Welcome to the New World in which you will be living, kids:
"UMass Amherst under lockdown because of coronavirus spike" by Martin Finucane and Christine Mui Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, February 8, 2021
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is under a strict lockdown because of a coronavirus spike that happened after students returned for spring semester.
The university said that all students, on campus or off, are required to stay in their residences.
Based on a flawed method of diagnosing infection that returns over 90% false positives, never mind the lack of symptoms and deaths among that age group.
Students will only be allowed out for twice-weekly coronavirus testing, to get food, or for medical necessity. Failure to comply will result in disciplinary action, which may include removal from residence halls, suspension, or both, the university said.
“To many of you these may seem like drastic measures, but faced with the surge in cases we are experiencing in our campus community, we have no choice but to take these steps. By acting aggressively now, we are confident we can contain this surge and more quickly return to normal operations, including a resumption of in-person classes and organized student activities,” UMass Chancellor Kumble R. Subbaswamy said in a letter Sunday to the university community.
Normal, you $cumbag ivory-tower elite?
The universities have obviously been bought off by the globali$t mon$ters behind all this, and they probably even believe all the dogma they poison the kids minds with.
Spring semester classes began last Monday. From Tuesday to Thursday of last week, which were the latest three days of testing results at UMass, the university counted 298 positive tests, and there are now 398 active cases, Subbaswamy said.
Sporting events and practices have been canceled. The university said its “high risk” level would be in effect for at least 14 days, at least until Feb. 21. The restrictions went into effect 2 p.m. Sunday.
“The level will only be changed if the public health situation improves significantly,” the university website says.
I never even go near the $port$ or new$ channels anymore (save for Tucker), and the problem with UMass is A.I. decides where the kid quarantines.
The university had raised the alert level to “elevated” on Friday. University officials have blamed undergraduate students who have not followed social-distancing and masking protocols.
“Let this moment be a stark reminder to any of you who may have been cavalier about COVID-19 that your individual behavior has a profound impact on everyone in your community. If each of us follows proper protocols to help protect the community, we can get through this trying time sooner and stronger,” Subbaswamy said.
Talk about a LECTURE!
How do you kids feel about being condescend to when you ARE ADULTS after all!
I know what is an old man's reaction.
The town of Amherst and the nearby towns of Hadley and Sunderland reacted to the new cases at the university by deciding not to join other communities in the state in loosening some restrictions on businesses Monday.....
A basketball coach let slip that they “we’re not going to be allowed to leave [the county]” by March, so....
HOW COULD HE KNOW THAT unless he was TIPPED to the SCRIPT that never variates?
Maybe you can transfer to Northeastern:
"Northeastern’s message to students: come back to class" by Deirdre Fernandes Globe Staff, February 9, 2021
Nearly a year after COVID-19 gripped the country and transformed higher education, forcing many colleges to transition to mostly remote classes, Northeastern University is trying to remind its students about that long-ago time when they learned in-person, and is urging them to come back to the class this spring.
So you can be imprisoned like at UMass?
In recent weeks, the university has released videos on social media and instructed its professors to give students a nudge to attend in-person classes. The effort has angered some Northeastern faculty and students, who say the university is prioritizing an image of a bustling campus over public health.
Well, it is an indu$try now.
Encouraging more students to attend classes when COVID-19 remains a deadly threat is unwise and some professors are wary of pressuring students if they feel safer taking classes remotely, said Ryan Cordell, a Northeastern English professor, who taught both in person and online last semester.
“The reality for a lot of classes, I don’t know if in-person in a pandemic is the best option,” Cordell said. “A lot of schools want the optics of being in-person.”
Well, that's complicated and they just want you to shut up about it.
Northeastern has said that it has spent millions of dollars on frequent COVID testing and on ensuring that buildings are safe, and that transmission has been low on campus. Coming to class allows students to engage with peers and gain more out of their educational experience, administrators said.
Northeastern is not trying to pressure professors into encouraging students to come back, but many faculty have asked administrators for suggestions on how to increase attendance in class after it slumped during the later fall, said chancellor Ken Henderson.
“If people interpreted it as pushing, that wasn’t the intent,” Henderson said. “It’s part of our promise as a residential campus to deliver the in-person interaction.”
The university has also converted offices in buildings with in-person classrooms into study space for students, so they don’t have to rush from their remote classes in the dorms to their in-person lecture halls, he said.
Will Cooper, 22, decided to take all his classes remotely this spring — his last semester at Northeastern — and said it isn’t laziness that is keeping him from going to the classroom. He enjoys the engagement he used to get in class with his peers, but the online classes have given him the flexibility in his schedule.
Cooper also said he can save money by eating lunch at home between classes and he can wake up later and simply log-on to his class instead of rushing across campus. Taking classes remotely also lessens his exposure to COVID, Cooper said.
“I don’t feel like I’m losing out on anything,” he said.
Then the full tuition is worth it!
Northeastern isn’t the only school that saw a shift during the fall. Boston University also experienced a drop-off with in-person student attendance during the second half of the semester, officials there said.
