In a pair of decrees Governor Charles D. Baker will allow teachers to sign up for vaccine on the troubled state website starting on March 11. Meanwhile, at his urging, his appointees to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted to direct school districts to begin a full reopening on April 5.
Taking an opposite approach, President Joseph Biden wants every educator, school staff member, and child-care worker to receive at least one shot by the end of the month of March as a precursor to opening schools.
The president’s intent of accelerating the vaccination of educators, in anticipation of reopening school, is in direct conflict with the governor’s push to open school without regard to educators’ ability to obtain a vaccination. The result in Arlington is an anxious staff, hitting refresh on multiple websites, hoping to get at least one shot before the governor forces us to fully reopen our schools. We are now scrambling to cover classes and hire substitutes so teachers can travel across the state if they pounce on the first available appointment.
If the Massachusetts legislature acts quickly, they can take emergency action to extract us from the chaos on the horizon. It requires fast action, and a veto-proof majority, but emergency legislation with two simple provisions will put us on the path to a safer, saner reopening. Here are the two provisions
- Prohibit the Board of Elementary Education, and the Commissioner, from requiring schools to re-open before April 26, 2021. While April 26 is three weeks later on the calendar, it’s only 10 school days after the April 5 opening date advanced by the Governor.
- Direct the state to provide vaccines for teachers directly to municipal health departments, pharmacies, or other health care providers who can provide on-site vaccinations. This will allow educators to focus on educating children, without the anxiety of missing teaching time while chasing after a shot
This can happen, but only with fast action by the legislature. If you think this two-step legislation for a safer, saner reopening makes sense, share the idea with your friends and contact your legislators!
I don’t understand why the teachers unions are so adamant about this. Vaccines are great, but not IMO a sine qua non. That said, I am a bit surprised this is being pushed before September which seems to make the most sense logistically and the right time relative to when things will be better.
So far, the vaccines prevent 100% of COVID deaths.
Sina. Qua. Non.
At least about the dying part.
And absolutely essential to controlling the virus.
So, what does the phrase “sine qua non” mean to you, in your opinion?
Because like the death data on vaccines, it has an actual meaning.
Next you’ll be doing mask denialism.
Oh wait
Sine qua non translates as “without which, not”. In other words if X is a sine qua non for Y then X must exist for Y to exist. If vaccines were a sine qua non for schools to be open that means schools cannot open unless teachers are vaccinated. I disagree with this assertion. The town in which a substitute teach is open on a hybrid model. The teachers are not dropping like flies and I don’t expect them to if we were to open fully. The vaccines aren’t even a sine qua non for preventing COVID deaths since even without only 2% of cases have proven fatal. I think they are welcome and great that they are ramping up, if for no other reason than to make people less scared. I have never been a mask denier, and shortly after I wrote the linked diary found more comfortable masks. However, after a year of this nonsense and dramatic overreaction I stand by the rest of the diary.
The pandemic is the worst single episode since the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918. It has already killed more Americans than WWI, WWII, and Vietnam combined.
Your comment is offensively incorrect, as bad as anything from the red-feathered crowd.
Please cite a fact in my comment which I have gotten incorrect. Are you challenging my 2% figure? We need to stop treating this like the Black Death! I’m not sure how the comparison to war casualties is relevant. BTW, all these sacrifices we’ve been asked to make over the past year and yet STILL have a half million deaths to show for it doesn’t seem to make the sacrifices worth it. We should start right away on preventing the need for this reaction the next time a pandemic hits. We’ve had viruses in the same family before, but this is unacceptable. This is one of those episodes in history where the mantra going forward has to be NEVER AGAIN!
What you’ve got woefully incorrect is your assertion that a 2% death rate of a highly infectious virus is anything but disastrous. As of today, more than HALF A MILLION Americans have died from this virus in less than year.
The fact that you don’t see that as a significant loss is staggering to me. Please offer ANY other event that killed half a million people in the US and tell me that it wasn’t a disaster.
I cited war casualties because war is one of the few events that produce what civilized people call “mass casualties”. By the standard you offer, Nagasaki and Hiroshima were no big deal.
Are you willing to admit that ANY disasters have happened in the past few decades? The death toll of 9/11 was 2,977 people. The death toll of Hurricane Katrina was 1,833. The deadliest mass shooting was in Las Vegas in 2017 — “only” 58 people (other than the perpetrator) were killed.
Suppose the terrorists had hit ONE HUNDRED FIFTY targets the same size as the WTC across the nation on 9/11 — would that have gotten your attention?
Suppose there had been twenty Katrina’s per year for the past 15 years (that’s how many it would take to match the pandemic death toll) — would you so cavalierly dismiss that?
Had we not made “all these sacrifices”, then the death toll could easily have been many times larger. Had we had any sort of competent government in power, the death toll might have been ten times lower. Still a tragic disaster and calamity, but nowhere near the impact of what actually happened.
