#Tennessee Higher Education in Prison Initiative | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

covid19updater · 3 years

Text

COVID19 Updates: 08/17/2021

RUMINT(Texas): My kids were exposed to covid and have tested positive. I notified the school and they told me the absences will be unexcused and they will also not be notifying any of the parents. This is so dangerous

New Zealand: All of New Zealand has been put on lockdown after 1 new case of coronavirus, the first since February

Nevada: Henderson elementary transitions to distance learning because of COVID-19 LINK

World: P681R mutation drives #delta advantage over #alpha #covid19 variant. Collaboration between PY shi lab, @scottweaverutmb @utmbnews @ihii_utmb @UTHealthHouston LINK

India: Today number of #COVID19 cases in #Kerala shoot up to 21,613 with a high #TPR of 15.48%.

Rwanda: More than half of the people in the city of Kigali considered to be in the COVID-19 risk group have been vaccinated, paving way for further reopening of activities in the coming months, according to health officials

Japan: #Japan decides to expand #COVID19 state of emergency to 7 new prefectures: report LINK

Canada: PPE must guard against airborne transmission of COVID-19, nurses' union demands> "[We] still, after all this time, we have nurses and health professionals out there that have restricted access to the proper PPE LINK

Thailand: Thailand seeks 12 million Sinovac Covid-19 shots for mix-and-match vaccine strategy #Thailand #news #ThailandNews #ThailandUpdate LINK

World: Wildfire smoke linked to higher COVID-19 death ratesA new study finds 2020 wildfires may have caused more than 19,000 COVID-19 cases and 700 deaths. LINK

RUMINT (US): Doctor: We have had at least five fully vaccinated previously healthy people in our ICU with Delta, at least one of whom has died. That’s really making me nervous. It’s still rare & no vaccine is perfect, but what about the next variant? I really hope I’m wrong, but I’m getting scared.

World: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination possbly blunts, but does not defeat Delta LINK

UK: Latest ONS deaths data (to week ending 6 August) has been released. 1,151 more deaths were recorded in-week compared to the 2015-19 year average. That’s 13% higher. Year-to-date there have been 354,283 deaths recorded, which is 8% higher than the 2015-19 average.

US: NEW: Number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 tops 85,000

District of Columbia: Health workers in DC are now required to be vaccinated against #COVID19 This requirement covers 121,844 licensed, certified, or registered persons. #TakeTheShotDC http://TakeTheShotDC.com

World: How COVID-19’s origins were obscured, by the East and the West LINK

Florida: 7 fully vaccinated COVID-19 patients die in what doctors say is extremely rare situation LINK

Bahrain: *BAHRAIN APPROVES SINOPHARM VACCINATION FOR 3-11 AGE GROUP

Japan: Japan extends its virus emergency as record infections strain the health system

US: NYT reports Biden administration has decided that most Americans should get a coronavirus booster shot eight months after they completed their initial vaccination, and could begin offering the extra shots as early as mid-September LINK

Tennessee: UPDATE: Dr. Adrienne Battle, Director of Metro Nashville Public Schools, says she will defy Governor’s order on masking to “further review this order and explore all options.”

Op/Ed: Doctor: I've heard about clinicians who only believed long COVID is real when either they, or someone they loved developed it. I sometimes wonder how different our responses to the pandemic would be if people just believed the suffering of others, without having to witness it themselves.

Florida: 5K+ Hillsborough Co. students in quarantine/isolation, emergency meeting called for Wednesday LINK

Arkansas: COVID long-hauler down to 80 pounds, says everything tastes and smells like rancid meat She was once a marathon runner LINK

US: The US reported 250,000 new cases yesterday. 7-day average now at 140k.

Arizona: UA expert: Arizona could see 300+ coronavirus deaths a week by end of month LINK

Florida: BREAKING Florida: HUGE new record: BOTH hospitalizations & ICU occupancy. 16,832 beds occupied. Almost 54% ICU beds occupied by COVID patients.

UK: In Scotland, temporary emergency powers to impose lockdowns, close schools and release prisoners early could become permanent in the event of future public health threats, according to a new consultation put before the country today

UK: The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has given emergency authorisation for the use of Moderna’s Covid vaccine among 12- to 17-year-olds in Britain. The JCVI will now consider whether to recommend the use of the jab to the government;

Europe: Latest EU database figures on Pfizer-BioNTech jab’s safety show (as of July 29), out of 330M doses given, a total of 244,807 cases of suspected side effects reported to EudraVigilance by EU countries. 4,198 involved a fatal outcome, “unclear whether was the cause”;

Australia: The federal government will deploy five teams of Australian Defence Force personnel to western New South Wales as part of an urgent push to vaccinate vulnerable Indigenous communities, as the region scrambles to get ahead of a Delta outbreak;

Australia: Sydney’s hospital system is under “enormous pressure” after a (+) Covid case resulted in 80 staff being forced into isolation at St George hospital. NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard stated. Ambulances carrying coronavirus patients waited for hours outside another facility;

Japan: The Japanese government and Pfizer have reportedly broadly agreed to a contract supplying an additional 120 million doses of the latter's coronavirusin 2022, as part of efforts to administer "booster" third doses.

