LAUSD To Lose Court Fight to Impose Vaccine Mandates

Children’s Health Defense California chapter employed attorney Nicole Pearson to challenge the LA school district’s ability to impose a vaccine mandate for kids.

The papers were filed last week for a preliminary injunction. At Nicole’s request, I was one of about 10 experts who filed an affidavit in support of CHD’s motion.

The hearing was today. The judge walked in with a 12-page proposed order denying CHD’s motion.

Nicole wasn’t going to let that happen. She made a brilliant argument that if the order were to be signed by the judge that every school district in California would be able to set the medical policy for all kids and the State would thus lose control. She also pointed out that schools shouldn’t be allowed to dictate medical policy for kids. If they can do it for vaccines, then they should be able to require birth control so kids don’t get pregnant and miss school, etc., etc.

The judge is now having second thoughts. He didn’t issue his order and is now going back to re-think his position. We are all optimistic he will strike down LAUSD’s ability to set medical policy for kids.

Congratulations Nicole! GREAT JOB.

Attorney General Asked If Fauci Will Be Investigated For Lying To Congress

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) asked Attorney General Merrick Garland during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday if they would investigate Dr. Fauci for potentially lying to Congress.

Monday CA School Walkout Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

SURVEY: A campaign swirling across social media calls on parents who oppose COVID-19 vaccine mandates to keep their children home Monday.

Parents organized to keep their children home from school Monday to oppose Gov. Gavin Newsom's COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Parents who oppose Gov. Gavin Newsom's vaccine and mask mandates for schoolchildren are organizing a statewide school walkout for Monday.

School districts and families across California are making plans to deal with the peaceful protest.

The protest is the latest move by parents and voters dissatisfied with both on-campus mask-wearing and vaccine mandates in California schools.

Here are five things you need to know about the upcoming California school walkouts.

1. The statewide walkout (also called a "sit out" on social media flyers) encourages California parents to keep their children home Monday. The flyer asked parents not to call their child in sick or otherwise excuse the absence to keep schools from reaping average daily attendance funds from the state.

2. The walkout affects elementary, middle and high schools. The walkout also calls upon California teachers and other district employees to stay home from work Monday. "Parents and concerned citizens all over CA are taking action against the forced COVID-19 vaccine mandate for our children in state schools. We demand parental choice over the bodily autonomy of our children," one Twitter flyer said.

3. The protest is a response to Newsom's state mandate Friday in which he made California the first state in the nation to require all children attending in-person instruction at every school to get vaccinated against COVID-19. California residents could see the enforcement of this mandate as early as January. Since the Food and Drug Administration has not authorized COVID-19 vaccines for children under 12, it will affect students in grades seven through 12 to start. Any student who refuses to take the vaccine will be forced to complete an independent study program at home, officials said.

4. California will also require teachers to be vaccinated or tested weekly, effective Friday. Some educators against the mandate will participate in Monday's walkout, forcing some campuses —including Oak Run Elementary in Shasta County — to close, CalMatters reported Friday. Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the state's largest, vowed to prohibit teachers from returning to classrooms on Monday if they do not receive at least one vaccine dose by Friday.

5. Across California, 50,896,327 vaccine doses have been administered, and 71.7 percent of Californians are fully vaccinated, CalMatters reported. As of Wednesday, California had 4,565,279 confirmed cases of COVID-19 (up 0.1 percent from Tuesday), and 70,010 COVID-19 related deaths (up 0.2 percent from Tuesday), the report said.

Answer the survey below to share how you and how your district will handle the Monday walkout.

Unvaxxed LAUSD Teacher Reporting From Behind Enemy Lines

I decided to provide an update on the situation at the school that I will be leaving today because some interesting things are going on. A meeting was held with the entire organization this week. I called in sick that day since I want to use up some of my sick days, but while I was out a lot of changes were announced.

More teachers and staff than I expected are leaving after today. So many teachers and other employees are leaving that they have to make drastic changes to the organizational structure of the entire company. Classrooms are being combined with one another because there will now be a lack of teachers. Also, because enrollment has dropped and continues to drop, due to vaxx mandates no doubt, they are firing a large amount of staff due to budget shortages.

To sum it up, the school is in chaos. They are losing massive amounts of money, over $1 million in just the special ed budget alone. I have no idea how much they are losing in total, but it is likely several million dollars. People are fleeing the school district in large numbers. Schools are scrambling to find replacements. Staffing companies that provide substitutes are stretched extremely thin, and there aren't many prospective employees who want to work in LAUSD.

I can't help but feel a small amount of schadenfeude. I feel bad for the people who are left to deal with the fallout, but they should have resisted the mandates when they had the chance. Now, the entire district is in turmoil with no easy solutions to their problems. The sad thing is that it will be the students who will suffer the most. Not only did they have a disaster of a school year during distance learning, where many students fell massively behind, now they will have to go get through a school year with long term subs and other temporary staff.

