Day 21-BA2.12.1 is the current variant
6 ft or 3 ft?? Emily Oster says 3 ft…you be the judge…
This just in...Oster debunked, but it is too little, too late…
Emily Oster is an Economics major from Brown with two children. Her 2013 book, Expecting Better, put her on the map. Expecting Better – Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong and What You Really Need to Know debunks prior pregnancy myths such as 1) Don’t drink alcohol; 2) Get lots of bed rest; 3) Gain as little weight as possible, etc. Pregnant moms ate this s—t up, especially the drinking part. Realizing she had a hit on her hands, Oster moved onto create what her publishers coined the “data-driven series”, with titles like Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Relaxed Parenting and The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years. Capitalizing on Expecting Better, she also revised it in 2014 and 2021, in order to sell even more copies, similar to the price-gauging my textbook publisher engages in when their representative forces my students to buy the new edition every two years, even though only a few chapter paragraphs have changed.
By the time the pandemic rolled around, Oster had cemented herself in the hearts and minds of mothers all over the country with her “don’t worry, be happy” allegedly, data-driven bullshit. In other words, she was a trusted source among parents who were primed to believe anything she said or published…especially when it involved Covid-19.
The idea of being able to calculate your personal risk, relative to other fellow Americans who were dropping like flies in the early stages of Covid-19, appealed to the American psyche. Assessing one’s personal risk is also referred to as “precision medicine”, “risk orientation” or “precision public-health.” But foregoing the public health in favor of personal risk doesn’t work when utilized in the broader context of a pandemic, because maintaining public health is paramount when it comes to beating back a contagious virus. “Every man for himself” - treating individuals independent from one another or breaking them down to the smallest possible unit - won’t work under pandemic/outbreak conditions.
Why talk about this? Because within a few short months of Covid-19, Oster began pushing heavily to get kids back in school, regardless of what public health officials were saying at the time, and using her “data-driven” namesake as “street cred” for white papers she authored to push her agenda forward. ITS IMPORTANT TO NOTE, however, that although she is a niche author in this parent-centered genre, a closer review of her work and funding reveals that she was financially backed by Charter School benefactors, of which Bill Gates is a primary patron. Also, her data were spurious and it wasn’t just her agenda she was touting…
Charter School-backed, data driven initiatives surfaced during the pandemic in attacks on public education, although they were present well before Covid-19. However, the chaff was more vividly separated from the wheat when blue states started shoving virtual education down the throats of students while, at the same time, parents [read: mothers] were forced to engage in the dumpster fire referred to as working from home. When Oster surfaced in May 2020 [two months after Americans were notified we were in the midst of a pandemic] and encouraged schools to open, parents embraced her fraudulent, “data-driven” approach. Anything to get little Johnny or Suzy back in school and out of the parents’ hair. If your child dies or gets extremely sick, it’s not your fault because you were just following Oster’s data-driven approach to the pandemic. A few of her articles: May 2020: “Opening Schools Might Be Safer Than you Think.” Also in May 2020, “The Just Stay Home Message will Backfire.” In August 2020, “How the Media has us Thinking all Wrong about the Corona Virus.”
The timing was perfect for those rich assholes who’ve been trying to destroy our public school system and who, coincidentally, hate unions, as unions are the very tool preventing privatization from happening. If you’re wondering why the rich hate public schools, take a moment to consider their strategy. If public schools are eliminated, financial backers such as the Waltons, Mike and Susan Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, etc., will run our education infrastructure and make a killing in this industry, earning even more money to fund their pro-management, anti-Union messaging [which helps their current empires] with talking points like “Union-busting works. Teachers make too much. Charterization is best.” Remember: Betsy DeVos, former US Secretary of Education under President Trump, was a charter-school advocate. But this anti-Union narrative is nothing compared to the profits Wal-Mart and Meta will reap through the delivery of “Ed-Tech” products to charter and privatized schools, especially if public schools are phased out once and for all.
Additionally, charter and private schools are often religious-based and sponsored by the Christian right, effectively obliterating “woke’ messaging and “critical race theory” that Conservatives can’t stand. For example, it is now considered a “liberal agenda” if slavery is discussed in the classroom. In order to appease Republican state legislatures, teachers are forbidden from mentioning slavery in any context, lest our children learn that our country, our economy, America, was actually built on the backs of slaves. But, hey…as Kanye said several years ago, “Slavery was a choice.” It is difficult to keep topics like slavery and gay marriage out of our public schools, but extremely easy to eliminate said topics from private and charter institutions. If our public school systems are eventually replaced, we will enter into a new era of “slavery deniers”, similar to those disgusting “Holocaust deniers.”
