Hi friends,
Mondays are hard, and I’m not even going to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. Over the weekend, New York City recorded its millionth case of COVID. There are more than 1,800 new cases each day in the city, compared to about 230 per day at the beginning of July. The silver lining is that vaccination rates are increasing.
Cases among children have been increasing sharply. Two days ago, 1902 children were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the US, which was the most at any time during the pandemic.
"This is not last year's COVID. This one is worse and our children are the ones that are going to be affected by it the most," Sally Goza, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told CNN on Saturday.
Two pediatricians reported that masking has proved quite effective at protecting children from COVID. They studied one million children in schools where mask mandates were in place and well-enforced and they compared their data to research in places where mandates were either absent or unenforced.
This data is encouraging and indicates that returning to in-person schooling is viable, AND it is based on last year’s variants, not Delta.
NYC does have a mask mandate for schools and the city is committing resources to promote vaccination for students aged 12-17. As a teacher, I believe that the plan to reopen the schools for in-person instruction is important, but it’s troubling that there are no plans for a remote option. In a press conference at the end of last week,
De Blasio did not directly address the population of younger students under the age of 12 who cannot be vaccinated, but said the school system was able to operate safely last year when vaccines weren’t widely available.
Obviously, there are children who have underlying conditions and who live in multi-generational households with vulnerable adults. The mayor’s plan does not factor in this reality.
We are back to all of the uncertainty we faced last year about how to begin the school year. The value of in-person schooling is obvious AND reopening schools with unvaccinated children is a dangerous undertaking.
The Delta variant dramatically increases the risk of long-term disability or death for everyone, but especially for the 73 million children living in America. We need to adjust our back-to-school plans immediately.
Yesterday, I spent a few hours with a dear friend whose daughter has long COVID. The health complications and the unknowns are formidable.
Contact the mayor to let him know that the Delta variant is different and we need a fully remote option for children too young to be vaccinated. Here’s a ready-made message.
Four Florida teachers died of COVID last week, before the school year even began. The daily COVID death toll in the US these days is more than 600 people. Thirteen hundred people died over the weekend in Haiti as a result of a massive earthquake. It’s possible to lose our sense of scale and become to become inured to horrifying death tolls.
We are going to have to hold fast to our humanity.
After a summer without executions, Alabama and Arizona are readying their gas chambers.
Please sign this petition in opposition to the use of gas chambers to execute people on death row.
As climate activists, we know that people are more attentive to immediate dangers than long-term dangers. This makes sense AND it is another kind of peril. If you haven’t yet done so, join the fight against NRG’s proposed power plant in Astoria, Queens. The plant will further contribute to the elevated levels of health-destroying particulate pollution in Astoria and Long Island City.
Please make a second comment to let NYS decision-makers know that we oppose the new power plant planned for Astoria.
The weather is beautiful today. Look at the sky. Talk to people you love. Have a great day!
with love,
L