Media Contact / Anna Bakalis 213-305-9654
For immediate release / June 9, 2020
Press release: https://www.utla.net/news/utla-recommends-keeping-school-campuses-closed
UTLA recommends keeping LAUSD school campuses closed; refocus on robust distance learning practices for Fall
LOS ANGELES — Amid COVID-19 infections and deaths surging to record highs, Trump’s threats to open schools prematurely, and a groundbreaking research paper that outlines necessary conditions for safely reopening schools, the UTLA Board of Directors and Bargaining Team are recommending to keep school campuses closed when the semester begins on Aug. 18.
“It is time to take a stand against Trump’s dangerous, anti-science agenda that puts the lives of our members, our students, and our families at risk,” said UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz. “We all want to physically open schools and be back with our students, but lives hang in the balance. Safety has to be the priority. We need to get this right for our communities.”
UTLA is also engaging all members in a poll on Friday, July 10, to find out where they stand on re-opening campuses. UTLA will notify members of the results of the poll Friday night.
The research paper, Same Storm but Different Boats: The Safe and Equitable Conditions for Starting LAUSD in 2020-21, (attached) looks at the science behind the specific conditions that must be met in the second-largest school district in the nation before staff and students can safely return.
Even before the spike in infections and Trump’s reckless talk, there were serious issues with starting the year on school campuses. The state and federal governments have not provided the additional resources or funds needed for increased health and safety measures and there is not enough time for the district to put together the detailed, rigorous plans for a safe return to campus.
According to UTLA’s research paper, there is a jarringly disparate rate of COVID-19 infection, severe illness, and death among Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) working communities, where structural racism and economic inequality mean people live with economic and social factors that increase risk of illness and death. In these communities, people are more likely to have “essential” jobs, insufficient health care, higher levels of pre-existing health conditions, and live in crowded housing. Because of the forces of structural racism, Blacks, Latinx, and Pacific Islanders in Los Angeles County are dying of COVID-19 at twice the rate of white residents.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m going to repeat here a comment I made on another page because I think that it’s really, really important. Before we can reopen schools, WE NEED TO RAMP UP N95 MASK PRODUCTION sufficiently that every person in a school can have a new one every five days.
True, Bob, we need more N95 masks and PPE in general. N95 masks can be painful to wear. I can’t imagine kids wearing them 8 hours a day.
Interesting point, Ms. Allegretti. Esp. younger kids and those with sensitive skin.
Let’s not be silly, imagining that children can wear N95 masks. They don’t even make a child-size. The goal for kids– at least up to age 15-ish– is to get them accustomed to wearing comfortable cloth masks for long periods. It will be a learning process for those under 9-ish. But I see plenty of younger kids every day in my town, on their own w/o adults, wearing masks as they bicycle up to convenience stores [masks reqd] where they want to buy something There will be many slips; that’s why adults need the N95’s.
It’s possible, suggested by stats & some studies, that children have a very low rate of both infection and transmission. IF one is willing to bet on that, this still leaves brick&mortar schools as an ideal viral breeding ground due to the numbers of adults on staff. Consider that adult school staff– by virtue of being their households’ shoppers/ gas-tank-fillers/ prescription-picker-uppers etc– many with spouses working outside home– are the ones bringing community spread into school bldgs. (Remember the recent AZ story: a team of 3 distanced, mask-wearing teachers doing remote ed from one classroom spread it to each other [one died].)
N95 masks would indeed by the ideal PPE to avoid passing on/ increasing community spread w/n school bldgs. All teachers/ adult staff should have them.
I have one I save for outings to the big grocery-store: it’s not uncomfortable!
At the moment this is a pipe dream, due to offshored manufacture, & mfrs’ not exporting/ hoarding for own populations. Our two US mfrs reportedly cannot even meet current US healthcare-workers’ needs no matter how they ramp up. Tell DC if they want to see schools reopen, use the Defense Production Act. Manufacture millions of N95 masks for adult school staff… And millions more for age 16& up– who seem to transmit as efficiently as adults– if they want to get them back into classrooms.
My recommendation is that we produce N95 masks for use in schools. They are not now available, and that was my point. They can be manufactured in appropriate sizes.
Tell DC if they want to see schools reopen, use the Defense Production Act. Manufacture millions of N95 masks . . . for everyone who enters a school–teachers, students, staff, administrators, visitors. Everyone.
Government agencies commonly have a “don’t cause panic” orientation and are quite willing to mislead if they think it will serve a more important immediate purpose.
Remember when, at the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC was saying that there was no reason for people in the general public to wear face masks? I do. I haven’t forgotten this. Why were they saying that at the time, even though it was clearly false and they knew that it was clearly false? Well, there weren’t enough masks for health professionals, so they were willing to lie about masks being effective in order to protect the mask supply for those people. At the time, I had an argument with my brother about this:
ME: If you are going out, you should wear a face mask.
BROTHER: The CDC says that they are not effective. The virus is much smaller than the pores in the masks are.
ME: Of course, but common sense would tell you that a mask would provide SOME protection–from large particles when someone sneezes, for example.
BROTHER: I’m going to listen to the experts. Who made you an expert on disease and filtration?
ME: Aie, yie, yie. Think.
So, here we are, now. We’re about to open schools, and people are saying that we need to “do this safely” by making sure that kids are wearing their masks and staying three feet or six feet apart (Which is it? who knows. Some say one, some say the other).
But the fact is that the masks available to kids will be pleated surgical masks or simple cloth masks and not N95 or equivalent masks made of melted polypropylene plastic fibers (which can filter out 95 percent of virus-sized particles). From what I can tell, the best of the surgical masks will filter out only about 30 percent of virus particles in the external environment. The cloth masks, only about 6 percent!!! They are of some use in protecting others from a mask wearer who is infected but doesn’t know it yet. But they are of very, very little use in protecting the mask wearer from others. If these are the only masks available, they should be worn. In fact, it should be MANDATED that they be worn in public because they offer some protection.
