Watching the Chicago press conference.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez notes that schools are safe and have consistently have lower transmission rates than surrounding communities.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot going straight at the teacher's union: "CTU leadership is compelling their membership to make a decision tonight that will do real harm to families"
Lightfoot points out that the teacher's union is screwing over parents that won't find out until late tonight if their kids have somewhere to go tomorrow. And that the CTU has done this more than once over the last few years.
Lightfoot emphasizes that Chicago has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make schools safer. She notes vaccines are widely available. That significant harm was done, especially to minority students, from previous school closures.
"Why on earth would anyone think it's a good idea.. to harm our students again?"

"I cannot stand here in good conscience ... and tell you that it makes sense to shut down an entire system"
Now Doctor Arwady at the press conference:

"no public health leaders in the world think that makes sense"

"that" refers to keeping bars and other places open but closing schools.
Arwady notes that kids that went to school actually had lower infection rates than kids that stayed home.

Further notes that even unvaccinated kids were just as likely to be hospitalized by the flu as Covid-19.

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More from @AGHamilton29

5 Jan
There is no "work remote" option for schools. That should be clear.

They have chosen to refuse to do their jobs and abandon kids. Not for safety or public health, but purely out of selfishness and a preference to work from home in a job that can't actually be done from home.
They don't care if it puts working class parents in an impossible position. They don't care if causes learning loss that will take years to make up. They don't care if it's leading to a mental health crisis among kids. They don't care.

Parents need to stand up for their kids.
Who exactly do you think will be hurt by Chicago schools shutting down? Not rich families that live in the suburbs.

It's the people who can least afford to be hurt. Those that can't afford to skip work, that can't afford to fall behind in classes, that can't afford tutors etc.
Read 7 tweets
4 Jan
This is Covid-19 misinformation coming from the former Surgeon General.

1) Of course the virus isn't harmless (something no one ever claimed), but even unvaccinated kids are at less-risk of severe illness or hospitalization than the very low risk of vaccinated adults.
2) There has been no significant rise in sickness among children or change in approach. Almost every data point suggests the increase in that chart is due to incidental hospitalizations due to high community infection rates:

As I pointed out yesterday, more kids die of drowning in an average year than have died from Covid-19 in almost 2 years.

And data already shows that the latest variant is even milder for kids:
Read 7 tweets
3 Jan
20k likes…

You don’t have to actually know anything about anything to have people agree with you on here.
Recently tempted to do an experiment where I create 2 grifter accounts that spread misinformation, but wasn’t worth the risk of getting my actual account banned.

1) Would be an anonymous ER Doctor who wanted to raise awareness about how vaccines are killing people.
2) Would be an anonymous ER doctor that wanted to sound the alarm on all the kids dying from Covid-19 and how society won’t stop it.

And then I would tweet the right people on both sides to see how fast both grew. I would safely bet I could get over 20k on both in 3 weeks.
Read 5 tweets
3 Jan
If you're wondering why people are abandoning states like NY, CA, and big blue cities, look no further than the number of schools that are going to be remote tomorrow in those places.
Whether it's closing schools, mandating masks on kids, or having them eat outdoors in the middle of winter, parents have every reason to be outraged and fed up with those prioritizing appeasing teacher's unions over what's best for their kids.
Want to expand w a specific example. I have friends moving their family from Chicago to FL. Chicago school just sent them Covid-19 requirements…

If their kid shows any symptoms, they need a negative PCR test to return to class (that’s 4-5 days). If positive, 10 day quarantine.
Read 4 tweets
31 Dec 21
Problem for Biden/health officials is they haven't been upfront throughout. They pushed specific restrictive policies and insisted that any disagreement with their approach was anti-science. Now that they are trying to shift to a more balanced approach and both sides are pissed.
The left is pissed because they bought into that message so now that there is a shift and they see Fauci etc. repeating lines they previously dismissed, they think the admin is turning anti-science. The right is pissed bc it's an admission that they weren't honest.
Public policy needed to be more nuanced. There were legitimate balancing questions between protecting people from the virus, protecting mental health, economic impacts etc.

Those all got dismissed at the time and anyone that advocated for more balance was attacked.
Read 6 tweets
30 Dec 21
Which shows you how useless that metric has become.
Specifically, high transmission = 100+ cases per 100K or > 10% positivity rate. But most people testing right now have Covid-19 so positivity rates are high everywhere. But positive tests tell you little about how many people are sick (much less severe illness) esp w Omicron.
Just to emphasize how useless this is...

Every region in the UK is currently above 10% positivity (so would be red) as cases exploded beginning a month ago, but their hospitalizations are way below previous Delta wave and deaths are even trending down.
Read 5 tweets

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