Teachers at War Against NYC Department of Education's Mandate That Employees Must Get Vaxxed by Sept. 27 2021

 

A teacher protesting COVID-19 vaccination mandates in New York City schools on August 25, 2021.

AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

A new war has started.

The Department of Education has a mandate that all unvaccinated staffers who do not have at least one shot against COVID-19 by September 27 will be removed from payroll, no exceptions - medical or religious - will be allowed.

Teachers have hired a lawyer to fight this.

See here:

Vaccine Mandate Litigation Information

If you work for the Department and have issues with getting the COVID vaccine, call them.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, Advocatz.com
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UFT President Michael Mulgrew

NYC teachers union ready for war over demand to pull all unvaxxed from payroll

by Selim Algar, NY POST, September 2, 2021

The United Federation of Teachers is gearing up for a war with the city over the fate of more than 15,000 educators who have yet to receive the COVID-19 vaccination — with classes set to begin in days.

Teachers union chief Michael Mulgrew said Thursday that City Hall has vowed to remove all unvaccinated staffers from payroll without exception — including those with religious or medical objections.

“Our impact negotiations with the city have gone to a very bad place,” Mulgrew told reporters after a Town Hall with members. “It’s clear that the two sides are very very far apart when it comes to this vaccine mandate.”

The union said it would now seek to arbitrate the issue along with other labor groups.

While he has consistently urged members to get the shot, Mulgrew said the city’s position was unreasonably rigid — especially for those with legitimate medical concerns.

The union chief said that staffers who are allergic to the jabs or have compromised immune systems should not be financially penalized.

“The city’s position is to remove them from payroll.” he said. “That is disgusting as far as I’m concerned. And it does not follow the law. The law says that these accommodations and exemptions have to be in place.”

The UFT said the city’s policy would also strip unvaccinated teachers of their health insurance.

During his meeting with members, Mulgrew focused on religious and medical accommodations.

But he later told The Post that the procedure for teachers who don’t receive either exemption but still refuse the vaccine is still being negotiated.

While he was confident that more teachers would get vaccinated ahead of the school year, which begins on Sept. 13, Mulgrew acknowledged the specter of staffing shortages — and said the city has not adequately prepared for those contingencies.

Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross-Porter reiterated this week that substitutes could be marshaled if necessary.

In backing the vaccine mandate for all public school workers, Mayor Bill de Blasio has argued that it would help to combat outbreaks and minimize school interruptions.

“We know this is going to help ensure that everyone is safe,” he said in announcing the plan.

Some union factions have demanded blanket vaccinations, arguing that those who don’t get the shot are putting their colleagues and others at risk.

DOE staffers have until September 27 to get their first shot and an agency spokesperson said that an accord is within reach.

“The health and safety of New York City children and the protection of our employees is at the core of the vaccine mandate,” said spokesperson Danielle Filson. “We will continue to negotiate with the UFT to reach a successful agreement because that is what’s best for our school communities.”

As of last week, the city said that 72 percent of city teachers and 63 percent of all school staffers are confirmed to have been vaccinated.

The city has said that the number of vaccinated teachers is likely higher than the official numbers because many have gotten the shot through private doctors or out of town.

The UFT estimated the number of jabbed educators to be 80 percent.

Mulgrew acknowledged during the Town Hall that the vaccine mandate has riven his ranks, and asked members to dial down the internal rancor — especially on social media.

“Please be respectful of each other,” he said in urging unity ahead of the new academic year.

NYC Says $900M Deferred Compensation Payout To Teachers is Cancelled

 

                             Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers.                                       Robert Miller

NYC cancels $900M deferred payout to teachers, cites financial crisis

Julia Marsh and Vincent Barone, NYPOST, October 8, 2020

The de Blasio administration has canceled a long-scheduled $900 million deferred compensation payout to current and former teachers, citing the coronavirus-induced financial crisis.

The payout due this month — the last in the series of five stemming from union negotiations between 2009 and 2011 — was called off as the city attempts to limit the number of administration-wide layoffs, First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan wrote to the teacher’s union Thursday.

“It is the city’s desire to avoid the necessity for layoffs, and to make a retroactive payment at this time would therefore be fiscally irresponsible,” Fuleihan wrote in a letter to Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers.

“The City regrets having to take this necessary action, particularly in light of the assistance and cooperation of the union and its members in opening schools over the past several weeks,” he added.