But not much.
It’s time for some freaking honesty from our officials about this stuff.
Imagine a situation in which they were being honest: People would be screaming from their rooftops that schools should not be reopened until we have ramped up production of N95 masks sufficiently that every person in a school can have a new one every five days or so.
As it is, I think that our health officials are responsible for widespread ignorance about what protection is and is not provided by masks of various kinds.
Bob, I think you are unnecessarily cynical on the end-Feb WHO/ CDC statements. They recommended masks for the ill, & anyone caring for an ill person who couldn’t wear a mask. This was also the understanding in Europe then. Only in Asia did the general public start sporting whatever kind of face covering they could get their hands on – no doubt because of their experience w/SARS, they attitude was ‘better safe than sorry.’ Meanwhile, the mask studies from SARS-era were conflicting – and only focused on wearer-protective masks. At that point scientists thought ad-lib face coverings of bandana or T-shirt material provided minimal if any protection, & definitely inferior to distancing & frequent hand-washing.
Think about this: hospitals don’t wait for CDC, they make their own policy based on what they perceive as reqd to protect their staff. Only at end-March did MA Gen Hosp begin handing out surgical masks to all employees entering bldgs, then UCSF to staff, faculty, trainees & visitors. For those 2 hospital systems, enough data had come in from China to show that the pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic were highly infectious.
At that point we were already running short of wearer-protective masks for med personnel. It took another few days for the concept of everybody wearing non-wearer-protecting home-made masks to protect each other to sink in. On April 3, CDC recommended all wear cloth face-coverings in public.
So I don’t for a minute blame WHO/ CDC for mixed messaging. In a fast-moving public-health crisis, new info comes in, policy has to change with it. This is ALL on Trump admin. In any normal OECD democracy, public-health/ epidemiologists/ scientists lead policy and messaging in this kind of crisis. Political leaders’ role is to echo them & make it stick.
How hard would it be to get this simple message across? I’m picturing banners on every TV station for a month: “Alert: new data shows covid is spread by exhalations of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic carriers. Masks required by all in public. Wearer-protective masks in short supply & needed by med personnel. However, 70% protection provided if all wear multi-layer cloth face-coverings in public, in addition to 6-ft distancing and frequent hand-washing.” Accompanied by pres & govtl speeches reflecting same. And not a single political message to the contrary.
bethree5; “And not a single political message to the contrary.”
This is the WHOLE problem in a nutshell. NO LIBERATE BLAH! NO DEMOCRATIC HOAX BLAH! Trump is an blubbering IDIOT!!! His made up realities are the cause of all the political messages to not fear this disease.
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In a phone interview with Sean Hannity on March 4, Trump contradicted public health experts’ estimates of the death rate for Covid-19 — based on a “hunch.”
Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it is very mild… So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better and then, when you do have a death like you had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, I believe you had one in New York, you know, all of a sudden it seems like 3 or 4 percent, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of 1 percent.
On February 25, Trump promised that a vaccine would be available soon. “Now they have it, they have studied it, they know very much, in fact, we’re very close to a vaccine,” Trump said during a state visit to India.
Trump is a dangerous, phucking FOOL!!
Coronavirus: Best Trump Quotes about COVID-19, Compilation. Funny? Fake News? Sad? Honest?
Mar 7, 2020
This is a compilation of the best Donald Trump quotes about Coronavirus or COVID-19. Trump has had a lot to say about the virus since it arrived in the United States. Do you agree with Trump about the coronavirus or do you disagree with Trump about the coronavirus? Let us know!
I give up. People want to believe what they want to believe. The schools will reopen with kids wearing cloth masks or, at best, surgical masks, and there will be massive infections and deaths, and there is this headlong rush to make that happen because it’s what people want to believe.
I think that if we reopen our schools without AT LEAST having N95 masks for everyone in those schools, the result will be a catastrophe.
I would gladly be wrong about this.
Bob, where did you got that multi-layer cloth face-masks only provide 6% protection? Perhaps referring only to aerosolized droplets? I’d read that if all present are wearing multi-layer cloth masks AND are 6ft apart AND (if indoors) fewer than 10 are present, protection is 60-70%. That was based on larger droplets. I gather the prevalence/ role of aerosolized droplets is just coming onboard, maybe I was living in a hopeful fantasy… Photos of Asians in 100% masks suggest that has been a large part of their
success… But then again, it might have been more about their prompt, complete, & aggressively enforced (lengthy) stay-at-home orders, plus reopening only when stats are low, combined w/ample testing/ contact-tracing/ quarantining …
My latest quest is to find wearer-protective filters for my cloth masks. So far my home area is highly-compliant w/masking/ distancing. But I’m looking to vacation in MA in Aug. Their stats are as good, & they have much stricter rules in place re: beaches, but
I’d like the extra insurance…
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/153567601001500204
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/health/what-coronavirus-autopsies-reveal/index.html
Oh god, it’s the freaking Andromeda Strain.
Between this, and the scientists’ open letter on aerisolized droplet spread, and Politico’s details on national spread posted by carolmayasia below, my hair’s catching fire.
I don’t want to sound morbid or cynical, but if enough children and/or school staff members were to die as a result of unsafe schools in the context of COVID, then maybe there will be major backlash and structural change in this country. Trump supporters will not want their children to die. But I can also see Trump blaming the teachers’ and administrators’ unions in some way on this scenario.
There are those who posit that the virus is a means for nature to purge stupidity and immorality from the population, but there are always many casualties in that cleansing. It’s a horrible way to put it, but who knows if it has merit. I and any of you could be potential casualties, right? There is also a backfire effect where it will give the public and ruling class more fuel to condemn public schools, further paving the road for privatization with the propaganda that private sector does everything better than government. Well, of course it would if government starves the beast and private sector has the resources as a result of wealth and power being transferred to it with our tax dollars. That’s a no brainer . . .