At Plymouth State University in northern New Hampshire, only one or two students out of a class of 25 would show up for a face-to-face sessions at the end, said Robin DeRosa, the director of open learning and teaching collaborative at the public college.
Universities said it’s unclear whether students are skipping in-person classes because they fear getting sick, have lost momentum due to the mental toll of the pandemic, or are finding the remote classes more convenient.
Students at Plymouth State come for the residential college experience, but in the pandemic some have been forced to pick up more work to help parents who lost their jobs. For those students, remote classes are more convenient, DeRosa said.
Where?
Others may be feeling isolated or worried about their families getting sick and just couldn’t rally the energy to come to class in the winter, she said.
“We are underestimating the stress that students were under,” she said. “The convenience of the classes was a stress reduction,” but she worries that students who may need face-to-face interactions with professors and peers to learn may not be getting the necessary support by opting for remote classes.
Which leads to something else, but don't dwell on it (thankfully, my criminal pre$$ has not)!
Even in-person, the classes are a world away from what students have come to expect from the college experience. Attempting to blend teaching models sometimes has created surreal situations: students taking a class online from their dorms from a professor teaching at home, but with their faces and conversations projected onto computer screens in an empty classroom.
Students say they want in-person classes, and colleges are under pressure to offer that to justify the prices schools are charging, said Chris Marsicano, an assistant professor at Davidson College in North Carolina and founding director of the College Crisis Initiative, which has been tracking higher education’s response to the pandemic, but the reality is taking a toll, he said.
The only problem is, the "reality" is complete fiction.
It's ALL LIES, folks!
SORRY!
“Students got tired,” Marsicano said. “You have to keep your mask on all the time [inside classrooms], you’re making sure they were getting tested, it was exhausting.”
Marsicano said he commuted during the week last fall from his home in Nashville to North Carolina to teach, and attendance in his morning seminar slowly shrank until one day he was teaching to an empty room.
“Having driven eight hours to be in the class, I was mildly annoyed,” he said, but Northeastern officials say it’s too early to tell if the school’s social media campaign is bringing more students back to the classroom.
My advice is DON'T GO!
For Hannah Nivar, 19, a Northeastern sophomore, taking one in-person class this spring has made a difference. She took all remote classes last fall and didn’t realize until recently that she missed some of the social cues of being together in the same room, such as making eye contact with the professor or noticing when others raised their hands or nodded in agreement.
“We’re slowly easing into it,” Nivar said. “This is the new normal.”
That's so wonderful.
Related:
"Undergraduates will have to budget a bit more for tuition at Brown University this fall. The Corporation of Brown University approved a 2.85 percent increase to undergraduate, graduate, and medical school tuition and fees for the 2021-22 academic year on Saturday, bringing the total cost of attendance to $78,688 for the year. The increase was announced on the university’s website Monday. The university said the increase will provide nearly $16 million in revenue. The increase was recommended by the University Resources Committee, a committee of faculty, students, and senior administrators led by Chair and Provost Richard M. Locke......"
I'm $ure it is all worth it as ejookhazion becomes the exclusive product of societal managers.
Also see:
They believe he is in Georgia after he went their to vote for Biden, Warlock, and Ossoff!
Meanwhile, it's Last Rites at Holy Cross.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
May God watch after your children:
"Thousands of students in Boston have been stuck at home for nearly a year, dreaming of the day they can go back into school and leave their laptop screens behind, but when they finally return to classrooms over the next two months, many will find no escape from online learning. To serve both students in the classroom and those at home without hiring extra staff, hundreds of teachers in Boston Public Schools will instruct both groups simultaneously, with everyone logging onto Zoom or Google Classroom....."
Better face up to the fact that you are never going back, kids.
"Business executives band together to promote early childhood programs; A coalition of local employers wants to improve child care and early education in the state" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, February 8, 2021
About 70 Massachusetts employers have joined a new coalition aimed at promoting early childhood funding and policies at the state and federal level, as well as private-sector programs for working parents with young children.
Would that also be the same SECRET CABAL that "fortified" the election (props to Polly for that).
The leaders of the Massachusetts Business Coalition for Early Childhood Education are officially launching the effort this week, but it’s been in the works roughly 18 months. It’s the brainchild of Bob Rivers, the chief executive of Eastern Bank. Rivers began the legwork in 2019 by devoting time and resources from the bank and its foundation toward early childhood education causes. He pulled together cochairs for the effort, and subsequently began seeking businesses that would be willing to join.
Thank God the bankers are taking care of all of us, huh?
Rivers said the coalition’s main goal is to promote early childhood education, both to help relieve working parents and to better prepare the state’s kids when they grow up to join the workforce. These issues have only become more important since the COVID-19 pandemic scrambled many families’ traditional support systems, and will likely vex many employers as they try to bring their workers back to the office after a long hiatus.
