The Biden administration is finally talking about reopening schools.; talking, but not actually reopening them. Even after CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced schools were safe to reopen and teachers didn’t need to be vaccinated, the White House continued to resist reopening schools. They said Dr. Walensky was speaking “in her personal capacity”, not as the Director of the CDC. In other words, she hadn’t checked with them before making her statement. She failed to realize that “following the science” takes a back seat to “following the teachers unions” in this administration.

Now that teachers are getting vaccinated in some states, as the teachers unions demanded, the White House seems to be moving toward school reopening soon. They might even make it by the end of the school year! But here in Florida, the schools have been open all year.

Were Florida schools superspreaders as some predicted?

That’s been the big question since Florida Governor Ron DeSantis bucked the trend and reopened schools in August last year. The answer is now available. Arian Campo-Flores, writing in The Wall Street Journal, tells us the latest data show Florida schools successfully reopened without becoming superspreaders.

In August, Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran directed districts to provide families the option of classroom learning five days a week or risk losing funding. The mandate triggered outcry among some teachers and parents who considered it risky, and it drew unsuccessful lawsuits aimed at blocking it.

However, seven months later, Florida schools have avoided major outbreaks of Covid-19 and maintained case rates lower than those in the wider community. In other words, schools are safer than the general community. Your children are safer at school than they are if they’re not in school. Corcoran says 80% of students in Florida are now attending schools in-person full, or part-time.

To be sure, there have been bumps in the road. Barbara Jenkins, superintendent of Orange County Public Schools, said, “It felt rushed and certainly had some glitches. I would say overall it has been successful.” Public health officials say the successful reopening was made possible by adherence to guidelines including mask wearing, social distancing, contact tracing, and quarantining. Given that adherence has been uneven, another likely reason is that young children don’t transmit the virus efficiently, said Eric Toner, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Florida consistently has had lower rates of Covid-19 in schools than in the community at large, according to a data dashboard created by Brown University data company Qualtrics and others. Available information allows them to track cases among students and staff at schools, but not pinpoint whether infections occurred in schools or elsewhere.

The latest data from February show the daily case rate per 100,000 people was 22 among students and 15 among school staff, versus 27 in the community. In earlier periods going back to October, the student and staff rates were almost always less than half the community rate. The Florida experience has been corroborated in Massachusetts and New York, where long-running data show coronavirus infection rates in schools uniformly were lower than community rates.

“It is possible to reopen schools safely with appropriate mitigation,” said Emil Oster, an economics professor at Brown University who helped create the dashboard. “We’re not seeing them as locations of huge amounts of spread.”

Even Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, a teachers union that unsuccessfully sued to try to stop the governor’s executive order, admits that school reopenings ended up being safer than many feared. Now, it’s time President Biden acknowledge what Governor DeSantis decided seven months ago – it’s safe to reopen schools.

Age is the most important risk factor for Covid-19. It has been clear from the beginning that the older you are, the higher your risk of death from this virus pandemic. Yet many of our most elderly population have still not been vaccinated.

Seniors over 75 years of age and healthcare workers were the first demographic to be eligible for vaccination. Those living in nursing homes were quickly vaccinated, but many elderly people are still living in their own homes. These are the ones lagging behind in vaccination rates.

According to a report in The Orlando Sentinel, the vaccination rates for people 85 years and above have fallen below the rate for younger age groups, even though these older people are at greatest risk. Two reasons for this have been established: lack of access to the internet and the absence of a car. Many elderly citizens lack the skills and access to a computer to make the needed appointments for vaccination. Often, they depend on others for transportation and this adds to the difficulty of getting vaccinated.

The vaccination rate for individuals 85 years and older is 55% compared to 63% for people aged 65 to 84, according to statistics generated by Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa. This gap has been growing since early February, with the older group falling further behind. Salemi says the gap may have arisen after the campaign to vaccinate seniors at assisted living facilities.