The canceled payment comes, as Fuleihan referenced, while teachers put their lives at risk returning to classrooms for blended learning this school year as the pandemic rages on.

Mulgrew said the union will go directly to arbitration to fight for the wages and that an arbitration hearing was scheduled for Friday.

“I will go into arbitration tomorrow. We will present that case, which is very simply: we want the money that you owe us now,” Mulgrew said in a video message to union members.

“We all understand that we’re in a pandemic; that our economy has basically been wrecked–both here in the city, at the state and nationally — but this money is money that we have already earned…from over 10 years ago,” he added, “and the city needs to make good on their obligation.”

City Hall spokesman Bill Neidhardt recognized the work of teachers during a chaotic school year but said the decision was necessary to preserve jobs.

“This action is necessary to avoid painful layoffs,” he said in a statement, “but make no mistake, New York City recognizes our teachers go above and beyond for our students and schools every day.”

New Deal Between the DOE asnd UFT: If You Can Teach Remotely, Stay Home

 

                            UFT President Michael Mulgrew and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio

Wow. It's not often we see the NYC Department of Education/Mayor Educational Complex reverse their crazy policies so quickly, if at all, but late friday this happened. Sort of.

Now, teachers who were told to go into their school and teach remotely their students (HUH?") can teach remotely without going in to their school. 

Amazing. Someone might be thinking over there.

In another week or two, we will see 100% total remote. That's the only way to have everyone safe.

Betsy Combier

betsy.combier@gmail.com

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New deal with DOE lets UFT teachers work from home if not needed on-site

Selim Algar, NY POST, September 25, 2020

The Department of Education will now allow many more teachers to work from home this upcoming school year as part of a new deal with their union, officials said late Friday.

Previously, any teacher who was not a given a specific coronavirus exemption was required to be present in school each day — even when teaching remote classes without kids present.

But the United Federation of Teachers pushed back on that in recent weeks and ultimately won the major concession.

“The DOE will be instructing principals that all UFT-represented employees in all job titles who have no on-site duties or responsibilities have the option to work remotely,” the union said in a letter to members Friday.

The DOE had already given roughly 16,000 teachers – or 21 percent of the citywide total – coronavirus medical exemptions that will allow them to work from home this year.

“Supervisors may require UFT employees to remain on-site on an as-needed basis only,” read the UFT missive.

The union said the allowances will “keep us safer and reduce the traffic on overextended Wi-Fi networks” within schools, according to the letter.

Teachers who are primary caregivers and have medically vulnerable family members at home will be given priority for the expanded pool of remote-only slots.

n addition, all parent-teacher conferences — normally held face-to-face on school grounds — will be conducted remotely this year, the union said.

The deal will also bar principals from compelling teachers to live stream their on-site classes to kids learning remotely.

Facing heavy union opposition, Mayor de Blasio has been pushing for a partial reopening of city schools, arguing that kids needed to resume that aspect of their former lives — even if in a limited fashion.

DeBlasio has also asserted that remote learning is inherently inferior to classroom instruction and that prolonged absence from school will deepen learning deficits.

But teacher groups vigorously resisted a return to classrooms, arguing that conditions are still too risky and that DOE preparations have been inadequate.

Some UFT factions have charged the DOE with failing to provide proper protective gear or offering reliable COVID-19 testing procedures.

About 100 DOE employees died from COVID-19 last year, the agency reported.

In parrying union objections, De Blasio has recently highlighted that only 0.3 percent of roughly 17,000 city teachers who have taken coronavirus tests have come up positive.

Roughly 540,000 city kids are expected to begin a hybrid learning model this next week that will have them alternate between home and building instruction.

bout 460,000 have opted for a remote-only format.

Parents who chose the blended model expressed surprise and dismay last week when the DOE revealed that there was no guarantee that their remote classes would even be led, in real-time, by a teacher guiding them online.

With school populations split up to enable social distancing, the number of classes in most schools has multiplied.

That in turn has created staffing shortages across the city that the DOE has been scrambling to fill in recent weeks.

“These common-sense policies will help keep our school communities safe while enabling you to do your work,” UFT chief Michael Mulgrew told members Friday of the new concession.

                                     NYC Chancellor Richard Carranza [photo: Paul Martinka]

Principals blast Carranza’s ‘failed leadership’ in last-minute deal with teachers

Selim Algar and Susan Edelman, NY POST, September 26, 2020

The city principals’ union is blasting Chancellor Richard Carranza’s “failed leadership” for inking a new last-minute agreement to let many more teachers work from home.