New Jersey: 161 fully vaccinated and 119 unvaccinated COVID-19 cases in Hoboken since June, mayor says

US: American Hospitals Buckle Under Delta, With I.C.U.s Filling Up LINK

New Zealand: FOUR NEW CASES OF COVID-19 IN NEW ZEALAND, RNZ SAYS

Florida: Palm Beach County, Florida is to declare state of emergency due to COVID-19

India: Much lower than expected AstraZeneca vaccine efficacy against #DeltaVariant during India’s surge—only 28% efficacy 2-doses (after 14 days) against symptomatic #COVID19, 67% against moderate/severe, & 76% against needing oxygen. VE drops with runaway surges it seems. @SatwikRuma

Illinois: CHICAGO TO ANNOUNCE INDOOR MASK MANDATE: CRAIN'S

Iceland: It looked like #Iceland was getting on top of the outbreak, but a big spike today. New #Covid19 cases rise from 56 last Tuesday to 104 today. The 7 day rate is back over 230/100k

California: BREAKING: Los Angeles County will now require people to wear masks at outdoor events like concerts & festivals - KABC

World: Researchers May Have Discovered the Root Cause of Long COVID Syndrome LINK

New Zealand: NEW Covid outbreak in New Zealand grows to five cases confirmed as Delta variant VIA

Texas: Texas Gov. and noted anti-masker Greg Abbott has tested positive for COVID-19. LINK

Texas: Hours before the announcement that he tested positive, Gov. Abbott posted pictures to his Twitter account of himself sitting with Texas musician Jimmie Vaughan, brother of Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Vaughan’s family. They were not wearing masks.

US: @TSA extends the Federal mask mandate for people in transit beyond September, 13 to January 18, 2022. The agency says this is “to minimize the spread of COVID-19 on public transportation.”

Texas: First, Greg Abbott received a third booster dose of the vaccine, something not yet available to the public. Now he’s receiving monoclonal antibody treatment, something the FDA has only authorized for those with “high risk for progression to severe COVID-19.” Must be nice.

Israel: Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis (head of public health services at the MoH) voted against vaccinating people under the age of 60: "Israel is going for a massive vaccination without having sufficient safety data..." "We saw more cases of Myocarditis in younger ages"

Florida: Dangerous move from the DeSantis admin: Florida education officials have voted to punish the Broward County and Alachua County school districts for requiring students to wear masks.

1 note · View note

techcrunchappcom · 4 years

Photo

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/covid-19-news-live-updates-the-new-york-times/

Covid-19 News: Live Updates - The New York Times

Key data of the day

Deaths in American correctional facilities surpass 1,000, as cases rise to 160,000.

The number of known deaths in prisons, jails and other correctional facilities among prisoners and correctional officers has surpassed 1,000, according to a New York Times database tracking deaths in correctional institutions.

The number of deaths in state and federal prisons, local jails and immigration detention centers — which stood at 1,002 on Tuesday morning — has increased by about 40 percent during the past six weeks, according to the database. There have been nearly 160,000 infections among prisoners and guards.

The number of deaths is almost certainly higher because jails and prisons perform limited testing on inmates, including many facilities that decline to test prisoners who die after exhibiting symptoms consistent with the coronavirus.

A recent study showed that prisoners are infected by the coronavirus at a rate more than five times higher than the nation’s overall rate. The death rate of inmates is also higher than the national rate — 39 deaths per 100,000 compared to 29 deaths per 100,000.

The Times’ database tracks coronavirus infections and deaths among inmates and correctional officers at some 2,500 prisons, jails and immigration detention centers.

The nation’s largest known coronavirus cluster is at San Quentin State Prison in California, where more than 2,600 inmates and guards have been sickened and 25 inmates have died after a botched transfer of inmates in May.

“It’s the perfect environment for people to die in — which people are,” said Juan Moreno Haines, an inmate at San Quentin.

Children across the U.S. have faced chaotic school reopenings, and New York may be next.

With the planned first day of school in New York City rapidly approaching, Mayor Bill de Blasio is facing mounting pressure from the city’s teachers, principals and even members of his own administration to delay the start of in-person instruction to give educators more time to prepare.

Mr. de Blasio has been hoping to reopen the nation’s largest school system on a part-time basis for the city’s 1.1 million schoolchildren on Sept. 10. No other big-city mayor is attempting reopening on such a scale, and many smaller districts that have already reopened have had to change course significantly almost immediately after students returned.

In Arizona, where the virus surged earlier this summer, many students started school on Monday. But classes in the J.O. Combs Unified School District, about an hour outside of Phoenix, were canceled through Wednesday after a significant number of teachers and staff members called in sick to protest in-person classes, and it was unclear when and how the school year may start there.