“The impetus, broadly described, is really to advocate for and to help create a more robust system of early child care and education in Massachusetts,” said Rivers, one of the coalition’s five cochairs. “Right now, the system is very fragmented, and relatively underfunded compared to other aspects of the educational system, and has been particularly decimated in the midst of the pandemic.”
The coalition’s other cochairs are Jon Bernstein, regional president at PNC Bank; Linda Henry, chief executive of Boston Globe Media Partners; Roger Crandall, chief executive of MassMutual; and Bridget Long, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
OMG, it is another $elf-$erving, agenda-pu$hing piece masquerading as news!
The coalition’s companies vary significantly in size and industry. While there is a heavy concentration of Boston-area companies, Rivers hopes to attract more businesses from other parts of the state to join the coalition, such as early member MassMutual, headquartered in Springfield.
“It took us a while before we recruited businesses,” Rivers said. “We wanted to make sure we had the right leadership in place.”
Rivers said it’s too early to disclose the specific state and federal policies that the coalition will promote. He said the group plans to meet later this month to review a slate of policies, and would be able to share more details at that point. He also would like the coalition members to share best practices, in terms of how to support child care and education among the families of their own employees. Rivers expects the group to convene three or four times every year, with some members working on projects between those meetings.
Starting the $mell like Great Re$Et $tuff!
Rivers and his peers have not established the coalition as a separate organization. Instead, they plan to provide support from their own respective companies, at least for now. Along those lines, Eastern hired two prominent early childhood experts in 2019 as “foundation fellows”: Rahn Dorsey, a former education chief for the city of Boston, and Tom Weber, the former commissioner of the state Department of Early Education and Care. Both work for the Eastern Bank Charitable Foundation, and Weber will serve as the Massachusetts coalition’s executive director. The Massachusetts Business Roundtable is hosting the coalition’s website.
The coalition is drawing inspiration from previous business-backed efforts, such as the “Success by 6″ children’s advocacy initiative in Boston launched during the 1990s and a similar effort that began in Pennsylvania in 2010, called the Pennsylvania Early Learning Investment Commission, that’s still in operation today.
“In many ways, the initial call to action is more urgent now as employers try to bring their employees back to work [post-pandemic],” Rivers said. “There’s a real need for not only greater funding but greater infrastructure to support these small businesses [in particular].”
When they are "urgent" about something, it is time to dig in your heels.
Now $MILE!
"Something to smile about: Newton company’s transparent mask is a revelation" by Sandy MacDonald Globe Correspondent, February 8, 2021
A mask is a mask is a . . . potential impediment when you’re trying to decipher a torrent of words pouring from a toddler’s mouth. Or so I discovered when, after months of hyper-cautious isolation, I was finally adopted into my daughter’s “pod” with her 4-year-old twins.
As we embarked on jaunts to a vast, bucolic historical cemetery — the safest, greenest space we could think of — I realized that, in our time apart, the girls’ vocabulary had increased a thousandfold, in inverse proportion to my ability to decipher their nonstop stream-of-consciousness commentary. If we were going to re-establish clear lines of communication, I would need some kind of visual assist.
I looked into child-sized face shields — no help, because the girls would still have to cover up. A cursory Amazon search brought me to Rafi Nova, a small Newton company that offers “Smile Masks” in both adult and child sizes. The “smile” element is a transparent rectangle framing the mouth.
This is ILL!
Developing children should not be reducing their intake of oxygen while breathing in their own carbon monoxide and gunk.
The fact that the Globe promotes proves they don't care about your kids (unless its the sex trafficking they ignore that serve the ruling cla$$) and are downright evil.
I sprang for two pairs of each, large and small. Many satisfied months later, there’s only one downside that I can see to wearing a Rafi Nova smile mask: Everywhere you go, you’ll be barraged with questions: Where did you get it? How can I get one?
Curious to learn more about the company, I talked with co-founder Marissa Goldstein, who has quite the origin story.
She and her husband/partner, Adam Goldstein, were teenage sweethearts, prom dates at the Rivers School in Weston in 2003. A decade later, having married, they wandered around the world for six months and “fell in love” with Vietnam. Seeking a way to stay, Adam founded a consulting company, Timroon, which acts as a liaison for US businesses interested in manufacturing there.
The Goldsteins remained bi-continental even after their twins came along. Or perhaps I should say “twinses”? They have two sets, ages 5 and almost 3.
The Globe leaks Jewi$h $upremaci$m.
I know firsthand the kind of chaos twin toddlers can create. The idea of starting up a business while wrangling an entire quartet seems unimaginable. Undaunted, the Goldsteins introduced Rafi Nova in February 2020 with a line of backpacks and luggage decorated with ethically sourced, “up-cycled” Hmong embroidery.
It was maybe not the best time to start up a business predicated on the Goldsteins’ own passion for globetrotting. “Two weeks after launch,” Marissa Goldstein reminisces, “there was a stay-at-home order in Massachusetts and nobody was buying $200 travel bags.”
Rafi Nova — the name combines syllables from the names of the couple’s four children — had to “pivot” rapidly.