But it means that principals will now have to redo their schools’ schedules yet again — days before in-person classes for students in K to 12 are set to begin next week.

“It causes more revisions at the 11th hour,” a Brooklyn principal told The Post. “This is a programming cluster–k.”

Under the last-minute deal, supervisors may require teachers to remain on-site “on an as-needed basis only.”

The DOE has already granted 16,025 teachers — 21% of the citywide total — coronavirus medical exemptions that will allow them to work from home.

Previously, any teacher without an exemption was required to be in school each day — even when teaching remote classes to kids learning from home. The policy has been challenged in court.

But the United Federation of Teachers argued against the rule, and finally won the concession.

The Council of Supervisors and Administrators, which represents principals, issued a blistering statement on Saturday, complaining they were left out of the loop.

“The Chancellor and his team have once again demonstrated a complete lack of respect for school leaders as we still wait for the DOE to release information regarding the new memorandum they signed just before close of business yesterday, an agreement the press has already reported on,” the CSA said.

“It astounds us that they seemingly had no plans to notify and debrief principals, who must now somehow find a way to implement their new agreement, before it was distributed widely.”

The statement concludes: “CSA will now be calling for an emergency executive board meeting, and we will share more on our public response to the DOE’s failed leadership as soon as we are able.”

David Bloomfield a Brooklyn College and CUNY grad center education professor, said the CSA statement conveys a crisis:

“Principals are now in open revolt, teachers confused, and parents at wits end over the constant policy shifts that make attention to learning almost impossible,” he told The Post. “Poor planning, a mayor and chancellor disconnected from the field, and flawed messaging make unsubstantiated rumors of Carranza’s resignation and all-remote instruction for grades 6-12 sound more and more plausible — and maybe a relief.”

City Councilman Mark Treyger, education committee chair, tweeted a text he received from a principal: “I can’t do this anymore. I’m not OK. I can’t look my community in the eye and tell them with a straight face that we’re OK. I want to quit.”

Also Saturday, a “heartbroken” Gina Battista, the principal of Tottenville HS on Staten Island sent a letter to families announcing her decision to start the new year all remotely — giving up on Mayor de Blasio’s plan to give in-school instruction to students one to three days a week.

“Tottenville HS would need an excess of additional teachers that is just not presently available,” Battista wrote. However, all students will get live instruction online, she added.

The DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

UFT President Mike Mulgrew is Angry, and Confirms Why Members Are Right To Fight The Department of Education

UFT President Michael Mulgrew

Youtube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJBzW5-0Ilk&fbclid=IwAR2rOakOEEzMLaI6-L9dKHYCW_1CVJBPZSmr9QAMXk8-rRAIMqIrqgD576g

 I congratulate UFT President Mike Mulgrew on a great youtube rant on Friday afternoon, September 11, 2020.

He points to the fact that the NYC Department of Education has not been honest with the protections promised for teachers in NYC schools.

He cites a lack of transparency by Department heads, who should not be hiding very important COVID-19 illnesses and job vacancies. And more

My only comment would be that he asks everyone to rely on their chapter leaders. I wish that I could agree. However, although most chapter leaders do a spectacular job, all are not given job protection by the UFT when a principal doesn't like being exposed for doing something wrong.

It's so easy to argue that someone is guilty of "incompetence" or "misconduct" when what the Principal really is doing is trying to remove a great teacher from the school payroll after he/she blows the whistle for something that the principal did that was wrong, or in an unlawful manner. Throughout the past 20+ years of doing advocacy work for teachers, educators, staff, parents, and students I have seen cunning moves by DOE administrators that are expertly designed to disguise prejudice, discrimination, aggravated harassment, etc. These ugly moves make the challenge of defending the victim all that more difficult. But not impossible.

Please, Mike, make Chapter Leaders immune to prosecution and/or retaliation while they act in line with their CL duties? 

