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As schools around the country grapple with in-person and remote learning, Emily Oster, economics professor at Brown University, author of several books and creator of the website COVID-Explained, talks about what's at stake in the presidential election on questions of how to balance health concerns against the need for in-person instruction, the federal government's role in guiding school policies and the COVID-19 School Response Dashboard she helped create to capture data in the absence of action on the part of the Trump administration.
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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue with our election series 30 Issues in 30 Days. We're in a stretch of eight days in a row on pandemic-related issues. Today, it's when and how to open schools. It came up in Thursday night's debate with Trump taking the simple universal position he's been taking all along.
President Trump: I want to open the schools. The transmittal rate to the teachers is very small, but I want to open the schools.
Brian: As for Joe Biden, he didn't exactly disagree about opening the schools, but he knocked Trump and the Senate Republicans for not passing bills to give schools the financial support, he says they need, if they are going in-person and keeping people safe.
Joe Biden: They need a lot of money to be open. They need to deal with ventilation systems. They need to deal with smaller classes, more teachers, more pods, and he's refused to support that money, or at least up to now.
Brian: With me now on this is Emily Oster, economist at Brown University. She's best known for her books on pregnancy and early childhood called Expecting Better and Cribsheet. These days, she is keeping an online dashboard that follows the confirmed COVID-19 case rate in schools. Earlier this month, she had an article in The Atlantic called Schools Aren't Superspreaders. Professor Oster, thanks for coming on again. Welcome back to WNYC.
Emily Oster: Thanks for having me again. Nice to be here.
Brian: Let's start off the politics by looking at your data. Can you tell people about your dashboard project and what you're trying to track?
Emily: Yes. The dashboard project is trying to track COVID cases in schools and in particular, trying to start at the school level. Trying to start by collecting some data on how many kids are at school in-person? What mitigation strategies schools are taking and then to track the schools over time and look at how many COVID cases they have and you use that to try to learn something both about overall, what are the risks of [unintelligible 00:02:34] at least in this set of schools and also what mitigation factors are mattering.
Brian: Your Atlantic article came out on October 9th. It's more than two weeks later as total case counts are exploding around the country. Is your conclusion today still that schools are not superspreaders?
Emily: Yes, I think that we really need to distinguish between two scenarios. One is the question of, is COVID spreading a lot in schools? The other is the question of, are there some people affiliated with schools or attending schools who have COVID and as the case rates in the community go up, we are going to see people who are associated with schools, students and staff who are getting COVID, but where we really need to be focused on is are they getting it at school? I think what we are seeing in our data, but also in other data is really good. It does not look like schools are themselves sources of outbreaks, particularly schools with younger children.
Now, of course, as COVID rates go up, we're seeing more people with COVID. I think that part of what's-- I think a lot of us are struggling with here is that in order to protect our schools and make it possible for schools to be open, we really need to do more to lower community spread.
Brian: In our previous segment, our guest was the managing editor of New Jersey Public Radio, who cited a stat that there have been 25 what she called outbreaks at schools around the state already. Is that consistent with your understanding and how should people hear a stat like that in terms of concern or policy toward opening and closing in your opinion?
Emily: I think one question you want to ask is, what do you mean by outbreak? I don't know how New Jersey is defining that, but in a number of places, an outbreak is defined as two or more cases. It's not always clear that they're associated with each other. I think we want to be a little careful about how sure we can be or how confident we can be that those cases are actually spreading in schools.
Again, I would say we're seeing there are people in schools who have COVID, but what we're not seeing, at least at the moment, there's a lot of cases in which there's a lot of spread inside the school and given how important in-person learning is for learning outcomes, I think we want to be careful about making sure that we are getting the right data here and really understanding what it's telling us.
Brian: My producer had a researcher on the podcast This Week in Virology, and yes, listeners, for those of you who are not virology nerds, there is a podcast called This Week in Virology. Say that he's seen an uptick in patients since schools reopened, but not so much because their transmission site, the schools, as parents seem to be taking reopening as a sign that they can have birthday parties and other gatherings now. I'm curious if your data reflects a secondary relationship like that to the rise in cases within-person schooling.
Emily: I don't think that our data is sufficient to separate out where are people getting COVID but I think it's right that a lot of things that happen at the same time and that there has been a general sense of opening. I think that we're seeing-- For example, when I talk to schools, they say when they contact trace their cases, they say we're seeing a lot of stuff come out of youth sports, come out of football, come out of parent parties, parents have a homecoming party because the school is not having one. It's an interesting question of if we messaged that somehow school's opening means that everything can open. I think that's probably not the right message.
Brian: Listeners, our guest, if you're just joining us, is Brown University Professor Emily Oster, who's tracking coronavirus cases tied to schools and we can take questions or your observations, your experiences for her at 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Since we're doing this as part of our election series 30 Issues in 30 Days, what do you want from Trump or Biden or what do you want from any elected officials on down the chain as a matter of policy around coronavirus in schools? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.
