it over with.

Problem #1: We do not currently know if people gain any robust, long-term immunity that protects them from future infections

Problem #2: There is evidence that the newer mutant strain that evolved in Europe and has become the dominant strain worldwide, is both more infectious and makes people prone to 2^nd infections, 

Problem #3: It's already clear that this is much worse than a bad flu. In a bad flu season (Oct-April), we generally get around 50-60,000 deaths in the U.S., primarily among the very old, infants, and immune-compromised. Whereas with covid-19, we already have nearly 80,000 deaths, and that was primarily from Feb-April. Since we know this is going to continue for another 12-24 months, we can assume there will be at least tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of more deaths by the end of the pandemic, even if the nominal mitigation efforts currently in place continue. 

One of the big problems with people like Katz, Friedman, Trump and Johnson, and others who claim the "cure" is worse than the disease, and who are calling for us to just go out there and take our chances with this "bad flu," catch our immunity and move on, is that they don't bother to extrapolate the number of deaths that would occur, let alone put that into a context that is meaningful to the general public.

But here's an attempt:

• Because  Covid-19 a brand new zoonosis, humans have no natural immunity (unlike the flu, where we have been exposed to dozens of different flu strains over our lives and have developed immunity to many of them. And there are vaccines. This gives us the possibility of some protection against novel flu viruses). Consequently, in a typical flu season, 9-40 million Americans catch the disease, which translates to 2.5%-12% of the population.
• With Covid-19, we have no natural immunity, nor a vaccine, which means almost everyone is vulnerable. Consequently, the CDC and WHO predict that, without mitigation, 60-70% of all humans will catch the disease.
• In the U.S., that translates to 196-230 million people getting infected.
• Even if no one died, and if only 10% of these people got too sick to work, that's still 19-23 million people not working. When you consider that we currently have 30 million unemployed (official count), we are now looking at the disease doing as much damage to the economy as the "cure."
• But that's assuming it spreads in a random, heterogeneous manner. In reality, diseases don't spread heterogeneously. For example, Amazon warehouses, food warehouses, grocery stores, nursing homes, meat processing plants, are all places where we've already seen the disease spread rapidly among workers or patients who, by the nature of these facilities, are either crammed close together or have human vectors (eg nursing homes) passing the disease from person to person.
• So, if we let the disease run its course and see millions of people too sick to work, with concentrations in the food industry, we could see severe food shortages, even in a wealthy country like the U.S. In poor countries, particularly war-torn ones, it is nearly certain that we will see famines of biblical proportions.
• Now let's talk about deaths, since that's what really scares people. If we take the WHO-estimate of 3.8% mortality and multiply it times 200 million sick Americans, we're talking about 7,600,000 deaths, which would easily be the deadliest pandemic in history. The Spanish flu, which up until now was the deadliest pandemic in history (at least that we're aware of) killed 675,000 Americans and 50-100 million people worldwide.
• But the true mortality rate is, no doubt, lower than 3.8%. Let's be generous and give Covid-19 the same mortality rate as a bad flu (0.1%). That would still translate into 200,000 deaths, which is far worse than seasonal flu, and serious enough that to suggest we should just let it run its course, rather than doing everything in our power to mitigate it and reduce the deaths, is like proposing premeditated mass murder, just so the economy can reopen.
• The actual mortality rate, however, may actually fall somewhere between 3.8% and 0.1%. We just won't know for a while, probably not for a few years. But let's say it's actually 1%. That would translate into 2 million deaths.

To deliberately send us back into unsafe schools and workplaces knowing that it could result in 2 million deaths--That is Genocide!