[Daily Caller] President Joe Biden’s administration threw the director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the bus after she suggested that teachers could return to classrooms before being vaccinated.
"There is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a Feb. 3 press briefing. "Vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for the safe reopening of schools."
White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded to Walensky’s statements later that same day, telling reporters that the CDC Director’s comments were not official guidance and that she was speaking in her "personal capacity.""The President — let me be crystal clear — wants schools to open," Psaki said during the Feb. 4 press briefing. "He wants them to stay open. And he wants to do that safely. And he wants health and medical experts to be the guides for how we should do exactly that."
But, on the other hand...
"Dr. Walensky spoke to this in her personal capacity," Psaki continued. "Obviously, she’s the head of the CDC, but we’re going to wait for the final guidance to come out so we can use that as a guide for schools around the country."
President Biden has said that school reopenings would be a priority for his administration, promising that students would return to in-person learning within the first 100 days of his presidency.
However ...
Psaki clarified during a Tuesday press briefing that the administration's goal was to have "most" schools open "at least" one day a week by Biden's 100th day in office.
That used to be called "walking back".
Biden appears to be on the same page as the teachers' unions despite promising to side with science. During an interview with ABC News, Biden said that he "would listen to the scientists" if they said it was necessary to shut the country down. And when he introduced his scientific advisors, Biden promised that they would fight the pandemic with "science and truth."And they quickly glued his lips back in place.
Scientific evidence overwhelmingly suggests that in-school transmission of the coronavirus is rare, and reopening is safe when certain precautions are taken. In a Jan. 26 article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, three CDC researchers concluded that "there has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission," and urged schools to reopen with proper precautions. Another study found that schools in rural Wisconsin that were taking precautions such as mask-wearing had lower rates of transmission than in the community.
Still, reopening has dragged on slowly at the expense of students.
More so in the blue states, I'll wager.
The gap between students from low-income and high-income families has widened due to virtual learning, which has left some families with insufficient resources for their children's education. The impact of virtual learning on children's mental health has been devastating.
Families described how their children have fallen into depression, lost their sense of drive, and grown increasingly fatigued from staring at a computer screen all day without any social contact. The situation became so dire that schools in Clark County, Nevada – the fifth-largest school district in the country – began monitoring students' devices for mental health warning signs after the number of suicides doubled.