The existing obstacles to getting a vaccine are often worse for older people, said Dr. Mary Jo Trepka, chairwoman of the Epidemiology Department at Florida International University. She said, “If an 85-year-old has a family member to help them make appointments and get to appointments, it’s doable. If otherwise, it can be extremely difficult.”

Seniors were made the highest priority by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis because they were at the greatest risk. The chance of dying from Covid skyrockets with age. About one in four people aged 85 and up who get Covid die from the disease, according to statistics from the Florida Department of Health. Although this age demographic accounts for only 2% of Floridians, it accounts for 32% of deaths in the state.

Governor DeSantis has just announced the lowering of the age of eligibility for vaccination to those age 60 and above. This will greatly expand the number of people getting shots. But many very elderly are getting left behind. To address this problem, the state established a new way for homebound seniors to obtain the vaccines. To sign up for a home visit for vaccination, email HomeboundVaccine@em.myflorida.com (if you have a computer!). The state has “strike teams” to administer the vaccines and to date about 1,500 people have been vaccinated by them.

Concerned citizens should contact those elderly people they know to be sure they have been vaccinated, or to assist them in getting vaccinated. It could be a life-saving gesture for those seniors among us who are most vulnerable.

Who do you turn to when the “experts” can’t be relied upon? This is the vexing question facing all Americans.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is supposed to be the authority on all things concerning disease control and prevention. That makes them the expected authority dispensing guidelines and best practices during this Covid pandemic. But you don’t have to be a doctor to realize they no longer are “following the science”, let alone common sense.

The latest evidence of this change are the newest guidelines. While the CDC finally started telling vaccinated people that they can have normal interactions with other vaccinated people, they will only allow this in highly limited circumstances. With vaccines that have 95% efficacy, and no incidences of serious illness in the other 5%, common sense tells you it’s time to get back to normal.

Yet, the CDC still advises against air travel even after vaccination. This despite a year of experience with Covid before vaccines were available that demonstrated commercial airplanes, with their HEPA filtrations systems, are safer than hospital operating rooms.

Marty Makary, professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School, reports in The Wall Street Journal an unpublished study conducted by the Israeli Health Ministry and Pfizer showed that vaccination reduced transmission by 89% to 94% and almost totally prevented hospitalization and death. With immunity fully kicked in about four weeks after the first vaccine dose, people should be able to return to most activities without concern. Wearing masks in public places, at this point, is largely a matter of complying with public regulations and to reassure those who don’t know you’ve been vaccinated.

The CDC did concede that fully vaccinated people don’t need to be tested. One wonders why this recommendation didn’t come two months ago when vaccines were first available. The CDC stresses that the risks of infection in vaccinated people “cannot be completely eliminated.” No one ever expected that. No one ever said the vaccines were “100% effective.” But every year only about 60% of the population even bothers to get a flu shot that is about 60 – 70% effective, even though about 40,000 Americans die each year from the flu.

All of these CDC precautions ignore the risks of isolation, the economic impact of closed or partly open businesses and schools, and the mental health crisis that is happening all around us. A FAIR Health study revealed self-harm among kids increased as much as 300% last year in some parts of the country. Is it better to die of suicide than Covid?

Where does common sense come into this equation? By this time nearly everyone in our country, let alone the world, is aware of the risks of Covid. As informed adults, we can make our own decisions regarding how much risk we are willing to accept. It’s time to let the grownups decide their own fate.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration has undermined the credibility of the CDC and we can no longer trust their advice. (see CDC Director Caves to Politics) It is abundantly clear they want to prolong the fear of the Covid virus to use as leverage to pass legislation that would otherwise be unacceptable. They just successfully accomplished this with the poorly named American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 Trillion progressive spending blowout. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget says only 1% of the money goes to vaccines and 5% for pandemic public-health needs. The rest is a huge income redistribution plan and bailout of states, mostly Democratic, that have large budget deficits due to poor governance. Even a state with a budget surplus, such as California’s $19 billion surplus, will get $26.2 billion in government handouts.

It’s time to look somewhere else than the CDC, or the White House, for Covid guidance.