What a hot mess! I have negligible faith in most politicians on both sides of the aisle (given the 6 recent takeaways from the Sanders-Biden Panel), but I still believe in the learning curve, goodness, and strength of the people when they find that have far more in common with each other and when they band together. It is us, it is people who will change this, not politicians. Politicians are only a symptom and reflection of who we are, even with gerrymandering, redlining, and the electoral college. We have the power; but still too many people don’t realize they do. But that too is changing for the better, to be objective.
I worked as an assistant principal in a school building built about 1912 or thereabout and while it’s a beautiful old Victorian building, it is in decrepit, arthritic condition with rampant mold and some lead pipes. The gymnasium literally rains water due to roof leaks and has not one window, but only two exits. It cannot be used whenever there is a heavy rain or when snow thaws. Water pools all over its vast floor. Plaster walls throughout some of the building (my office included) are peeling and crumbling, windows are single pane and don’t always open, lighting and hung ceilings are poorly done and in unacceptable condition, stairwells have exposed studs under the landing, and air quality is Horrendous with a capital “H”.
My position and about 4 other building administrator positions were excessed due to budget cuts as of 6/29/20. The teacher pool up for cutting was even larger. I worked in a vastly underfunded, impoverished district, about 51% of which was inner city African American and 33% are Latino immigrant. I am terrified and gravely concerned for the safety and health of any occupant who works in that building, should the building open up. Class size cap is 25 (but there is, I believe a small waiver allowed to raise the cap) with one teacher and a half day TA who works on average only 2.5 hours in the classroom.
While I miss my job and wonderful school community, I question if it would have been prudent, at the risk of being selfish, for me to go back there and work in that building. PK classes are held in the basement of the building in rooms that were never built to be classrooms. The cafeteria has elbow-to-elbow children sitting at the tables because it is a makeshift space. These are among the poorest and most vulnerable populations, and it sickens me to my stomach that this corrupt, divided, polarized, and indifferent country is not correcting a situation that would be laughed at or not believed in France or Finland or Germany or most any other developed, modern, successful democracy.
Education is critical. I agree with the concept of reopening schools and the rationale behind it. But I have acute doubts that it will NOT be done properly, given the political culture and brainwashing of American society. We are not Finland or France. At most, richer suburbs are more far more likely to be able to experiment to properly and safely reopen.
Sad, infuriating, but never without serious hope . . . But what will it / does it take? We must overcome the strong ripple effects of the antebellum economy and culture, and we still have not . . . We will be tested by schools reopening and they will be a reflection of who we are and continue to evolve to be.
A vivid, infuriating report, Robert!
Hi Robert,
How much is “enough children and/or school staff members?” How will “they” come to that magic number? Will it be one person or 200? Of course, we’ll have to rely on “them” to make these decisions.
Sadly, yes. Here in Flor-uh-duh, it seems that no amount of death is enough to get Trump Mini Me Governor DeSantis to reverse course.
Florida and Arizona both have large numbers of retirees. As the virus hits their communities, I wonder how they will feel about their do-nothing governors?
Excellent question. The answer to that is starting to come in. Simultaneously, Trump’s support among elders here is declining while the rates of infection and death among them are rising. Just read a report about that yesterday. We had a surge amount young people after the reopening of beaches and bars. DeSantis tried to spin this as a positive sign, that the disease was affecting those who were least likely to die. But now the increases are greater, each day, in the elderly community than in any other. So, your question will loom large come November, when the remaining elderly here in Flor-uh-duh vote against Donnie Death.
Mamie,
Great questions as usual from you. All I can say is that I prefer, like you, that advocacy sets things right rather than the casualties of children’s and adults’ deaths.
Our youth are inheriting the society we leave behind. They are and will continue to be among the most powerful forces of change, and I’m not implying that it should all or mainly on them, because this is a “We” pursuit. But the youth will shape Americas’s political evolution; they stand to lose the most because ____________. Easy blank(s) to fill in.
Robert Rendo, what a sad and illuminating post. It reminds me of my sis’ first placement (mid-’80’s) as a NYC special-ed teacher in a subsidized, Dickensian school for LD/ED/handicapped. Often the furnace didn’t work; kids & teachers shivered in coats/ hats/ gloves/ boots, & the fish in the aquarium tank froze. When the furnace worked, the radiators sent up clouds of coal-dust that aggravated her allergies & their asthma.
I haven’t experienced that extreme, but my mind immediately travelled to my time in WTC south tower, where sick days were through the roof: everyone always felt kinda sickish, which we knew had to do w/the sealed windows & airplane-like recirculated air [we all missed our former modest ’30’s bldg a few blocks away w/its huge liftable sashes on the Hudson]– & the creepy way the toilet water sloshed back & forth w/the wind, as did the elevator cabs, sometimes banging into the walls… we were an engrg co, & always knew there was something wrong there, proven in the post-mortem of just how the collapses happened…
My experience isn’t parallel, because it was just biz, where you & my sis were helping needy kids. But I relate to that floating drumbeat just under the job you’re doing, telling you every day, it’s not right, it’s not good for our health, society is paying good money for something that’s structurally wrong & harming the workers here, while some other cohort has profited at our expense.
Which makes your extrapolation not morbid or cynical,at all, just logical: “if enough children and/or school staff members were to die as a result of unsafe schools in the context of COVID, then maybe there will be major backlash and structural change in this country.” You are simply revealing the rot, and expressing hope.
“if enough children and/or school staff members were to die as a result of unsafe schools in the context of COVID, then maybe there will be major backlash and structural change in this country.”
We can hope BUT look at what happened after first graders were mass murdered? NOTHING. Too often common sense doesn’t apply to politicians who have cement for brains.
