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Open Letter to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

[NOTE: THIS OPEN LETTER IS POSTED AT MY WEBSITE AND IS BEING MADE AVAILABLE WIDELY TO THE MEDIA – IT MAY BE REPRODUCED FREELY WITH ATTRIBUTION] Dear Commissioner Riley and Members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education: I am a professor in the public health program at the Tufts University School of Medicine and an epidemiologist who was trained in infectious disease outbreak response at CDC. I am writing to urge you to immediately allow schools to hold virtual classes for the next 2-3 weeks, or at least until the astronomical rate of increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations in Massachusetts subsides. Opening schools in-person at this time is going to be disastrous, both for our local communities and for the devastating situation that our hospitals are already facing. I hope you will consider allowing schools to implement a 2-3 week delay before forcing students to return to school in-person. The issue is not the safety of our students, or even of our staff. It is s
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Why Our Teaching Assistant Employment Policy is a Racist, Not an Antiracist, Policy

For the past two semesters, the School of Public Health has implemented a teaching assistant employment policy by which applications are automatically rejected from people with health conditions that preclude them from going into the classroom because they are at increased risk for severe complications of COVID-19. If applicants are unable to work in-person in the classroom because of a health condition (or are just anxious about COVID-19 or about transmitting infection to vulnerable family members or other household members) and do not consent to working in-person, their employment applications are automatically rejected. The policy holds that they are simply ineligible for employment as a teaching assistant unless they agree to spend essentially 42 hours in the classroom (14 sessions at 3 hours each). Note that this policy was in place at the start of the current semester, at which time Massachusetts was experiencing the all-time peak of COVID-19 infection in the state. It is not dif
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Guest Commentary by Jerry Halberstadt, Coordinator of the Stop Bullying Coalition and Advocate for the Elderly and Disabled Tenants of Public and Subsidized Housing

Copyright © 2021 Jerry Halberstadt Original source: https://stopbullyingcoalition.org/mycovid “Though we sow in sorrow, yet shall we reap in joy.”   Dear Friends and Colleagues, This is a time of great danger for all of us who are elderly and disabled and live in public and privately owned subsidized housing. We are all at exceptional risk of getting COVID, becoming severely ill, and of death. Now I have COVID-19, or more precisely, COVID has me; I am 84 and have health conditions so that my risk is great. I have access to excellent medical care, although the health system is under stress and I am working long hours to assure my care. Usually I write about our common needs, our advocacy that we do together, and to put forth policy and legislative proposals. Today, not knowing the future, I am writing to you—my friends, my colleagues, my opponents, and my mentors—in haste to look back with a personal perspect
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Open Letter to BUSPH Urging the School to Start Classes Online this Semester Due to Peak COVID-19 Conditions

Dear Dean Galea: It is with a love for the School of Public Health and a concern for its long-term reputation that we write this letter urging the School to begin the semester with virtual-only classes. We do not think it is responsible for the School to be holding in-person classes at the peak of this pandemic. This is an open letter and is being sent to all SPH faculty who are teaching this semester and whose health and safety are therefore at risk because of what we believe will be unsafe conditions at the start of the semester. When BUSPH opened for hybrid classes in the fall, COVID-19 infection rates were at a lull, with fewer than 200 cases reported in the state per day. At this time, however, the opposite is the case. We are in the midst of the largest surge of cases in Massachusetts since the start of the pandemic. At the peak of the first surge in April 2020, Massachusetts experienced 2,300 cases at its absolute peak. In the past seven days, we have experienced
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