Near Oklahoma City, an infected student at Westmoore High School attended class last week before his quarantine period was over, NBC News reported, saying the child’s parents told the school that they had “miscalculated” the timing. Twenty-two students who came in contact with that student or another at the school who tested positive have been quarantined.

And in Cherokee County, Georgia, which by the middle of last week had nearly 1,200 students and educational staff ordered to quarantine, a third high school closed to in-person learning this week after 500 of its students were quarantined and 25 tested positive.

Still, the closest comparison to New York may be Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest school system. There, public schools on Monday began a sweeping program to test hundreds of thousands of students and teachers — even though, for the time being, the Los Angeles Unified School District will begin school online.

If New York is able to reopen schools safely, it would be an extraordinary turnaround for a city that was the global center of the pandemic just a few months ago. Schools are the key to the city’s long path back to normalcy: opening classrooms would help jump-start the struggling economy by allowing more parents to return to work and would provide desperately needed services for tens of thousands of vulnerable students.

But the push to reopen on time is now facing its most serious obstacle yet: The city’s principals are questioning the city’s readiness.

“We are now less than one month away from the first day of school and still without sufficient answers to many of the important safety and instructional questions we’ve raised,” Mark Cannizzaro, president of the city’s principals’ union, wrote in a letter last week.

New York City has a virus transmission rate so low that it is closer to that of South Korea than to the rates of many other American cities, and there is agreement among many public health experts that the city’s infection rate is low enough to reopen at least some schools.

The city’s public school principals say they do not know how many of their students will report to buildings on the planned first day, because there is no deadline for families to switch from hybrid learning to remote-only. So far, about 30 percent of city families have said they will start the year remotely, but that number could change significantly.

That has made it all but impossible for principals to plan their class schedules, and to determine how many teachers they will need to staff remote instruction, in-person learning or both.

And though the city has begun to ship personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies to schools, and has made strides in preparing many of its aging buildings for reopening, there are lingering questions about how many classrooms will have proper ventilation, and about how frequently staff and students will be tested after buildings open.

The coronavirus entered Cherry Springs Village in Hendersonville, N.C., quietly, then struck with force. Nearly every staff member and resident of the long-term care facility would become infected.

They needed help — fast — and the county responded: It sent in a “strike team” of medical workers, emergency responders, clergy and others, in what is becoming a new model for combating Covid-19 in residential care centers.

Nurses and doctors from hours away came to aid sick residents and replace staff who had contracted the virus. They set up oxygen and IV drips, to avoid sending residents with milder illness to overburdened hospitals.

Covid-19 strike teams apply an emergency response model traditionally used in natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires to combating outbreaks in long-term care facilities. Composed of about eight to 10 members from local emergency management departments, health departments, nonprofits, private businesses — and at times, the National Guard — the teams are designed to bring more resources and personnel to a disaster scene.

“Calling emergency management made sense, because it was a disaster,” said Dr. Anna Hicks, a local geriatrician who helped coordinate the Cherry Springs strike team. “It felt like being in a natural disaster.”

Coronavirus outbreaks spread like wildfires in long-term care facilities, which house medically vulnerable residents and staff in relatively small spaces. So a growing number of states are treating them like one.

More than 40 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the United States have been tied to nursing homes, according to a New York Times analysis.

“Desperate times, like a pandemic, call for a different way of thinking,” said Dr. Timothy Chizmar, the emergency medical services director for Maryland. “The idea has roots in trauma settings, where it’s just not possible to take everybody off the scene — sometimes you need to take some medical care to them.”

Though initially coordinated at the top, with governors and state health departments sending the National Guard to the scene, strike teams are now being replicated on a much smaller scale in counties and local jurisdictions, including in states that were hot spots for the virus, like North Carolina.

At least seven other states have sent strike teams to long-term care facilities with outbreaks, including Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin and Tennessee. Other states have proposed but not yet adopted them.

The radical disruptions in the rhythms of American life caused by the pandemic continued to ripple through the business world this week, with big retailers like Walmart and Home Depot reporting booming sales, and aerospace giant Boeing planning further job cuts as the airline industry continues to suffer.

Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, saw its second-quarter sales rise 9.3 percent, driven by continuing strong demand for food and general merchandise, the company reported Tuesday. The company’s e-commerce sales alone grew 97 percent, more than double what the company had been averaging in recent years. And despite rising costs related to the pandemic, the retailer also generated larger-than-expected profit.

It was one of the clearest signs of the consolidation in the retail industry triggered by the pandemic, as many other retailers have struggled or failed in recent months.

Homeowners with time on their hands for renovations appear to have also given a boost to Home Depot, where same-store sales rose more than 23 percent in the quarter from May to July. The home-improvement and hardware retailer also saw an increase in profits, earning $4.3 billion in the second quarter compared with $3.5 billion during the same period last year.

