“We now have experience with school openings, both in the US and globally, and there is little data to support the idea that schools are a major site of transmission or a driver of community spread.
For example, New York City has had schools open in a hybrid model since early October and monitors Covid-19 in the district by testing a random sample of students and staff. As of November 12, results show that of more than 123,585 total tests conducted since October 9, only 228 were positive (0.19 percent) — 95 students and 133 staff. These results are still early in the year, and students are not back yet full-time, but with more than a month of data, and during a time when cases are rising in New York generally, Covid-19 is not tearing through New York City public schools.”
…
“Quickly closing schools — where we have not seen a lot of transmission — while leaving higher-risk establishments open — where there is a lot of transmission — does not make sense. When faced with overwhelming case surge and crushing hospital demand, school closure could be necessary to prevent further Covid-19 surge, but only as one component of a larger plan to reduce mobility and control transmission.”
…
“data has been emerging about the harms of ongoing school closures. Washington, DC’s public schools, which remain in a largely remote model despite having low local new case rates until recently, report substantial reductions in kindergarten students meeting or exceeding benchmarks for reading. And Chicago Public Schools, which also remain in a largely remote model, report a stunning 15,000-student decrease in enrollment this year. Unforeseen extended school closures lead to lower test scores, lower educational attainment, and decreased earning potential.
These gaps are not impacting all groups equally. The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) reports that districts with the highest rates of poverty are nearly twice as likely to be operating with remote learning as districts with the lowest rates. The higher a district’s share of white students, the more likely it is to offer in-person instruction — a pattern that generally holds across cities, towns, suburbs, and rural areas. A great racial and economic disparity is widening unnecessarily, one that will be sewn into the fabric of our society even beyond this generation if we do not rectify the problem now.”
…
“If the blue states are for holding back, many red states are recklessly opening their schools and increasing the odds of exposing children and staff to Covid-19 in the midst of raging outbreaks.”
“The sudden rise of infections caused surprise among many politicians and had led to a sudden shift of opinion in recent days, as some of Germany’s regional leaders had previously resisted calls from Merkel to adopt swifter measures. The latest numbers are notably worse than Merkel’s own prediction in late September, when she warned that Germany could have 19,200 daily new cases by Christmas if it did not introduce further restrictions.
Speaking on Sunday, the chancellor made an “urgent” appeal to citizens to respect the rules and thanked health care workers: “For them it will be a very hard Christmas.””
“Australia enjoyed plenty of advantages over the United States in containing Covid-19. It has no land borders to speak of. Its population density is very low (though the population is concentrated on the coasts). Its outbreak never got nearly as bad as the US’s did. On its worst days, Victoria saw about 700 new cases; Missouri, with (very roughly) a similar population and landmass, is currently averaging more than 3,000. Some of the Australian states also closed their borders to the others, which lowered the risk somebody might bring Covid-19 from one part of the country to another.
But the Australian epidemic has also mirrored America’s in important ways. Once the coronavirus arrived in the spring, the country went into lockdown. When cases abated, some of those restrictions were eased — and, before too long, Covid-19 cases were spiking again. Each state was responsible for its own response, with the federal government playing an advisory role outside of obviously national issues like foreign travel.
In the second wave, Victoria was by far the hardest-hit state. Its case numbers were dwarfing those in every other state including New South Wales, home to the country’s other great metropolis, Sydney.”
…
“The state had gone into a stage 4 lockdown — most businesses closed, there was a nightly curfew, and residents were ordered to stay within five kilometers of their home — in August, and it was then extended in September, with the explicit goal of eventually reaching zero new cases.”
…
“They treated the threats to public health and the economy as intertwined, which most experts agree they are. The Australian states that contained Covid-19 best also saw the strongest economic recoveries. Victoria, with the worst outbreak among the states, was lagging behind in consumer spending and business revenue.”
…
““Without elimination, the third, fourth, or fifth wave is an inevitability. This will either involve more lockdowns or the government will lose the social license to do lockdowns and the virus will spread indiscriminately,” Duckett told me over email, perhaps unwittingly describing the very challenge before the United States during this winter surge. “A hard lockdown in the early stages of the virus gives a chance for elimination, and that gives the chance for business certainty and a full recovery.”
Melburnians are now enjoying the benefits of their sacrifices. Duckett said he had just gone to lunch with a few friends before responding to my email.
The US probably cannot achieve zero Covid-19 cases anytime soon. But it could embrace the spirit of the Victorian model: a clear goal, support for the proven mitigation strategies, and a commitment from the public.”
…
“They expanded testing, including random pooled testing and testing for workers in essential industries and of people attending schools or other indoor events. They achieved 24-hour turnarounds for test results, so if a person tested positive, they could quickly isolate. Once cases reached zero, the state was planning to start testing sewage for Covid-19 to get a head start on any resurgence.”