The idea for a transparent mask arose early on. Marissa Goldstein and the fledgling company’s marketing manager at the time were in the Goldsteins’ garage, fulfilling orders. “I kept saying, ‘I’m smiling behind the mask, but you can’t see it.” Her co-worker daylighted as a speech and language pathologist. “I have all these students who are deaf and hard of hearing,” Goldstein recalls her saying. “They aren’t going be able to wear masks, because they rely on lip-reading.”
“We’re always open to trying things,” says Goldstein, “and we are very quick with developing new products. Within a couple of weeks, we sent samples out to get feedback. We thought that the smile mask would be just for a small subset of the community that relies on lip-reading. Turns out, the same facial cues are vital to children’s education and communication.”
After they commissioned a fabric design for the see-through mask from deaf actress Millie Simmonds (“A Quiet Place”), the notion went viral: “Thousands of schools from all over the country were sending us purchase orders.”
Ravi Nova’s latest innovation, prompted by a customer inquiry and designed in concert with the Easter Seals organization, is a silk-lined mask designed for kids and adults with autism and sensory sensitivities in general. “It sits off the face so that you don’t feel it,” says Goldstein. “It’s very comfortable,” and when — may the day come soon! — the current crisis has abated?
“We started Rafi Nova with a mission to create products that get families out to do fun things,” she says. “Not necessarily traveling in Southeast Asia, but just like going to the park, to the zoo . . . doing things as a family that gets you out and about.”
I know two little girls and one grandmother who are very grateful to be able to do so.
Here they are:
Twins Eyva (left) and Noa Goldstein, 5-year-old daughters of Rafi Nova founders Adam and Marissa Goldstein, wear their Smile Masks (Courtesy of NBC10 Boston).
With all due respect, they look like sick little Jokers of Batman fame.
I hope the other kids don't make fun of them.
So what does their doctor have to say?
"Everyone loves Dr. Rick from those Progressive ads. He’s the creation of a Boston ad agency; The self-help coach keeps homeowners from turning into their parents — and helps them pronounce ‘quinoa.’ by Don Aucoin Globe Staff, February 9, 2021
At first, “Dr. Rick’' was just Rick, the mustached leader of a support group for people who found themselves suddenly “turning into my dad” after they became homeowners, but the creative team at Arnold Worldwide, the Boston-based advertising agency that devised that clever 2017 TV commercial for the Progressive insurance company, knew right away that they had struck gold with both the character and the actor who played him, Bill Glass.
So they built a series of spots around Dr. Rick, and they have turned out to be some of the most inspired TV commercials in years. The goal is to raise awareness of the homeowners’ insurance sold by Progressive — not, on its face, fertile ground for comedy, but from that unpromising soil Arnold has created an original and endearing addition to television’s gallery of quirky ad characters.
At Arnold, the term “parent-a-morphosis” is used to describe the made-up but completely plausible-sounding malady in the Dr. Rick ads, in which new homeowners struggle against the tidal pull of transforming into their parents once they get a mortgage. “Even though it’s a fake affliction, it’s a ridiculous construct — he’s a doctor for an affliction that doesn’t exist, and we all know that — it feels true because the story’s been told in the right way, that’s relatable,” said Sean McBride, the chief creative officer of Arnold Worldwide, in an interview over Zoom.
They really are in your face with their CV $cam, aren't they?
Indeed, both the gimmick and the genius of the Dr. Rick ads is that viewers are likely to see both their parents and themselves in them, at least if they’re being honest.....
When are you guys going to start being honest?
Related:
"Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Assembly on Thursday abruptly canceled a vote to repeal Democratic Governor Tony Evers’s mask mandate in the face of broad criticism from the state’s health, school, and business leaders and out of concern it would jeopardize more than $49 million in federal aid. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he still believed the Assembly would vote one day to repeal the mandate, but that lawmakers wanted to “pause and do our due diligence’' to ensure no federal money would be lost. Democratic minority leader Gordon Hintz heralded the change of heart. “It’s a win for the public, a win for public health,” Hintz said. The surprise change in direction for the Assembly came after news broke hours before the scheduled vote that repealing the governor’s emergency health order and undoing the mask mandate would also jeopardize federal food assistance for low-income people. The COVID-19 aid bill passed by Congress last year gives states the federal money but only if they have emergency health orders in effect, a memo from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau said. This month alone, nearly 243,000 Wisconsin households received $49.3 million in federal assistance, the memo said. The Senate on Thursday tried to fix the problem. It passed a bill with a provision that would give the governor authority to issue emergency health orders only for the purpose of accessing the federal money, but that was attached to a larger COVID-19 bill that was at risk of an Evers veto because it contains provisions that would prohibit employers from mandating workers get vaccinated and give Republican legislators control over federal COVID-19 relief dollars. Vos said he thought that bill would solve the problem, but wanted to make sure before scheduling the mask mandate repeal for a vote......"
They USED to call that EXTORTION and TYRANNY, and asked if he thought the Assembly would still vote at some point to repeal the order, Vos said he “believes we will.”
