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.

Biden, Newsom, HIt Men For Capitalism

I'm not sure what more evidence anyone needs to see that capitalism is a piece of shit system for everyone but the richest members of society. The pandemic has enriched the country's wealthiest billionaires by $1 trillion, while the rest of us are suffering the worst levels of unemployment and income loss in a century (possibly worse than the Great Depression). Nearly every major politician, including the Democrats, and especially Biden and California Governor Newsom, have been doing everything in their power to force people back to work, shop and play under unsafe conditions that have led to over 400,000 deaths in less than a year. The message should be abundantly clear to anyone who is paying attention: Human life is irrelevant in the pursuit of profits.

The fact that  Newsom, is ending restrictions for the state, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the state is still in the most restrictive purple tier, has only two logical explanations:

1. He is a multi-millionaire himself and is doing the bidding of his class allies and colleagues: open up the economy, regardless how safe, so the rich can continue to make record profits. Likewise, he doesn't want to piss off his financial backers, who all want the same. 
2. He's scared shitless about the recall campaign coming from his rightwing flank and believes that by sending everyone back to unsafe working, shopping and playing conditions, right when several dangerous covid variants, with far greater transmissibility than good old-fashioned Covid-1.0, are becoming common throughout the state, he will appease them (or kill them through mass infections). 

But in his blind allegiance to Capitalism, what he fails to see is that he will also be sickening and killing thousands of his liberal supporters and motivating liberal survivors to join the recall campaign. His policies are tantamount to being a hitman for Capitalism and a mass-murderer. 

What about Biden? Almost all the same points can be made about him, too. He's a millionaire. He continues to insist that all schools will be opened within his first 100 days, regardless of the scientific data and advice from scientists. He continues to insist that 100,000 more Americans must die in the next month and that there's nothing that can be done about it, directly contradicting the advice of his own Covid transition team advisor, Michael Osterholm's, that we must stringently lockdown the entire country for 6 weeks, while providing financial and medical relief for everyone who needs it, in order to bring the pandemic back to being only really terrible, instead of its current catastrophic level.

One important scientific point that the media and politicians have almost completely failed to mention: the greater the percentage of infected people, and the longer high infection rates persist, the greater the chances for new, highly infectious and virulent strains to evolve. Pathogens can share genes. The more concentrated they are (i.e., high rate of community infection), the greater the opportunities to share genes. They also mutate spontaneously, on their own. The greater the rate of infection, the more virus particles there are going through the process of replicating their genetic material, and the greater the number of random mutations.

Therefore, getting the infection rates down significantly and quickly ought to be our primary goal, not only to save human lives and reduce suffering, but to reduce the chances of a far greater surge down the road, due to the proliferation of the British and South African strains, which we already know exist in the U.S. and are far more transmissible than Covid 1.0. California even has its own unique strain, which was nonexistent in October, 2020, but by November, 2020, was responsible for 24% of all Southern California infections. Considering how quickly Los Angeles County lost control of the pandemic, and the fact that 33% of their infections were due to this new, Socal strain, it seems likely that the Socal strain is also more infectious than good, old-fashioned Covid 1.0.

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 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.

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.

Why It's Hard for Americans to Trust the Experts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The only safe and rational option is to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join the Pledge to NOT Reopen Schools in the Fall

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

Racial and Social Justice

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

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

Economic Necessity

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

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

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

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

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

Protecting the Mental and Social Health of Our Children

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

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

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

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

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

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

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