What about the unveloping world?
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To his credit - he does seem to have worked on that.
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At first glance I read that as âpandemic will end the world for the rich by late 2021â and I got a little excited.
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We donât need this.
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Canât they just hang in and ignore the idiot until January? 
Thatâs my strategyâŚ
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About that âchildren are immuneâ thing
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That sounds like the plan.
â The US is set to leave the WHO in July 2021, after Donald Trump slammed the WHOâ
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Unfortunately, they also think all cases in children are mild, donât consider that kids will infect others, and wonât believe thereâs a problem until the death count for children under 16 goes off the charts. These are the folks who consider everything less than death to be a âmildâ case. Then 45 and everyone in the administration who pushed for schools to reopen will point the finger at everyone else (especially the medical community) and say they should have given better information, taken more precautions, etc.
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They still wonât care - their kids go places like this.
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Given that we do not know fully the severity of neurological, cardiac, pulmonary, renal, etc consequences, especially is still-developing brains, there is the possibilty for seriously long term devastation of the next generation. Folks need to get past the dead/fine dichotomy. It is not that simple.
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Ahh, the dream school of DeVos (and people who think like her).
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Hopefully that will impinge on Trumpâs escape plan once he loses access to Air Force One.
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Which, Dog willing, is enough time for the next administration to call off the asinine move.
Also have to take away his private jet. Letitia James is working on that one.
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According to the CDC, the ICU admissions rate for kids hospitalized is the same as adults.
I think the reason we havenât seen a surge in infections among kids yet is because schools were closed down and so many parents, like us, stopped taking children to stores. So, the kids were home even more than the adults, creating another layer between them and infection.
From what I can tell, the science to back up the idea kids are suffering is out there. But the powers that be are ignoring it, like they do so much else. Also, Black and Hispanic kids seem to suffer the most- which plays into the goals of the far-right.
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For those of us who want a deep dive into the figures, the ONS has released this fairly huge and comprehensive report on the excess deaths seen in Europe as part of the last six months of the outbreak.
There are a few interactives and comparison charts that highlight some of the key points- and show with as rigorously as we can, which parts of Europe were most badly affected and how they managed their recovery.
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Meanwhile:
Theyâre going to close for a couple of days to âwipe things downâ. Then on with the killing!
Some Thoughts on Schools (paywall)
(Getty Images)
August 10, 2020 9:37 a.m.
Weâre in line for a rash of morality tales emerging out of school re-openings around the country. That high school in Georgia that had the viral photo of kids crowded into a hallway between classes has now reported at least 9 new cases â students and teachers â and is at least temporarily moving to remote instruction.
These stories also provide new evidence of how little emerging science is figuring into decisions on the school reopening question. North Paulding High School is moving to remote instruction today and tomorrow during which time the facility will be closed for cleaning and disinfection. The problem is that most of what weâve learned over the last eight months tells us that this sort of cleaning addresses what is likely only a minor or even trivial source of infection. COVID virus can persist on surfaces for significant periods of time, at least in laboratory settings. But surfaces contaminated hours or days earlier appear to account for very little disease transmission.
Full Essay
In other words, definitely keep up your hand washing. Wiping down frequently touched surfaces like door handles is a good idea. In my home we continue to wipe down surfaces of boxes and bottles and milk cartoons when food or groceries are delivered. But as a mitigation strategy for a school this is mostly mitigation theater, taking action that is high profile and relatively easy because things that would actually make a difference are either too hard or have been ruled out in advance because of difficulty or politics. Itâs the germ theory version of looking for the missing keys under the street lamp because thatâs where the light is.
The bulk of evidence from the Spring and Summer is that COVID transmission is mainly through the air, either exhalation and inhalation of people in immediate proximity to each other or airborne contagion through recirculated air or contagion that persists in the air for some period of time. Again, please keep washing your hands, okay? Iâm not saying surface transmission doesnât happen. Iâm very confident it does. There is plenty of evidence it can and likely does. Weâre talking here about the main sources of transmission and the main public priorities for mitigation. Most people appear to get COVID because they are in proximity to infected persons in indoor spaces with limited ventilation or filtration. Thatâs what makes in school instruction such a public health challenge. Doing âdeep cleaningâ of schools because an infected person was touching things on Friday is going to be mainly irrelevant to new people getting infected on Tuesday. It probably has limited impact for Saturday.
Now let me shift gears to another aspect of the school reopening issue.
