If you’re a student at Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, N.Y., you’re going to have an unusual school year—but not necessarily an unpleasant one. The 25-acre campus of your 166-year-old private school will be filled with 70 socially distanced learning tents, and you will be taught in separate “pods,” each including no more than 11 other students. That sure beats endless hours of classes over Zoom. There is, of course, a catch: the $53,000 annual tuition.
As my colleague Katie Reilly reports, pricey private schools like Poly Prep are making in-person education a possibility for families across the United States who can afford it. Meanwhile, less wealthy parents are stuck with whatever options are offered by their public school, which are in many cases crowded, underfunded and generally ill-equipped for pandemic-era instruction. The result will be a widening of the education gap: While most private schools are planning full in-person or hybrid education this year, according to the National Association of Independent Schools, 41% of the highest-poverty public school districts will start the year remote-only, per the Center on Reinventing Public Education.
“Schools are highly unequal. But the ability of families to provide education is even more unequal,” says Richard Kahlenberg, director of K-12 equity at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.
Some parents who can’t afford private school but can afford other options, like private tutors, are taking advantage. Mayssoun Bydon, managing partner at test prep and admissions consulting firm Institute for Higher Learning, reports a 38% increase in her business since March.
“We’re going to end up with a real educational divide between the haves and the have-nots and without a way to reverse it,” Bydon says. “Who’s going to fail are the kids who don’t have the money.”
Washington isn’t helping matters. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to revoke funding from schools that stay shuttered, while Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued a rule that would divert more coronavirus relief funding from public to private schools. That, plus the flight of wealthier students from public to private schools, could have a lasting effect on the education system long after the pandemic is over.
“I can’t say that I fault individual parents for doing what they think is best for their own kids,” says Kahlenberg. “But the secession of upper middle class families from public school to private school is very bad for the country and for educational equality.”
More than 25.4 million people around the world had been sickened by COVID-19 as of 8:30 a.m. ET today, and more than 850,000 people have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On Aug. 31, there were over 261,000 new cases and 4,203 new deaths confirmed globally. Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here is every country with over 300,000 confirmed cases to date:
Canada is in no rush to reopen its border to the U.S, which has been closed since March, CNN reports. Commercial trade is allowed to continue more or less unimpeded, but private travel has been banned indefinitely, spelling hard times for small businesses dependent on tourist traffic. But health comes first for many Canadians, who will welcome the Yanks back only when they’ve succeeded in flattening their curve.
Russia has been producing its Sputnik V vaccine so quickly that Moscow clinics have already been receiving supplies of the shots, even though Phase III trials began only last week. The vaccine is to be made mandatory for the military, and is being offered to doctors and teachers on a voluntary basis. But the teachers don’t want any part of something so unproven, according to Reuters—their union has launched an online petition against the vaccine, fearing that a shot that is voluntary today could easily become mandatory tomorrow.
Brazil has the world’s second-largest caseload, at nearly 3.9 million, but you might not realize that by looking at the packed beaches of Rio de Janeiro, the country’s open bars and public soccer matches, and the crowds of maskless joggers in public parks. If Brazilians don’t seem to be taking the virus seriously, it might be because President Jair Bolsonaro has successfully framed the problem as a manageable one that does not require drastic social distancing, reports Americas Quarterly. Brazilians have rewarded him with a bump in popularity, pushing his approval rating back over 50%—despite a COVID-19 death rate exceeding 900 per day.
A second wave of coronavirus is continuing to crest in Spain. In the past week, the country has outpaced the rest of Europe with 53,000 new cases and an infection rate of 114 per 100,000 people. The virus is spreading there twice as fast as it is in France, eight times the rate in Italy and Britain, and 10 times Germany’s pace. Multiple reasons are being cited for the rise, including the return of tourism, lack of adequate housing for migrants and the decision to allow localities to determine their quarantine rules rather than imposing one national strategy.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 6 million coronavirus cases as of 8:30 a.m. ET today. More than 183,000 people have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On Aug. 31, there were more than 33,000 new cases and 594 new deaths confirmed in the U.S. Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
The House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis just released eight weeks of reports from the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which it requested from Vice President Mike Pence. The reports contradict the relatively sunny face the task force was putting on the pandemic during its daily briefings earlier in the summer. Just one of many examples cited by the subcommittee: On June 29, Pence reported that “all 50 states are opening up safely and responsibly,” even as the task force determined that at least 10 states were in “the red zone” with “significant” increases in cases.
There aren't many economic sectors that can say they’re thriving not despite the pandemic, but because of it. But if the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area is a bellwether, real estate might be enjoying boom times. As the Washington Postreports, city homeowners anxious about the risks of close-quarters urban living have been fleeing to the suburbs. In July alone, $5.3 billion in home sales were reported in and around the District of Columbia, a 25% increase over the same period last year.
New York City officials are delaying the reopening of the country’s largest school district from Sept. 10 to Sept. 21, citing the need for more preparation, the Associated Press reports. One other factor involved in the decision: the United Federation of Teachers was planning to vote on the possibility of a strike if the schools opened too soon.
Good news from Arizona: a new low of 174 new cases and no new deaths were reported yesterday. The reduced infection rate follows a weeks-long improvement after the state experienced a spike in cases earlier in the summer, the Arizona Republicreports. Only 10% of all in-patient beds and 15% of all ICU beds across the state are currently occupied by virus patients, while only 29% of available ventilators are in use.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of September 1, 1 a.m. eastern time. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
A ‘Blunt Tool’ Is a Bad Tool
A new study published in Nature cautions that the "blunt instrument" of excess mortality (or the increase in actual deaths over expected deaths in a given period), which is used to calculate virus deaths, needs to be taken with a grain of salt. That's in part because getting an accurate excess mortality figure depends on timely and accurate reporting of deaths, and many may go unrecorded, artificially lowering the total. Read more here.
Harsh Words for FDA Commissioner
In a scathing open letter, Medscape editor in chief Dr. Eric Topol called on U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn to explain why he publicly over-touted the benefits of convalescent plasma in treating COVID-19 or, in the alternative, to resign. The key area of dispute is a claim from the White House and FDA that convalescent plasma could reduce mortality by 35%, a figure that has been widely debunked. Read more here.
Face Shields Less Effective Than Thought
From medical professionals to restaurant staff, people in all lines of work have adopted plastic face shields, based on the idea that they act as a decent defense against viral spread. But a new study (and visualization) shows that the face shields are less effective than believed, since fluid droplets easily move around the sides and bottom of the plastic covering. Read more here.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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