Thread by @ErinForYall

🧵 I’m going to give y’all more details about all the reasons this is disastrous, but first I need to calm down.

I. Am. Furious.

This is bad and directly deviates from some of the CDC recommendations. #txlege

https://twitter.com/wfaa/status/1423418544767787017

Let’s go through section by section. Here’s the TEA guidance for school reopening.

This is generally fine. Except notice what’s missing...do you have to tell others in the classroom? Coworkers who work closely with the affected person? More on this later.

Here’s where we start to get wonky. No mask requirements allowed.

This is in spite of the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommending schools mask up.

And pediatric COVID hospitalizations soaring. And most kids not being eligible yet.

This is all Governor Abbott.

This is generally good, except I think giving schools some teeth to require COVID testing in some circumstances would be ideal. Close contact extracurriculars come to mind, especially since in my area, most cases last year were associated with athletics.

Okay, here is where I started yelling at my phone.

HOW ON EARTH CAN YOU COMPARE TRANSMISSION FROM LAST YEAR TO DELTA VARIANT TRANSMISSION?!

75% of our cases are now Delta. Delta patients have 1000% the viral load of earlier strains. The whole deal is it spreads more easily!

I’m going to need two tweets to complain about this.

Schools don’t have to do contact tracing?! What?! Does the school have to tell a parent that someone in their classroom tested positive? What about a teacher who has someone vulnerable at home? This isn’t hard to track.

Schools with leadership who don’t take COVID seriously are going to use this as an excuse to do nothing. Of course a school is *aware* which classrooms have close contacts, but this is a get out of jail free card to pretend they don’t.

And here’s the other thing. Close contacts could be partially defined by masked/unmasked, creating an incentive for masking and potentially bolstering some community norms. Nope, can’t require masks and can’t even use scientifically-based means to incentivize them.

Okay, last chunk.

Paragraph 1 is fine. Paragraph 3 is fine.

Paragraph 2 is a blatant disregard of CDC guidelines. Know how I know? My daughter just went through a close contact quarantine.

Minimum unvaccinated quarantine: 7 days with a negative test done at day 5 or later.

@teainfo The link is right here: cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…

Think about it. If a kid is exposed on Thursday, gets tested on Friday, that test won’t be accurate. When they go back to school on Monday, they might get a whole classroom sick.

Why on earth aren’t we following CDC?

So breakdown:

Dramatic COVID spike right now including among kids

More infectious variant

Kids under 12 not eligible for the vaccine yet

No mask requirement

No confidence that you’ll be notified your kid was exposed

Quarantine guidelines that increase spread

Wow

Oh forgot one, it’s an open question whether Delta has more severe outcomes in kids.

We’re going to have to rattle some cages to fix this nonsense. Among school leaders, this is empowering deniers and tying the hands of responsible folks.

Our children deserve so much better.

Call @GovAbbott. Call @DanPatrick. Call TEA. Call your state rep (if it’s not me). Call your state senator.

They don’t get to play Russian roulette with our kids.

wrm.capitol.texas.gov