There are families who have lost fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, grandfathers, grandmothers — hundreds of thousands of families wracked by grief while you whine about your cabin fever.
Ask even one family who have lost a loved one to COVID about whether they feel that we overreacted.
You are in denial, my friend. Your refusal to admit the terrible tragedy that has already occurred is an outright insult to every family who has lost loved ones in the past year.
The only factual claim I made in the above comment is the 2% fatality rate. Therefore, it is the only part that is subject to a judgement of being correct or incorrect. How disastrous it is is a matter of interpretation on which we can disagree. In many ways, especially in comparison to other countries, it HAS been disastrous, but it is still not the extinction level event we have treated it as. I have certain expectations for the time and place in which I live. Those expectations include fixing this without turning the world upside down. COVID, including one hospitalization, has hit close to home for me. If I personally die of it, something very unlikely statistically, I promise my last words aren’t going to be, “I wish we had shut down more.” The other episodes you offer as examples are much more concrete and have definite solutions and remedies that help those that need help. None of them was treated as affecting everybody. In fact one of my complaints about the 9/11 comparison is if we had reacted to that the way we’ve reacted to this we would have said the terrorists have won. BTW, I’m pretty sure that event killed 100% of the people on the hijacked planes and a large percentage of those working in the WTC that day.
You’re cherry-picking the statistics.
Every statement you make about risk is a factual claim, and the claims you make about the risk from COVID are factually ludicrous by any reasonable measure of comparison.
Hurricane Katrina affected every one of us, if nothing else than because the enormous cost of its recovery was absorbed by taxpayers. The pandemic killed THREE HUNDRED times as many people — yet you dismiss the pandemic.
You are of course entitled to your own opinion and to the right to express it. You are incorrect when you claim that the opinion you express here is fact-based.
It is not.
Risk assessment varies from person to person and the ironic thing is I actually don’t consider myself a very big risk taker. Katrina may have impacted our collective resources, but neither the hurricane itself nor the recovery impacted individual lives outside the impacted area. I have consistently shown my mathematical work and cited historical precedent in making my claims.
This pandemic that you treat so lightly has been, for the last year, the leading cause of death for Americans. It has displaced heart disease and cancer (of all kinds) for that dubious distinction.
We impose restrictions on all sorts of activities and products when they are shown to be carcinogenic — do you also oppose those measures? The first wave of restrictions on cigarette advertising met with wails of protest from tobacco farmers who claimed a similarly “unconstitutional” intrusion on their “freedoms” and livelihood. Should we have taken our cue from your complaints and removed those restraints on tobacco?
The economic impact of measures taken to limit the pandemic have been widespread and severe. The impact of NOT taking those measures would have been many times worse. Certainly we can all work to provide effective and more targeted measures in the future. At the same time, those measures bring with them even more intense tension between privacy, liberty, and public health.
I apologize for writing so much about this, but you really have struck a nerve with me. In particular, your suggestion that these measures have failed because so many have died is, well, breath-taking.
We are very fortunate that this pandemic struck at a time and in a society such that a safe and effective vaccine could be rolled out so quickly. The mRNA approach of the first two vaccines is literally brand new — the basic science that enables it is unfolding as we speak.
The difference between COVID-19 and the Black Death has far more to do with the vulnerability of human culture then versus now than with the virulence of the disease agent itself.
The COVID-19 virus is a serious pathogen.
There is no constitutional right to sell, produce, or use cigarettes. Regulating that is very specific and not a general upending of lives. However, if I had to choose between being in the same room as a smoker and a person with COVID I would almost certainly choose the latter.
The legal history of government attempts to restrict tobacco sales, production, and use is far more complicated than you suggest.
As an example, the Supreme Court struck down every attemptd by the federal government to restrict the tobacco advertising and marketing practices — see “FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp” or “Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly” (Google these yourselves if you care)
Regulating that upended the lives and livelihood of essentially everyone in the tobacco industry — that was a huge impact on tobacco-producing states like North and South Carolina.
As I cited in the comment you’re responding to, you are choosing the higher-risk activity.
In the past twelve months, COVID deaths exceeded ALL cancer deaths. That means that lung cancer (the primary cancer produced by cigarette smoking) killed far fewer people in the past 12 months than COVID.
You are denying the science, whether or not you admit it.
I am actually going to push back on a fact on that one. Smoking deaths in the US were 480K in 2020, comparable to COVID, according to the CDC.
I fear you’re using stale data.
The COVID pandemic began for real in April of 2020. The 480K cancer deaths in 2020 are for an entire year. We are still in early March, and today’s COVID death toll is 525,031 according to JHU (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/cumulative-cases)
As I wrote above, the 12-month death toll for COVID therefore already exceeds the 12-month death toll for cancer (of all types) by almost 10%, and we won’t have an annual total for COVID until the end of this month. There were 682 deaths reported today (according the NY Times), and there are still three weeks left in the month.