Anyways, I'm glad I'm getting out now, some of the other teachers have told me that I'm leaving at a good time. Thanks for reading, say a prayer for all the students who will have to suffer through another difficult school year.

Chicago Blinks, Says Unvaccinated School Teachers Will Not Be Fired

With an impending COVID-19 vaccination deadline for employees, unvaccinated Chicago Public Schools teachers and staffers will be able to opt for weekly testing and continue working after this week.  

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez on Wednesday said those who are not fully vaccinated by Friday’s deadline must consent to weekly testing, but will not be immediately barred from working, as had previously been threatened.

“Employees will not be barred from coming to work,” he said. “We’re going to just work with them to see where they’re at in the vaccination process, what hesitation they might have, what information we can give them … I feel fairly confident that we’re going to be ok.”

The shift comes after union leaders, Chicago teachers and staffers penned a letter asking Mayor Lori Lightfoot not to bar unvaccinated employees from their work after this week.

Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey and leaders from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) penned a letter to the mayor Wednesday, saying immediate enforcement of the vaccine mandate will “leave schools dangerously understaffed, and disproportionately impact employees of color within CPS.”

“Understaffed schools are unsafe schools,” the officials said in the letter. “We urge you to avert this dangerous situation by refraining from punitive enforcement of your vaccine policy for CPS staff. We also urge CPS to join the CTU and SEIU Local 73 in partnership to get unvaccinated workers access to the vaccine and greater safety in the coming days and weeks.”

Lightfoot issued a vaccination mandate for all city employees, but has since said that those who have not received the vaccine can continue working if they instead get tested for COVID-19 twice per week through December. Martinez would not say how long this weekly testing exemption would continue for CPS employees, though he said it’s “not indefinite.”

According to Martinez, 85% of district employees are vaccinated as of Wednesday, and the teachers union said it is planning vaccination events this week in the communities “most in need.”

Asked about the impact on CPS during an unrelated press conference Wednesday, Lightfoot said she didn’t “want to talk about the consequences” if someone isn’t vaccinated.

“We really want to focus on the positive,” she said. “Get yourself vaccinated.”

The CTU has been in favor of a vaccine mandate, and said its goal is to vaccinate as many of its members, school community members and Chicagoans as possible. In the letter, it contrasted those efforts with other unions who have “detestably compar(ed)” the mandate “to Nazism.”

The head of the Chicago police officers’ union has called on its members to defy the city’s requirement to report their COVID-19 vaccination status by Friday or be placed on unpaid leave.

In the video posted online Tuesday and first reported on by the Chicago Sun-Times, Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara vowed to take Lightfoot’s administration to court if it tries to enforce the mandate, which requires city workers to report their vaccine status by the end of the work week.

Catanzara suggested if the city does enforce its requirement and many union members refuse to comply with it, “It’s safe to say that the city of Chicago will have a police force at 50% or less for this weekend coming up.”

Lightfoot on Wednesday said she “does not expect that to happen.”

“Our message is to the members, protect yourself, protect your partner, protect members of the public, get yourself vaccinated,” she said. “We don’t want to lose any more police officers for COVID-19 deaths when a life-saving vaccine is readily available.”

Unvaccinated NYC Teachers Must Waive Right To Sue If They Want To Keep Health Benefits

Aside from being put on unpaid leave, New York City teachers who’ve declined to get the COVID-19 vaccine won’t be allowed to keep their health benefits for another year unless they give up their right to sue the city over its vaccine mandate.

The secret is not to refuse the vaccine. 

This condition was the result of an arbitration invoked by the city’s largest teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). The union touted the arbitration verdict as a victory that forced the city to acknowledge medical and religious exemptions to the vaccination. It also allowed the teachers to take a year of unpaid leave with continued health care coverage or voluntarily resign with unused sick days paid out and a year of continued health insurance.

But the UFT Sept. 10 press release on the issue left out the caveat that the health benefits would only continue beyond Nov. 30 for those who sign waivers preventing them from suing the city for getting fired. It did include a link to the arbitration verdict that, on page 17, states the waiver requirement. But several teachers told The Epoch Times the DOE only explicitly told them about the condition about a week ago, right before the mandate went into effect.

Based on last week’s data, several thousand teachers and other school workers remain unvaccinated.

An official with the city’s Department of Education (DOE) distanced the agency from imposing the waiver requirement.

“This stipulation was given out by a third-party arbitrator,” the official told The Epoch Times on the condition of anonymity. “Unions and DOE both agreed to it; DOE didn’t make this decision.”

But the arbitration verdict says its rulings “reflect” what the parties agreed to before and during the mediation as well as the “language” the parties agreed to in response to the arbitrator’s interim rulings.