I want to be back in my classroom with my students so badly, I don’t care about the risks to me, but I know that my personal safety is not what matters. What matters is the safety of my students and colleagues, and their families. I will tell my caring, diligent union tomorrow that I do not intend to go back to school until it’s much safer. We’re not prepared to reopen, not fully or partially.
By the way, why don’t we at least take ourselves off the unpopular, non-achieving, test prep based, experimental, early start calendar and give ourselves until at least after Labor Day to start school this year, like we used to before the so-called reformers came along? Give ourselves an extra three weeks to figure things out?
Hi LeftCoastTeacher,
If I may say, there’s nothing wrong in taking care of yourself and being cognizant of the risks you are taking. You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of anyone else. Your personal safety IS what matters. It’s not selfish, it’s practical and essential. In taking care of yourself, you also take care of others.
time for teachers to figure things out: planning time, now THERE’S an old days’ concept which we would all love to see come back
Yes indeed.
I’m w/you, LCT. I think not only about my students and colleagues and their families. In fact I can’t even say “I don’t care about the risks to me,” because the jeopardy to me extends to my husband and two sons. Perhaps it’s because we already lost one of us [my eldest at 23, illness, 10 yrs ago]. We are just a precarious little family. I can’t countenance indulging my love of teaching at the risk of my or my husband’s life, given the fallout/ consequences. Would I be teaching my sons some kind of idealistic lesson? When I put myself in their shoes, I have to think of my own mother, who was wont to extend herself to the nth to help others, pushing the family envelope all out of shape to do so. I got over the anger and resentment as an adult. I concluded that she was saintly and admirable in a way, but she did what she did out of her own needs– & must be forgiven on those grounds– but failed her family.
Left Coast,
There is nothing wrong and there is everything moral in you assessing risks for yourself and being concerned about your own personal safety. Educators have signed up to educate children and provide a safe environment in which to learn. We did not sign up to become sick or literally die for our careers. No one has or should. Ever.
If schools reopen – especially in overcrowded schools – then D.C. needs to open up its checkbook big time. It does for all these other interests, including the PPP that employees never got to see because they’ve been laid off after their employers took the funds.
LeftCoastTeacher: “I will tell my caring, diligent union tomorrow that I do not intend to go back to school until it’s much safer.”
GOOD FOR YOU!! I’m SO glad that I am retired and don’t have to face the horrors that politicians are putting on our schools.
There is no way in the world that I’d want to meet with every student in at least two schools and have them sing into their masks OR sing without masks and spread COVID-19, possibly by asymptomatic kids or from adults who work in the schools.
I wonder what will happen to music teachers. Nobody can play a band instrument with a mask on. What are these teachers going to do?
Hi, Carol. Just to share what my musician family is doing.
I, a choral singer, am SOL. Just got the memo today that our Oct concert [postponed from May] has been postponed to May 2021. That’s cuz we can’t rehearse. (Superspreader event!) in my smaller SSA group, we are keeping in touch by gathering on our director’s front lawn wkly– masked, 4 at a time– & just singing something simple… But I can imagine 1-on-1 zoom voice lessons. And choral projects, where teacher sets the timing video, sends out videos for each part, each kid sends in a video joining in… It wouldn’t be the same– & it would require serious tech chops– but it could be a wonderful project.
My husband is in 5 bands, but only one is trying something like that. It has taken them 2 mos but it’s starting to come together.
My two sons work for a private music school. They have been able to continue 1-on-1 guitar & piano lessons remotely throughout the shutdown– most students have stayed onboard. (This takes a good digital platform at school, & hi-qual teacher devices). The school reopened a week ago for in-person group lessons (small combos/ bands). They manage it via socially-distanced “cubicles” created via clear polyethylene sheeting hung from ceiling!
bethree5: I play in a local community band. We quit having rehearsals and never had our April 2020 concert. Back then it was assumed that the band would begin rehearsals in September. I emailed the band director, who is a good friend of mine, that most likely that wouldn’t happen. She agreed.
The group has around 65 members and most of them are older.
We can safely reopen schools only when we have developed the capacity to test everyone. Short of that, we must have developed the capacity to produce N95 masks for everyone. Until then, reopening is a grave mistake.
Lightbulb! Now I getcha, Bob. Must have been in a fog yesterday. So the N95’s-for-all scheme was about reopening in decidedly unsafe conditions.
To me, any plan that starts from pre-covid school routines then tries to backfit toward safety is counterintuitive: pre-covid “normal” was all about squeezing in together, teaching as many as much as possible. We need craft guilds, not factories.
I think I’d be queasy about going back even w/ample testing/ contact-tracing, unless community spread had been down to a trickle for months AND startup was small self-contained class-groups. Maybe model it after successful daycare centers for essential workers. Like a bunch of one-room schoolhouses.
Very interesting, Bethree. I am heartened that conversations like these are taking place online. BTW, I read a study recently that said that cloth and surgical masks were much better at protecting people from their wearers than they are from protecting wearers from other people. Alas, there is a lot of misinformation about this stuff floating about. I just saw, yesterday, a post by a right-wing cousin claiming to be from an expert on OSHA requirements that made a long list of false statements, including that N95 masks provided NO protection from the wearer’s exhalations. This piece was in the form of a chain email that has been circulating in Trumpish circles.
This is Indiana’s way of opening…no masks because 87% of the parents didn’t want their kids to wear a mask. GREAT STATE! /s
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Masks will be optional in some Indiana schools, despite health experts’ advice
When Jay Schools reopens next month, none of the district’s more than 3,100 students or 240 teachers will be required to wear a mask during classes.
The district is among those in Indiana planning to stop short of a mandate — pointing to a low number of local cases and public disinterest — despite public health experts emphasizing the important role face coverings play in stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
Administrators nationwide are grappling with how strictly to recommend and enforce mask wearing as schools face pressure from President Donald Trump to open full time…
Meanwhile, a Jay County district survey found that 87% of responding parents in the rural community want masks to be optional. And 38% said their children wouldn’t return to school in the fall if masks were required.