Thank you,

Betsy Combier

betsy.combier@gmail.com

Editor, ADVOCATZ.com

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This is what you could use to back up a legal action to teach remotely and/or sue the Department of Education:

Michael Mulgrew - Message to UFT Members - September 11th, 2020

Teachers union, medical experts, elected officials, and parent and community groups: Individual schools deemed unsafe must remain closed

Principals Blast the NYC DOE For Handing Out Safety Equipment That is "Cheap Black-Market Crap" PPE

NYC Department of Education Confirms 19 Coronavirus Cases in City Schools

Two Employees at PS 811X and 17 Other Schools Test Positive For COVID-19, Close For 24 Hours

Part 155 Regulations (Educational Facilities)

COVID-19 Fears Bring Mass Teacher Resignations, Student Protests, and Lawsuits in New York State

The DOE’s plan fails NYC students and teachers – a Teacher’s Letter to Anyone Listening

Officials renew calls to close ‘unsafe’ NYC school with air flow 

issues

'An Open Window's Not Gonna Cut It': Ventilation Expert Warns Teachers About Classroom COVID Risks

NYC principals union warns of staffing crisis amid school reopenings

370 NYC school buildings inspected in 2 days, status of each school to be listed online: de Blasio

Reopen NYC: Schools reopening plan 'unsafe,' teachers and students say

DOE refuses to reveal number of teachers, school workers sickened by coronavirus

DOE keeping secret a full list of schools with COVID-infected teachers

by Susan Edelman, NYPOST, September 12, 2020

While trying to bolster confidence in the planned school reopening, the city Department of Education won’t reveal a full list of schools where teachers who returned to work last week have tested positive for COVID-19.

The DOE also would not say whether parents or guardians at the affected schools would be notified.

As the number of teachers who test positive grew — at least 24 as of Friday — some co-workers say they were not notified or contacted by city disease detectives when staffers reported the infections.

Lynn Shon, a teacher at MS 88 in Brooklyn, tweeted Saturday that she and fellow staffers heard for the first time that morning from the city’s Test & Trace program — four days after being exposed to a colleague who tested positive for COVID.

“It’s unacceptable the lag between when we were exposed and when we were directly contacted by the city,” Shon told The Post.

A Bronx teacher told The Post she learned only by asking around that a teacher at a school in her building, PS 168, had tested positive. She saw staffers at that school leaving early on Thursday, but the school was open Friday.

“No notice went out. They are trying to hide it, going about business as usual,’ the teacher said.

Nequan McLean, a dad and president of Community Education Council 16 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, said he learned Thursday that a teacher at MS 267 had tested positive.

“There has been no official notification given out at the school. Everyone is back today,” he said Friday.

The parent advisory group voted 8-0 during an emergency meeting Thursday night to “take legal action” to stop the DOE from opening District 16 schools because officials did not turn over reports on ventilation and other building conditions. The group has retained a lawyer.

“We don’t feel like our schools are safe.” McLean said after the meeting. “The gloves are off. They’re telling too many lies.”

The DOE  said Friday it has confirmed 19 teachers at 18 schools have tested positive for COVID. One school, P.S. 811X, was closed on Friday for at least 24 hours, because it had two confirmed COVID cases in different classrooms.

The COVID-infected teachers started reporting to schools citywide last Tuesday before getting their test results, which were supposed to be “expedited.” About 15,000 teachers had themselves tested voluntarily, the DOE said.

The DOE refused to disclose how many school staffers exposed to the infected teachers have now been sent home to quarantine for 14 days.

“The mayor is saying nobody needs to know about these cases, which is pretty crazy,” said teacher Liat Olenick. “If I were a parent, I would definitely want to know.

Olenick is active in MORE-UFT, an activist faction of the teachers’ union, which tweeted a list of 22 schools where teachers reported confirmed cases. The list did not include PS 267 in Brooklyn, which McLean had identified as having a teacher testing positive.

Schools are set to open for students on Sept. 21. Beginning Oct. 1, under an agreement between the city and labor unions, all schools will have mandatory random testing of 10 percent of staff and students.

The plan already has some parents worried about the nasal swabbing — a procedure that can be uncomfortable — being done on their children without them being present. Kids whose parents don’t give permission will have to learn remotely, officials say.

Also in October, the DOE will launch the city’s “Situation Room,” described as a “rapid response team” with members of the city Health Department and the Test & Trace Corps aimed at detecting and curbing spread of COVID.

The Health Department failed to conduct such testing and tracing in March, when numerous teachers were likely infected before Mayor de Blasio finally agreed to close the schools. Nearly 100 school staffers have since died from the virus.

Florida Court Rules School Reopening Utterly F*cking Insane

Jamie Lynn Crofts

August 27, 2020

Notice of Appeal

Florida Teachers Union Sues DeSantis Over Order to Reopen Schools

By Alexa Lardieri, Staff Writer, US NEWS July 20, 2020

The state reported more than 10,500 new coronavirus cases and 90 deaths on Monday.