But a homebound nation continues to cause trouble for the commercial air industry. On Monday, Boeing’s chief executive said that the company would offer a second round of buyouts, adding to the 10 percent cut the company announced in April.

Mr. Calhoun did not specify how many jobs Boeing was hoping to cut. The new buyouts will help limit involuntary layoffs and will be offered to employees who work in parts of the company most affected by the pandemic, like Boeing’s commercial airplane and services businesses.

While recent federal data shows air travel is recovering again after stalling in July, the number of people flying each day is still less than a third of what it was a year ago. Industry executives expect that figure to remain depressed until a coronavirus vaccine is widely available.

A large federal study that found an antiviral drug, remdesivir, can hasten the recovery in hospitalized Covid-19 patients has begun a new phase of investigation.

Now researchers will examine whether adding another drug, beta interferon — which mainly kills viruses but can also tame inflammation — would improve remdesivir’s effects and speed recovery even more.

So far, remdesivir, an experimental drug, has received emergency use approval from the Food and Drug Administration to treat hospitalized Covid-19 patients. In a large clinical trial, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, remdesivir was shown to modestly shorten recovery time, by four days, on average, but it did not reduce deaths.

The additional drug, beta interferon, has already been approved for treatment of multiple sclerosis, which takes advantage of its anti-inflammatory effect.

The U.S. trial, called ACCT, is designed to move quickly. Known as an adaptive trial, it is a race between treatments. It tests one treatment against another, and, when results are in, the drug that won becomes the control drug for the next phase, in which it is tested against a different drug.

The new phase is the study’s third. A total of 1,000 patients will receive either remdesivir and a placebo or remdesivir and beta interferon.

Interferon is given as an injection. Remdesivir, made by Gilead Sciences, is given as an intravenous infusion.

Faced with a recent resurgence of coronavirus cases, officials in France have made mask-wearing mandatory in widening areas of Paris and other cities across the country, pleading with people not to let down their guard and jeopardize the hard-won gains made against the virus during a two-month lockdown this spring.

The signs of a new wave of infection emerged over the summer as people began resuming much of their pre-coronavirus lives, traveling across France and socializing in cafes, restaurants and parks. Many, especially the young, have visibly relaxed their vigilance.

In recent days, France has recorded about 3,000 new infections every day, roughly double the figure at the beginning of the month, and the authorities are investigating an increasing number of clusters.

Thirty percent of the new infections are in young adults, ages 15 to 44, according to a recent report. Since they are less likely to develop serious forms of the illness, deaths and the number of patients in intensive care remain at a fraction of what they were at the height of the pandemic. Still, officials are not taking any chances.

“The indicators are bad, the signals are worrying, and the situation is deteriorating,” Jérôme Salomon, the French health ministry director, told the radio station France Inter last week. “The fate of the epidemic is in our hands.”

France has suffered more than 30,400 deaths from the virus — one of the world’s worst tolls — and experienced an economically devastating lockdown from mid-March to mid-May. Thanks to the lockdown, however, France succeeded in stopping the spread of the virus and lifted most restrictions at the start of summer.

The course of the pandemic in Europe has followed a somewhat similar trend, with Spain also reporting new local clusters. But important disparities exist among countries. In the past week, as France reported more than 16,000 new cases, Britain reported 7,000, and Italy 3,000, according to data collected by The New York Times.

New research emerges on a rare immune syndrome that strikes some children with the virus.

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome, the severe illness that strikes some children with the coronavirus, is distinct from both Kawasaki disease and from Covid-19 in adults, according to a new study.

Most children infected with the coronavirus have mild symptoms, if any at all. But on very rare occasions, some develop so-called MIS-C, characterized by widespread inflammation in the heart, lungs, brain, skin and other organs. In the United States, there were 570 confirmed cases of the syndrome and 10 deaths as of Aug. 6.

The study, published Tuesday in Nature Medicine, analyzed immune cells in 15 boys and 10 girls, aged 7 to 14 years, with the syndrome.

When the children were acutely ill with MIS-C, these immune cells behaved much like those in adults with Covid-19. They produced vast amounts of certain disease-fighting molecules, as the adults did, and researchers saw declines in the B and T immune cells that are important for fighting the coronavirus.

But another type of immune cell, called neutrophils, increased in the affected children. These cells seem unaffected in adults with Covid-19. The pattern differs from that seen in Kawasaki disease, a similarly rare inflammatory condition in young children.

Only 17 of the children with MIS-C had detectable antibodies to the coronavirus, and these children were more likely to have gastrointestinal symptoms, pneumonia and aneurysms.

As of Aug. 3, children account for 7.3 percent of coronavirus cases in the United States, but make up about 22 percent of the overall population. The actual proportion of infected children is likely to be higher, because testing is still focused primarily on adults with symptoms. The figure for children has been increasing steadily as access to testing improves.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

Hong Kong, a global shipping hub, faces an outbreak among dock workers.