“I think parents ought to have a voice in how their schools reopen,” said Superintendent Jeremy Gulley. “I think our system really needs to function on the consent of those who are governed by it.”
But public health experts warn that schools shouldn’t base their decision based on the policy’s popularity. And waiting until the number of cases in a community begins to rise to implement more stringent protocols is too late…
https://in.chalkbeat.org/2020/7/9/21319306/masks-will-be-optional-in-some-indiana-schools-despite-health-experts-advice
It seems that Indiana will have to have many COVID cases and deaths before it takes action to protect people.
Arizona is experiencing a surge in the virus but the Koch-backed Governor, Doug Ducey, refuses to mandate face masks.
This is a great report, well written and edited and containing a lot of excellent information. I do wish that it had specified N95 masks for all students and school personnel.
Agree on N95 masks if these will be in sizes that also fit children. What about eye googles? Eyes are another path for the virus. contortions
Great point, Laura!
GOOD GRIEF. People in this country are dying and all this IDIOT thinks about is ‘poor me’. After all the good I’ve [Trumpy] done the Supreme Court treats me like this. I personally built the greatest economy the world has ever known and the ‘fake news’ never recognizes it.
Narcissistic, demented BS.
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Trump the victim: President complains in private about the pandemic hurting himself
July 10, 2020
The president rants about the deadly coronavirus destroying “the greatest economy,” one he claims to have personally built. He laments the unfair “fake news” media, which he vents never gives him any credit. And he bemoans the “sick, twisted” police officers in Minneapolis, whose killing of an unarmed black man in their custody provoked the nationwide racial justice protests that have confounded the president…
Instead, Trump often launches into a monologue placing himself at the center of the nation’s turmoil. The president has cast himself in the starring role of the blameless victim — of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country.
Trump put his self-victimization on public display Thursday in response to a Supreme Court ruling rejecting his claim of absolute immunity and permitting a New York prosecutor to see the president’s private and business financial records.
Trump reacted with a social media meltdown, writing on Twitter, “PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!” and “POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” He wrote that the decision was “Not fair to this Presidency” and claimed that “Courts in the past have given ’broad deference’. BUT NOT ME!”…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-the-victim-president-complains-in-private-about-the-pandemic-hurting-himself/2020/07/09/187142c6-c089-11ea-864a-0dd31b9d6917_story.html
What shocked Trump most, I am guessing, is that the two men he put on SCOTUS voted against him.
He is a whiner. Poor poor me. Traitors everywhere.
Thank you for posting this, and thank you UTLA for leading the way out of this darkness. We know how to write curriculum and we know how to individualize instruction. We can learn to do it remotely. The big problem is the number of families who don’t have a grandma, like me, to stay home with the kids so both parents, or the only parent, can work. The kind of wage protection they enjoy in world powers like Ireland would solve a lot of problems, and cost some billionaires some money. (There’s the rub).
The kids aren’t getting “behind” anything unless it is the STANDARDized test. Time to throw it out. Time for we “traitors” to get together and vote all those criminals out.
He is a regular Rodney Dangerfield.
One of his central themes is that our country (and Earth, in general) was a cesspool prior to his ascent to The Sacred Oval Office.
He made that up and has just repeated it, daily, going on four years, now.
There’s really no way to convince the people who make up his base that he’s lying. It’s frustrating and demoralizing.
Gov. Little [R-IN] says, ‘We want our children back in school.” One more red state that has an increasing number of cases that wants children to be ‘back in school’. Idaho doesn’t have enough testing and want tests to be limited to those with severe symptoms.
One more great state. They never end. [You may all know by now that I grew up in Boise and went to Boise Public Schools.] Idaho is among the lowest funding for education in the U.S.
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Idaho will try Stage 4 of reopening plan for a third time, Gov. Little says
…Little also announced his intention to push to have in-person classes this fall for the state’s K-12 school system. He emphasized the need for students to be in school, and the need for Idaho residents to slow the spread of COVID-19 in order to ensure schools can open…
While wearing a mask is strongly recommended by the governor and health officials, Little said he is not mandating them statewide, nor has a plan to do so been discussed among state officials…
Health care providers such as Saint Alphonsus have asked people who are asymptomatic or who only have mild symptoms to not seek testing because labs are becoming overwhelmed. Instead, the health system directed those people to stay home and asked people with more severe symptoms to seek testing.
Dr. Christine Hahn, state epidemiologist with IDHW, said the state coronavirus task force would meet Thursday to discuss what additional measures can be taken to improve testing availability in Idaho. She added that state testing numbers have gone up, but many of the companies analyzing tests are from outside Idaho and have been inundated with test kits in need of processing.
The state has also failed to see a downward trend in health care providers being infected, something that is another aspect of the criteria to move forward. As of Wednesday, 651 health care workers had been infected with the virus.
IDHW reported a downward trend in health care worker infections Thursday, but that was based on day-to-day numbers and didn’t consider that the state reported 59 such infections during the previous 14-day window and more than 170 during the latest window…
Read more here: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/coronavirus/article244084347.html?#storylink=cpy
VIdeo of Gov. Little speaking about schools:
At a July 9 press conference, Gov. Brad Little kept Idaho in Stage 4 for a third time, and simultaneously released a framework of best practices for schools and school districts to have in-person classes in the fall.
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/coronavirus/article244123907.html
Opps. Video by itself isn’t available. I’m not a subscriber to the Idaho Statesman.
Can see video if click on link to headline: Idaho will try Stage 4 of reopening plan for a third time, Gov. Little says
FYI …people NEED to pay attention to this: I doubt anyone in the Dump administration can understand science and math or read and comprehend well…very SCARY.
CORONAVIRUS
CU profs: CoViD-19 airborne
By Katie Langford
Staff Writer
People can contract coronavirus through the air even while wearing masks and social distancing, according to data and research by a group of University of Colorado Boulder professors.