FLORIDA'S LARGEST teachers union filed a lawsuit on Monday against Gov. Ron DeSantis over his order to reopen schools even as cases of the coronavirus rise.

The Florida Education Association is suing the governor, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, the Florida Department of Education, Florida State Board of Education, and Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez "to safeguard the health and welfare of public school students, educators and the community at large," the association said in a press release.

"The lawsuit intends to stop the reckless and unsafe reopening of public school campuses as coronavirus infections surge statewide," the release continued.

Corcoran signed an executive order earlier this month ordering all brick and mortar schools, including private and charter institutions, to reopen in August at least five days per week for all students, though the order states that parents can continue remote learning with their child if they choose.

Come August, schools "must provide the full array of services," including in-person lessons and specialized instruction and services for students with individualized education programs.

However, school reopenings are subject to the advice and orders of state and local health departments, and the day-to-day decision to open or close a school will rest locally and with the school board.

"Gov. De Santis needs a reality check, and we are attempting to provide one," FEA President Fedrick Ingram said in the press release. "The governor needs to accept the reality of the situation here in Florida, where the virus is surging out of control."

On Monday, Florida Health reported 10,508 new cases in-state residents and 90 deaths since Sunday. The state has the third most cases in the country, with more than 360,390, and it has recorded 5,072 deaths.

"Everyone wants schools to reopen, but we don't want to begin in-person teaching, face an explosion of cases and sickness, then be forced to return to distance learning," Ingram continued.

In a press conference Monday, Ingram said the lawsuit is seeking to put control and education back "where it belongs, to locally elected school board members and superintendents."

Ingram said it will be safe to return to schools once the infection rate of COVID-19 is under control and falling and the necessary resources are available.

President Donald Trump has threatened to pull funding from schools that do not reopen for the upcoming school year.

"Right now, all we have is a slogan: We must reopen schools," he said. "We need more than a slogan, we need a comprehensive plan."

NYC School Workers Solidarity Campaign Rejects UFT Deal With NYC Mayor De Blasio

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 2, 2020 

Press Contact: Flynn Murray

505-316-1500

nyctscampaign@gmail.com

@nycswsc 

NYC School Workers Solidarity Campaign Rejects UFT President Michael Mulgrew’s Deal with Mayor Bill de Blasio

Deal delays in-person public school reopening temporarily but does not address pressing obstacles to keeping students, families, and school workers safe from the COVID-19 virus.

New York, NY — In response to yesterday’s agreement between NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and the United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, the NYC School Workers Solidarity Campaign is issuing the following statement:

The New York City School Workers Solidarity Campaign stands behind our educators. We are a coalition of parents, educators, nurses, unions, and community members, and we support school workers’ demands to not reopen in-person schooling until it is safe.

The recent deal negotiated between Mulgrew and de Blasio does not in any way meet the standards for a safe reopening, including preliminary and regular testing of all school workers and students; ventilation; overall building safety; personal protective equipment (PPE); busing and commuting concerns; safe lunch plans; improvements to remote learning; and having no new cases in NYC for a period of at least 14 days.

By opening for in-person instruction on September 21 and requiring teachers and other staff to be present in school buildings on September 8, Mulgrew and de Blasio are not addressing any of the underlying health concerns, they are simply delaying the increased spread of this deadly virus. Our school staff, students, families, and communities are being put at risk because Mulgrew, de Blasio, and New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza believe we should reopen the economy rather than protect the health and safety of New Yorkers.

De Blasio has suggested that he is pressing to reopen schools on behalf of a “silent majority” of disadvantaged families. However, as a new poll conducted by Sienna College indicates, the families who have been most disadvantaged by educational inequities oppose reopening in the highest numbers. A majority of NYC respondents (54%) support a fully remote start to the school year and state-wide 56% of low-income, 63% of Latino, and 65% of Black respondents support this measure. Already, close to 40% of families have opted-in to the DOE’s plan for 100% remote learning.

The focus on reopening schools in the face of massive safety issues has come at the direct expense of funding and planning to improve remote learning and provide support to families. This is despite the fact that all students, including those in the blended learning model, will spend the majority of their time learning remotely. The staffing shortage created by the city’s hybrid plan means that remote classes may be as large as 64 students. Meanwhile, many families still lack access to broadband internet and devices. These realities guarantee that reopening schools in these conditions will not address but instead exacerbate existing inequities.

