- U.S.Yahoo Money
Coronavirus contact tracing: New York imposes $2,000 fine for noncompliant out-of-state travelers
Depending on where you’re coming from, a visit to New York could set you back $2,000.
519519 reactions - U.S.USA TODAY
'I wouldn’t trust you to care for a house plant let alone my child': Pressley slams DeVos on reopening schools
"I wouldn’t trust you to care for a house plant let alone my child," Pressley said in reply to DeVos' remarks on reopening schools amid the pandemic.
- U.S.The New York Times
'I Don't Want to Go Back': Many Teachers Are Fearful and Angry Over Pressure to Return
Many of the nation's 3.5 million teachers found themselves feeling under siege this week as pressure from the White House, pediatricians and some parents to get back to physical classrooms intensified -- even as the coronavirus rages across much of the country.On Friday, the teachers' union in Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest district, demanded full-time remote learning when the academic year begins on Aug. 18, and called President Donald Trump's push to reopen schools part of a "dangerous, anti-science agenda that puts the lives of our members, our students and our families at risk."Teachers say crucial questions about how schools will stay clean, keep students physically distanced and prevent further spread of the virus have not been answered. And they feel that their own lives, and those of the family members they come home to, are at stake."I want to serve the students, but it's hard to say you're going to sacrifice all of the teachers, paraprofessionals, cafeteria workers and bus drivers," said Hannah Wysong, a teacher at the Esperanza Community School in Tempe, Arizona, where virus cases are increasing.School systems struggling to meet the financial and logistical challenges of reopening safely will need to carefully weigh teachers' concerns. A wave of leave requests, early retirements or resignations driven by health fears could imperil efforts to reach students learning both in physical classrooms and online.On social media, teachers across the country promoted the hashtag 14daysnonewcases, with some pledging to refuse to enter classrooms until the coronavirus transmission rate in their counties falls, essentially, to zero.Now, educators are using some of the same organizing tactics they employed in walkouts over issues of pay and funding in recent years to demand that schools remain closed, at least in the short term. It's a stance that could potentially be divisive, with some district surveys suggesting that more than half of parents would like their children to return to classrooms.Big districts like San Diego and smaller ones, like Marietta, Georgia, are forging ahead with plans to open schools five days per week. Many other systems, like those in New York City and Seattle, hope to offer several days per week of in-person school.Adding to the confusion, optional guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May set out ambitious safety precautions for schools. But the president, and many local school system leaders, have suggested they do not need to be strictly followed, alarming teachers.Many doctors, education experts, parents and policymakers have argued that the social and academic costs of school closures on children need to be weighed alongside the risks of the virus itself.The heated national debate about how and whether to bring students back to classrooms plays upon all the anxieties of the teaching profession. The comparison between teachers and other essential workers currently laboring outside their homes rankles some educators. They note that they are paid much less than doctors -- the average salary nationwide for teachers is about $60,000 per year -- but are more highly educated than delivery people, restaurant workers or most staffers in child care centers, many of whom are already back at work.Now, as teachers listen to a national conversation about reopening schools that many believe elevates the needs of the economy and working parents above the concerns of the classroom work force, many are fearful and angry. They point out that so far Congress has dedicated less than 1% of federal pandemic stimulus funds to public schools stretching to meet the costs of reopening safely.The message to teachers, said Christina Setzer, a preschool educator in Sacramento, is, "Yes, you guys are really important and essential and kids and parents need you. But sorry, we don't have the money."Earlier in the shutdown, Trump acknowledged the health risks to teachers over the age of 60 and those with underlying conditions, saying at a White House event in May that "they should not be teaching school for a while, and everybody would understand that fully."But this week, as the administration launched a full-throated campaign to pressure schools to reopen in the fall -- a crucial step for jump-starting the economy -- it all but ignored the potential risks teachers face. More than one-quarter of public schoolteachers are over the age of 50.Teachers say many of their questions about how schools will operate safely remain unanswered. They point out that some classrooms have windows that do not reliably open to promote air circulation, while school buildings can have aging heating and cooling systems that lack the filtration features that reduce virus transmission.Although many districts are spending millions this summer procuring masks, sanitizers and additional custodial staff, many teachers say they have little faith that limited resources will stretch to fill the need.They also worry about access to tests and contact tracing to confirm COVID-19 diagnoses and clarify who in a school might need to isolate at home in the event of a symptomatic student or staff member.The CDC has advised against regular testing in K-12 schools, but Wednesday, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said the Trump administration was exploring whether testing being developed for other vulnerable environments, like nursing homes, could be used in schools.Indeed, educators have had to process a head-spinning set of conflicting health and safety guidelines from Washington, states and medical experts.The CDC has recommended that when schools reopen, students remain 6 feet apart "when feasible," while the American