Dr. Rochelle Walensky wants you to know it is not safe to go to any Super Bowl parties this weekend.
“We must take prevention and intervention seriously,” the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Director said at a White House briefing on the Covid-19 pandemic Wednesday.
“Whichever team you’re rooting for and whichever commercial is your favorite, please watch the Super Bowl safely, gathering only virtually or with the people you live with.”
However, on the same day at another Washington briefing she said we can reopen schools safely as infections soar without even waiting to vaccinate teachers first.
“There is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen,” she said, and “safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely.”
WHAT!?
One doesn’t need to be an epidemiologist to know that these two statements are contradictory.
On the one hand, gathering in-person in a large group of people with whom you don’t live is a danger.
…If you’re watching a football game.
On the other, gathering in-person with an even larger group of people not in your personal pod and staying with them for an even longer period of time somehow IS safe. And in fact you don’t even need to be vaccinated against the virus before doing so.
…If you’re learning reading, writing and arithmetic.
What the heck is going on here!?
I thought the anti-science Trump CDC was a thing of the past.
Less than a month ago, health memos from the organization were being edited by Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka Trump. In September the White House blocked the agency from issuing a nationwide requirement that masks be worn on all public transportation.
Now with the Democrats in control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency, you’d expect something different.
In fact, Walensky claims her mandate is to remove politics from science.
“Political people cannot influence science,” she says. “If they do, I won’t be there.”
Then why are you promoting incoherent policies at the CDC? Why are you cherry picking data?
Why are you going on all the major news networks in transparent support of Biden’s proposal to reopen schools by April?
Why are you using your platform as head of the CDC to promote magical thinking?
Because that’s exactly what this is – magical thinking.
It’s not science.
Science doesn’t offer policy. It looks at very narrow questions and determines what may have caused what.
It works hand-in-hand with logic and reason. Otherwise, it’s invalid.
And the fact that your statements don’t add up disproves at least one of them.
Either large groups are a danger or they’re not.
If they’re not, then we can reopen schools AND go to Super Bowl parties.
If they are a danger (as a preponderance of evidence shows), then what is it about schools that makes them safer than Super Bowl parties?
Answer: Absolutely nothing!
In fact, schools are MORE dangerous for several reasons.
First, the average Super Bowl party only lasts a few hours. When not in remote or hybrid mode, schools typically are open 7-8 hours a day for five days a week, over 9 months.
You receive much more exposure to Covid-19 at school than at any Super Bowl party.
At both venues, people will be eating and drinking – the most dangerous time for infection. At parties, people may be snacking throughout the event. At school, students at least will eat lunch and probably breakfast not to mention possible snacks between meals. That’s approximately 180 breakfasts and lunches at which you are exposed to Covid compared with a few hours of nachos and pizza.
Moreover, the people attending these parties are mostly adults. Even with the likelihood that people will be drinking at these events, if you have responsible friends, these adults are much more likely to take precautions against infection than children. Kids are constantly fidgeting with their masks. Younger kids and some special needs students at many schools are even given mask breaks or excused from wearing them altogether. And that’s if the school in question has a mask mandate at all!
The idea that Covid doesn’t spread at school or is unlikely to spread is magical thinking.
Even if masks are worn more routinely at school because teachers enforce the rules, that doesn’t remove the danger. Few schools are large enough to socially distance children 6 feet apart. Many administrators don’t even try anymore – they simply promise to do the best they can. Add to that poor ventilation and inadequate cleaning of buildings and you have a recipe for disaster.
Pushback against the CDC has been huge, especially from teachers.
Things got so bad this week, that White House press secretary Jen Psaki distanced the Biden administration from Walensky’s remarks. Psaki said that Walensky had been speaking “in her personal capacity” and there would be “official guidance” and “final guidance” on the issue coming next week.
Walensky, herself, went on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show where she repeated her controversial statement but added that other steps need to be taken to lower risks for teachers and students, as well, including masking, social distancing and more viral testing.
“Schools should be the last places closed and the first places opened,” Walensky said.
Again, that is not a scientific statement. It’s a political one.
For someone who claims to be separating science and politics, she sounds much more like a Biden surrogate than a science advisor.
But it’s not just Walensky. The organization she oversees has made some huge missteps on this same issue since Biden’s inauguration – emphasizing some studies and completely ignoring others that don’t support the party line.
CDC scientists published an article last week in the journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that claimed some schools were able to reopen safely by following safety precautions. In fact, this one article is the cornerstone of Walensky’s assertion that “There is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen.”