As public school parent Kaliris Salas-Ramirez (PRESS NYC) points out, “This plan still does not address the longstanding inequities in our educational system that have been exacerbated by COVID. Black and Latinx students, ELLs, and students with IEPs remain the most impacted. Ten days is not long enough to fix ventilation issues, provide broadband to every student who needs it or expand our testing capacity — to name just a few of the many holes in the plan. While teachers and principals have been left to navigate and clean up this chaos, all they can do is forge on with little options or help. Ten days is not enough to make our schools safe. There are just too many deal-breakers.”

Across the state, the other largest New York school districts are opting out of in-person learning in favor of remote-only instruction. Buffalo, Yonkers, Rochester and Syracuse are all prioritizing their school workers and students; New York educators and families deserve the same respect and protection as their peers.

Meanwhile, in New York City, the Mayor and City Council have proposed massive budget cuts that will reduce school funding and possibly even slash 9,000 jobs from the Department of Education. A baseline of equitable, quality education is impossible without an adequate budget and becomes even more precarious during a pandemic that warrants additional effective safety precautions. The Department of Education must be fully funded before the Mayor decides to open in-person schooling. Our children need a millionaire tax (S7378, A10363) now!

We are fighting to keep school buildings closed and ensure that students are able to learn remotely in an equitable manner. We have already lost 70 UFT members to COVID, and countless other school workers and community members who contracted the virus from inside a DOE building. Students whose communities have been most devastated by the virus also attend some of the schools with the least resources. These are the families who are most at risk if there is a new wave of infections. There is no scenario in which reopening for in-person learning this fall does not result in more preventable deaths.

The NYC School Workers Solidarity Campaign will do everything we can to keep our school workers, students, and communities safe, not just from COVID 19, but also from leadership that chooses to do the bare minimum even as our most impacted families, school staff and communities vocalize their justified opposition and evidence-based claims about the untenable nature of these plans. In the midst of a global pandemic and an uprising for Black lives, how can we celebrate a ‘delay’ that doesn’t address the issues that got us here in the first place?

Pediatric nurse, public school parent, and NYSNA member Sean Petty stated, “The simple fact is that the current deal to re-open schools in-person will result in the illness and death of numerous educators and public school family members. Given recent data on how this virus is impacting younger populations, especially Black and Latinx children, we now also have to consider serious illness of children, and even death, to be a significant risk. The city does not currently have the testing and tracing capacity to effectively identify and contain new outbreaks with hundreds of thousands of teachers, students, and their families riding public transportation and interacting in enclosed spaces every day. And with $1 billion dollars being robbed from city workers in the current budget alongside impending layoffs in the school and hospital systems, I simply don’t trust the Mayor to provide the resources to keep this city safe. The only way to do this safely is to tax the rich, stop the layoffs, and scale up resources for testing, tracing hospitals, and school infrastructure. Protecting the pockets of the 1% and political reputations of our so-called leaders are just not worth the lives being put at risk under the current conditions.”

Co-endorsed by: PRESS NYC: parents.press.nyc@gmail.com Democratic Socialists of America, NYC: labor@socialists.nyc

The Most American COVID-19 Failure Yet

Contact tracing works almost everywhere else. Why not here?

OLGA KHAZAN

AUGUST 31, 2020

by OLGA KHAZAN

With her thin eyebrows arched high on her forehead, Robyn Openshaw urged her 212,000 fans to stand up to a new menace: contact tracing. Openshaw, a widely followed health blogger who goes by “Green Smoothie Girl” on Facebook, had recently heard of a bill in Congress that would provide $100 million to mobile health clinics to help monitor the spread of COVID-19.

“Are you willing to hand over your freedom and create a health police state?” she asked her viewers, punctuating her statements with a karate chop to the air. “We will hold them accountable for the rollout of what looks an awful lot like communism.”

Openshaw is so suspicious of contact tracing that when restaurants she dines at asking her for a phone number so they can call her if someone else at the restaurant tests positive for COVID-19, she sometimes gives them a fake number, she told me later.

Her fears are ill-founded. Contact tracers recommend that infected people self-isolate, but they have no power to enforce isolation. Most countries with coronavirus outbreaks have started contact tracing, and of them, only China is Communist. But Openshaw’s outraged reaction to the concept helps explain a major problem bedeviling the American pandemic response: Contact tracing does not work as well here as it has in other rich countries.