Now they want you to wear TWO MASKS:
"Some experts have recently called on Americans to up their mask game amid a worsening coronavirus pandemic, by wearing two masks or purchasing better-quality masks. Some have even suggested that the federal government should send out high-quality masks to all, but the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation remains the same: People should wear cloth masks of two or more layers, and masks should fit snugly over people’s noses and mouths. Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s top medical adviser on the coronavirus, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, stuck with those recommendations in a CNN town hall on Wednesday night....."
That's only the latest Fraudci flip-flop on masks, but just wear a mask and maintain 6 feet distance, will ya'?
"Wearing a mask — any mask — reduces the risk of infection with the coronavirus, but wearing a more tightly fitted surgical mask or layering a cloth mask atop a surgical mask can vastly increase protections to the wearer and others, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. New research by the agency shows transmission of the virus can be reduced by up to 96.5 percent if both an infected individual and an uninfected individual wear tightly fitted surgical masks or a cloth-and-surgical-mask combination. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, announced the findings during Wednesday’s White House coronavirus briefing and coupled them with a plea for Americans to wear “a well-fitting mask” that has two or more layers. “With cases, hospitalizations, and deaths still very high, now is not the time to roll back mask requirements,” she said.
I'm going to interject here and say WHEN THEN?
Of course, the answer would be NEVER but they don't say that.
“The bottom line is this: Masks work, and they work when they have a good fit and are worn correctly.” Virus-related deaths, which resurged sharply in the United States in November and still remain high, appear to be in a steady decline; new virus cases and hospitalizations began to drop last month, but researchers warn that a more contagious virus variant first found in Britain is doubling roughly every 10 days in the United States. The CDC cautioned last month that it could become the dominant variant in the nation by March. As of Feb. 1, 14 states and the District of Columbia had implemented universal masking mandates; masking is now mandatory on federal property and on domestic and international transportation, but while masks are known to both reduce respiratory droplets and aerosols exhaled by infected wearers and to protect the uninfected wearer, their effectiveness varies widely because of air leaking around the edges of the mask. “Any mask is better than none,” said Dr. John Brooks, lead author of the new CDC study, but, he added, the new research shows how to enhance the protection. The agency’s new laboratory experiments are based on the ideas put forth by Linsey Marr, an expert in aerosol transmission at Virginia Tech, and Dr. Monica Gandhi, who studies infectious diseases at the University of California San Francisco....."
If so, natural herd immunity is fast approaching.
Related:
ARE YOU SICK of the LYING CDC yet and the pre$$ that fronts for them?
I KNOW I AM!!!
"State educators, parents welcome CDC guidance on reopening classrooms" by Naomi Martin and Jeremy C. Fox Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, February 12, 2021
Massachusetts educators and families welcomed updated guidelines released Friday from the nation’s top public health agency that say in-person schooling can resume safely with masks, social distancing, and other coronavirus containment strategies.
With a variant doubling every ten days?
They WANT THE KIDS SICK so they can KIDNAP THEM under the guise of CV QUARANTINE!
WAKE UP, PARENTS!!!
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new guidance for getting students back to classrooms said that vaccination of teachers, though important, is not a prerequisite for reopening, and there is strong evidence now that schools can safely reopen, especially at lower grade levels, but the agency’s guidance is only that. The CDC cannot force schools to reopen because such decisions are made at the state and local level, and CDC officials were careful to say they are not calling for a mandate that all US schools be reopened.
Yeah, now that TRUMP is GONE you can COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE!!!!
The new federal guidance includes many of the same measures backed by the CDC prior to the beginning of the school year last fall, but it suggests them more forcefully. It emphasizes that all of the recommendations must be implemented strictly and consistently to keep school safe.
It also provides more detailed suggestions about what type of schooling should be offered given different levels of virus transmission, with differing advice for elementary, middle, and high schools.
Keri Rodrigues, founder of Massachusetts Parents United, an education advocacy group, praised the CDC’s clarity that schools should be the first facilities to open and the last to close amid the pandemic. Black and brown families are less likely to feel comfortable sending their children to school due to the systems breaking their trust, she said, and white families are starting to feel similarly that the decisions around schools are based more on politics than science.
Yeah, WE ALL SEE IT!
“We don’t trust a lot of the folks that aren’t experts and aren’t the CDC to be calling the shots,” she said. “That’s why it’s really important that we have direct guidance from these guys today.”
Who knew TEACHERS could be SO STUPID!!
Now roll up that $leeve:
"Teachers unions propose pilot program to rapidly vaccinate school employees; Unions want pilot program to begin before educators are eligible for vaccines" by Felicia Gans Globe Staff, February 10, 2021
A coalition of labor organizations, including Massachusetts’ two largest teachers unions, proposed Wednesday that the state support a pilot program to rapidly vaccinate school employees at up to 20 high-needs school districts starting this month.