Emily is standing by her article from October 9th in The Atlantic called Schools are not Superspreaders. In that article, the case rate that you cite among teachers, which is, I think, where the bigger concern is in terms of who's more likely to get seriously ill, the case rate among teachers and other staff that you cited was only around two infections per 1,000 staff.
I wonder if you make a case for what's ethically acceptable. Like if I'm the president of a teacher's union, I'm probably going to say it's immoral to put the lives of two teachers out of every 1,000 teachers with all the thousands of teachers, maybe millions of teachers in the country. That's a lot of people who could be at risk for seriously getting ill as compared with ramping-up the best quality remote learning that people can ramp-up for one more school year until presumably there's a vaccine and better treatments and the pandemic fades. What would you say to that hypothetical teacher's union president?
Emily: I think that the issue is that it isn't clear at all that when we cite that number "two in 1,000", that's not two in 1,000 people got it at school, that's two in 1000 people who had it who are associated with the school. We really, what we'd like to understand is are those people getting at school, or are they getting it elsewhere? What I was saying initially is that when people have done contact tracing, it looks like those infections are largely coming from outside of the school.
Actually closing the school in that case, is not going to prevent those two infections. Closing the school would just mean that people have those infections and they have those infections anyway. One way to see that in our data is to say we have schools that are operating remote only where the students aren't there, the teachers some cases are in-person which people have sometimes thought, "Okay, that's safer because the students aren't there to infect the teachers." Actually, the infection rates in those cases are basically the same as the infection rates where the kids are in-person.
I think we have this instinct like, "Oh, we want to protect those teachers," but it isn't clear that closing the schools is going to do that at all. In fact, in the case of kids, I think it's likely or at least people have suggested that because of the other things parents will be doing with their kids, that if we keep schools closed [unintelligible 00:09:30] be higher infection rates in kids than if we have them open.
Brian: You make the point that the students who lose out academically by remote learning systems are disproportionately low-income students of color, but we also see here in New York where parents have a choice that those families are choosing remote learning more than wider and more affluent kids are. Have you seen those numbers, and if you agree that's the case, why do you think that is?
Emily: I think there's a couple. I have seen those numbers. I think that's reflected elsewhere as well and I think there's a couple of things going on. I think one is that those families do tend to be living in circumstances in which it is maybe riskier, so in multi-generational households, in which perhaps they're worried, especially worried about kids bringing COVID home, which could happen.
I think the other thing is that we haven't done a great job communicating and I think people are afraid. Teachers are afraid, kids are afraid, parents are afraid. I think we need to think about helping people understand how large the risks are and then helping to make the right choices for their families, which may differ by demographic group but I think it would be a shame for that to happen because of fear that was not calibrated with the size of the actual risk.
Brian: I see you tweeted something today or retweeted something today from the writer, Alec MacGillis who wrote, "I made a mistake a few weeks ago. I assume that once private schools resumed in-person instruction, the contrast with public school remote learning would be too awkward to endure. I was wrong. In my cities and many others, that gap is now a reality and it's just the way it is." Why did you retweet that from Alec MacGillis comparing public schools and private schools?
Emily: I think this has been a sort of interesting and somewhat upsetting aspect of this that in a lot of places particularly low prevalence places like San Francisco, Boston, what we've seen in the opening is that the public school district remains closed while private schools, in some cases, Catholic schools are open and it's generating yet more of this inequality that already exists in the education system.
Somehow now it's not just that there's differences in quality of school, but literally, there are differences in whether kids are able to go to in-person school. I had the same instinct that Alec did that if we can show if we can see that private schools are starting to open, the Catholic schools are starting to open, the charters are starting to open, and that they've started to do so successfully that that would push-- at least in low prevalence areas, that would push the public districts to do more opening. I think we haven't seen as much of that as I expected.
Brian: Looks like we have a fan of your writing calling in from Edison, New Jersey. Heather in Edison, you're on WNYC with Brown professor, Emily Oster. Hi, Heather.
Heather: Hi. First of all, I have to tell you your book Expecting Better saved my sanity while I was pregnant. Thank you very much.
Emily: Thank you. That's so great.
Heather: [chuckles] Literally. I recommend it to anybody who is pregnant and reading lots of books just to read her book. We're debating whether to send our son into the hybrid mode here in Edison because we're seeing that it's really difficult for him. He's only six to do the online learning, but we're really nervous as we're both opera singers. Obviously, nobody wants to get this, but we don't want any long-lasting effects for him, for us. We're really nervous about doing it, but the ratio of students that have opted in for the hybrid mode is so low. I guess my question is, have you noticed in your data that if there's a low amount of students versus a higher amount of students, the difference in infection rates? Does that make sense?
