ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, ISRAEL IN FULL LOCK-DOWN INCLUDING SCHOOLS; HALF OF CHICAGO TEACHERS SCHEDULED TO RETURN TO SCHOOL DID NOT REPORT MONDAY; UFT NEGOTIATING EVALUATION SYSTEM

This news comes from The Guardian: 

England will enter its toughest nationwide lockdown since March, with schools closed and people allowed to leave home once a day for exercise for at least six weeks, Boris Johnson has announced as the numbers of people in hospital reach new highs.

All pupils will switch to remote learning until the February half-term, the prime minister said in an address to the nation, and GCSE and A-level exams are unlikely to go ahead as planned. All non-essential shops will be told to close.

From a different Guardian piece, Johnson kind of explains why he changed his mind on closing schools:

Even in the past 36 hours, the prime minister had insisted schools were safe to open in most areas of the country. “There is no doubt in my mind that schools are safe,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday.

However, the prime minister was unable to identify what he believed had changed since the preceding days, when most schools had been told to remain open – only saying in his address that schools were likely to act “as vectors for transmission, causing the virus to spread between households”.

No shit, Boris.

We know the new UK COVID-19 variant is in NY and COVID numbers continue to grow but NY school buildings remain open even as the vaccine rollout is not exactly going smoothly.  

Israel is the most successful country in the world at vaccinating its people so far but they know they have to stay ahead of the spreading virus. From the Times of Israel:

Government ministers voted Tuesday night in favor of tightening the current nationwide lockdown by shuttering schools and nonessential businesses for two full weeks, with the aim of cutting rising daily infections that have passed 8,000 a day.

The increased measures will come into force at midnight between Thursday and Friday and last for at least 14 days, according to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Health Ministry.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it “one final effort” to keep COVID-19 at bay, as contagion spreads alarmingly even as Israel continues its vaccination campaign. Leading the world in per capita vaccinations, Israel had inoculated some 1.5 million of its 9.3 million populace by late Tuesday, including some 55% of its 60-plus age group.

In NYC, the city is reporting a 9.03% positivity rate (the state has it at 6.4%). The UFT is now hiding behind the state numbers as they erase that 9% line in the sand to close schools. According to UFT President Michael Mulgrew via NYC Educator, 45% of schools opened since December 7 have been closed at some point since then. So is the UFT demanding that every building be closed until it's safe? No, they have more important things to do such as negotiating a teacher evaluation agreement (sarcasm alert there).

Reality Based Educator describes today's situation succinctly on Twitter:

The UFT is working with the Department of Education on a MOSL so teachers can be rated in part based on student progress in a pandemic. 

Closing school buildings to keep all safe? Not on the UFT's public agenda until that state positivity rate hits 9%. At that point, it will be too late in my non-scientific opinion. I am no scientist but the trick with shutting down seems to be to do it before COVID-19 is out of control. Watching our leaders make the same mistakes over and over would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.

The US is 37th on Bloomberg's COVID Resilience ranking. Countries in the top 5 (New Zealand, Taiwan, Australia, Norway, and Singapore) I believe all had national or regional lockdowns at some point although I wouldn't want to emulate Singapore.  

For those looking for information on the effectiveness of stay at home mandates, this is from capradio:

Experts and several studies show government-imposed shutdowns do work to slow COVID-19 when combined with mask mandates, social distancing and hand hygiene requirements. They also depend on the public’s willingness to comply with the orders.

Here’s one recent example: A state-mandated stay-at-home order in Delaware this spring, combined with public mask mandates and contact tracing, led to an 82% reduction in COVID-19 cases, an 88% drop in hospitalizations and a 100% decline in deaths, according to a November study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

“These strategies are effective in limiting potential exposure to [COVID-19] and reducing community transmission when implemented as part of a multicomponent strategy,” the study concluded.

“No single mitigation strategy is likely to be effective alone,” it added.

For those who are interested in how a real union responds to COVID when an incompetent mayor decides to open schools, look to the Chicago Teachers Union. Monday, some teachers and other staff were supposed to report to schools to prepare to reopen them. This is from the Chicago Teachers Union:

Half of the pre-k and special education cluster teachers in elementary and high schools scheduled to start teaching from school buildings Monday refused to work in-person on January 4, electing instead to continue teaching students safely by remaining remote. Workers who did go in on Monday have also reported serious safety issues at their schools — and a reluctance to return to buildings that lack even the most basic safety protocols that CPS has been promising for months — but has yet to deliver to buildings.

70 percent of Black and Brown families continue to reject sending hundreds of thousands of their children back into unsafe school buildings. At the same time, a growing body of evidence shows that schools in neighborhoods with high COVID rates can increase spread of the virus. That’s a critical issue for families and educators, who fear both contracting the virus and inadvertently passing it along to elders or medically vulnerable household members.

All it will take to close schools here in NYC is for a number of school communities to go remote on their own. Dare de Blasio and Cuomo to invoke the Taylor law strike penalties when you are willing to work remotely. Your health is more important as is the health of the students during the pandemic.