Three and a half weeks into the new administration, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a new set of guidelines for K-12 schools. The general features of the guidelines have been well-covered in the press (with some minor mistakes–it’s complicated!), and some public-health researchers have started to weigh in as well (also with some mistakes–it’s complicated!).1 To me, the key operative expression is three and a half weeks into the new administration; the timing reflects both political needs of the Biden administration as it pushes through its COVID relief package,2 and also professional needs of the public-health community to return to ordinary public-health politics after the sheer awfulness of the Trump administration response to the pandemic.
The result is the closest thing to a consensus I would expect at this point, among public-health professionals who disagree on some important things. It’s probably a misnomer to think that a public-health consensus on all important issues are possible, and as a layperson I see significant public disagreements about transmission risks related to school reopening. In CONTINUE READING: Sherman Dorn: What Ed Policy Wonks Might Want to Know About the CDC School Advice, February 2021 | National Education Policy Center