You want to get people back to work? Make schools safe!

The Trump administration is making two big pushes now: to get people back to work and get kids back to school in August or September. Of course, they’re both parts of one push: to get people back to work and the economy moving again, which Trump thinks is essential to his re-election in November (and he’s probably right about that. Unfortunately for him, the chances of getting the economy back on track before November, given the way the case numbers are exploding now, are somewhere around those of his getting elected president of the NAACP). With kids at home (and of course not much affordable day care available), unless schools are open their parents will never be able to come back to work, so the full economic reopening needs to wait for the full schools reopening.

In the case of both jobs and schools, the number one reason why full reopening isn’t possible now is that parents don’t feel safe sending their kids back to school, and workers don’t feel safe returning to work. In the case of workers, of course, the administration’s (and Mitch McConnell’s) strategy is to force people to go back to work through economic necessity: When their companies reopen, workers have to return or face losing their unemployment insurance benefits. And for good measure, both the administration and McConnell (both in complete disregard for their own self-interest in getting re-elected) want to end the current $600-a-week federal add-on to state unemployment insurance payments, when it expires at the end of this month.

Unfortunately, the administration has much less leverage to force schools to reopen and students to return. Schools are controlled locally, and it’s up to each school district (or in some cases, the state) to decide when it can safely reopen. School districts are concerned first and foremost with the safety of their students and teachers. And even though children seldom suffer adverse effects from the virus, they are constantly around their parents and other family members. When they get infected (which probably happens as much with children as with adults, although almost always asymptomatically in the case of children), they will spread the novel coronavirus to their parents – who then may spread it to other adults during work or other activities.

So how do schools reopen safely? The CDC has put out guidelines, so a good first step would be implementing those. But here’s the catch: I heard an estimate on NPR today that implementing them nationwide would cost at least $200 billion, while only $13 billion has been allocated so far for this purpose. Naturally, one would think the Trump administration would be furiously lobbying Congress – and especially Mitch McConnell – to provide that money in the new relief bill that will come hopefully this month.

However, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear that they’re not doing that, and of course McConnell is against giving any money at all to state and local governments, on the justified fear that some of it would go to – heaven forbid! – Democratic-controlled states. Unfortunately, a bill that just gives money to GOP-controlled states isn’t likely to pass the House, although it seems nowadays it would sail through the Senate.

But of course this isn’t stopping the administration from pushing the schools to reopen. In fact, my Quote of the Week was by Alex Azar, HHS Secretary, yesterday when he said that school districts can’t “hide behind the CDC guidelines” – they have to reopen regardless. This is a very refreshing bit of honesty on the part of this administration, since it makes it very clear: If you can implement the CDC guidelines and make sure students are safe by September, great. But if you can’t implement the guidelines and you’re worried that the children won’t be safe, you still need to reopen. And by the way, don’t expect an additional dime from us to help you make the schools safe.

This strikes me as an excellent strategy to win the hearts, minds and – of course – votes of American parents.

The numbers

These numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my numbers all along). No other variables go into the projected numbers – they are all projections based on yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 deaths, which was 3%.

Note that the “accuracy” of the projected numbers diminishes greatly after 3-4 weeks. This is because, up until 3-4 weeks, deaths could in theory be predicted very accurately, if one knew the real number of cases. In other words, the people who are going to die in the next 3-4 weeks of Covid-19 are already sick with the disease, even though they may not know it yet. But this means that the trend in deaths should be some indicator of the level of infection 3-4 weeks previous.

However, once we get beyond 3-4 weeks, deaths become more and more dependent on policies and practices that are put in place – or removed, as is more the case nowadays - after today (as well as other factors like the widespread availability of an effective treatment, if not a real “cure”). Yet I still think there’s value in just trending out the current rate of increase in deaths, since it gives some indication of what will happen in the near term if there are no significant intervening changes.

Week ending	Deaths reported during week/month	Avg. deaths per day during week/month	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
March 7	18	3
March 14	38	5
March 21	244	35
March 28	1,928	275
Month of March	4,058	131
April 4	6,225	889
April 11	12,126	1,732
April 18	18,434	2,633
April 25	15,251	2,179
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
May 2	13,183	1,883
May 9	12,592	1,799
May 16	10,073	1,439
May 23	8,570	1,224
May 30	6,874	982
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
June 6	6,544	935
June 13	5,427	775
June 20	4,457	637
June 27	6,167	881
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
July 4	4,166	595
July 11	3,933	562
July 18	4,050	579
July 25	5,321	596
Month of July	18,406	594	77%
Total March – July	148,528

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 133,991

Increase in deaths since previous day: 705

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 3% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 5% yesterday. There is a 7-day cycle in the reported deaths numbers, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the three-day percent increase I used to focus on, and certainly not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases: 3,097,538

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 56,409

Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 2%

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 14%

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 1,355,524

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 133,991

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 9%

For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post. Short answer: If this percentage declines, that’s good. It’s been steadily declining since a high of 41% at the end of March. But a good number would be 2%, like South Korea’s. An OK number would be 4%, like China’s.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com