COVID-19 day 174: 📈 3,304,942 (59,017 new) cases and 135,205 (428 new) deaths: 12 July 2020
DeVos is latest Trump surrogate to demand schools open or be "defunded"; most K-12 funds are state/local; reopening could cost an additional (unfunded) $245 billion; NYC had no death Saturday
It’s day 174 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States. On what is normally a day where case reports drop (“Sunday dip”), Florida set a record high for any state: 15,300 new cases. However, the Saturday report showed a decline from Friday, so this looks like an artifact of the reporting process.
Nevertheless, the report on Sunday was almost one-quarter of the total for the week ending 11 July, which was 64,459 cases.
Sections (no jump links, sorry!)
1, One big thing; 2, Key metrics; 3, Recommendations; 4, Politics, economics & COVID, 5, Case counts and resources
⓵ One big thing, schools again
The Trump Administration continues to put rhetorical pressure on schools to re-open this fall, regardless of the status of the pandemic. On Fox News Sunday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said that schools which did not re-open for face-to-face classes this fall should not get federal funds.
American investment in education is a promise to students and their families. If schools aren't going to reopen and not fulfill that promise, they shouldn't get the funds.
Important miss from all the news reports that I saw: the federal government is a minor player in K-12 education. Only about 8% ($60 billion) of K-12 funding came from the federal government for the 2016-2017 school year. Congress designated about $13.5 billion for schools in an earlier COVID-related bill (less than 1% of the total) - so that’s another, umm, 2%? Maybe?
However, that 8% comes not just from the Department of Education but also other agencies, such as the School Lunch Program, which is part of the Department of Agriculture budget.
Another important miss: the implication that remote learning isn’t real learning. If DeVos was really interested in K-12 education, her department would have been figuring out how to get computers into the hands of children who don’t have them. For example:
In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that remote learning was the safest option, and that students in classrooms should remain six feet apart “when feasible.” A six-foot requirement would mean that many schools could accommodate half of their students or fewer at any given time.
Instead, she’s trying to figure out how to fund private schools with public dollars. And the GOP-led Senate is moribund.
Democrats included $58 billion in additional school funding in a $3 trillion coronavirus relief package that passed the House in May and must still be negotiated with the GOP-controlled Senate.
Chris Wallace, on FOX, pushed back, emphatically:
“Under what authority are you and the president going to unilaterally cut off funding, funding that's been approved from Congress and most of the money goes to disadvantaged students or students with disabilities?” Wallace asked, adding it would make more sense for the funds to be used to make the schools safer.
“Look, American investment in education is a promise to students and their families. If schools aren't going to reopen and not fulfill that promise, they shouldn't get the funds, and give it to the families to decide to go to a school that is going to meet that promise,” DeVos replied.
“Well, you can't do that,” Wallace said.
Show me a business in America that is routinely pulling 30 people into a face-to-face meeting in an enclosed space, every day, for an hour. Much less six hours. Bollacks.
While Trump sees the opening of schools as a plus for his flagging reelection campaign — if kids are in schools, parents can work and the economy may be able to function as before (a pipe dream in the time of COVID-19) — every other sane American sees this as a move to spread a so-far unstoppable virus that is raging its way through most of the United States….
What Trump should be doing is leading Congress toward making sure school districts have the money they need to open schools in the safest and most effective way …
How much money are we talking about to reopen K-12 schools during the COVID-19 pandemic? Money that hasn’t been budgeted (nor a source identified), I might add.
An average-size district of 3,700 students with eight buildings, 183 classrooms, 329 staff members, and 40 school buses can expect pandemic-related costs for 2020-21 to hit $1.8 million in, according AASA, the School Superintendents Association.
That’s an estimated $245 billion.
⓶ Key metrics
🦠 Sunday, Johns Hopkins reported 3,304,942 (59,017 new) cases and 135,205 (428 new) deaths, an increase of 1.82% and 0.32%, respectively, since Saturday. A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 1.64% and 0.28%, respectively.
Today
- seven-day average: 58,188 cases and 691 deaths
- 4.09% cases leading to death
- case rate, 998.46 per 100,000; death rate, 40.85 per 100,000One week ago
- seven-day average: 48,385 cases and 563 deaths
- 4.50% cases leading to death
- case rate, 872.69 per 100,000; death rate, 39.26 per 100,000
Note: the seven-day average is important because dailies vary due to factors other than actual case numbers, particularly over a weekend.
⓷ Recommendations
🤓 Recommended reading
Coronavirus: How New Zealand went 'hard and early' to beat Covid-19. BBC News, 10 July 2020.
How talking about the coronavirus as an enemy combatant can backfire. The Conversation, 10 July 2020.
Your mask feels uncomfortable? Get over it. As a surgeon, I know how vital they are. Washington Post, 12 July 2020.
Visual timeline shows Bolsonaro flouted health recommendations before contracting coronavirus — and after. Washington Post, 11 July 2020.
⓸ Politics, economics and COVID-19
🗽 Most excellent news from: no one died of COVID-19 in New York City on Saturday, for the first time since the outbreak in March.
‼️ The governor of Japan’s Okinawa island is extremely unhappy after learning that 61 Marines at two bases have tested positive for COVID-19. The Japanese government had to make “repeated requests to the U.S. military” to get data.
As of 10 July, the Pentagon reported 23,842 cases. One month earlier, according to the NY Times, the Pentagon reported 7,408 cases. That’s tripling in one month.
🦠 Trump Administration changes vocals on masks, sings loudly on Sunday talk shows.
CDC, Johns Hopkins, states, WHO
🇺🇸 12 July
CDC: 3,236,130 (62,918 new) cases and 134,572 (906 new) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 3,304,942 (59,017 new) cases and 135,205 (428 new) deaths
State data*: 3,293,767 (61,715 new) cases and 127,691 (484 new) deaths
KS reports only M-W-F; CT and RI report only M-FWHO Situation report, 174
3 163 581 cases (66 281 new) with 133 486 deaths (803 new)
🌎 12 July
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.00 pm Pacific)
Global cases: 12,910,328 (192,420 new)
Total deaths: 568,541 (3,403 new)
Global: 12 552 765 cases (230 370) 561 617 deaths (5 285)
The Americas: 6 540 222 cases (142 992) 283 357 deaths (3 500)
* Johns Hopkins data, ~11.00 pm Pacific.
State data include DC, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
The virus was not created in a lab and the weight of evidence is it was not released intentionally. Although early reports tied the outbreak to a market in Wuhan, China, analyses of genomic data in January suggested that the virus might have developed elsewhere.
Resources
👓 See COVID-19 resource collection at WiredPen.
📝 Subscribe to Kathy’s COVID-19 Memo :: COVID-19 Memo archives
🦠 COVID-19 @ WiredPen.com
📊 Visualizations: US, World
🌐 Global news (at WiredPen)