Great new guidance from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Policy lab. "Our recommendations encourage a less stringent approach to school-based COVID-19 mitigation..." policylab.chop.edu/sites/default/… Isolation protocol for COVID cases: when you're sick, stay home. No pre-specified number of days or need for a negative test to return. "Individuals should remain home until fever-free for at least 24 hours, and until symptoms are improving."

The science doesn't support LA mandate. Here we show why. LA isn't actually in the CDC "High" tier + high-quality data shows mask mandates are ineffective. Using data everyone knows are inaccurate to justify a useless mandate is terrible public health.🧵 dailynews.com/2022/07/22/bri… Co-authored with @drklausner, former CDC medical officer and USC Professor of Public Health, LA physician @houmanhemmati, and Neeraj Sood, professor of health policy at Price School of Public Policy and Director of COVID Initiative at Schaeffer Center

This article is a litany of totally-not-okay reasons to recommend additional boosters. Topping the list is
"because we have vaccines we want to sell before they go bad." 1/ washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07… Totally-not-okay reason #2: someone has a "leaning."

New data updates today in the #UrgencyOfNormal toolkit! I'll go into detail here on the updates to (1) better quantify how vaccines address COVID risk for older adults, and (2) delve into what vaccination rates in children really mean (and don't mean). 🧵urgencyofnormal.com The slide on vaccine protection for those >65 yrs now shows absolute risk levels, rather than just % vaccine efficacy, and compares COVID risk levels to the flu for this age group.

CDC reports another study that fails to control for vaccination rate differences between mask-wearers (higher vax rate) and non-mask wearers (lower). Vaccines were highly protective vs infection (pre-Omicron), so of course the mask group has lower rates. The vaccines work.🧵

https://twitter.com/CDCgov/status/1489675180242870278

Using proper control groups is critical, and the most basic principle of good study design. If you don't control for obvious confounding variables (vaccination rate) that will impact the result, you can't assign the effect to the variable you're testing (masks).

Kids desperately need normal life back. To support everyone trying to understand the overall best for them right now, we've created this Advocacy Toolkit. It boils down the data on vaccines, Omicron, and mental health to advocate for kids as whole people. urgencyofnormal.com The toolkit is an independent collaboration of diverse voices from the medical community. Its origins came from partnering with our own children's schools to help them make sense of the data and make wise choices.

The truth about masking children is starting to hit the front page: we never had evidence that it's helpful, and the harms are obvious. 🧵bbc.com/news/health-59… New UK study finds the same result as all the other studies: if there is any benefit, it's so tiny that it can't be accurately measured. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

Getting lots of questions on what it means for truly highly vulnerable folks if COVID will eventually infect us all. If that's you, please read this thread. 1: talk to your doctor about your medical conditions + find out how much risk you truly face. I've spoken with many people who think their risk is much higher than it actually is. Hard to gauge risk with all the scary headlines. You may be safer than you think

Our disagreements on COVID are now rarely about science; they're differences in values. As such, it's important for scientific experts to recognize that we are not moral experts. Our opinions of what costs and tradeoffs are justified are not more valid than anyone else's. 🧵 People differ in the amount of risk we're willing to accept as part of living. Not because some are paranoid or others are reckless (labels for those we disagree with), but because we have different value systems around risk, and most of all, who gets to make those choices.

@TracyBethHoeg in Congress today speaking up for our kids. Her statement has everything you need to know about COVID and kids, all in one place. The "abundance of caution" approach did an abundance of harm. We can learn and do better. docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF… 🧵 "Recent data from Public Health England (PHE, 2021) also found that unvaccinated children have a decreased risk of hospitalization when compared with fully vaccinated 40–49 year-olds (3.4/100,000 vs 3.6/100,000 during this 2-week study period)"

New UK school guidance: "Our priority is for you to deliver face-to-face, high-quality education to all pupils. The evidence is clear that being out of education causes significant harm to educational attainment, life chances, mental and physical health." gov.uk/government/pub… "Individuals are not required to self-isolate if they live in the same household as someone with COVID-19, or are a close contact of someone with COVID-19, and any of the following apply:
-they are fully vaccinated
-they are below the age of 18 years and 6 months"