Chalkbeat reports that the Center for Disease Control is easing up on its COVID recommendations:
Schools can end quarantines and regular screening tests for COVID, but students and staff should keep masks on in areas with high levels of COVID spread, according to guidelines released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new, more limited recommendationscome as districts across the country are starting a new school year — and in many cases reflect decisions to ease up on COVID precautions that schools have already made. Almost no districts are starting the year with a mask mandate, and in-school quarantine rules are on the retreat.
“This latest guidance from the CDC should give our students, parents, and educators the confidence they need to head back to school this year with a sense of joy and optimism,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “While COVID continues to evolve, so has our understanding of the science and what it takes to return to school safely.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Heading back to school with “joy and optimism”? He must be joking. My school is understaffed despite lower enrollment this year. We are lacking 8 teachers, 5 of them in core subjects that students must have to graduate, and school has already started. My small classroom is packed to the extent that I can’t walk behind or between my aisles of desks, only in front of them. I feel like a sitting duck when it comes to getting Covid or any other transmissible illness. Why do we lack teachers? Nobody wants the job. It isn’t worth the high risk, high stress, and substandard pay.
Oh, but the limousine Rheeformsterz in the Billionaire Boys and Girls Club and all their coattail hanging idolaters are happy, so it’s all good. Just give the kids laptops. That’ll shut them up and enrich Wall Street with the surveillance data of unsuspecting youth. Neoliberal “win win”.
Sarcasm out of the way, I truly feel for you. Teachers have gone from disrespected since the NCLB to terrorized since Race to the Top to bizarrely overworked and overstressed since the pandemic. I wish I had something uplifting instead of merely empathetic to say.
Let’s see, for the United States on April 9, the seven day average on that date for COVID was 10,328 hospitalized and 1,710 in the ICU.
On August 9, four months later, the seven-day average for those numbers on that date had climbed to 38,609 hospitalized and 4,579 in the ICU.
Those numbers are a daily average based on a seven day period for each month leading up to April 9 and August 9.
DAILY AVERAGE! I wanted to emphasize that.
A seven day average at 10,328 = 72,296. That was in April four months ago.
A seven day average at 38,609 = 270,263. That was this month, four months later.
Those numbers only cover 14 out of more than 120 days
My Conclusion: The more people that think we are back to normal and stop taking precautions, the more I’m going to stay in isolation as much as possible.
I’m not worried about dying. There’s nothing anyone can do to stop death.
What I’m concerned about is ending up with Long COVID for whatever time I have left. If you don’t know what its like to have Long COVID, click the next link and learn.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html
These numbers are no longer reported on the MSM, lulling people into complacency.
Regardless of how high the numbers go, I doubt the PTB will ever allow remote learning again.
We are just collateral damage in the drive to keep Wall Street fat and happy.
Eleanor– Except MSM does report any briefings/ changes from Fauci, which we’ve had recently. Plus the beginning of articles about policies for this school year. And WaPo carries regular articles by Leanna Wen [for what that’s worth].
Meanwhile I never waited for some article– have been checking NYT covid site & ‘covid actnow nj’ at least monthly for a long time. [The NJ resource recently upped most of NJ from medium to high]. I have friends who do that regularly too, & am always surprised when I get among shoppers & see how little attention is paid. They must just look around and monkey see monkey do. Or maybe have thrust the whole concept into rear view mirror…
New CDC recommendations are IRRESPONSIBLE & the RISK IS MADDENING!
Schools are open in some states & we are risking their health & WHO WANTS LONG COVID? Where is the data of the damage long term from LONG COVID?
I may never leave the house without a mask….ever again!
I’ve tried to trust CDC & Public Health, but too much has come down the pike & people are still getting sick & dying. I’m not OK with such high death stats. Are we just OK living with this, just like regular Mass Shooting deaths? Our society is not well & can’t be expected to make healthy decisions until we correct the obvious & most dangerous.
If you’ve ever worked on an assembly line conveyor belt, the company plans for a certain % of BREAKAGE….well, we’re on that conveyor belt with % of calculated breakage where the breakage % is calculated manipulated & varied.
VERY RISKY FOR HUMANS.
Apparently our political leaders are not only okay with more COVID disease and deaths, but there’s also an upside: fewer Medicare enrollees, and fewer retirees collecting pensions and/or Social Security, especially since St. Ronald Reagan and a bipartisan Congress raised the retirement age and began taxing Social Security benefits.
CDCeit
CDCeit kills
And coffins it fills
With medical bills
That reach to the hills
As Lloyd points out, chances of catching the prevalent BA-whatever are much higher now than they were a few months ago. Yet around me at least, when I stop in for supplies, fewer people than ever are wearing masks. Pretty much boils down to maybe 25% of older people.
And it’s no picnic, even setting aside the worry about possible long covid. I have a friend who needs to work PT post retirement— healthy/ vaccinated/ boosted, but early 70’s. She was reqd to work one of her gigs in person in a borough that had hi community spread this past spring. Few students wearing masks. No hospitalization but it put her out of commission for 5 wks [2wks ill + 3 wks utter exhaustion]. My younger sis is a hisch admin & very careful due to underlying autoimmune condition. She caught it in May [perhaps not from school]. Monoclonal infusion warded off worst symptoms, but it was a 2-wk ordeal + 2wks exhaustion.
I read the guidelines and see nothing explaining why they no longer encourage quarantine rules. And yet none of the advice has really changed. E.g., people who have been exposed should test, and stay out a full 10 days if they test positive. They still recommend layered-protection protocols in school settings, & outline them. They don’t encourage rote quarantines, but do encourage on-site immediate testing (which would obviate the need for quarantine).
My adult sons, their colleagues in music-lesson studios, others they know in offices self-test frequently. But I’ll betcha this doesn’t happen on home front with school-aged kids. This CDC missive seems to be a subtle shift in emphasis– like, don’t criticize us, we were never mandating any of this—it’s on your school district, as before. Or something.