If Conservatives are successful in ‘woke’ cancel culture’, they will also successfully eliminate budding new Democrats as these issues have historically engaged Democrats. If there is no discussion of these topics, they disappear from our history altogether, and young students will be more apt to follow Republican propaganda, which will result in more Republican voters. This is why DeSantos is now staffing Florida colleges with former military employees who have had no teacher training, whatsoever.
The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, the Walton Family Foundation, and Peter Thiel [German-American billionaire, venture capitalist] funded Oster’s bogus “data dashboard” she created in order to track K-12 responses to the pandemic, but in my essay that you’re in the midst of reading, I’m going to focus on her most insidious assertion: that 3 feet of social distancing is the new 6 ft.
Essentially, if 3 ft of social distancing is safe, children can report to school ASAP, because the logistical nightmare exists only when school administrators are forced to create a 6-ft bubble around every student, as opposed to a 3-ft bubble. There is not enough space in the classroom for a 6-foot radius around every child; thus, kids must Zoom their education until further notice. If 3 ft is fine, then it’s business as usual with typically crowded classrooms containing upwards of 30 kids.
Oster co-authored a paper with several people who looked at Covid case rates for schools in Massachusettes that had policies requiring 6 ft of distancing vs. schools that required 3 ft of distancing, i.e., fully, in-person schools. BUT, Oster deliberately misinterpreted the data. We know she misinterpreted the data because we know who her funders are – “3 ft is fine” was the outcome they wanted and she delivered.
The study was quite weak and committed statistical errors. Not to get too “in the weeds,” but one of the weaknesses of the study involved a “high amount of uncertainty” between the 3 ft and 6 ft social distancing radius. When a “high amount of uncertainty” exists in similar studies, that data must be deemed “inconclusive.” Oster lied and deemed it, “no difference”, ostensibly because she and her colleagues had a clear policy preference, in line with their funders as well, and produced low-quality research that they deliberately mislabeled.
Oster also authored a 10/2020 piece for the Atlantic with the headline “Schools Aren’t Superspreaders”, where she argued that Covid transmission rates in schools were too low to warrant closures and remote classes. She correlated case rates in schools with case rates in the community and noted that transmission in schools was lower than in the community, implying that transmission wasn’t really occurring in schools. But this spurious correlation did not address the main questions: 1) Are kids getting Covid in school? Yes. 2) Are kids spreading Covid to other kids and teachers? Yes.
The crux of MY essay, you ask? Too early in the pandemic, Rochelle and Fauci used Oster’s flawed studies as justification for changing CDC guidelines from 6 ft to 3 ft, forcing teachers and students back into the classroom, at a time when Covid-19 was rampant in schools and the community. Rochelle and Fauci were desperate to provide justification for getting kids back in the classroom. They didn’t care that Oster’s studies committed statistical errors because they didn’t bother to read the studies; they just cited her conclusions and called it a day. The EU’s European Center for Disease Control also cited Oster’s conclusions. When teachers protested returning to the classroom under these conditions, with children on top of each other and no room for social distancing (per the usual packed classroom), they were vilified. In school districts that were NOT unionized, teachers had no choice but to return or be terminated. Many teachers died…all while Oster was simultaneously guest-speaking on the talk circuit about her data-driven bullshit. One of the more prominent events she attended involved the Chicago Teachers Strike, where she met with the Public School CEO and encouraged his pro-management, anti-union position.
RIP “essential” workers…and teachers.
6/1/22. Wednesday
6:00-6:15-My alarm goes off at 6:00 am because the tree trimmers are coming at 7:30. I need transition time so I stay in bed for another 15 minutes, then drag myself out of bed and go downstairs to greet the animal - she’s still asleep on the couch. I sit next to her and rub her tummy until she’s finally ready to go outside. We head to the backyard and I stand around waiting for her to go potty. Return inside and cheese for her; coffee for me. I go upstairs.
6:15-7:15-I have plenty of time to get ready because Reynaldo and B. aren’t coming for another 75 minutes. I weigh myself before I jump in the shower. 97…Damn. I cannot get this weight off. I sit in the shower, drink my coffee, and ice my eyes, while listening to The Daily and What Next. Lotion. Athletic housewife attire. Just as I start putting on my make-up, Reynaldo and B. arrive. It’s 7:10 am. He is 20 minutes early. great. I run downstairs, say hello, secure the dog, and lead R. and three members of his crew to the backyard, where they proceed to decimate my trees and shrubs for the next 6 hours.