It suggests that the conditions of the unpaid leave in particular were left to the parties to sort out.

“I concluded the parties are more familiar with Department [of Education] policy and how to leave and entitlements have been administered in accordance with prior agreements,” the arbiter said.

The ruling says the affected employees have from Nov. 1 to 30 to extend their leave and the connected benefits.

“An employee must file a form created by the DOE which includes a waiver of the employee’s rights to challenge the employee’s voluntary resignation, including, but not limited to, through a contractual or statutory disciplinary process,” it says.

It’s not clear how hard the union pushed against the requirement. It hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

The issue underscores the dissatisfaction of the unvaccinated teachers with both the city and the union. They feel justified in holding back on the vaccine and believe the city has tossed them aside and the union failed to protect them, according to several conversations between them and The Epoch Times.

The vaccines, developed in record time and still in the process of clinical trials, are known to cause severe side effects such as myocarditis, particularly in young men, and blood clots, though authorities and experts say these are rare and pose a lower risk than the disease itself. The vaccines don’t necessarily prevent one from contracting and spreading COVID-19, but clinical trials indicate they minimize symptoms, which are primarily a concern for the elderly or those with preexisting conditions.

Healthcare & Education Vaccine Mandates Lawsuits in NY & WA

Laura Ingraham talks to two people who are fighting vaccine mandates, one in New York, and one against Washington State's Gov. Inslee

LATEST: A federal Judge in New York issues a temporary restraining order that stops the state from enforcing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers if they seek a religious exemption. https://t.co/71feHz9syV

— ABC News (@ABC) September 14, 2021

 

If Teachers Force Kids To Wear Face Diapers = Your Salary Withheld

 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to school officials & teachers: Enforce mask mandate, get your salaries withheld

The state "could" defund the salaries of district superintendents and county school board members who mandate mask-wearing in schools, according to a statement from Gov. Ron DeSantis' office. 

His spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, released the following language Monday afternoon:

"With respect to enforcing any financial consequences for non-compliance of state law regarding these rules and ultimately the rights of parents to make decisions about their children's education and health care decisions, it would be the goal of the State Board of Education to narrowly tailor any financial consequences to the offense committed. 

OC Board of Education to Sue Gavin Newsom Over Face Masks

Board members say that Gov. Newsom has misused his power “in a way that threatens serious harm to Orange County’s children.”

Claiming that wearing masks harms young children, the Orange County Board of Education announced Tuesday that it plans to sue Gov. Gavin Newsom over what it calls an “unwarranted” state mandate that students wear masks in classrooms this school year.

The board voted 4-0 during closed session in favor of filing the suit, and then had an attorney read a press release in which they said Newsom has abused his authority by indefinitely continuing to issue health edicts under a state of emergency.

Last month, state officials ordered all students, teachers, staff and visitors on school campuses to wear face masks while indoors in the coming school year.

“He has now misused that power in a way that threatens serious harm to Orange County’s children,” board members wrote.

Board members Mari Barke, Tim Shaw, Lisa Sparks and Ken Williams voted in favor of filing the lawsuit during a special meeting Tuesday that featured only one item on the agenda: litigation. Board member Beckie Gomez, who attended the beginning of the meeting, left at 4:30 p.m and was not present for the vote.

Board members, who are elected, have been vocal about their views against face masks in schools. But while the state said its masks-in-class mandate will be enforced by school districts, the Board of Education does not oversee any of the county’s 27 districts.

In addition to saying Newsom and officials in the state’s executive agencies are overstepping their authority with the mask mandate, the board also questioned the validity of face masks.

“Putting aside for the moment the lack of a sound medical or scientific basis for the Governor’s requirement to mask school children (who in general are neither at risk from COVID-19 nor likely to spread it), and also putting aside the lack of any thoughtful, well-considered and transparent balancing of the substantial harms of forced masking of juveniles against the purported benefits, the Governor and his state-level executive agencies do not have the power to continue the state of emergency indefinitely, and to continue to suspend the Administrative Procedure Act to circumvent normal agency rulemaking requirements.”

On Tuesday, Board members did not present evidence that face masks harm children. In the past, they have said that the continuous use of face masks hurts students’ education as well as their emotional well-being. Children learning English and those with special needs especially need to see a teacher’s face, they said.

The state’s in-class mask order has added a layer of controversy during the pandemic, with some parents supporting the move and others saying it will harm their children. In Orange County, at least three school boards – representing Capistrano, Placentia-Yorba Linda, and Saddleback Unified school districts – voted for resolutions this summer that asked the state to ease the mandate and make face masks optional.

The Orange County Board of Education will be represented for free by Tyler & Bursch, a law firm with offices in Anaheim and Murrieta.

