‘Dark Money’ And Lobbyists Have Influenced The CDC Guidelines On School Re-Opening — Here’s The 411
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The Center for Disease Control recommendations have been changed and it’s not because of The Science — it’s because Democrat donors are pushing an agenda.
Teachers and teachers’ unions are pushing against The Science and demanding ridiculous standards are met before in-person learning can resume.
Nevermind the harmful effects that virtual learning has had on kids’ education and mental health. None of that seems to matter to many teachers or the teachers’ unions who are pushing for virtual learning rather than in-person instruction. You know, for “safety” reasons. Apparently, these teachers are willing to let the employees at Walmart and Target, their Uber driver, and the Door Dash guy all “risk their lives” so that they can buy what they need, but educating kids who are at low-risk of spreading the virus, well, that’s just too risky.
And the CDC just caved to these guys and rewrote their recommendations to align with the Biden administration that is backing teachers’ unions over parents’ concerns.
I’m old enough to remember when there were warnings that the CDC was being “politicized” under the Trump administration even though the head of the CDC often disagreed openly with the President on things like masks and therapeutics.
But now, it appears that a very powerful lobbying group — teachers’ unions, who donate heavily to Democrats, are influencing recommendations on school reopening.
On February 3, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Center for Disease Control, said that schools are safe to reopen, as long as they follow these 5 guidelines:
- Masks
- Physical Distancing
- Handwashing and Respiratory Etiquette
- Cleaning and Maintaining Healthy Facilities
- Diagnostic and Rapid and Efficient Contact-Tracing, in combination with Isolation and Quarantine, and in collaboration with the Health Department.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about this and said that Dr. Walensky was speaking in a “personal” capacity and not in an “official” capacity.
On February 12, that same Dr. Walensky said this:
Bringing back K-12 students safely to in-person learning, since we know the benefits the classroom setting and support services delivered by schools provide to our students, especially those from low-resourced, racial and ethnic-minority communities, and children with disabilities. I recognize that the decision, on when and how to begin in-person learning is one that must be based on a thorough review of what the science tells us works, and understanding of the lived experiences, challenges, and perspectives, of teachers and school staff, parents, and students.
We have conducted an in-depth review of the available science and evidence base to guide our recommendations, and we have also engaged with many education and public-health partners, to hear firsthand from parents and teachers, directly, about their experiences and concerns.
These sessions were so informative and direct changes to the guidance were made as a result of them.
The highlights were published by a bipartisan group of parents in Fairfax County, Virginia that want public schools reopened.
?Breaking? @CDCDirector admits that lobbying groups changed recs in the recent CDC School Guidelines
From a Fri. press conf: CDC based its recs on what the science says AND input from teachers groups w “direct changes in the guidance made as a result.” https://t.co/kLiqYnIPsT pic.twitter.com/pZWcYk6yJt
— OpenFCPS (@OpenFCPS2020) February 15, 2021
Who else helped draft the recommendations? Donna Harris-Aikens, who came to DOE last month after 14 years as a Senior Policy Director at the NEA.
In addition, CDC sought input from other “stakeholders,” i.e., lobbying groups, w no mention of meeting w any openschools parents. pic.twitter.com/NoKjDFm7jg
— OpenFCPS (@OpenFCPS2020) February 15, 2021
The new CDC guidelines for school reopening was also published on February 12, and they contradict all of The Science that we were told to date.
An opinion piece in the Washington Post breaks down the new recommendations and what it really means for students — no in-person learning.
The new report on schools from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should be a wake-up call to parents everywhere: If they’re not back already, your kids are not going back to school full-time this year.
The report adds new and unnecessary demands that will ultimately keep millions of kids out of school. In particular, there are two items that will act as barriers: the use of community-spread metrics to determine whether schools should open, and the requirement of routine screening testing.
The CDC defines four color-coded levels of the spread of covid-19 in a school’s surrounding community: blue (low), yellow (moderate), orange (substantial) and red (high). If community spread is red and if schools don’t have routine screening testing in place, two conditions that exist in more than 90 percent of the country right now, the CDC recommends closing middle and high schools, unless all mitigation strategies can be strictly adhered to, and hybrid models for young learners. If it is orange, middle schools and high schools join elementary schools in being able to go hybrid. In yellow or blue communities, all K-12 schools can be open for in-person instruction.
But community-spread metrics pose major problems. We’re part of a group of faculty and researchers at Harvard, Boston University and Brown University that released a report in July using such metrics as indicators for when to open schools. We changed our position on this in light of overwhelming scientific evidence that transmission within schools can be kept low regardless of community spread, so long as good mitigation measures are in place. It’s also clear that community spread is not an indicator of within-school transmission. The CDC itself released a study showing this. It also recently wrote that there is “little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to community transmission.” So why tie reopening schools to community spread?
There’s another problem with the two community-spread metrics selected — cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days, and the percentage of covid-19 tests that are positive. The first metric is entirely dependent on how much a community is testing; the second is flawed because it cannot be interpreted without understanding who is being targeted for testing.
Source: Washington Post
The new guidelines would leave the vast majority of U.S. public schools closed for in-person learning for a very long time.
She technically said this in regard to vaccine distribution, but I’m sure she would say the same thing about school reopenings.https://t.co/MOqtlFUiDi
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 15, 2021
Even CNN’s Jake Tapper was calling out Dr. Walensky on her flip-flop on reopening schools.
Teachers at high risk for Covid-19 should have options for virtual learning, CDC chief Dr. Rochelle Walensky says following the agency’s updated guidance for reopening schools #CNNSOTU https://t.co/GORbZU7gPv pic.twitter.com/t7b5LEzNeG
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) February 14, 2021
School closures hurt students and families, especially those that the left says that they want to help — the low-income, primarily minority families.
The problem is that Democrats are more beholden to the teachers’ unions than they are to their alleged voting base. I think it’s pretty clear who they truly believe that their base is and it isn’t the black, single mom working a blue-collar job to make ends meet while she tries to give set her kids up for a better life — it’s the “dark money” teachers’ unions who care about their members more than educating that woman’s kids.
