Posted on 02/04/2021 10:38:55 AM PST by george76
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reiterated on Wednesday that schools can safely reopen even if teachers are not vaccinated against COVID-19.
Last week the CDC weighed into the ongoing debate over whether to reopen schools for in-person instruction, noting that schools that are currently welcoming students into classrooms with certain safety precautions in place have had only “scant transmission” of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The CDC team reviewed data from studies in the United States and abroad and found the experience in schools different from nursing homes and high-density work sites where rapid spread has occurred,” The Washington Post reported last Tuesday. “The review, which echoes the conclusions of other researchers, comes as many school districts continue to wrestle with whether and how to reopen schools and as President Biden makes a return to in-person learning one of his top pandemic-related priorities.”
“The preponderance of available evidence from the fall school semester has been reassuring,” CDC researchers noted in an article for the Journal of the American Medical Association. “There has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission.”
“The conclusion here is with proper prevention efforts…we can keep transmission in schools and educational settings quite low,” the study’s lead author noted in the article. “We didn’t know that at the beginning of the year but the data has really accumulated.”
On Wednesday, the CDC weighed in again, this time suggesting that a common teachers union demand — that all teachers be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before being forced to return to classrooms — is not a necessary requirement for in-person learning to be done safely and with minimum risk of coronavirus transmission.
“There is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated,” President Joe Biden’s CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, told reporters during a COVID-19 response team press conference Wednesday morning.
“Vaccinations of teachers is not a prerequisite for safely reopening schools,” she reiterated.
The CDC remains concerned, largely, about extracurricular activities associated with school, rather than in-person instruction itself. As the agency pointed out in its JAMA article, there are records of significant coronavirus outbreaks associated with school athletics, particularly sporting events that are not typically held outdoors or where social distancing is not possible, like wrestling.
The CDC’s scientific recommendations seem to run contrary to statements made by teachers’ unions. In places like Chicago, the nation’s third-largest school district, the Chicago Teachers Union has repeatedly demanded that all teachers be vaccinated before returning to classrooms and, where that is not possible — and where teachers live with unvaccinated individuals live with individuals vulnerable to the disease — teachers should be allowed to work from home indefinitely.
In Virginia, lawmakers are pushing for staff-wide vaccinations before school resumes, per Fox News.
As The Daily Wire reported last week, the science is now weighing against keeping schools in lockdown. “The CDC’s data [which says that schools may safely reopen with precautionary measures in place] does seem to echo data collected in other areas of the world, where students returned to in-person schooling in the fall, or, in some cases, were never locked out. The study also comes on the heels of a set of British statistics, released on Monday, that suggest teachers are no more likely to get COVID-19 than other essential workers.”
And just like that, there were no more bodies everywhere and Covid was no longer scary.
What a total cluster mess this agency is.
They flip flop more than M!tt and John Fn Kerry, together.
And yet teachers (no matter how young or how healthy) are prioritized above the elderly... at least in Maryland.
What they now need to deal with is the terror some people are living in of COVID.
They can tell them it’s now safe, but once people are conditioned to fear like that, it’s not going to be easy to condition them to not fear enough to not wear masks and “social distance”.
Are federal agents going to make sure teachers and students are double masked?
Schools here have been in session from the start of the school year. No piles of dead teachers.
teachers are immune to c19?
“And yet teachers (no matter how young or how healthy) are prioritized above the elderly... at least in Maryland.”
A testament to the power of the teachers’ union.
There has never been a single documented and proven case where one person is asymptomatic and positive infecting anyone else. Not. One. Case.
Every morning demonrats pick the topic of the day out of a hat.
Will they listen to the “scientific experts” now?
These people have no shame with gaslighting at all.
Where is your proof of such a statement of fact. Here is one of a half dozen counter proofs. A simple search of ebsco or science direct Journal repositories will yield copious peer review scientific research debunking your BS statement.
This review accepted and published data shows 50% asymptomatic transmission. There are slews of others with the same or higher results. Are you a medical researcher do you have a PhD in virology? What is your credentials to make such a statement of fact do tell the audience.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774707
Disclaimer: I would expect at least a small degree of asymptotic transmission of COVID-19, simply due to the rest of the characteristics of the pathogen and how it works. There are lab studies (cited in your linked study) showing that levels of viral RNA in respiratory secretions are high at the time of symptom onset. However, that’s not my argument (which going into further would be a bit lengthy, and it is quite late here.) I merely present it as a sort of “where I’m coming from”.
That said, the study you linked to has little other actual firm input data that I can discern. It is all modeling based on various assumptions and estimates stacked on top of statements such as “data suggested”, “would be expected”, “may be as likely”, “substantial uncertainty”, and so on. Many of those phrases refer back to the cited studies. I do not have time to run down the study’s references, but, I suspect somewhere in those is better support of your point.
Put another way: I used to design real consumer items sold in large quantities that had to perform as stated, or else. So, I like my data a little more, uh, direct and concrete. That 50% you cite is not itself data, it is a rather wobbly model.
BTW, we had a very large COVID-19 exposure situation at my daughter’s high school last week. Over 1/2 the students were sent home during the school day as “discovered to have been likely exposed”. (Apparently part of it has to do with athletics and part a large party.) In-class instruction for following days was cancelled and on-line classes restarted. Mind you all, this is a private parochial school in a group of such schools that went up against the governor (and lost in court) to reopen early. Hardly a bunch of COVID-chickens. However, granted, previously the associated congregation my wife is a member of has been impacted somewhat badly by COVID-19 illnesses.
It will be most interesting to see how many positive cases turn up from last week’s event.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.