Academy of Pediatrics released guidelines suggesting that 3 feet could be enough space if students wore masks.But after major pushback from educator groups, who felt there was too little attention on the health risks for adults who work in schools, the Academy joined with the two national teachers' unions Friday to release a statement saying, "Schools in areas with high levels of COVID-19 community spread should not be compelled to reopen against the judgment of local experts."In Arizona, Wysong, 30, said she was willing to return to her Tempe classroom; she is not in a high-risk category for complications from COVID-19 and her school caps classes at 15 students. But given the long-term teacher and substitute shortage in Arizona, which has some of the lowest educator salaries in the nation, she said she believed the overall system could not reopen safely with small enough class sizes.Health and education experts who support reopening schools have sometimes questioned the need for strict physical distancing, pointing in recent weeks to emerging research suggesting that children may be not only less likely to contract COVID-19, but also less likely to transmit it to adults.In interviews, many teachers said they were unaware of or skeptical of such studies, arguing that much about the virus remains unknown, and that even if teachers do not catch coronavirus in large numbers from children, it could be spread among adults working in a school building, or during commutes to and from schools via public transit.The education systems in Germany and Denmark have successfully reopened, but generally only after local virus transmission rates were brought under control.American schools currently have a variety of plans for welcoming students back to campuses, ranging from regular, five-day schedules with children using desk partitions to stay distanced, to hybrid approaches that seek to keep students physically distanced by having them attend school in-person only a few days per week, and spend the rest of their time learning online from home.In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that the nation's largest school system would reopen only part-time for students this fall, but teachers would most likely be back in classrooms five days a week.The teachers' union president, Michael Mulgrew, has said he does not believe schools can reopen at all if the city does not receive additional federal funding this summer.With many teachers reluctant to return to work, according to polls, staffing will be a major challenge for districts across the country. New York estimates that about 1 in 5 of its teachers will receive a medical exemption to teach remotely this fall.Matthew Landau, a history teacher at Democracy Prep Charter High School in Harlem, hopes he will be one of them. He survived stage four cancer several years ago and said he does not feel comfortable going back to his classroom."I feel there's no way to keep immunocompromised teachers safe," he said.Kevin Kearns, a high school English teacher at the High School of Fashion Industries in downtown Manhattan, has spent the last few weeks wrestling with his own dilemma.Kearns and his wife became parents in March, and need child care for their infant son. Their only option is to have Kearns' mother-in-law, who is in her 70s, stay with them. Kearns is terrified of bringing the virus home."I don't want to go back, I don't think it's safe to go back, but I don't know that I necessarily have a choice," he said.Still, Kearns said he feels a duty to the mostly low-income, Black and Latino students he teaches."It puts me in a very difficult moral conundrum," he said, "to choose between supporting my community, students, colleagues and my own family's safety."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
- BusinessBloomberg
Covid-19 Reinvades U.S. States That Beat It Back Once
(Bloomberg) -- The first U.S. states to endure the coronavirus this spring hoped the worst would be behind them.Instead, the virus is coming back.Many places that suffered most in the first wave of infections, including California, Louisiana, Michigan and Washington state, are seeing case counts climb again after months of declines. It’s not just a matter of more testing. Hospitalizations and, in some places, deaths are rising, too.The disease is raging -- Florida reported 15,300 cases Sunday, the biggest single-day increase of the U.S. pandemic -- and experts say the resurgence in the original battlegrounds has common causes. They include a population no longer willing to stay inside, Republicans more likely to refuse face masks as a political statement, and young people convinced the virus won’t seriously hurt them.And even though some of the states led by Democratic governors delayed restarting their economies until weeks after more eager peers like Georgia, they still jumped too soon, critics say.“I don’t think there’s any question about that anymore. Even in California, we opened up too fast,” said John Swartzberg, a doctor who is a clinical professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley.On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom pulled back on reopening efforts, banning indoor restaurant dining throughout the state and ordering a halt to indoor activities at gyms, hair salons and places of worship in the state’s 30 most affected counties.So far, the virus rebound hasn’t reached the states hardest hit by the first wave: New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. But New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Friday that it’s on its way.“We’re going to go through an increase, and I can feel it coming,” he told WAMC radio. “The only question is how far up our rate goes. But you can’t have it all across the country and then have it not come back.”While public attention last week focused on an explosion of disease in Sun Belt states that largely missed the first wave -- Arizona, Florida and Texas -- California’s hospitalizations and daily death toll hit new highs. The state, first to shut down its economy, reported a record 149 dead Wednesday and more than 320 since then.