…
““A system that relies on self-isolation in which people are unable or refuse to self-isolate cannot succeed,” Duckett and Mackey wrote.
That probably sounds draconian to Americans. Certainly, the harshest lockdown measures taken in Victoria — requiring people to stay within a few miles of their house and stay inside completely at night — would be politically challenging in the US.
But Australians took it in stride because they knew the goal they were working toward.”
…
“The government there made it easier for businesses and workers by providing subsidies to businesses to keep people employed and by increasing their unemployment benefits — the same policies that the US has let lapse and is now struggling to reinstitute even during this devastating winter wave.
As cases dwindled, the lockdown measures were relaxed in a clear, tiered fashion. The extreme travel restrictions were the first to go. Schools and businesses could reopen with spacing. Masks continued to be required indoors and on public transportation. Eventually, all restrictions except for international quarantine could be lifted.
Things could still go wrong for Victoria and the rest of Australia. The state has started prioritizing having “normal” conditions for the Christmas shopping season over maintaining zero new cases. But it is easier to focus on reopening when community spread is eliminated — rather than pushing forward with reopening in spite of sustained spread, as the US has done.”
…
“I don’t believe it was impossible for America to execute a similar strategy to the one that has succeeded in Victoria. Polls showed most Americans did support wearing masks and other mitigation measures, even if there was some divide among partisans. They worried that social distancing would be relaxed too quickly, not too slowly, much like the Australians did.
The problem, or one of them, is that the US just never set a clear goal for Covid-19 suppression. It was understandably hard to ask people in Wisconsin to abide by social distancing restrictions back when they thought the coronavirus was just a New York City problem — and when they didn’t know what the plan was.
Today, of course, the pandemic is a very real problem for every American. So as we try to bring the winter wave under control, we might benefit from taking a lesson from the Aussies and coming up with a specific objective that all of us, together, can work toward.”
“One of the major disagreements between the House and Senate is over how many F-35s taxpayers will buy from Lockheed Martin next year, reports Defense News, a trade publication for the military-industrial complex. The Senate wants to get 96 of them, while the House has authorized purchasing five fewer—though it should be noted that the Pentagon only asked for 79 new planes.”
…
“The various branches of the military already have 375 F-35 fighter jets, according to a July article from Air Force Magazine—far more top-of-the-line fighter jets than any other country in the world. But the planes have been criticized by the Government Accountability Office for being overpriced and failing to meet reliability goals.
Negotiations also loom over the number of new Virginia-class submarines—which cost about $5.5 billion apiece—to be built. The Navy asked for one, so naturally the House decided to budget for two. The Senate has included funding for just a single submarine, Defense News reports.
That’s not sitting well with Rep. Joe Courtney (D–Conn.), whose district notably includes the submarine base in New London, Connecticut. In a statement on Tuesday, Courtney condemned the Senate’s change to the submarine budget as “unworkable.”
“There are now two competing proposals in Congress, neither of which has garnered the support needed to move forward.
The first is a $908 billion bill that a bipartisan group of senators is working on, which has been heralded as a strong “starting point” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. The second is a $916 billion offer from the White House via Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, which Republican lawmakers — including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — have rallied behind.
Both contain funding for small businesses and vaccine distribution, though they differ on a couple key points. The bipartisan proposal, for example, includes far more funding for unemployment insurance (UI), guaranteeing a weekly $300 boost to recipients for 16 weeks, on top of what they are currently receiving on the state level.
The White House offer, on the other hand, only includes $40 billion to extend expiring programs that have increased access to UI. It also contains funding for a second round of $600 stimulus checks, while the bipartisan proposal does not.
Democrats have already rejected the Mnuchin plan given its treatment of UI, while McConnell has balked at the bipartisan proposal as unnecessarily broad and favored a more targeted bill. These disagreements leave lawmakers at yet another impasse, though both Republicans and Democrats have emphasized they’d like to get something done before leaving for the holiday break, something they’re currently scheduled to do by December 21.”
…
“The recurring issues that lawmakers have struggled to navigate throughout stimulus negotiations are still liability protections — a top Republican demand — and state and local aid — a top Democratic one. Earlier this week, McConnell had even suggested stripping both out of a stimulus bill in order to advance it, signaling some movement given his previous commitment to preserving liability protections.”
…
“Democratic leaders have noted, however, that any package without state and local aid would be completely inadequate given huge budget cuts that regional governments are being forced to make. They’ve said, too, that state aid has support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. “State and local funding is bipartisan unlike the extreme corporate liability proposal Leader McConnell made which has no Democratic support,” Schumer has said.