Hong Kong’s latest coronavirus outbreak appears to be tapering off, but the port city’s enhanced coronavirus testing has revealed a new cluster among its dock workers.

As Hong Kong deals with a third wave of infections, it is ramping up testing of workers whose jobs place them at heightened risk of infection. As of Monday, 57 dockside laborers were among 65 cases linked to the city’s Kwai Tsing Container Terminals.

Some workers fear that cramped conditions in the dorms, some of which hold up to 20 people, could accelerate the spread of the virus.

Two of the Hong Kong dock workers who tested positive this week had been living temporarily in cramped port dormitories fashioned from shipping containers. They were trying to avoid traveling to their homes in Shenzhen, a city in the Chinese mainland — a trip that would have required them to quarantine upon their return.

On Monday, the Union of Hong Kong Dockers called on container companies to expand their accommodation for employees and to hire workers directly instead of outsourcing recruitment to smaller firms.

In 2016, Hong Kong reported that its maritime port industry employed 86,000 people and accounted for 1.2 percent of its gross domestic product.

After battling back two waves of coronavirus infections, Hong Kong kept its new cases in the single digits for months. But cases began to spike again last month, to more than 100 per day, in part because officials had exempted seafarers, airline crews and others from mandatory quarantine.

The city has since reimposed strict social-distancing measures, and health officials have reported fewer than 100 infections a day for more than two weeks.

In other developments around the world:

Officials in New Zealand on Tuesday pushed back against President Trump’s assertion that the remote Pacific country was “having a big surge.” New Zealand, where the national election has been delayed from September to October because of a growing cluster in Auckland, has reported 22 deaths and fewer than 1,700 cases during the entire pandemic. “I’m not concerned about people misinterpreting our status,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.

After a surge in infections in the past week, South Korea tightened social-distancing rules in the Seoul metropolitan area, banning all gatherings of more than 50 people indoors and more than 100 outdoors and shutting down high-risk facilities such as nightclubs, karaoke rooms and buffet restaurants. Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun also said that churches must switch to online prayer services.

Greece has locked down two facilities for migrants where new infections have been traced, after another overcrowded reception center was put under lockdown last week, the government said. The infections are part of a recent spike in the number of cases in Greece, which has weathered the pandemic relatively well so far, with just over 7,200 confirmed cases and 230 deaths. But the authorities this week introduced new restrictions to address local outbreaks and have warned of more measures if the upward trend continues.

Countries putting their own interests ahead of others in trying to ensure supplies of a possible coronavirus vaccine are making the pandemic worse, the director general of the World Health Organization said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. “No one is safe until everyone is safe,” the agency’s leader, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said during a briefing in Geneva. The organization also said the pandemic was now being driven by young people, many of whom were unaware they were infected, posing a danger to vulnerable groups.

U.S. Roundup

Sororities and fraternities pose a virus-fighting challenge for colleges.

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, officials abruptly called off in-person classes on Monday after identifying four clusters in student housing facilities, including one at the Sigma Nu fraternity.

The New York Times has identified at least 251 cases of the virus tied to fraternities and sororities at colleges and universities across the United States.

At the University of California, Berkeley, 47 cases were identified in a single week in early July, most of which were connected to the Greek system. In Mississippi, a significant outbreak in Oxford, home to the state’s flagship university, was partially blamed on fraternity parties. At the University of Washington’s Seattle campus, at least 165 of the 290 cases identified by the school have been associated with its Greek Row.

As students return to campus, there have been virus outbreaks at residence halls and other university housing as well. More than 13,000 students, faculty and staff members at colleges have been infected with the coronavirus, according to a Times database of cases confirmed by schools and government agencies.

But fraternities and sororities have been especially challenging for universities to regulate. Though they dominate social life on many campuses, their houses are often not owned or governed by the universities, and have frequently been the site of excessive drinking, sexual assault and hazing. That same lack of oversight, some experts say, extends to controlling the virus. Even on campuses that are offering online instruction only, people are still living in some sorority and fraternity houses.

“Fraternity and sorority homes have long functioned as a kind of ‘no-fly zone’ for university administrations,” said Matthew W. Hughey, a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut who has studied Greek life and social inequality on campuses. “The structure that’s already been set up makes them harder to control when it comes to the transmission of disease.”

In other news from around the United States:

Democrats opened an extraordinary presidential nominating convention on Monday night, offering a vivid illustration of how both the pandemic and widespread opposition to President Trump have upended the country’s politics. Perhaps the most searing critique of Mr. Trump came not from an elected official but from Kristin Urquiza, a young woman whose father, a Trump supporter, died after contracting the virus. Speaking briefly and in raw terms about her loss, Ms. Urquiza said of her father, “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that he paid with his life.”

The young people crowded into the pool, standing shoulder to shoulder, as they listened to a D.J. No one was wearing a mask, and no one seemed to care.