7:00-9:30--B leaves and returns with Starbucks. We talk politics and watch through the window while the dog is in the garage, barking, and the crew are trimming my trees.
-9:00-11:00-I let the dog in the house and B. and I move upstairs and watch two episodes of Bosch Legacy.
10:30-11:00-B. and I take the dog for a walk on one of my paseos while the tree-trimming crew continue to work on my backyard..
-11:00-12:00-B. leaves for Ooh La La Panini and I pull a Pyrex dish out of the freezer that I froze long ago and have no idea of it’s contents. I thaw it and it appears to be pork strips and some sort of rice and tomato blend. I finish eating and continue checking the tree-trimmers’ progress.
12:00-1:00-B. returns and eats his panini while we wait for Reynaldo to finish. I just woke up a few hours ago but, already, I am so exhausted. It’s really hot today. The workers must be miserable.
By 1:00, the crew is done and they’ve also cleared out my beds and trimmed my hedges which resulted in a grape vine fatality. Oh no!
Don’t get me wrong-they do a great job and thin my overgrown trees appropriately, but they also destroyed a grape vine that has served as ivy climbing up the side of the house for the past 12 years. The branches from the trees fell on some of my potted plants causing trauma. When all is said and done, the rose bush remains intact, thank god. The crew hops my retaining walls and are in both neighbors backyards hauling away huge branches that fell on their side, especially Griselda’s yard, where she has all those succulents. The big debris is carted away but I see that I’m going to have to come in and do a more refined cleanup post haste. The largely shaded yard and garden that I used to have is no more. The sun is so bright back here that now I have to wear sunglasses. I don’t like it, preferring the overgrown look instead, but it needed to be done.
Reynaldo replaces my broken sprinklers and makes sure the sprinklers are working appropriately especially in light of the new CA drought guidelines. Residents with addresses ending in even numbers (B. and me) can only water on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday.
1:30-3:00-Reynaldo is done, B. leaves, and I drive to my 2:00 eye appointment, even though I want to collapse. I get a new glasses and contact prescription. EVERYONE at this office is masked, and I do mean everyone. In fact, patients cannot enter the premises unless they are wearing a mask and they must keep it on at all times. I find this refreshing…especially when so many places have decided they don’t give a shit…
If you’re a reader of this blog, then you know I’m being monitored for glaucoma. I get annual retinal photos, for which I have to personally pay out of pocket ($39) and my pressures are also checked. This year, the doctor is unconcerned but wants to do the same standard series of glaucoma tests that I’ve had the last 3 years for a compare-contrast. Yes, that makes perfect sense, except now I have to schedule an appointment with my PCP, which will take another 30 to 40 days, in order to get the referral for glaucoma tests so I can schedule ANOTHER appointment with Helm Eye Center when I’m here right now and the doctor says I need glaucoma tests. Unfortunately, the Helm Eye Center doctor is not my regular doctor, so my insurance plan doesn’t give a shit about what she says. This next part of the process will take 60 days.
3:00-4:00 - Home and I have a small bowl of Rocky Road ice cream and promptly fall asleep until 8:00.
8:00-9:00-I check College No. 2 to see how my highschoolers are doing with the online Final and I receive a lovely email from one of my favorite students about the class. We have a back-and-forth exchange.
I scan my new prescription to Warby Parker and order the glasses that L. helped me select. Then I re-package the box so I can return the 5 pairs of glasses that were sent to me.
I start preparing a monthly check for my retirement account and discover that I’m out of envelopes. great.
I go through my mail and there’s a letter from the HOA informing me that a neighbor reported me for not picking up my dog poop which is a complete lie!
9:00-1:00-I spend the rest of this time forcing myself to look at dresses and athletic wear in accordance with the Currated Closet project that will best represent my sexy librarian and athletic housewife aesthetic. This is so mind numbing but after 4 hours I’ve selected 86 items to cull from, none of which include pants or blouses. I listen to the latest season of Counterclock.
1:00-2:00-I’m too tired to clean the kitchen. Nighttime routine. I listen to Dateline. I forgot to post content for my online class yesterday so I do so right now, for Wed and Thurs. Bed