Professor Jose-Luis Jimenez created a tool to estimate airborne transmission of COVID-19 in different settings, and he and a group of CU Boulder faculty were among 239 scientists who signed a letter asking the World Health Organization to recognize that the virus can be transmitted through the air.
WHO released a scientific brief Thursday that discussed the possibility of airborne transmission, but held the line that the main form of transmission is through droplets that people spread when they cough or sneeze.
Jimenez and his colleagues have been asking WHO to recognize airborne transmission for four months, which gained traction in a letter published Monday.
“There is significant potential for inhalation exposure to viruses in microscopic respiratory droplets … at short to medium distanc- es (up to several meters, or room scale), and we are advocating for the use of preventive measures to mitigate this route of airborne transmission,” according to the letter cosigned by Jimenez, Professor Shelly Miller and four other professors.
Early efforts to study airborne transmission involved 36 scientists exchanging nearly 50 emails a day, Jimenez said.
That collaboration led Jimenez to develop a model to estimate the probability of contracting coronavirus through the air in specific scenarios if people are already taking precautions like social distancing and wearing masks.
The model accounts for the size of a room, the number of people.
University of Colorado Boulder scientist Jose-Luis Jimenez poses for a portrait at his home in Boulder on Thursday. Jimenez is one of hundreds of scientists who signed a letter to the World Health Organization outlining evidence that COVID-19 can be transmitted through the air, not just in droplets infected people and carriers emit when they cough, sneeze or talk, and their breathing rates, the amount of time spent in the room, how many people have COVID-19, room ventilation, efficacy of masks and how much of the virus people are likely to breathe out and breathe in.
For example, if an instructor has coronavirus and is teaching a class, they are more likely to transmit the disease than a student because they’re talking more frequently and loudly than students.
Jimenez’s model estimates that with social distancing and mask-wearing, there’s a 4% chance that an instructor would spread the virus to someone else in the classroom. If it’s just one student who is sick, there’s a .5% chance they could spread it.
Jimenez’s model is adjustable and includes scenarios for an entire university campus, a bus, a subway car and the outdoors. He also used data from an outbreak at a choir practice in Skagit County, Wash., to show that even if social distancing is maintained, not wearing a masks, being indoors with little ventilation and staying somewhere for a long time causes infection rates to skyrocket.
With one sick person, social distance, no masks and singing, the probability of infection increased to 83%.
Miller’s research into the Skagit County outbreak shows that air flow and spending less time inside could result in a lower risk of infection.
“We need as much outside air as possible,” Miller said in a statement. “If you have to recirculate air, then use the highest-rated filter that you can.”
On a college campus of 33,000 students — roughly the size of CU Boulder — with reduced in-person teaching and social distancing policies in place, Jimenez’s model estimates 583 students and 2 instructors will contract coronavirus. Jimenez modeled the probability of transmission on a campus of that size by scaling up the classroom scenario.
Jimenez said his model is still being updated, but that it points to the importance of wearing masks, maintaining social distance and reducing time indoors with groups of people, low ventilation and singing or shouting. All of those factors influence how much virus will be in the air, the probability it will be there and the probability of breathing it in, Jimenez said.
“We have a difficult fall and winter in front of us so it behooves us to take these models seriously so we can reduce the virus,” Jimenez said. “The model is really dependent on how many people have the virus. We need to collectively reduce the number of cases so we can make it safer for everybody.”
Jimenez’s model can be viewed and downloaded at tinyurl.com/covid -estimator
Here’s the estimator:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16K1OQkLD4BjgBdO8ePj6ytf-RpPMlJ6aXFg3PrIQBbQ/edit#gid=519189277
Wow, Yvonne. This is truly frightening.
Sure is frightening, Bob.
I love your comments, too. You rock. I share some of your comments with my husband and with one of my male cousins who lives on O’ahu.
What is interesting is that two days ago, my husband (a former inner city public school science and math teacher) who became an aerospace engineer told me about the density of Covid-19 virus and he ended with, “BEWARE. School should NOT open. If schools open in the Fall, there will be hell to pay and schools will just have to shut down, just like those places that opened up too soon.”
Your husband should write a piece about this and share it widely.
I will suggest this to him.
Thank you, Bob.
My husband’s graphs are stunning.
Yup, Yvonne – good heads up. This document likely to make a big ripple even if stupid WHO keeps dragging their feet – I just read it this am (the open letter from 239 scientists):
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa939/5867798?searchresult=1
Read it & weep. Just like somebody-or-other observed recently, reopening schools is essentially replicating the superspreader events [e.g. the socially-distanced choral rehearsal in a church] on a massive scale.
reopening schools is essentially replicating the superspreader events
Exactly. This ought to be obvious.
We can all relax. Trump is going to work with educators to ensure in-person learning resumes in a healthy way AND schools should open because parents don’t want their kids to be dumb.
I pity both of Trump’s parents. Trump went to school full time and totally missed the boat on knowledge. Why did he hide all of his grades and pay someone to take his SAT tests?
Does Trump really care about whether or not children are starving? There are other ways to help if that is his concern. How about raising the amount of money parents can get when they apply for food stamps? That would be better use of taxpayer money than his useless ego wall that might fall down and that smugglers can saw through.
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Trump Banks on School Reopening to Help Him in November
But not everyone is in agreement. CDC officials are nervous about mixed messaging, and a prominent endorser is sticking with virtual learning.
…One person who has been in the room with Trump recounted that he spoke repeatedly about the hot meals that kids get at schools that they might not be able to get at home. Another source said that Trump has also told those close to him that many voters are with him on this one, largely because parents “don’t want their kids to be dumb,” citing the greater benefits to younger, developing children when they learn in a classroom versus doing so remotely or via video chat.