Republicans thus far have insisted that liability protections are necessary to ensure that small businesses don’t get hit with a deluge of lawsuits for how they handled the pandemic, while Democrats counter that such shields are intended to protect corporations from accountability. Some Republicans, including McConnell, have opposed state and local aid because they claim that states could use this funding to cover other unrelated costs. Researchers, however, have emphasized that these funds are needed to address what could be up to $500 billion in shortfalls that states have accrued due to lower revenues and higher costs during the pandemic.”
“The Trump administration has pushed the envelope of its executive authority once again by issuing a blanket eviction moratorium that applies to all rental properties nationwide.
The order, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in early September, says tenants earning up to $99,000 ($198,000 for joint filers) cannot be evicted for failing to pay their rent, provided they tell their landlord in writing that they have made every effort to obtain government assistance, that they have lost income or received extraordinary out-of-pocket medical bills, and that their eviction would force them into homelessness or into a crowded living situation.
Landlords can still evict tenants who engage in criminal activity on the property or who pose a risk to public health or safety. Property owners who try to remove a tenant in violation of the CDC’s directive could face a $100,000 fine and a year in jail. The order goes beyond the federal eviction moratorium passed by Congress in March, which applied only to the 28 percent of properties covered by federal mortgage guarantees or other federal housing programs.”
“Biden is correct that the previous administration made numerous fatal blunders in its handling of the pandemic, and that more clarity and transparency at all levels is an important step in rectifying those mistakes. That will be a welcome change from his predecessor’s failure to roll out sufficient testing, devise an effective reopening strategy for the country, and his numerous inane assertions that the end of the pandemic was nigh, including claims like the virus will disappear “like a miracle” and “this is going to go away without a vaccine” and “the China plague will fade” and “we’re rounding the corner and it’s going away.” Nevertheless the makeup of Biden’s advisory board and his mixed messages on mask mandates give cause for concern, and will be worth keeping an eye on.”
“There are varying schools of thought about whether the president has the authority to issue a national mask mandate, as many other countries have. Some attempts to do so at the state and local level have been met with lawsuits and refusals to comply, as masks have become an increasingly politicized and contentious issue. Biden has said he will issue an executive order requiring masks to be worn on federal property.
Beyond that, Biden’s version of a national mask mandate, as spelled out in his new transition website, does not appear to come from him. Instead, he’s going to be “working with governors and mayors” to encourage them to issue their own mandates, as well as remind Americans to wear masks. While the majority of America’s governors have issued statewide mandates, 16 states have not — including Mississippi, which revoked its mask mandate in October (Gov. Tate Reeves is requiring masks in certain counties).
Though it’s hard to see a reality where states and localities run by Republicans work hand in hand with a Democratic president these days — even in the face of a virus that infects people regardless of their political leanings — many firmly Republican state governments have issued mask mandates once their constituents began getting sick and dying, most recently Utah on Monday. Others still seem to take pride in their obstinance, like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. Even in that state, however, local governments are trying to issue their own orders.”
“On December 2, a staggering 2,885 Americans were reported to have died of Covid-19, according to the New York Times. It was the highest single-day toll of the year.
It was nearly the same number of people who died in the 9/11 attacks (2,977). And it was far more than the estimated 1,800 Americans who died over a matter of days when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005. During World War II, from the Pearl Harbor attacks in December 1941 to Japan’s surrender, about 300 US soldiers died every day on average (and about 407,000 were dead in total by August 1945).
Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic has more in common with a slow-motion tragedy, like a war, than an acute event like 9/11. More than 2,600 deaths were reported on December 1, the day before the US set its new record for daily deaths; the previous high had been 2,752 on April 15. With the number of daily new cases and hospitalizations still rising across the country, public health experts expect new terrible death records will be set over the coming winter.”
…
“According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, the official number of total deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the US is 274,121. But total excess deaths — the number of deaths above what would be expected in a normal year — has reached 345,000, according to the Times. Most, though not all, of those deaths are likely uncounted Covid-19 fatalities.”
…
“There is still time to soften the blow, with states and cities implementing more social distancing restrictions and requiring better mask adherence. But barring a sudden change in public behavior and public policy, America’s outbreak is not going to get better anytime soon.
At this point, we appear to be waiting for the vaccine to be widely distributed to bring the virus under control — something that may not happen for another six months or longer. Prioritizing the most vulnerable populations for vaccination should help reduce the death toll, but there is no avoiding the fact that tens of thousands of Americans are likely to die over the next few months.”
“It’s great to have highly effective vaccines, but as the researchers observe, “How well a vaccine program ‘works’ will also depend on how quickly it can be manufactured, how efficiently it can be distributed to locations in greatest need, how persuasive health messaging can be in promoting public acceptance, and how consistently the public can adhere to the many complementary prevention strategies (e.g., masks, hand-washing, distancing) to limit the spread of the virus.”