Emily: Yes, absolutely. This is something that I think we still need to be able to dig into a little bit more. We do see slightly higher rates for the places that have full-time in-person learning, but somehow, perhaps ironically, those actually tend to be places of very high prevalence. Most of the places that have pretty dense school classrooms are places like in the Upper Midwest and in the South, which have had very high case rates. It's a little hard to separate those things out. I think the one thing that is for sure happening is as places have gone hybrid as you see, a lot of people do not opt-in and it's due in a sense it de-densifying the classroom already. The things that we'd like, which is more distancing is generated by the smaller number of kids in the classroom.
Brian: Heather, I hope that's helpful. Thank you very, very much. Emily, I'm sure there are a lot of listeners right now who would say that you saved their sanity when they were pregnant through your book Expecting Better or after the child was born with your book Cribsheet, which covers from birth to preschool. Is there a natural development of your own work through those books to now you being the maven of all things, coronavirus in schools?
Emily: I started doing this school stuff because I was writing a lot for this audience about decision making and how to decide about daycare and how to decide about seeing grandparents and I think that's been a big struggle for a lot of us, but honestly the school stuff that I started really came from a feeling that there was a fall down of leadership at the federal level but to a lesser extent at some state levels in terms of tracking this information.
You've played the clip from the debate at the top and I really resonated with what Biden said, which is that may be the right choice to have people and more kids in classrooms and then obviously is what I think, but I think it's very clear that we need to make this a priority and we need to give resources to it, and we need to be tracking better in the data and understanding it better. That's where it's really been very frustrating that we've not made this something that is important.
Brian: Here's a tweet from a listener that backs up what you were saying about why the families in the most at-risk neighborhoods, lower-income and people of color oriented schools are choosing remote learning more than their wider and affluent peers. The tweet comes from somebody going as ChefSasha and it says, a friend is a principal in middle school in Bed-Stuy. Every child lost at least a cousin and uncle, et cetera. The low-income families know how dangerous COVID is, 75% are staying remote.
To follow up on what you just said, bringing it back to the debate and this again is in the context of our 30 Issues in 30 Days series looking at Trump and Biden on various issues, I gather from other things in your Twitter feed that you're not a Donald Trump fan. I don't know if you endorse, you could give us whatever political context--
Emily: I endorse Biden. I am endorsing Biden absolutely.
Brian: In that context, maybe on this issue about generally opening schools and being vigilant about that based on your data, maybe you think on this one Trump is right, or how should I read that?
Emily: I don't think that he is right and I certainly think this particular approach of let's just open everything and not think about it at all is emblematic of many of the problems with the approaches. I think it happens that even a stop clock is right twice a day.
I think that having more schools open that are open could be a good decision, but what I think is very unfortunate is that the president has been saying this for months and actually, I think that in the summer, he sent out this message and the result was that schools opened in places with high prevalence and not a place with full prevalence and that somehow the access of school reopening move from being about science and risk and trying to mitigate those risks and make the safe into a political statement. If you're with him, your schools are open and if you're not with him, your schools are closed, which is exactly the opposite of the way I think we'd like to make that decision.
Brian: Laura in Westfield. You're on WNYC with Emily Oster. Hi, Laura.
Laura: Hi. How are you?
Brian: Good thanks.
Laura: I've looked at the percentages very carefully because I'm compromised. It looks like in New Jersey and nationally, they attribute about 30% to the 39 to 49 age group. I'm just wondering if that's because kids are not likely to get tested. I just had a negative COVID test recently. It wasn't that easy to get, and I can't imagine finding a place that's going to take kids and they don't always have symptoms. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that.
Brian: Tell me again the age group that you cited as having a lot of cases.
Laura: The 30% category in both nationally from what I can see in the time is about 39 to 49-year-olds and then the next bump up would be my age group, which is about 50 to 69 maybe. That's the next percent. Teenagers are on the bottom of that group.
Brian: Were you going to relate this to college students somehow? Did I get that from my screener?
Laura: Yes, I said where you can take your pick. My son's at NJT, they've done a remarkable job. They have 17 cases that they've had since school started that they've been able to record. They tested sewage water and I thought that was very interesting. They closed down his dorm for about five days. He had to quarantine because it's a dorm of 300 kids. It's a hybrid learning program. I don't know why we couldn't test groundwater or greywater rather in some of these bigger schools.
Brian: Laura, thank you. There's a few things on the table. I want to follow up about colleges after you answer the question that she actually asked. This idea of sewage testing for those of you who've never heard of it is really interesting in that what is sewage testing? If they're testing water coming out of the dorm bathrooms, they can get a sense of whether there are any cases in that dorm. If there are, then they can start testing individuals. It's, I guess, relatively inexpensive way of screening perhaps for college dorms. The age group question that Laura was really asking you about Emily, what would you say?