Contact tracing, the last two-thirds of health wonks’ “test-trace-isolate” mantra, was supposed to get us out of the pandemic. It’s meant to work like this: Let’s say Aunt Sally tests positive for COVID-19. A tracer working for the local public-health department calls her and asks for her contacts—anyone she’s spent more than 15 minutes with recently—and asks her to self-isolate. Then the tracer calls those “close contacts” of Aunt Sally’s and asks them to self-isolate too. The tracer doesn’t tell Aunt Sally’s contacts that she is the person who tested positive, only that someone they were in contact with did.

In the United States, this whole process is failing, allowing Aunt Sally to continue roaming about town, infecting others, and spreading COVID-19. There is no national contact-tracing program in the U.S., and contact tracers who work for the 40 local health departments in areas with the most coronavirus cases have reached just a fraction of the patients who have tested positive, a Reuters investigation found earlier this month. In Maryland, 25 percent of those called by contact tracers don’t pick up. At one point in Miami, contact tracers were able to reach only 17 percent of the infected. In Houston, New Jersey, and California’s Inland Empire, half of the people reached by contact tracers won’t cooperate. In Philadelphia, a third of COVID-19 patients claimed they had no contacts. Philadelphia is one of the country’s most densely populated cities; it’s hard to believe that a third of the people who got sick there had no contact with their fellow Philadelphians.


Some of these numbers might not be totally accurate in the long run. For instance, some health departments might count a person who picks up a contact tracer’s second or third call, instead of the first, as a nonresponse. But even giving U.S. health departments the benefit of the doubt, response rates here are far lower than those in other countries. Less than 1 percent of sick people fail to respond to contact tracers in Iceland, Ævar Pálmi Pálmason, who leads the country’s tracing effort, told me. In New Zealand, 86 percent of people contacted by tracers respond within 48 hours. “The U.S. contact-tracing effort has been a dismal failure compared with many of its peer countries,” says Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University.

Contact tracers are not to blame. Tracers tend to be relatively low-paid, civic-minded workers who make calls relentlessly in an attempt to rescue the nation from a ruthless pandemic. But they’re struggling for three main reasons.

There are too many cases to track

In July, I called up a contact tracer in Texas to see what her job was like. She was worried that she’d be fired if she talked with the press, so I won’t disclose her name here. Every day, she gets on her laptop, sets herself to “available,” and signs into Microsoft Teams. She spends all day clicking a button to see if there’s a new contact she can call.

She enjoys the work, but she had some concerns. The big one was that she felt like a public-health Sisyphus. “It’s literally too late to do contact tracing in Texas,” she said. That month, Texas had 15,000 new cases on some days. “How are you going to go back and find all those old contacts? You can’t really trace if everyone and their cousin has it.”

The countries where contact tracing has worked best set up their tracing systems before cases exploded, and as cases grew, they hired more tracers. The U.S. has not done this. In June, when states were in the throes of reopening, only seven states and Washington, D.C., met the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation of 30 contact tracers per 100,000 residents, according to an NPR analysis. According to the latest data from Test and Trace, an organization that grades states on their testing and tracing capabilities, only seven states are currently considered “fully prepared to test and trace.” States meet this threshold if they have a test-positivity rate of 3 percent or less, provide test results in two days or less, and employ five to 15 contact tracers per positive test. “When we started to  cases start to rise back up, hospitalizations start to increase, and then people are looking at contact tracing as this thing that’s going to stop that? Well, that’s just not what contact tracing is able to do at that point,” says Candice Chen, a health-policy professor at George Washington University.

What’s more, once a tracer asks Aunt Sally to isolate, ensuring that she actually does so can be hard, especially if she doesn’t get paid leave from work, or if she lives in a cramped apartment with lots of other people. In Iceland, the government set up a special quarantine hotel as an option for people to isolate away from their families. But few places in the U.S. have set up free hotels for isolation. Larry Wile, the medical director of a health department in southwest Michigan, told me that a nearby county had set up a COVID-19 motel, but abandoned the effort when its staff quit out of fear of getting infected. Now, Wile said, the best his tracers can do is tell infected people to stay away from their family members and wash their hands.
Testing takes too long

In Iceland, Pálmason has been tested twice. Both times, he took the test at 10 a.m. and got his results by eight that evening. In the U.S., coronavirus tests are taking days to come back—largely because there are too many different kinds of tests and no national testing strategy—which further hampers contact tracers’ work. The infected are walking around for days, unwittingly infecting others. And people are naturally less likely to be able to rattle off the names of everyone they encountered five days ago, as opposed to whom they saw yesterday.

