Why Teachers Unions Aren't Riding Harder for Vaccine Mandates
As students head back into classrooms in the U.S., teachers are finding themselves in the middle of a heated fight over how schools should handle the pandemic. American parents are split along partisan lines as to whether schools should require precautions like mandatory vaccination, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll released yesterday, and bothsides are pressuring administrators to follow their wishes. Meanwhile, the Delta variant is driving viral spread across the country—including among school-age children, many of whom are too young to be vaccinated, making the debate all the more urgent.
Given the issue's sensitivity, it's no surprise that the two biggest national teachers unions are treading carefully when it comes to vaccine mandates, as my colleague Charlotte Alter reports. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) encourage all teachers to get vaccinated, and support mandatory vaccination or regular testing. But they aren't demanding that school districts issue mandates—instead, they're giving local unions space to negotiate what they feel is right based on different communities' attitudes and situations.
"Any decision about requirements that school districts make, they need to be working with educators, they need to be at the table where collective bargaining is possible," NEA President Becky Pringle told Charlotte.
That the teachers' unions aren't pushing more strongly for nationwide vaccine mandates may anger parents who fear their kids are being put at risk of infection as they head back into classrooms in the coming weeks. But many districts, including those in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, are moving ahead with mandates without opposition from the major national unions, and others may follow suit now that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has fully approved the Pifzer-BioNTech shot. But as experts told Charlotte, even pressure from national teachers unions may not be enough to move the needle in communities where vaccine hesitancy runs particularly hot.
"[The national unions] can say one thing, but they don't have a ton of top-down authority, and so what happens across the country depends on what local unions want," Lesley Lavery, an associate professor at Macalester College who studies education policy, told Charlotte. For parents who want their districts to issue vaccine mandates, the best course of action is to make their voices heard by speaking with their students' teachers, showing up at school board meetings, and so on.
About 428.5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this afternoon, of which nearly 363.2 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 51.5% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
More than 212.5 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 3 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 4.4 million people have died. On August 23, there were 668,160 new cases and 9,444 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 4 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 37.9 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 629,400 people have died. On August 23, there were 225,655 new cases and 903 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Aug. 24, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
It may take until next spring for the U.S. to get its COVID-19 outbreak under control, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN last night—assuming enough unvaccinated people get their shots for the country to achieve "blanket protection," as he put it. However, Fauci warned that if too many people remain unvaccinated, the virus could linger and mutate into another devastating variant. The number of Americans showing up for their first dose has risen 41% in the past 30 days, from 97 per 100,000 people on July 24 to 136 on Aug. 23. Just under 60% of U.S. residents have received at least one shot.
New Zealand's nationwide lockdown is being extended until late Friday night (and through next Tuesday in Auckland), Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced yesterday, as an outbreak threatens the country's effort to keep cases at zero. "Our plan has worked before and together we can make it work again," Ardern said in a statement. The country reported 42 new cases in the last 24 hours, the most in a single day since it recorded 89 cases on April 2, 2020. The lockdown requires everyone in New Zealand to stay at home except for essential activities like grocery shopping.
The FDA's decision to fully approve the Pfizer shot has already emboldened more companies to pass vaccine mandates. CVS Health said yesterday that its pharmacists, nurses and care managers must be fully vaccinated by Nov. 30, while many other employees must be vaccinated by Oct. 31. Workers at Walt Disney World have agreed to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 22, the Associated Press reports. And energy company Chevron is requiring expatriate workers and employees who travel internationally get vaccinated by Oct. 31, the Washington Post reports.
Hawaii governor David Ige is urging travelers to avoid visiting his state amid major spikes in cases and hospitalizations. "It is not a good time to travel to the islands," he said in a press conference yesterday. Ige, who cautioned that local ICUs are filling up, also urged residents to travel only if they absolutely need to do so. Hawaii is currently reporting a seven-day rolling average of 704 new daily cases, up from 166 a month ago.
Two popular at-home coronavirus tests from Abbott Laboratories and Quidel Corp. were launched without a mechanism for reporting results to public health authorities, Bloomberg reports, potentially leaving a massive hole in available pandemic data. If too many at-home test results go unreported, public health officials could miss out on valuable information about the virus' spread, including data on the appearance of new clusters. Demand for at-home tests has spiked amid the U.S. fourth wave.
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. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Tara Law and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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