The organizations want the pilot program, called the Last Mile Vaccine Delivery Proposal, to be launched while the state is vaccinating people ages 65 and older; only people 75 and older are currently eligible. Once more vaccine doses become available, the program can “be scaled up to administer shots to school staff across the state as quickly as possible,” they wrote in a letter Wednesday to Marylou Sudders, the state’s health and human services secretary, and Monica Bharel, commissioner of the state Department of Public Health.
The program would initially be rolled out in 10 to 20 low-income communities and communities of color, where the coronavirus pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll and where many students have been learning remotely since last spring. Participation in the pilot program would be limited to communities with high coronavirus transmission rates and a large number of low-income students, the groups wrote.
“Getting students who need in‐person learning back to school safely is an issue of equity,” wrote the leaders of nine different organizations in their cosigned letter. The proposal was sent by representatives from the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, the Boston Teachers Union, the Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, UFCW 1459, Massachusetts AFL‐CIO, AFSCME Council 93, and United Steelworkers.
I'm so sick of the buzzwords covering the implementation of a medical surveillance dystopia and corporate totalitariani$m that will essentially be Communi$m.
We will have equity, all right. It will be 99.99% serf!
“The education of our students, preK through college, has been badly disrupted by COVID‐19,” they wrote. “Hundreds of thousands of students are being taught remotely some or all of the time, some with great success while others continue to struggle, and while no child and family is left untouched by COVID‐ 19, the disparate impact of the coronavirus on people of color is mirrored in their schools.”
K-12 educators are currently slated to receive the coronavirus vaccine as part of the third priority group in Phase 2 of the state’s vaccination plan. The state began Phase 2 on Feb. 1, making people 75 and older eligible for the vaccine.
The next group to become eligible — which is the group immediately before educators and other specific essential workers — will be people who are 65 and older and those who have 2 or more comorbidities. They were moved ahead of educators in the vaccination priority list last month, a change that alarmed teachers unions at the time.
They should be thankful.
In their joint letter Wednesday, the various groups expressed concern that there is “no state-approved plan for how to vaccinate school employees.”
The Last Mile Vaccine Delivery Proposal, as the pilot program is called, was designed in part by infection control company Mascon Medical, which would be responsible for locating vaccination sites, contracting personnel to operate the sites, and working with municipal partners to make it all work, the organizations wrote.
Nothing like $erving your$elf in the midst of a $camdemic, 'eh?
Local firefighters and EMTs would administer the vaccines and provide any other needed medical care. All the program needs before it can launch, the groups wrote, is the state’s support.
A trial run of the Last Mile Vaccine Delivery service began operating last week at locations in Chelsea and Quincy where Brewster Ambulance EMTs vaccinated eligible people in the community.
The groups requested a meeting with state leaders to discuss the program this week. The state’s COVID-19 Command Center did not immediately respond to the Globe’s request for comment.
We have a CV Command Center!
The organizations urged Massachusetts leaders to move fast on the their proposal, noting that the state is lagging behind many others that have already begun vaccinating school staff members.
“It would be a turnkey operation, taking the burden off of state and municipal leaders,” the groups wrote. “This would save municipalities from having to reinvent the wheel in each community.”
You mean latch key, right?
At least the kids don't spread it in school:
"The theory was compelling: Could children be less vulnerable to the new coronavirus because they carry antibodies to other coronaviruses that cause the common cold? Might that also help explain why some people infected with the new virus have mild symptoms while others are more severely affected? The notion gained traction particularly among people who thought it would swiftly bring about herd immunity. A study in the journal Science, published in December, gave the hypothesis a strong boost, but a new study published on Tuesday in the journal Cell found that the theory does not hold up. Based on experiments with live virus and with hundreds of blood samples drawn before and after the pandemic, the research refutes the idea that antibodies to seasonal coronaviruses have any impact on the new coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2."
It's enough to make you want to run away:
"Missing Belmont teen found after search involving police, FBI" by Travis Andersen and Charlie McKenna Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, January 28, 2021
A Belmont teen who had been missing since Jan. 17 was found safe Thursday and reunited with her family, capping a search that had involved both local police and the FBI, authorities said.
Belmont police confirmed in a brief statement Thursday that 15-year-old Nya Brown had been found.
The statement said she “has been located and is reunited with her family. The Belmont Police would like to thank the numerous law enforcement agencies and individuals who helped to locate Nya. There will be no further comments from the Belmont Police on this incident.”
Kristen Setera, a spokeswoman for the FBI Boston field office, which had assisted in the search, released a separate statement Thursday afternoon.
“Nya was safely recovered earlier this afternoon by investigators with the Belmont Police Department, the FBI Boston Division’s Child Exploitation-Human Trafficking Task Force, and the Arlington, Boston, and Dedham police departments,” Setera wrote. “She has been reunited with her family. We would like to thank the public for its assistance and all of you for publicizing this case. As it remains an ongoing investigation, no further comment will be made at this time.”
The announcement came hours after Nya’s mother, Heather Glassco, had taken to Facebook to post an urgent plea for her daughter’s safe return.