“We’re seeing community spread and hospitalizations like we saw in late April -- and what we hoped would be the height of infection,” said Barbara Ferrer, public health director for Los Angeles County, which on Sunday reported 3,322 new cases and 18 new deaths.Louisiana’s daily case count is nearing its previous peak, reached back in April, according to Johns Hopkins University. And Washington, first to detect an outbreak, is seeing record numbers of infections, although deaths remain well below their March peak of 34 in a day.As traumatic as the initial wave may have been, the number of people infected didn’t come close to providing so-called herd immunity, experts say. The vast majority still has no natural protection.“We’re basically at the same place we were at the start of March, in terms of how much of the population is vulnerable,” said Carl Bergstrom, a biology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.And people’s willingness to stay home most of the time -- and wear masks when they don’t -- has frayed. For many Republicans, rejecting masks has even become an act of defiance, with President Donald Trump refusing to wear one in public until Saturday, when he visited a military hospital.“It’s absolute exhaustion,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who threatened to reimpose a stay-home order if the outbreak now gripping his city worsens. “Quarantines are the most frustrating things to human beings. Nobody likes being told what to do.”The states, and their people, may have let their guard down.Michigan’s two-month shutdown brought infection rates low enough to lift stay-at-home orders by June. Within a few weeks, they started creeping up again.One of the biggest new outbreaks was at Harper’s Restaurant & Brew Pub, an East Lansing bar near Michigan State University. More than 180 cases have been traced there, according to health officials. Smaller outbreaks have been documented at a bar in Romulus and in Royal Oak, a trendy city north of Detroit.“Bars and restaurants opened, and that caused a big shift, as well as whatever percentage of people who don’t want to social distance or wear a mask because they think it’s all a hoax,’ said Linda Vail, health officer for Ingham County, which encompasses most of East Lansing.In response, Governor Gretchen Whitmer banned indoor bar service July 1 and, effective Monday, made mask-wearing mandatory. Individuals face a $500 misdemeanor penalty for violating it.Even though hospitals in Southeast Michigan are better equipped than in March, doctors and nurses are on edge, said Teena Chopra, a doctor who is a professor of infectious disease at Wayne State University in Detroit.“Given what we’ve seen before, and the shock and trauma we’ve been through, even one or two cases if they go up, it makes us nervous,” Chopra said.California officials are trying to assure residents that they’re better prepared this time around. Newsom said Monday that Covid victims occupied just 8.7% of available hospital beds. As of last week, the state also had 46 million N95 masks, compared with 1 million in March.But Los Angeles County could use up its beds in weeks, officials there warn. And rural Imperial County along the Mexican border has been so badly hit that some patients have been flown to San Francisco, more than 400 miles away.Newsom alternately scolds residents for not taking the virus seriously and reminds them of the shared resolve they showed this spring, when a San Francisco Bay Area outbreak threatened to rage out of control.“We were able to suppress the spread of this virus,” he said Monday. “We’re going to do that again. There’s no doubt in my mind.”Officials in the Seattle area also have tried to reassure residents, and they pin some of the increase on the young. More than 130 recent cases have been linked to fraternity houses at the University of Washington. This week, the city’s Space Needle was topped with a massive flag: “Mask Up.”In Louisiana, Governor John Bel Edwards made masks mandatory on Saturday and limited the size of gatherings. Confirmed Covid-19 cases hit a one-day high of just over 2,700 in April, but more than 2,600 cases were reported Friday.Joseph Kanter, the assistant state health officer, said the deadly spring is still vivid for residents of Louisiana’s larger cities.“People in New Orleans have a real visceral memory of the spike in March and April and have a real understanding of what this virus can do,” he said. “Memory drives behavior here. People are more conscientious, because they know how bad this virus can get.”Now, smaller towns and parishes in western Louisiana are also seeing an increase. Calcasieu, a parish of about 200,000 near the Texas border, has more than 3,000 cases and has seen a spike in recent days.“People didn’t really have the opportunity to see the virus in the community,” said Lacey Cavanaugh, a doctor who is director of public health for the area. “People didn’t know their friends and family who had gotten sick and been hospitalized. I think to a lot of people, it felt like something that was happening in big cities, not small communities.”The Baton Rouge area has also seen an increase, particularly among people aged 18-29, and 95% of the cases are community spread, said Dawn Marcelle, a physician who’s the regional medical director.Swartzberg, the Berkeley professor, said ignorance and crisis fatigue aren’t adequate reasons for America’s failure to tame the virus.“That doesn’t explain why Europeans aren’t exhausted. That doesn’t explain why Taiwanese aren’t exhausted,” he said. “Everybody’s been through this.”Instead, he blames a lack of national leadership, or worse, leadership that has been detrimental to fighting the virus. “I feel very frustrated about how poorly we’ve done,” Swartzberg said.(Updates with new California business restrictions in seventh paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- EntertainmentE!
Russell Crowe Has This Friendly Reminder About Gladiator 's Plot Amid Sequel Rumors
Russell Crowe recalls his "fond" memories of filming Gladiator but has one friendly reminder about the epic's plot as sequel rumors continue to swirl. See what he said in E!'s interview below.
- U.S.Miami Herald
Woman races across 4 lanes of traffic, dives into canal to save child, Oregon cops say
The toddler’s grandmother has been cited for child neglect.
- LifestyleEpicurious
82 Superb Sandwich Recipes
These hearty sandwiches might just be the best thing since sliced bread...Originally Appeared on Epicurious