The scene would be incredible anywhere but was especially so in this case. It was in Wuhan, the city in central China where the coronavirus pandemic began late last year.

A series of photographs and videos posted by Agence France-Presse captured the moment on Saturday night, when hundreds of people attended a pool-party rave that would have been unthinkable only months ago.

The images seemed to touch a nerve in a world where lockdowns remain in place, where fear of public spaces and entertainment venues remains high, and where the idea of wading into a public pool is tantalizingly off limits to millions of people.

It was also another example of how life is slowly returning to normal in China, even in its hardest-hit city, as other countries — even those that coped well with the first wave, like South Korea and New Zealand — struggle with new outbreaks.

Shanghai Disneyland reopened in May, while movie theaters reopened across China last month. The step-by-step return of the country’s cultural life has not ignited any significant new outbreaks, though the government remains extraordinarily vigilant.

China on Tuesday reported no new locally transmitted cases of the virus on the mainland for the second consecutive day.

The pool party in Wuhan took place at Maya Beach Water Park in conjunction with a musical festival at an adjacent amusement park called Wuhan Happy Valley. They reopened in June, two months after the city’s 76-day lockdown was lifted, although in a nod to coronavirus precautions, the parks have limited capacity by 50 percent.

The parks have been holding Saturday night concerts since July 11, featuring some of the country’s biggest performers, including Panta.Q, who performed in Happy Valley last Saturday. Up next Saturday: The singer Big Year.

Help yourself be more productive.

You don’t need to finish everything to feel productive. Satisfaction can and should come from the smaller accomplishments in your day. Here’s how to refocus your attention on your smaller wins.

Reporting was contributed by Alan Blinder, Alexander Burns, Stephen Castle, Choe Sang-Hun, Nick Corasaniti, Hannah Critchfield, Brendon Derr, Claire Fu, Thomas Fuller, Trip Gabriel, Rebecca Griesbach, Amy Harmon, Ethan Hauser, Ann Hinga Klein, Jennifer Jett, Niki Kitsantonis, Gina Kolata, Théophile Larcher, Jonathan Martin, Tiffany May, Constant Méheut, Steven Lee Myers, Norimitsu Onishi, Frances Robles, Eliza Shapiro, Michael D. Shear, Daniel E. Slotnik and Mark Walker, Timothy Williams.

#covid #World

0 notes

topinforma · 7 years

Text

New Post has been published on Mortgage News

New Post has been published on http://bit.ly/2lWqOVa

former-harvard-education-dean-why-college-in-prison-programs-work

Photo Credit: The New Press

The following is an excerpt from the new book Liberating Minds: The Case for College in Prison by Ellen Condliffe Lagemann (The New Press, February 2017):

On a hot June day in 2008, I sat with about one hundred other visitors in the yard of the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in upstate New York. We had come for the graduation of the first cohort of students from the Bard Prison Initiative to receive bachelor’s degrees. It was an exciting moment because up to this point students in Bard’s prison program had earned only associate’s degrees. As several student speakers walked to the podium, their classmates cheered, clapped, and yelled encouragement. Each spoke powerfully about the sense of personal efficacy and the intellectual confidence his Bard education had given him. “All I knew before was the street,” the first speaker remarked. “I was tied to its rules and expectations. Now I have read Plato and Shakespeare, studied history and anthropology, passed calculus, and learned to speak Chinese. I know the world will be what I make of it. I can make my family proud.” They all spoke of their determination to contribute to society. “With this education,” another speaker announced, “I not only understand my debt to society, but I am also now in a position to repay it.”

While I listened to these well-spoken men and watched them walk up to the president to shake his hand and receive their diplomas, I thought back to the last commencement ceremony I had attended, some years earlier. I was dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education then, and the ceremony took place in Harvard Yard. As the name of each graduate or professional school was called, its dean would stand up and tip his or her hat to the president and then extol the superb leadership qualifications of his or her students. The students roared their approval and waved something symbolic of their particular school. The ed school students waved children’s books; the business school students waved dollar bills.

The two ceremonies were much alike, even though one took place within the wire-topped walls of a prison yard and the other in the shade of Harvard Yard’s stately elm trees. The academics in robes, the pomp and circumstance, and the smiling faces of family members were all just the same. But the routes the students had taken to graduation were worlds apart.

The graduates of the Bard Prison Initiative had all been convicted of felonies and were nearing the ends of relatively long sentences. Few had finished high school before being sent to prison, yet all of them had met the full curricular requirements of a regular Bard College bachelor’s degree. In their lack of prior schooling, these men were entirely typical of the prison population. The men and women incarcerated in the United States are among the least educated among us. Most have not gone beyond tenth grade. But the Bard graduates are not typical in their post-prison lives. While the national rate of return to prison is over 50 percent, the recidivism rate for graduates of the Bard Prison Initiative is 2 percent, and for those who have taken some classes but did not complete a degree the rate is 5 percent. Most alums of the program move on to good jobs, many in social service agencies and in public health organizations, although graduates have also found jobs in publishing, real estate, and legal services. Many have pursued graduate degrees, including in New York University’s master’s program in urban planning, Columbia University’s master’s programs in public health and social work, and Yale University’s master’s program in divinity.