However, it was roundly criticized by the scientific community because the study was based on only 17 rural Wisconsin schools. Moreover, the data was based primarily on contact tracing. And considering that most children are asymptomatic even when infected with Covid-19, contact tracing is a poor method of determining how many people are infected in schools.
Heck! At the same time the CDC published another contact tracing study during the same week as the JAMA study which came to the opposite conclusion – that thousands of Covid cases were, in fact, linked to schools. I wonder why Walensky didn’t talk about that one at her White House briefing!
It’s not that the data is contradictory as much as the method the CDC is relying on is a poor indicator of infection.
Large-scale prevalence studies or antibody testing of students and teachers would much more accurately determine the relationship between educational settings and community transmission. But to date the CDC has not conducted any such studies.
In fact, despite such a full throated media blitz on the matter based on the JAMA article, the piece includes a rather telling disclaimer that its conclusions “do not necessarily represent the official position” of the CDC.
Walensky is right about one thing at least.
World scientific consensus is increasingly coming together around whether schools should be reopened in communities with high infections.
And it’s going in the exact opposite direction of Walensky and the CDC.
The European Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) have acknowledged that children of all ages are susceptible to and can transmit Covid-19. Moreover, the organization admitted that school closures can contribute to a reduction in infections though by themselves such closures are not enough. It takes all of society working together to halt the spread of the virus.
In Europe, evidence obtained through antibody surveys conducted in various nations showed that the coronavirus equally infects school children, said Antoine Flahault, director of the University of Geneva’s Institute of Global Health. The results were repeated in Switzerland, Austria, and England.
Even England’s prime minister Boris Johnson conceded, “The problem is schools may nonetheless act as vectors for transmission, causing the virus to spread between households.”
But that’s not all. Take this study from southern India, published in the journal Science on November 6, which found children were spreading the virus among themselves and adults. Using both contact tracing and viral testing the study indicated that super-spreading events predominated, with approximately 5 percent of infected individuals accounting for 80 percent of secondary cases.
Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan, member of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in New Delhi, India, told NPR, “What we found in our study is that children were actually quite important. They were likely to get infected, particularly by young adults of the ages 20 to 40. They were likely to transmit the disease amongst themselves … and they also go out and infect people of all age groups, including the elderly. Many kids are silent spreaders in the sense that they don’t manifest the disease with symptoms. They happen to get infected as much as anyone else, and then they happen to spread it to other people.”
Why is none of this being considered by the CDC?
If the goal is to remove politics from science, shouldn’t the organization follow the evidence even if it goes against Biden’s school reopening policy?
Are these other studies invalidated because they were conducted in other parts of the world?
Okay. Here are a few others from the US:
● A JAMA study published July 29 concluded that statewide school closures in the first wave of the pandemic led to a 62 percent decline in the incidence of COVID-19 per week. Similarly, the death rate saw a 58 percent decrease. States that closed earlier saw the most significant weekly reductions.
● According to a study published in Science, the combination of the closure of schools and universities, limiting gatherings to 10 people or less, and closing most nonessential businesses reduced the reproductive number (R0) to below one. These efforts reduced the number of infections in the community. Among the interventions listed, school closures and limiting gatherings to 10 people had the highest impact on slowing the infections.
● A Nature study published in November ranked the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 interventions. It concluded that the cancellation of small gatherings, closure of educational institutions, border restrictions, increased availability of PPE and individual restrictions were statistically significant in reducing the reproductive number (R0).
Where are these studies in the CDC’s analysis?
Answer: nowhere.
Because this is not about science. It is still about politics.
After the criminal negligence of the Trump administration spreading lies and disinformation through government channels, what the Biden CDC is doing is beyond reckless.
We need to have facts. We need to be able to trust our scientific organizations again.
This kind of willful negligence won’t just result in more Covid deaths, it will enable the next Trump to do much worse behind a banner of fake news and science denial.
And how will science defenders fight back when both sides play with the data to make it say whatever they want?
Sadly, this new CDC is far too similar to the old CDC.
I had hopes Biden would be better than this.
He still has time to turn back from these games.
Next week’s new CDC guidelines will likely signal whether he is changing course or doubling down.
In the meantime, teachers, students and communities desperately in need of valid science and facts have to turn to the rest of the world for guidance.
Our lives are not expendable to ensure a robust economy.
That lesson will be a lot less expensive now than after the next neo-fascist coup.
We can’t afford magical thinking at the CDC.
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