“I have sent out an ARMY to find you Nya,” Glassco posted Thursday. “I will never stop. If you are reading this and you have my daughter I will never stop. It will always be this way. LET HER GO! She is loved beyond measure. She is a BRIGHT STAR. She is my light! She will shine through whatever this is and we will get her back. We will find her. She is not worth your time. WE WILL NOT STOP! Believe that.”
Following news that Nya had been located, Glassco posted, “We got her!”
Found her in a spider hole, did they?
WTF was all that about?
Whatever it was, THAT REPORT made NO SENSE AT ALL and they now have a suspect in custody.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Hacking attacks plague Massachusetts schools; Remote learning has been disrupted in multiple districts, forcing schools to pay thousands of dollars in cyber-protection" by Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff, February 10, 2021
It’s difficult enough to teach schoolchildren online during the COVID-19 pandemic, but a relentless series of hacking attacks have crippled remote learning efforts at several Massachusetts school districts, forcing them to spend thousands on security systems to fend off the vandals.
The first question you learn in $chool is cui bono.
That's your perp.
“It’s beyond frustrating for our students and our teachers and our parents,” said Jeff Marsden, superintendent of the Medfield school system, which has seen its network disrupted by intermittent attacks that began about two weeks ago.
Similar incidents have plagued Massachusetts school districts since the beginning of the academic year. Schools in Tyngsborough and Sandwich were stricken with network attacks last October; the Norton public school network came under fire in late January and administrators have only recently regained control, and in Winthrop last Thursday, an attack disrupted town and school computer services. Officials said the attackers did not gain access to student, employee, or financial data.
In Duxbury, school superintendent John Antonucci said its systems have suffered “intermittent Internet outages” since late December, but in a rare success, the school tracked down the culprits.
“We identified them as members of our school community,” Antonucci said. He declined to name the hackers, but said Duxbury would not bring criminal charges. In a letter to parents, Antonucci said the district has “initiated a disciplinary process for all involved.”
In most cases, it’s likely the perpetrators will never be caught. “I think what we’re seeing is a lot of free time by some people who try to figure out how to create havoc,” said Norton public school system superintendent Joseph Baeta, “and it wouldn’t shock me if it was a student.”
WTF is this?
They think we are f**king stoopid, or just don't care.
What reprehensible creatures!
A December report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation cited increases in attacks on school computer networks during the pandemic. These include “distributed denial-of-service” or DDoS attacks, the kind being launched against so many local school networks.
In a DDoS attack, hundreds or thousands of computers fire a massive stream of Internet data at a targeted network, overwhelming the network so that legitimate data traffic can’t get through. It’s a crude way to shut down a network, requiring little technical sophistication. There are even companies that hire out attacks, or sell software for DIYers.
EXCU$E ME?
Who would they be?
Russian, Chinese, or Iranian no doubt, right?
Wait, they would have been mentioned so it must be from a "friendly" source (Israel or the UK?).
That is why we get gibberish and no charges!
As a result, “the ability to launch attacks has been democratized,” said Patrick Sullivan, chief technology officer for security strategies at Akamai Technologies in Cambridge, which provides services that block DDoS attacks.
Yeah, "democracy" is now bad.
Mark Ostrowski, East Coast engineering chief for data security firm Check Point Software, said some cybercriminals launch DDoS attacks to distract network operators away from more harmful invasions. “The DDoS is what everybody’s focusing on,” said Ostrowski, “but they’re really doing something else.”
One common scheme is installing “ransomware” programs that lock up vital school files and can only be unlocked if the school pays a ransom.
Like dropping off a suitcase of cash?
Attacks can also be launched by disgruntled students looking to get out of class. ”It’s kind of the equivalent of pulling the fire alarm,” Sullivan said.
That is GARBAGE as they BLAME STUDENTS!
If they can do this, they sure are smart kids!
In Duxbury, school officials found suspicious online searches performed on a laptop that had been issued by the school system. “They were search terms like ‘can you go to jail for a DDoS attack?’ ” said Antonucci. Investigators found that the attack had been carried out by a DDoS-for-hire service that charged just $25.
Pelosi's or Hillary's?
DDoS attacks are also expensive to deter. When the Norton school network was first hit during the last week of January, the district’s Internet provider Comcast assigned a team to thwart the attack, at an initial cost of $13,000. Then came three more days of additional work, at around $2,000 per day. Finally, the school signed up for Comcast’s full-time anti-DDoS service, priced at an annual rate of $32,000 a year.
Comcast later agreed to waive its initial fees and charge only for the annual subscription service. A Comcast spokesman also said that the company offers 90 days of DDoS protection to schools at no charge before the annual rate kicks in. Duxbury’s Antonucci said his school system is being billed $2,500 a month, or $30,000 a year, for Comcast’s DDoS defense service.
So it is Comca$t that is benefitting?
HMMMMMMM.
Better watch my mouth since they are the ISP.
