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Heya,
Here’s some stuff you might like.
The vast majority of states have eschewed Oregon’s statewide partial school closure approach
Most of Oregon’s school districts are, famously ’round these parts anyhow, closed to in-person instruction pursuant to state orders regarding case numbers and positivity rates. It turns out, this kind of edict from on high regarding the reopening of schools is by far the minority approach in the United States. The vast majority of states, 43 to be exact, either require schools to be open, or more or less allow school districts to decide whether to open, often subject to distancing and other state requirements, according to Education Week.
The states that leave matters to the districts include such hotbeds of right-wing Covid denial as Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, Virginia and Washington. The entire list of states that have mandated statewide partial or full closures is as follows: Oregon, California, New Mexico. Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware and North Carolina. That’s it.
So why does the State of Oregon dictate whether local schools reopen, when 86% of states leave the decision to local districts? It’s not because we have Covid worse than the more lenient states – Oregon has one of the lowest test positivity rates in the country, and that was even before schools reopened in some of those states in the Fall. It’s not because Oregon students need in-person instruction less than students in other states – Oregon has one of the lowest graduation rates in the country, and it’s uniformly acknowledged that in-person instruction is better for kids’ academic success. It’s because Oregon Governor Kate Brown believes that she’s onto something the governors and legislators in the vast majority of other states, including a majority of Democrat-governed states, have missed: that when one weighs the risk of Covid transmission in schools with the risk of having kids locked out of schools, the Covid risk outweighs the kids’ risk.
Now, maybe the science indicating transmission is less in open schools than in the community at large is wrong, and open schools are, in fact a major vector for transmission. And maybe all the other governors and legislators in some of the most liberal states in the country are, well, to put it bluntly, anti-science. It’s possible Gavin Newsome and Kate Brown are right and they know better than 86% of states, along with their own states’ local government bodies – school boards – authorized under state law to oversee the safe education of the students of their respective states. . Or, maybe, just maybe, they’re wrong, and Oregon’s and California’s students are being disproportionately harmed as a result. The evidence is growing that not only is Oregon in the very small minority of states mandating closure, but that the science does not support this approach. This is not to say that students and staff in schools can’t contract Covid at school, they can as we’ve seen today, but that there is a risk of contracting it anywhere, and there is significant long-term risk to Oregon kids in keeping schools closed.
Governor Brown should cause Oregon to, finally, join the vast majority of states that leave opening decisions to school districts and their elected leaders.
(Hat tip to Roundup friend and education guru Dr. Victor Chudowsky for sharing the Education Week story at the beginning of this section).
Covid is an evasive target
Since the beginning of the pandemic in the first quarter of 2020, which seems like about a decade ago at this point, we’ve been desperate to determine the suite of policies that best combat the spread of the disease. All over the world, government officials have tried various policies from welding apartment doors shut to enforce a lockdown in parts of China, to various degrees of less, ah, comprehensively sequestering lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe, to who knows what they’ve been doing in places like Russia, Africa and South America. There’ve been mask mandates and people have been arrested for surfing at otherwise empty beaches and some people have even just gone about their business as usual.
Nationwide, we appear headed for a third peak of cases, with many of the new cases occurring in the Midwest and rural areas. Because there is such a wide variety of Covid-related policies in place in different states and localities in the U.S., we’ve seen surges in places more or less regardless of the policies in place. It’s almost as though there’s no policy silver bullet to stop Covid, at least that’s consistent with a political culture that generally frowns upon welding people inside their homes.
Simultaneously, Europe is seeing a sharp increase in cases, and recently passed the U.S. in the key metric of positive cases per million residents. In other words, in recent weeks, a European is more likely than an American to have contracted Covid. As with the U.S., there are many different Covid policies in place in the many different little countries that comprise Europe.
It sure seems Covid can and does spread regardless of who the president, governor, commune leader (yes, in France, some local governments are called communes, take from that what you will), and what policies they adopt. While President Trump’s personal behavior and particularly his communication style regarding the virus have been pretty bad, the former arguably landing him in the hospital, his jurisdiction does not extend to Europe, and I would argue most leaders in western Europe (like most governors in the western U.S.) are more likely than not to conduct themselves personally and support policies as diametrically opposed to Trump’s as possible. And yet, people over there are still getting sick, just like they’re getting sick here. It’s also worth noting that a couple of Kamala Harris staffers, including her top communications aide, have tested positive.
I’ve written before that the coronavirus demonstrates nothing so much as the folly of placing trust in government, because governments are comprised of people who, like you and me, often don’t really know what they’re doing, especially when faced with new and complex challenges that require balancing important values. The story of coronavirus, writ across the two wealthiest and advanced continents in the world, is that no one politician or government agency has been able to stop the spread, regardless of the policies or personal behaviors they exhibit. This is not to say we shouldn’t critique our leaders on those points, but anyone who tells you they and they alone can stop it is almost certainly wrong.
Another bad sign for Portland real estate
In the wake of news about Portland’s increasing commercial sublease listings that we covered last week, there’s a new report showing Portland apartment rents are down 5.7%.The Oregonian story linked just now dutifully ascribes the decline to Covid, and points out that urban areas generally are emptying out as people seek to move to the suburbs and places like Bend where one of the biggest challenges to newcomers is finding a bike rack for their car that holds as many bikes as possible under the laws of physics. (Seriously, there have always been a lot of bike racks here, but even as of a few years ago, most were on the top of cars and could accommodate at most two bikes. The average bike carrying capacity of personal vehicles in Bend has at least doubled in the last few years. I saw a Honda Pilot the other day with a monstrous rear-mounted rack that heretofore I’d only seen on those rare occasions I’ve accidentally caught a glimpse of the Tour de France.)
But I digress. The story does, in the third to final paragraph, finally get around to, well, you know, the p word that must not be correlated with anything negative in polite company: “Downtown Portland is facing distinct challenges brought on by the pandemic, protests and homeless camps.” (Note, the Oregonian referred to protests, but I suspect the larger concern is political violence and property destruction and arson). I know some people will try, but is it reasonable to believe that months of nationwide coverage of that stuff has not and will not have an impact on local real estate and the economy generally? Sure, the bad stuff has mostly (but not exclusively) happened downtown, but that is a distinction that is likely to be lost on many viewing Portland from afar. Apartment-renting baristas with masters degrees seeking quirky but harmless Portlandia weird aren’t necessarily interested in living in a city where weird has given way to wild.
Portland has not experienced the biggest drop in rents (that would be San Francisco and New York), but only 10 counties nationwide experienced a sharper drop in rents than Multnomah County. It’s possible that it’s mere coincidence this big drop occurred alongside chronic disorder, but I doubt it.
Finally, an elk opposed to systemic racism
You may recall that rioters recently tore down a revered bronze statue of an elk in downtown Portland (rioters tear stuff down, protesters don’t). Well, it appears that someone has now constructed in its place an elk fashioned from pallets and scrap wood. What the new elk lacks in artistic merit it presumably makes up for with a deep and abiding commitment to social justice, unlike its predecessor.
Thursdays it is
As usual, my wife was right and the Roundup is a Thursday publication for now. Thanks for everyone who weighed in, even those people whom Anna specifically solicited to weigh in in favor of Thursdays.
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Have a great weekend!
Jeff Eager
jeff@oregonroundup.com
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