Recidivism rates for prisoners who have graduated from other college-in-prison programs are comparably impressive. Hudson Link, which offers associate’s and bachelor’s degrees through several different colleges at five correctional facilities in New York State, reports a return rate of 2 percent. The Cornell University Prison Education Program reports a 7 percent recidivism rate for students who have completed fewer than three courses upon release, and zero percent recidivism for those who have gone on from Cornell to complete an associate’s degree. The Prison University Project at San Quentin State Prison, north of San Francisco, reports recidivism rates for its students of 17 percent after three years as opposed to a state rate of 65 percent.

Moving from Harvard to Bard, where I have been deeply involved in the prison program, has demonstrated to me how vitally important it is to offer opportunities to go to college to those who are incarcerated. Today, prisons are schools for crime. They must become schools for citizenship. The Bard program and others around the country offer powerful evidence that most people in prison who earn college degrees are both prepared and highly motivated to return to society and use their talents in positive ways.

Today more and more people are working to make “college for all” a reality in the United States. Doing so is important in helping individuals realize their full potential, which advances not only their personal well-being, but also the greater good of society.

As President Obama has argued on several occasions, ensuring that all men and women complete at least two years of college is critical for the economy. Once the leader of the world in rates of college completion, the United States has slipped markedly in comparison to other countries. Because good jobs today require high levels of knowledge and skill, the decline in college graduation rates in recent years threatens our economic competitiveness. So does the fact that there are not enough college graduates to meet the demands of the labor market. On the positive side of the ledger, the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity of the Center for American Progress noted in a 2015 report that even a 1 percent increase in a state’s college graduation rates raises wages for all workers, even high school dropouts, more than 1 percent. In light of the indisputable role college-going plays in the nation’s economic well-being, Congress is considering legislation that would help finance at least two years of college, which makes good sense. Other hopeful signs are financial aid programs in place in a number of states, including Tennessee and Oregon, as well as in cities such as Chicago, designed to make college affordable for all students. The movement to ensure both college access and completion gains adherents every day. It is in the best interests of all of us that people in prison be included in such plans.

In addition to providing direct economic benefits, college in prison is cost-effective. The expense of incarceration is staggering, and by significantly lowering recidivism, thereby reducing the number of men and women imprisoned, college programs promise to lower the costs substantially. On average, between 2009 and 2015, American taxpayers spent nearly $70 billion a year on prisons, and due to a dramatic increase in the size of the prison population and consequent boom in the building of prisons, the costs have been escalating. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, between 1986 and 2012, overall state spending for corrections increased by 427 percent, from $9.9 billion to $52.4 billion. The rising cost of prisons is siphoning vital funding away from more productive uses, including investments in public education, health care, and infrastructure. Spending on prisons has come to rank second after health care in its rate of growth, and that increase has necessitated spending cuts in other areas. Higher education and K–12 education are among the biggest losers. Reversing the tide, so that less is spent on prisons and more on education, is critical for the nation’s economic future. Research indicates that cutting the recidivism rate in state prisons by even

10 percent could save all fifty states combined $635 million from their expenses on corrections—and that does not include the potential savings from reducing recidivism in the extensive federally run prison system.

In addition, college in prison can reduce crime. Estimates suggest that spending $1 million on correctional education, which includes basic adult education, GED instruction, and vocational education as well as more traditional college programs, would prevent 600 crimes from being committed, while spending the same amount on incarceration alone would prevent only 350 crimes. The benefits of reducing crime are manyfold, from alleviating the harm done to victims, to lowering the costs of lost property and bringing down the expense associated with policing and prosecution.

College-in-prison programs have a powerful positive effect on the quality of life inside prisons, both for people in custody and for officers. A large national study by the nonpartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons confirmed widespread claims that violence is a serious problem in both jails and prisons, perpetrated not only by those who are incarcerated, but also by corrections officers. While officers live in fear of being attacked, men and women in custody, in turn, fear abuse at the hands of officers as well as attacks by those imprisoned with them.

Overcrowding contributes to violence. In 2014, the prison systems of seventeen states imprisoned many more people than they were designed to hold. According to a 2012 report about federal prisons, they, too, are over capacity, by 39 percent. Overcrowding results in double or even triple bunking, waiting lists for education and drug treatment programs, limited work opportunities, and higher inmate to staff ratios, all of which intensifies tensions and leads to flare-ups. By reducing recidivism so dramatically, college programs are a reliable means of alleviating this problem.