Facts are facts.
You do realize that countries with stricter lock downs have fewer deaths and that our numbers spiked precisely from denialists like you. I’ve chosen to ignore your comments on this subject since they are wildly unscientific and you stubbornly refuse to admit error when you’re refuted, but you’re living on another planet. I’ve had students and colleagues bury loved ones before their time and my wife is suffering from PTSD from the patients and colleagues she had to bury from her previous job. Vaccines also work and your skepticism about their efficacy is downright dangerous.
Whoa! I have NOT questioned the efficacy of vaccines! I’ll still take Sweden’s approach regarding lockdowns. I still don’t understand why you’ve had more exposure to this than I have; I’m sorry about that. I have never denied the numbers or the virology. I have simply called for context and a more balanced approach. We should have held hearings about the likely effects rather than shut down in a panic. We should have tested and traced more aggressively. We should have used more scalpels and fewer sledgehammers. If we absolutely must take measures we do not expect someone should have conducted some “fireside chats” to explain what is happening and acknowledge our misgivings. Instead whenever anyone raised a question the groupthink pointed and yelled, DENIER! KILLER! in an attempt to shut down debate.
James may be reacting to this:
It is a small step indeed from your pronouncing that the vaccine is unnecessary (since COVID kills “only” 2% of its cases) to pronouncing it ineffective.
Your 2% number is WILDLY wrong when you start examining specific risk groups. Students are forced to attend school by law. Many of those students come from at-risk homes with a large number of comorbidities.
As an example, the risk of death from COVID is substantially higher than 2% among people over 65. If you, even as a substitute teacher, unknowingly spread your nascent COVID infection to — say — five or ten students with grandparents living in a crowded multifamily building, then that act along is very likely to result in killing at least one senior.
Your commentary reflects an abysmally narrow understanding of the impact of this disease and the importance of stopping its spread.
I have no doubt about how effective they are. Effective and necessary last I checked were not synonyms. For the record, I will get mine as soon as I can and am trying to figure out whether being a substitute teacher counts as K-12 on the hierarchy of priority.
Then of course, there is the low chance of having it in the first place at any level of severity.
I want to just mention that I received the one-shot J&J vaccine yesterday (Friday), at the brand-new MGH-Brigham facility in Assembly Square. I’m eligible because I’m over 65.
I did not sign up for any websites, nor did I spend any time at all hitting multiple refreshes on even one site. I use an inexpensive BCBS Medicare-Blue Value insurance plan, and several of my providers are in the MGH network. MGH notified me via email last week that I was eligible. I logged into the patient gateway as I always do, clicked through to a well-organized signup page, chose a 10:00a slot at a facility a mile and half away from me, and I was done.
I have friends and colleagues in other networks (Atrius and BIDMC) who are receiving similar invites.
I’m having trouble understanding why it is so hard for some of those who absolutely require vaccinations (like teachers) and so easy for others like me. I’m not sure why the state is trying to force traffic to a website that doesn’t work. I’m not sure why the legislature has to act in order to accomplish something that strikes me as so frigging obvious to even the most brain-dead administrator.
Of COURSE teachers need to be vaccinated before schools open again.
Wouldn’t it be more effective for the Governor or Legislature to order the various healthcare networks to open their patient gateways and vaccination programs for designated groups such as teachers?
Surely this entire episode shows, yet again, how completely dysfunctional our healthcare system is here in Massachusetts — allegedly one of states with the very best health care systems in America.
If it is this bad here, what in the world is it like in Alabama or Kansas?
Three responses. To Tom’s point, I won’t defend the Baker admin and their terrible rollout, but I will say that supplies are increasing and appointments are now a lot easier to come by than they were two weeks ago. Many educators in my district have already gotten shots through CVS or their health care provider. I will be getting mine at the district site which will be next Friday. My parents got their appointment through their Medicare Advantage provider as well. As for other states my sister in law and her husband in KY and my in laws in IL have either been vaccinated or are scheduled to be. Which is great news since they are visiting for Easter and we’ll all have immunity (we’re still not taking any risks, but it’s a weight off my chest).
So I’m confident I’ll have immunity priority to our 3/29 hybrid start and feel a lot less anxious, to Christopher’s point, about in person learning. Masks and newly installed ventilation machines should protect us, but now we have even more assurance. I think it’s a more than reasonable workplace safety accommodation.
To Pablo’s point, this move by DESE is ridiculous and overrides hundreds of impact bargaining agreements carefully negotiated by districts and locals across the state. Conditions are not the same in every district, and no hybrid model is the same. We fought hard and accepted a carefully constructed compromise after a month of non stop all night negotiations. This proposal would undermine both my local and my super and I was glad to see my president speak out against it on channel 5. I feel particularly bad for places like Chelsea, Lawrence, and Methuen which have higher caseloads and have had a much harder time getting shots to teachers. That and their insistence on MCAS this year is proof we need actual educators in these roles.