“The severe negative impacts of keeping schools closed, including mental and social development, are well documented, including by pediatricians,” White House spokesman Judd Deere wrote in a statement to The Daily Beast on Thursday afternoon. “The President wants to see schools open and the Administration is committed to working in partnership with university presidents, superintendents, principals, counselors, teachers, health professionals, parents, and students to ensure in-person learning resumes in a safe and healthy way.”..
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-banks-on-school-reopening-to-help-him-in-november-despite-coronavirus-scares?source=email&via=desktop
I strongly agree with UTLA on cautions for reopening schools and appreciate the many comments being made in relation to this post, in particular those of Bob Shepherd. I also want to add a caution regarding any rush to adopt online learning as the “answer” to the crisis. Our Foundation just published this study involving feedback from 500+ teachers regarding experiences with mandated online learning this past spring: https://www.socialpublishersfoundation.org/knowledge_base/this-is-not-teaching-the-effects-of-covid-19-on-teachers/. Lonnie Rowell, president, Social Publishers Foundation – social publishing with a social conscience.
As I used to do when admins would hand down unobtainable goals and objectives related to the students I was teaching; I would ask DeVos and Trump to please physically model for us the correct procedures necessary to ensure a safe, orderly, and effective learning and social environment during this time of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Five days a week (don’t be late 😊).
Preferably with students from essential worker communities.
For at least a month..
This so that we can get a true read on how this difficult a task can be successfully implemented.
Because, quite simply; I need guidance during these “unprecedented times”.
Because if you can’t walk the talk…
The proliferation of mouth garbage never stops coming.
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The Hill:
Trump tells Treasury to review universities’ tax exempt status
President Trump on Friday threatened the tax-exempt status of and funding for universities and colleges, claiming that “too many” schools are driven by “radical left indoctrination.”
The threat comes amid the president’s escalating battle over schools’ plans for learning during the coronavirus pandemic.
Teachers and their unions are going to be forced to stand up for themselves and their students in refusing to return to school when there is in fact no real plan that safeguards everyone’s health. This will let others off the hook and make those selfish teachers unions the bad guys who wouldn’t help restart the economy just because they were not willing to expose themselves and their students to a deadly virus for which there is no vaccine and for which the majority of the population has not been tested.
How can schools open at a time when states’ see their numbers rising? This is crazy. The only thing that needs to be done now is to start over….close ALL states down. Some medical experts are now saying that has to be done.
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Illinois’ daily new coronavirus case count tops 1,000 for second day in a row; Chicago orders bars and restaurants that sell booze to close by midnight
JUL 10, 2020
SPRINGFIELD — Two weeks after Illinois reopened a bit more under Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s five-phase plan, the state’s reported tally of newly confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday again climbed to a level not seen since early June.
State officials on Friday announced 1,317 new known cases, and 25 deaths, raising the known case count to 151,767 and the statewide death toll to 7,144 since the pandemic began.
It was the third consecutive day newly confirmed daily cases stood near or above 1,000. Until Thursday, when 1,018 new cases were reported, the last time new case numbers reached over 1,000 was June 5. The highest case count earlier this week had been 639 on Monday, although the four days prior to that daily new cases hovered between 800 and 900.
Weekend and early weekday numbers are sometimes lower, due to testing result lags over the weekend…
https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-illinois-coronavirus-cases-20200710-aukd2jvtuvg4dkclipqqit2omu-story.html
More like an international effort…which isn’t likely with our current commander in chief, unfortunately.
We have leaders who are still in denial. How bad will it have to get before Pence/Trump begin to understand that this country is NOT a bit well?
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Idaho Statesman
July 9, 2020
Boise
Health care providers such as Saint Alphonsus hospital have asked people who are asymptomatic or who only have mild symptoms to not seek testing because labs are becoming overwhelmed. Instead, the health system directed those people to stay home and asked people with more severe symptoms to seek testing.
Dr. Christine Hahn, state epidemiologist with IDHW, said the state coronavirus task force would meet Thursday to discuss what additional measures can be taken to improve testing availability in Idaho. She added that state testing numbers have gone up, but many of the companies analyzing tests are from outside Idaho and have been inundated with test kits in need of processing.
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Politico:
YOU’RE NOT SAFE — Vice President Mike Pence has often said that the latest surge in infections is a function of only a few hotspots, select counties in certain states that can be targeted and extinguished.
In reality, the virus is raging out of control in regions across the country. It isn’t a function of more testing, as President Trump claims. And it isn’t confined to one region, or places governed by one political party.
While Arizona, Florida and Texas are in the spotlight, several other states are reporting alarming numbers, begging residents to change their behavior and warning of dire consequences if they do not.
State officials in Oregon asked residents today to avoid indoor gatherings of more than 10 people and said at the rate the virus is spreading, daily infections could triple in the next month. If that were to happen, “we’d quickly fill hospitals across the state,” said Dean Sidelinger, state health officer.
Oregon’s reopening began on May 15 but the date is less important than people’s behavior, said Patrick Allen, director of the Oregon Health Authority. Too little social distancing and mask wearing has helped fan the spread.
In South Carolina, nearly half of all infections have occurred in just the last two weeks and more than 17 percent of tests are now coming back positive.
In Alabama, state health officer Scott Harris said Thursday he is “extremely concerned” about hospital capacity. The state of 5 million people has fewer than 200 ICU beds available, less than at any time since the pandemic began. “This is not sustainable for very long,” Harris said.
Problems are also growing in the Midwest. Ohio reported a record number of new infections today and the number of patients in ICU beds has reached new highs. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who has been praised for his deliberate handling of the pandemic, mandated masks for the state’s three largest counties.
In Indiana, state health commissioner Kristina Box said Wednesday that she is concerned that the percentage of positive tests has steadily increased over the last week.
In Wisconsin, the percent of positive tests more than doubled over the last couple weeks, and a record number of daily infections were reported on Thursday and then again today.