Higher education is a powerful antidote to the sense of purposelessness and the intense boredom many of the incarcerated describe in prison memoirs. The poet Dwayne Betts, a recent graduate of Yale Law School, explains that during his eight years in a Maryland prison his “occupation was time.” There were apparently no opportunities for education available, although, on his own initiative, Betts found considerable pleasure in reading. The dearth of advanced education is unfortunate for many reasons, not least the fact that college programs are said to give students focus and goals to reach for, which has a positive impact on the atmosphere of a prison.

Many wardens and officers remark upon the improvements in behavior college-in-prison programs can promote. Some participants have confirmed that going to college had a positive effect on their behavior. For example, one woman explained in an interview that when she first arrived at Bedford Hills, where she was being held, she was “a chronic discipline problem.” She was often rude and broke many rules. Then, when she enrolled in college, her behavior changed. Because she had something to care about, she became less angry and aggressive and managed to avoid getting in trouble. A study conducted by the Urban Institute to evaluate the effects of college-in-prison programs found that participants had formed supportive associations with other students and were now motivated to avoid conflicts.

The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons argues in its report that it is important to create safe and productive environments in correctional facilities not only because it is the just thing to do, but also because “what happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons. It comes home with prisoners after they are released and with corrections officers at the end of each day’s shift.” In this way, conditions in prisons affect us all. With more college offerings in prisons, more people would be sent home empowered to become skilled employees, responsible family members, and productive citizens. This would help mitigate the untold “collateral damage” done to families and communities by the incarceration of so many people.

The most direct advantage for families and communities that results from college-in-prison programs is financial. Men and women who go to college in prison are more successful in finding well-paid jobs after they are released. As a result, they are able to provide considerably more financial support for their families. In addition, when men and women leave prison with a college credential, or even just a few college credits, they are more likely to help improve life in their neighborhoods than to contribute again to its dysfunction. Many among those who have been to college in prison are active in community renewal work or activities with young people.

Beyond the direct financial benefit to a family, having a father, mother, or sibling go to college in prison can become a source of pride and inspiration for others in their family. Some family members of people in prison report a keen sense of shame about having a close relative behind bars, and the pride of a son or mother or spouse going to college can help counteract that pain. Imprisoned college students are often the first in their families to seek postsecondary education. Many boast that as a result of their pursuit of advanced education, a relative, maybe a sister or a nephew, is now also enrolled in college. Many also proudly announce that they are asked to help with homework assignments. Students in the Bard Prison Initiative talk constantly of their determination to ensure that their children graduate from high school and move directly to college.

Helping members of the next generation avoid prison is a goal for many incarcerated college students. Such commitments show that, while incarceration is designed to remove prisoners from participation in society, college-in-prison programs can help to kindle a wish to reengage with society in positive ways as well as enhance a student’s capacity to do so. If asked about how going to college has empowered them, many respond that the experience has helped them develop the capacity to give back and make restitution for the pain and harm they caused. Researchers who have studied the outcomes of college-in-prison programs have documented these sentiments in interviews. One participant in a college program at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women told a team of researchers, “After having time to reevaluate how many people were hurt and the ridiculous choices I made… the process of going to college [turned] my remorse into wanting to make amends. Wanting to make things better. Helping others not make the same mistakes.”

Students also frequently talk about the importance of college classes in teaching them about the way society operates and in helping them understand the complexities of the social conditions in which they grew up. A large number come from impoverished, dangerous neighborhoods, and many come from homes where there has been domestic violence. The new skills and perspectives they gain lead some to pursue work in social services, community development, and criminal justice, often advocating for reform. Their civic engagement can help to heal deep wounds in our society and strengthen our democracy. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “When an individual is no longer a true participant, when he no longer feels a sense of responsibility to his society, the content of democracy is emptied.”

At a time of increased attention both to criminal justice reform and to the need for greater access to higher education, this book makes the case for new support for college in prison. College programs were scaled back dramatically in the past few decades. While virtually all state correctional departments offer, or even require, schooling that leads to a general education diploma, and many offer some vocational training and classes designed to prepare people to go home, only a few offer higher education. That is the result of a misguided decision made by Congress, and approved by President Bill Clinton, as part of the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill, to end Pell Grants for prisoners. The action marked the culmination of several decades of “tough on crime” policies. The Pell Grant program, named after Senator Claiborne Pell, who sponsored the legislation establishing the program, provides need-based grants to low-income students to help them attend college. When prisoners were no longer able to pay for college courses with Pell Grant money, support for college-in-prison programs all but dried up. While in the early 1990s 772 college-in-prison programs operated in 1,287 correctional facilities across the United States, almost all of them were closed down after passage of the 1994 bill.

Ellen Condliffe Lagemann is the Levy Institute Research Professor at Bard College, where she is also the Distinguished Fellow in the Bard Prison Initiative. Formerly she served as president of the Spencer Foundation and as dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of the book Liberating Minds.

0 notes