Related:
They are under fire as the suit, filed in US District Court, claims that the all at-large election system dilutes the vote of communities of color and deprives them of an equal opportunity to select candidates to represent them. The majority-white electorate “has all but extinguished minorities’ opportunities to elect their chosen representatives,” and the only problem is they have no sense of their own history thanks to the schools.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Biden’s goal to reopen schools meets high-stakes political test" By Laura Meckler and Annie Linskey Washington Post, February 11, 2021
WASHINGTON — One of President Biden’s central campaign promises sounded simple: reopen most schools within his first 100 days in office. The politics and the logistics have proved far more complicated.
The outcome is significant for Biden, with much of the country eager for schools to reopen, but politically, it’s dicey, as he is forced to balance the interests and wishes of many parents and children against the fears of teachers and their unions.
Many parents, including those in politically crucial suburbs, crave the normalcy that will come with the reopening of classrooms, which have been closed for nearly a year in much of the country, but few groups did more to push Biden’s candidacy than teachers unions, which have resisted returning to school buildings in communities across the country.
“I think it’s time for schools to reopen safely — safely,” he said in an interview with CBS News, repeating the word “safely” for emphasis. In case his loyalties are not clear, he often mentions that first lady Jill Biden is a teacher.
Biden has repeatedly said he won’t push schools to open until his administration produces new safety guidelines and until Congress provides billions of dollars to implement the recommendations. Now, he is on the verge of getting both the guidelines, expected as soon as Friday, and the funding, but it is unclear whether that will be enough to bring recalcitrant teachers and their unions along or how hard the president will push them.
Some following the debate closely say that in recent weeks, Biden and his aides have appeared careful not to upset the unions.
"I think unions are a very powerful constituency for Biden, and I think that there’s a desire to listen to and coordinate on messaging on reopening schools," said Sasha Pudelski, advocacy director for AASA, the School Superintendents Association. As for Biden’s 100-day pledge, she said: "He’s definitely had to walk it back a little bit."
I'm so glad he is beholden to the unions.
Since making his 100-day goal, Biden and his aides have repeatedly loosened their definition of an open school, making it easier to meet his target.
Schools where children are in buildings even one day a week will count as "open." Opening "most" schools means 51 percent, a metric the nation has probably already reached, and high schools, which are the most likely to be online only, aren’t counted in the measurement at all.
That's all this government does is fudge numbers, be it CV or anything else!!
Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, who is close to the president, said he believes the Biden team is feeling discomfort over pushing teachers to go back to work.
Not all parents want their children back in school. Parents of color, in particular, whose communities have been hit hard by the pandemic, have been hesitant, but the momentum in recent days has been toward a return to school, with teachers in Chicago agreeing to a deal with the city after weeks of threatening a strike. In addition, more teachers are being vaccinated every day, giving them some comfort. A survey by the National Education Association (NEA) conducted from Jan. 27 to Feb. 3 found that 18 percent of its members had received at least the first of two shots.
Nothing about adverse reactions or deaths, of course.
It's all good!
Teacher, educate thyself!
As early as Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to issue much-anticipated guidelines for schools to safely operate in person.
In a sign of how carefully the administration is tending to the many stakeholders, the CDC met with more than 70 organizations as they crafted the upcoming guidelines, according to a person familiar with the outreach who was not authorized to discuss it. Groups ranged from the country’s two major teachers unions — whose presidents met directly with Biden’s CDC head — to organizations focused on children with disabilities, parents groups, and even a group focused on charter schools, but the CDC guidelines will not be significantly different from the bottom-line message delivered by the agency under the Trump administration, a person familiar with the planning said.
Another seamless transition to another president, HMMMM!
The agency is set to again advise that schools can reopen safely, notwithstanding infection rates in the surrounding community, as long as steps are taken to mitigate transmission. Those steps include mandating masks, keeping distance between students and staff, adopting protocols for hand-washing, cleaning facilities, ventilation in classrooms, and contact tracing when exposures occur.
Now the threshold for quarantine is simple exposure?
What if you are NOT SICK and TEST NEGATIVE?
The CDC will also encourage states to prioritize teachers for vaccination, something the agency has already recommended, but will not set it as a prerequisite for opening.....
Related:
"Mayor Lori Lightfoot says Chicago Public Schools plans to proceed with the reopening of elementary and middle schools on Monday despite the failure to reach an agreement with the teachers union. School officials and the Chicago Teachers Union have been locked in negotiations for days to reopen schools closed in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The teachers union has opposed the school district’s plan over concerns for the health of its members. Lightfoot said late Friday that the two sides have agreed on several issues. The union rejected Lightfoot’s contentions, saying in a tweet that the mayor “wrecked it all” in the final hours. The union wants a phased-in return with voluntary vaccination, testing for students and staff and accommodations for teachers whose household members are at higher risk of the coronavirus. In-person classes were canceled this week for about 3,200 pre-K and special education students when teachers refused to work in classrooms. Officials say they expect those students to return to class on Monday."
Also see:
I would say transfer to a Catholic school and summer camp, but somehow I don't think you want to put those two together.