The one constant message from public health and elected officials in all these states is that the variable that matters most is personal precaution. The virus is everywhere in the country, and it’s spreading at an increasing rate. No matter how careful your governor is, or what party is in charge, or what coast you live on, or if you’re nowhere near a coast, the advice about mask wearing and social distancing remains the same.
Of course this comes from ABC New…must be fake news since we all know this virus is just a Democratic hoax put out to make Trump look bad. GRRRRR!😡❌‼️
‘All the Hospitals Are Full’: In Houston, Overwhelmed ICUs Leave COVID-19 Patients Waiting in ERs
The busiest hospitals in Houston are increasingly telling emergency responders they cannot safely accept new patients as hundreds of coronavirus patients crowd emergency rooms, and hospitals scramble to open more intensive care space.
by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica, and Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC News
Opps. NBC News..Oh well. Since it isn’t Fox, it’s also fake news.
I wonder if Fox knows about this? Can they report something this horrible when Trump is the savior of everyone?
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A Spike in People Dying at Home Suggests Coronavirus Deaths in Houston May Be Higher Than Reported
In Houston, one of the nation’s fastest-growing coronavirus hot spots, more residents are dying before they can make it to a hospital. Medical examiner data shows that an increasing number of these deaths are the result of COVID-19.
by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica, and Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC News
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
H. L. Mencken
Wow. Aren’t we lucky. That ‘downright moron’ is now in the Ofal Office spouting his gems.
Feb. 27 “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Probable scenarios regarding masks and young adolescents:
I don’t know, I must have left it somewhere
Mrs. Jones, Sean took my mask at lunch and wont give it back
My daddy says you can’t make me wear one
Trump doesn’t wear a mask and I wanna be president too!
Ewwww! Mr. Smith, Jimmy just puked in his mask
No one said I couldn’t wear it on my forehead
Hey Brianna, do you know I can drink right through my mask
Look everyone, Bobby set a new school record! He’s wearing 30 masks at the same time
But Mr. Smith doesn’t make us wear our masks after lunch.
Speak louder, your mask is messing up the sound waves
So here’s how to make it into a slingshot . . .
My mask stinks, I’m not wearing a stinky mask
James, that is a very inappropriate picture on your mask
No, Latrelle, your t-shirt is not a mask
Mrs. Jones, Santos just pulled down his mask and coughed on me
The elastic broke, do you have a rubber band I can use?
Check out Simon, he’s blowing a bubble underneath his mask again
I’m tired of sweeping up masks at the end of the day
Well the bathroom was all out of toilet paper
“House of Absolute Horrors”: Mary Trump’s Book Reveals How Trump Family Gave Rise to a “Sociopath”
Democracy Now
JULY 10, 2020
In a new book, Mary Trump — the president’s niece — describes Donald Trump as a “sociopath” who grew up in a dysfunctional family that fostered his greed and cruelty. Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert, is seeking to block the sale of the book on the grounds that it violates a confidentiality agreement, but publisher Simon & Schuster says 600,000 copies of the book have already been distributed ahead of its July 14 publishing date. Investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, who has reported on Trump for three decades, says the book is “very, very important” and helps to answer how Trump got to the White House…
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/7/10/mary_trump_book
I used this information to write a protest letter to Gov. Holcomb about opening up schools in Indiana. These children were playing baseball and everyone was following the CDC rules and yet 3 children tested positive for COVID-19. [I wrote a long letter protesting and in capital letters stated that no schools should open until teachers say it is safe for themselves and their children.] My 10th grade grandson lives in Crown Point, IN and he plays baseball.
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[NWI Times] Crown Point youth baseball teammates test positive for COVID-19, official says
CROWN POINT — Three members of a Crown Point youth baseball team have tested positive for COVID-19, an official said.
Babe Ruth District Commissioner John Pearson said three players on a 16- to 18-year-old team have tested positive.
The discovery came after a fourth player on the team who had symptoms consistent with COVID-19 tested negative.
Per the Crown Point Babe Ruth protocol, Pearson said, contact tracing was done and additional tests were administered to players and family members. That’s when the three positive tests happened.
The team did not play last weekend because the league had no scheduled games over the Fourth of July holiday. The team’s games for this weekend were called off, Pearson said.
“They have to have negative tests to come back (next weekend),” Pearson said…
“We’re following CDC guidelines,” Pearson said, including social distancing, encouraging fans to wear face masks, having concession stand workers wear masks and sanitizing surfaces at ball parks nightly…
https://www.nwitimes.com/sports/crown-point-youth-baseball-teammates-test-positive-for-covid-19-official-says/article_1626b0b4-094d-5076-87b4-74efc5c32ac1.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share
Here are the exquisite words of a man telling public schools to open? This stable genius is dummer than a dead mule. He now wears a mask when near workers who have contact with COVID-19 patients but still isn’t doing anything to ensure that these medical workers get appropriate PPP equipment.
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“I’ll probably have a mask, if you must know,” Mr. Trump said. “I think when you’re in a hospital, especially in that particular setting where you’re talking to a lot of soldiers and people that in some cases just got off the operating tables. I think it’s a great thing to wear a mask. I’ve never been against masks, but I do believe they have a time and a place.”
NYT:
The number of daily tests conducted in the U.S. is only 39 percent of the level considered necessary to mitigate the spread of the virus.
DeSantis wants all schools to be open 5 days a week. IDIOT!!
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Florida hits grim COVID-19 record: Most new daily cases of any state throughout the pandemic – 15,300
By SUSANNAH BRYAN
SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL |
JUL 12, 2020
Florida hit a grim one-day record on Sunday for new coronavirus cases: 15,300.
Since the pandemic began, 269,811 people have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Florida Department of Health.
The state reported 45 new deaths Sunday morning.
At least 4,346 people have died from the virus in Florida, reports show. That figure includes 104 people from outside the state…
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-florida-coronavirus-deaths-cases-sunday-july-12-20200712-t6z4lz6emncnrirdergjws3nly-story.html