I base this partly on what is happening in the New York City public school system. Transmission in New York is at the lowest levels anywhere in the US other than a few barely hit and barely populated states. It is one of the very few parts of the country where school reopening is actually plausible.
But the plan the city and most of the state has come up with shows how limited this can be and how much weâve made a fetish of in-school instruction. There are two big reasons to have in-school instruction. The first and most important is the educational, social and emotional development and well-being of children. The second is the impact on the economy. Many parents canât work if their children arenât in school and to the extent they can their childrenâs remote learning lacks the support it needs.
The current blueprint in the New York City schools is to give families the choice of remote or âblendedâ learning. Remote is remote. In âblendedâ children are fully remote for four days and then for two days they are in school. But this is school with masks, confined to a single classroom, mostly locked down in their seats, barred from being within six feet of each other and in most cases watching the same prerecorded video on a computer screen which their remote friends are watching at their computers at home. The difference is that for two of the six days in the cycle they have a teacher in the class room who can answer questions they may have in person â though six feet distanced â as opposed to answering remotely.
This is the blueprint. The New York City Department of Education is giving individual schools a fair amount of flexibility in customizing it to the needs of their particular communities.
This may work â and here I define âworkâ as being sustainable with little additional community transmission. Itâs really only in New York and maybe a few other states where transmission rates are low enough where this becomes plausible. Going to full in-school instruction right now in states like Georgia and Florida is just bonkers.
But I think there is a real question whether in-school instruction on these terms is even worth it. At best kids will be in school 1/3 of the time â and it may be less â and under such straightened and perhaps nerve-wracking conditions that most of the educational and social benefit is actually lost. Watching the process as a journalist and a parent it seems to me that the school system and political authorities have been so focused on the absolute necessity of âreopeningâ the schools that theyâve ended up with something that is not obviously better than full remote learning and called it success.
For working parents of school aged kids who canât work remote 1/3 or 1/4 of the days in the classroom is certainly better than zero, but not by much. Notably, in many schools it wonât be the same day each week. It will float with the 4 days out, 2 days in rotation, which makes work scheduling still harder. At such a limited and confined level, your childâs one or two days a week in class may be more disruptive than additive both for work schedules and more importantly for the educational experience of the children.
You donât have to agree with me on this. Iâm not sure I agree with me on this. But the scenario Iâve sketched out should at least spur a conversation about whether weâve reached a point of diminishing returns, if weâve made such a fetish of in school instruction that weâve ended up with something that â if we step back and look at it with fresh eyes â is worse than the alternative.
My main concern is that school authorities have put so much time into the process of jamming themselves into this very limited ersatz in-school instruction that they havenât put enough time into making remote learning â where all kids will spend the overwhelming majority of their time â as good as it can be.
The truth is that weâre in a horrible situation. We have failed as a country to control the virus and because of that weâre forced into no-win situations and choices which are all bad. As much as anything we simply lack the kind of information that allows us to make informed, smart decisions. And yet September is less than four weeks away.
Although I think he usually comes from a good place, Josh often has the same cognitive problems that infect all of our leadership:
As much as anything we simply lack the kind of information that allows us to make informed, smart decisions.
Every part of this sentence is wrong. The key to making informed, smart decisions is to understand and use the information that is available. Not excuse bad decisions because some other information might become available later.
But also, we have all the information we need. Schools should remain closed in pretty much the entire country, and shelter-in-place with salary replacement from the Fed should be enacted to make that possible. In the face of what theyâve been handed by our mass-murderer governor, I sadly agree that TUSDâs split option (stay home if you can, come to controlled classrooms if you canât, all instruction virtual) is their best option, but itâs still a bad option.
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Dear Presidents of the Big Ten,
Please, please, please commit to killing a bunch of African-American college students so that I can watch some college football games.
Yours truly,
Senator Benjamin Sasse
MONDAY, AUGUST 10, 2020
But Mah Football
The Big Ten has voted to cancel the 2020 college football season in a historic move that stems from concerns related to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, multiple people with knowledge of the decision confirmed to the Free Press.
Iâm more of a sports fan than I used to be, and I get the even greater fandom in others more than I used to, but that tons of grown ass adults in the middle of All This think OH NOT DONâT TAKE MY FOOTBALL AWAY as if thatâs important at allâŚ
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) plans to send a letter to Big Ten presidents pleading them to hold the 2020 college football season, according to Sports Illustratedâs Ross Dellenger.
by Atrios at 11:44
But congratulations to the âBig Tenâ leadership for taking a stand (as long as it lasts).
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