Emily: I think there's something very interesting in here about-- There's a question people bring up which is we know that kids are less likely to be infected but we also know that they tend to have asymptomatic infection. I think there's a lot of worry about the idea that kids are asymptomatically spreading COVID and that when we open schools, we won't see the infection in kids, we will see them in the outside broader community.
The best evidence we have from that so far comes from New York, which is among the few places that's doing asymptomatic testing of kids in schools. I think other places are planning to start. New York has been doing some of this and by and large, very successfully but also suggesting that there's actually relatively really quite low rates of kids with asymptomatic COVID. I think that's encouraging and I think it's reflecting-- Back to the college question, it's reflecting what we're seeing on a lot of college campuses. We're doing a lot of testing here at Brown and we have very few cases. Very few cases.
Brian: That goes against some of what's been in the news, right? If Pre-K through 12 schools, data shows are not super-spreaders, what about colleges and universities in general? I've seen at least press reports, which is not necessarily science, it's journalism but nevertheless, press reports that say a lot of the outbreaks that we're seeing around the country started in places that have big universities where a lot of students came back to live.
Emily: Yes, part of what's been really tricky about [unintelligible 00:22:38] is that colleges have been-- They have been really different experiences. We've seen a bunch of places where there are very significant outbreaks associated with colleges and then other places where colleges [unintelligible 00:22:51] very few outbreaks. I think the truth is a lot of the differences have to do with how much testing they're doing. The places that have opened more successfully tend to be doing a lot of testing, a lot of asymptomatic testing.
How much is the testing versus the places that are doing the testing also encourage less risky behavior? I think that's a little bit unclear. The evidence suggests it is possible to run a college campus with relatively low-prevalence but also that it is very possible to run one with larger outbreaks. There are many cases in which colleges are really driving outbreaks in the community which is obviously very concerning.
Brian: George in Hazlet. You're on WNYC with Emily Oster. Hi, George.
George: Hi. Hello. Great show. I'm down here in New Jersey as you said and the governor is pretty strict here as you have this Cuomo up there as well. We just released, I don't know how long ago, the kids to play contact sports, close contact sports, indoor hockey. You are spitting in the kids' faces or spitting into each other's faces playing a game, running around. I don't care if it's outside, inside, you're literally spitting in each other's faces playing a game. How could you possibly justify keeping the schools closed and remote? First off.
The second off, isn't it true that COVID-19 is patented and the people that have that patent means it's man-made? If you can't patent a natural virus, it's man-made and they also own the vaccine to that and it's [inaudible 00:24:27] these people.
Brian: George, I think that that's completely disinformation. Nobody has a patent for COVID-19. Do they Professor Oster?
Emily: No. No, they do not. No.
Brian: Just to be clear. On this other point about contact sports, he was getting at maybe some schools that are closed but actually allowing after-school sports activities. I don't know if that's the case. Even on allowing those sports activities in general, he mentioned hockey indoors, spitting at each other's faces. Of course, football has a lot of close contact, it's this season. I think you've been following some of the lessons from pro sports and the experiments that they've been undertaking to try to control the spread while playing their sports. What would you say about that?
Emily: I think that there's a very broad point here which is we are allowing a lot of things and not allowing schools in a way that suggests that somehow we think schools are especially high-risk. I share the view of the caller that it may well be that some of these sports activities are in fact higher-risk. There's a logical inconsistency you could say, we're going to have both things, or you could say-- If you're only going to have one of them, it seems like the one with the lower-risk is the one you'd want to do particularly given the benefits.
In terms of, are these sports actually particularly high-risk? It's something we're still trying to understand. There's been a lot of variation in pro sports in how good they are which probably has a lot to do with the NBA manager [unintelligible 00:26:03], really aggressive in a really aggressive manner whereas the professional baseball has been a bit looser about that. The result as you might expect, more infections in one place than the other.
Brian: I know you've got to go in a minute. This week in New York City happens to be the first time since school opened that parents are allowed to opt back in if they chose to start remote. I wonder if you have a prediction or based on your data advice, go back to school.
Emily: I'm interested to see what happens. I would not presume to tell people what to do. I hope that they look at the evidence when they make their choices. My guess is we will not see much of an uptick. It was interesting, I was talking to someone in North Dakota last week, who is going through the same choice. You might have thought there they have a very aggressive outbreak that people might have actually been opted-out. If anything, he said he's seeing more people, opt-in relative, to the beginning of the school year. There's this combination of Zoom distance learning fatigue competing with maybe concerns about the virus.
Brian: Brown University Economics Professor Emily Oster, keeping a COVID in schools dashboard and the author of Expecting Better and Cribsheet. Thank you so much for all this information today. Thank you, thank you.
Emily: Thank you so much.
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