Thread by @TracyBethHoeg

This morning, I testified as an expert physician epidemiologist on COVID in schools for a House of Representatives Round Table. It was a fascinating and productive experience. To me, the most important messages were as follows:

1. It is counter-productive to blame school districts/teachers for prolonged school closures when the message we are getting from the CDC is that schools are not safe at X amount of community spread/X amount of distance between students/until strict ventilation standards are met

We scientists know none of the above are based in K-12 school reopening science. We need a unified message from our CDC that is evidence-based which facilitates opening asap with simple, straight-forward, achievable mitigation strategies.

2. The message that schools are overall safer than the community for kids both in terms of COVID and overall health and safety needs to get out and can't be emphasized enough.

(teachers have also been found to be at lower risk of severe disease than other essential workers and now that most are vaccinated, are very safe at work)

3. Millions/billions of $ should not be spent on new school ventilation, expansions, plastic barriers when we know these are not necessary. This $ should instead be directly funneled to improve education and accelerate learning to make up for losses incurred over the past year.

4. Prioritizing our children's education and well-being is something that should have united our country, but instead divided us. It should have been a top if not *the* top priority from the beginning to get our kids back in schools.

We adults should not have let politics interfere with this shared goal. When we prioritize the well-being of our kids, everything else falls into place.

And happy 70th birthday to my mom, who has instilled in me my whole life: together we are stronger.