I haven't been a hard liner on keeping schools closed and am trying to listen to science. If we were still at the original COVID I'd say let's go with the low rates for kids and teacher vax but variants are still a wild card and children seem to be susceptible. But consider the article and comments below including long-term lung scarring from even people with mild cases. Every single person I know who had it even a year ago complains of some shortness of breath or being more tired. I may never leave my house again.
As usual the UFT and AFT are waffling. Do we think the CDC is suddenly not politicized under Biden who has promised to get schools open and viola, distances shrink from 6 to 3 feet.
Naked Capitalism -
Yves here. Biden repeatedly promised to “follow the science” in developing Covid policies. But as has become the norm in American medicine, the science has instead been distorted in the interest of profits and political expedience. This post provides a devastating takedown of the Biden plan to reopen schools with little in the way of additional protections for teachers and students, particularly more ventilation (how about the simple expedient of opening windows?). It explains why Covid cases among children have been severely undercounted and where population-wide surveys were made, children were vastly more likely to introduce Covid into a household than adults. It also shreds the CDC’s astonishing assertion that distancing as little as three feet would be OK.
On the one hand, parents and children are suffering due to the lack of in-person instruction. Keeping schools closed is politically risky for Team Dem, particularly since it is seen as a staunch ally of the (formerly) powerful teachers CONTINUE READING: Ed Notes Online: New CDC Guidelines to Reopen Schools, Based on Outdated, Cherry-Picked, and Misinterpreted Data, Put Students, Teachers, and Communities at Risk