The logistical testing delays are exacerbated by quirks of the American health-care system that are making it even harder for people to get tested and quickly quarantine. Many people can’t get paid leave from work unless they provide proof of a positive COVID-19 test. So if Aunt Sally is feeling sick but her test results haven’t come back yet, she might be required to report to work or forfeit her paycheck for the day. “If that test isn’t showing up for a week, then they’ve already been exposing people for a week,” said another Texas contact tracer, who asked to remain anonymous, because she’s not authorized to speak with the press.
Many Americans fear and distrust government

It’s likely that the first time many Americans heard the term contact tracing was this spring. Before that, some public-health departments were little more than two people and an old computer, having lost a quarter of their workforce through aggressive budget cuts since 2009. Because the U.S. has had such an enfeebled public-health system for so long, the public doesn’t trust public-health workers at a time when it’s crucial that they do so. When called by a department they’ve never heard of and asked for a list of all their friends, Americans could be forgiven for thinking, Who the hell are these people?

Besides Openshaw, many others got up in arms about H.R. 6666, the contact-tracing bill. Some worried that its bill number was too close to the sign of Satan. “United States Citizens, contact your neighbor, your relatives, and your friends, and warn them that contact tracing is a ploy for the worst crime against humanity: democide and population control,” a man named Demetrios Alexandros wrote on Facebook, using a term for the murder of people by the government. Someone started a petition on whitehouse.gov soon after the bill was introduced, saying it was reminiscent of life in “NAZI Germany.”

This is despite the fact that the U.S.’s methods for contact tracing aren’t especially aggressive. In South Korea, which conducted a very successful tracing operation, tracers used cellphone data and credit-card transactions to find sick people’s contacts. In the U.S., tracers rely only on phone numbers and names provided voluntarily by individuals.

Still, contract tracing depends on trust, and many Americans don’t trust the government enough to give up their contacts or follow quarantine orders. Of the 121 agencies Reuters surveyed, more than three dozen said they had been hindered by peoples’ failure to answer their phone or provide their contacts. About half of the people whom contact tracers call don’t answer the phone, because they don’t want to talk with government representatives, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a June news conference.

Examples of this distrust abound. A video with more than 325,000 views on YouTube recommends that people avoid contact tracers because they are tied to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Gates. In eastern Washington, angry locals threatened a contact tracer’s life. Some contact tracers have reported that people think they are identity thieves. (It doesn’t help that some actual scammers are posing as contact tracers.)

“I think that the politicization of contact tracing in America is definitely hampering its success,” Steve Waters, the head of Contrace, which helps connect contact tracers with health departments, told me recently. “In some areas, it’s perceived as a political act to not participate in contact tracing.”

These trust issues have become especially pronounced in the Black and Hispanic communities, two populations that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. Black and Hispanic people are more than twice as likely as white people to get COVID-19 and are more than four times as likely to be hospitalized with it. Several experts told me that wariness of the government in these communities has been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s public-charge rule, under which immigrants might jeopardize their green card if they accept public benefits. “If the word gets out in a community, ‘Don’t talk to the government, because we are worried the government will do bad things to us,’ then you don’t have trust,” John Auerbach, the president of Trust for America’s Health, a nonprofit that promotes public health, told me.

Some state and local officials have cleared a path for contact tracers. Few people pick up calls from numbers they don’t recognize, so in Massachusetts, the contact-tracing operation asked phone companies to display its phone number as the “Massachusetts COVID team,” even for people who don’t have caller ID. That small change persuaded many more people to answer their phone, according to K. J. Seung, a global-health expert who leads the state’s tracing effort. But not all places have done this; elsewhere, some people still think contact tracers are robocallers.

People have more trust in public-health workers when local health departments, governors, and the president speak with one voice. But some officials have downplayed the virus, some have taken it seriously, and others have ignored it entirely. Other than claiming that the U.S. has gotten “good at” it, Donald Trump hasn’t said much about contact tracing. But perhaps his actions should speak louder than his words: When someone in the White House gets sick, the executive branch traces all of that person’s contacts.

Olga Khazan is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World.