Same As It Ever Was
It might be 2022, but we're still talking about Covid and the Build Back Better Agenda!
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
Covid and Kids
David Leonhardt has an important piece today in the New York Times on the disastrous impact of school closures on children — and he makes a provocative argument about how we balance the risks of Covid with the best interests of our children:
Data now suggest that many changes to school routines are of questionable value in controlling the virus’s spread. Some researchers are skeptical that school closures reduce Covid cases in most instances. Other interventions, like forcing students to sit apart from their friends at lunch, may also have little benefit.
One reason: Severe versions of Covid, including long Covid, are extremely rare in children. For them, the virus resembles a typical flu. Children face more risk from car rides than Covid.
The widespread availability of vaccines since last spring also raises an ethical question: Should children suffer to protect unvaccinated adults — who are voluntarily accepting Covid risk for themselves and increasing everybody else’s risk, too? Right now, the United States is effectively saying yes.
To be clear, there are some hard decisions and unavoidable trade-offs. Covid can lead to hospitalization or worse for a small percentage of vaccinated adults, especially those who are elderly or immunocompromised, and allowing children to resume normal life could create additional risk. The Omicron surge may well heighten that risk, leaving schools with no attractive options.
For the past two years, however, many communities in the U.S. have not really grappled with the trade-off. They have tried to minimize the spread of Covid — a worthy goal absent other factors — rather than minimizing the damage that Covid does to society. They have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults, often without acknowledging the dilemma or assessing which decisions lead to less overall harm.
I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, Leonhardt’s overall point is correct. Covid risks for kids are vastly overstated. Kids are unlikely to get sick from Covid, unlikely to be hospitalized, and, thankfully, unlikely to die. The deleterious impact on mental health and educational development from school closures and isolation is a far greater risk to kids. And as Leonhardt points out, children have lost a year of education and have not caught up. Many are suffering from mental health problems. Suicide attempts have increased and so too has gun violence.
But on the flip side, I’m not sure Leonhardt’s argument is that terribly urgent in January 2022. For example, my kids’ school closed on Monday because they simply didn’t have enough staff to functionally operate. Indeed, for many schools right now that is a key issue: teachers are sick from Covid or have a loved one who is ill and thus can’t come into work. That is an infrastructure problem more than it is a public health issue. Indeed, in New York City, the Department of Education is going to great lengths to keep schools open. I was surprised to learn recently that if kids are fully vaccinated (two weeks past their second shot) and someone in their class tests positive, they don’t have to quarantine. That’s a big change from a year ago when entire schools were closed for ten days because of a handful of positive cases.
Of course, in much of red-state America, schools have been operating with virtually no Covid restrictions since last year. There are, as Leonhardt suggests, some communities that are grappling with Covid trade-offs, but my sense it this is not the majority of schools — and there is increasing recognition that kids need to be in school and not remote learning. Indeed, as noted in Leonhardt’s own paper this week, “a vast majority of U.S. public schools appeared to be operating as planned this week.” Only a handful of districts have closed schools or gone remote and most appear to be doing so because of the staffing reasons mentioned above. That may change as the Omicron wave continues to travel across the country, but for now, it appears that most school districts understand that kids need to be in school and are doing everything they can to make that happen.
Take The Deal
In my subscriber-only post yesterday, I made the case for optimism about the trajectory of the pandemic … and today, it’s more of the same. But this time on climate legislation. This is a very interesting quote from Joe Manchin about the state of the Build Back Better agenda:
It’s been apparent for some time that contrary to the claims of conspiracy-hunting Manchin haters, BBB’s climate provisions were not a major stumbling block for him. Since Manchin has a vested financial interest in the coal industry, he was opposed to any serious effort to deal with climate change, or so the argument went. But, in reality, Democrats heeded his concerns over the climate provisions and re-wrote the legislation to address them while also ensuring that BBB would have a significant impact on addressing global warming. And voila, we have a winner!
This is good news in two regards: first and foremost, the approximately half a trillion dollars in climate change spending will stay in BBB, and second, and just as important, it means that Manchin’s vote is gettable. If Democrats meet his demands (as they did on climate) he will play ball). Is it right that one senator gets to hold a significant piece of legislation hostage to his personal whims? Of course not, but eyes on the prize people. If tailoring the rest of BBB to what Manchin wants helps Democrats get a deal, then, by all means, break out the scissors, the safety pins, the sewing machine, and the tailor chalk.
The Democrats likely have a year left of a slim majority that allows them to pass transformative legislation. The last thing they can afford to do is make perfection the enemy of the good. So get a deal with Manchin and then move on to the next fight.
What’s Going On
Yesterday, there was a report that a new collection of Norman Mailer’s political writings was canceled by Random House because of concerns about a legendary 1957 article by Mailer, called “The White Negro.” I’m not sure if that explanation is true (it came from Michael Wolff, who has not always been the most scrupulous journalist), but one thing I do know is that Mailer was a brilliant political writer. Of all the authors I read when I researched my book on the 1968 election, Mailer was the most insightful. His political analysis, written in real-time, was simply brilliant and eerily prescient. Here’s a smart 2018 piece by David Denby looking back at Mailer’s greatness.
You’ll be shocked to discover that Republican officials are “scornful or silent” about booster shots. Who could have seen that coming?
Democratic Representative Bobby Rush of Illinois is retiring, which is yet another worrying sign for House Democrats. Rush is in a safe seat but, like 23 other Democrats, has decided he’s had enough of Washington … or perhaps more ominously, he thinks Democrats will lose the House in 2022, and he doesn’t want to serve in the minority. When a party has this many retirements going into a congressional cycle, it’s usually a harbinger that bad electoral results are coming.
Musical Interlude
Courtesy of reader “Pepe” this clip of Etta James performing with the Grateful Dead is fantastic. I’d actually never seen it before, so please don’t hesitate to pass along your musical suggestions.
Yes, perfection should not be the enemy of the good, but anything is better than nothing doesn’t cut it either, sometimes there is a minimum to be effective.