I hope CDC and White House officials will emphasize the value of normalcy. As CNN first reported, new CDC guidance is on the way for K-12 schools. It should end close contact quarantines, which are still being used in some districts, and generally provide more normalcy for children in districts where the agency’s guidance is applied with fidelity. However, despite the fact the…

Preserving citizen well-being must be at the heart of every country’s Covid-19 policies moving forward. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, many countries have reorganized their societies around limiting transmission of SARS-CoV-2 on their national territories. With minimal concern for collateral damage or public health more generally, governments shuttered businesses, schools, cultural institutions, and even parts of their health care systems.

Many European center-left politicians supported reopening schools — as early as spring 2020 — despite significant coronavirus transmission and suboptimal buildings. A New York Times story published Monday reignited a heated debate among Americans about the political consequences of extended school closures and pandemic mandates. In this piece, I don’t want to dive into that debate, which has sometimes framed demands to reopen schools or lift mask mandates as racist or…

The agency still recommends close contact testing and quarantines With many children having experienced catastrophic learning loss during the pandemic, it is essential that the upcoming school year be as smooth as possible, but some districts will continue to apply CDC close contact testing and quarantine guidance that could lead to healthy children missing weeks of classroom instruction. …

Weingarten said she “completely understand(s)” those who believe masks are “an impediment to learning” In a Washington Post article published today about a small number of school districts bringing back mask mandates, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten seems to publicly acknowledge for the first time that mask mandates can be problematic in the classroom environment: Randi Weingarten, the president of the American…

Different places have different child vaccination policies. It’s interesting to compare policies across different states or countries, because we realize that things aren’t quite as black and white as we expected or might like. Washington, D.C. public schools will require all children 12 and older to be vaccinated against Covid-19 in order to attend school in the…

WHO and UNICEF child mask guidance: “No children should be denied access to education because of mask wearing.” Even as the harms of extended virtual instruction are now becoming clear, San Diego’s school board president said yesterday in a local television news interview that students uncomfortable with her district’s reimposed mask mandate should “just not return” to summer school and “go to the school where they don’t have…

It was incredibly cynical and dishonest. On September 15, 2020, I was watching YouTube — probably some food or travel video — and was served an advertisement by Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. …

This was lost on some people in 2020. After the CDC released school reopening guidance in summer 2020, Andy Slavitt — a former UnitedHealth Group executive, Obama administration Medicare and Medicaid chief, podcaster, author, and amateur comedian — was outraged. Outraged. Sharing a link to the guidance, he lamented that “The ⁦@CDCGov has fallen so far. …