This would mark the second pandemic-related lawsuit the board files against state officials.

Last August, the board filed a lawsuit against Newsom and the state’s public health officer, Sonia Y. Angell, seeking in-person learning at a time when school campuses across California closed down due to the pandemic. That lawsuit went straight to the California Supreme Court, where Justices asked Gov. Newsom to respond to the Board’s petition and a second related lawsuit. On Sept. 9, the Court refused to hear the case, which alleged that actions by Newsom and Angell were unconstitutional and violated the right to equal access to education.

That lawsuit also was represented pro-bono by Tyler & Bursch.

On July 22, two parent groups – Let Them Breathe and Reopen California Schools – filed a lawsuit against Newsom and state public health officials, seeking to end the school face mask mandate.

Here is the article for the OC register. 

40% of NYC Public Employees & Teachers Don't Trust Vaccines

Some of the city’s largest agencies have lower vaccination rates than the general public. Of NYPD’s 54,000 uniformed and civilian workforce, only 43% are vaccinated, the New York Post reported last week, also finding that the FDNY has a 55% vaccination rate. Roughly 42% of city Department of Correction workers are vaccinated, the agency told THE CITY, based on the information it has about those who were vaccinated in the five boroughs.

Both the city’s 135,000 public school employees and 42,000 public hospital workers have a 60% vaccination rate. An MTA spokesperson estimated 65% to 70% of the transit agency’s 65,000 employees have received the vaccine.

Maybe a decent number of NYPD and FDNY personnel voted for Trump. But it’s hard to believe there are many Republicans, registered or self-identified, among the ranks of the workforces of the MTA, city hospitals, or the city’s public schools.

And that last one is a strong argument for metaphorically burning teachers’ unions to the ground and salting the earth where they once stood. For the past eighteen months, teachers’ unions across the country and in New York City insisted that school buildings could not be reopened because the threat of COVID-19 infection to teachers, administrators, and other staff was just too high.

In New York state, teachers became eligible for vaccination back on January 11! And almost eight months later, 40 percent of city Department of Education employees remain unvaccinated? Clearly, these educators were not all that worried about catching COVID-19. Apparently, the fear of the coronavirus was just powerful enough to make returning to the classrooms unthinkable, but not quite so powerful enough to get them to get off their butts and go get vaccinated.

If the mainstream media wants to shame some people for not getting vaccinated, they don’t have to look through the social media posts of members of the Hillsong church.

Read more

Gavin Newsom's Children Are Back to Private School Classrooms

At a news conference, Newsom said that his four children, aged 4 to 11, had returned in some capacity to classrooms. 

Governor Gavin Newsom said Friday his children returned under a "phased-in approach" to in-person learning while many schools across the state remain closed due to Covid-19, including virtually all public schools where the governor lives in Sacramento County. 

According to a source, Newsom's children attend a private school in Sacramento County that has a hybrid curriculum that alternates remote and in-person education before returning full-time next month. POLITICO, for privacy purposes, does not name the school. 

"They are gradually returning to school and we are gradually leaving the very difficult distance learning that we've been doing, so many parents are doing up and down the state," Newsom said Friday when asked about the education of his own children.

Under Newsom's reopening scheme, Sacramento County schools are authorized to open classrooms. But major public school districts in the city, including San Juan Unified, which serves the neighborhood of Newsom, have yet to do so. Next month, several Sacramento County districts expect to reopen elementary schools, while San Juan has a target date for January. A reopening date has yet to be proposed by Sacramento City United. 

Reopening debate: This week, members of the California assembly sought more concrete action on school reopening from Newsom and state officials, stressing testing ability. For teachers across the state who believe it's not yet safe to reopen classes, the opportunity to consistently test students and staff has been a sticking point. 

According to an EdSource report released Friday, in 21 of the state's 58 counties, all school districts are either providing some form of in-person instruction or preparing to do so soon. 

Newsom referred to $5.3 billion in state and federal school funding to respond to Covid-19 and two months' worth of PPE offered by the state to districts. 

He expressed his conviction that schools need to be opened as soon as possible, citing academic and social-emotional issues, but stressed that local districts remain responsible for the decisions. The California Teachers Association has been adamant that it is not safe to return to schools yet. 

"We absolutely believe that the social-emotional learning that takes place in the classroom is the best place for our children, certainly also the best place for their parents. And so it is absolutely incumbent on doing everything in our power to support our districts so that they can reopen safely, with emphasis on reopening safely," said Newsom.

Newsom spoke at the unveiling of a $25 million laboratory on Friday that will dramatically increase the Covid-19 testing capacity of the state, which he said could help districts reopen schools. The laboratory, designed in collaboration with PerkinElmer, a diagnostics firm, will begin processing tests next month with a goal of 150,000 tests by March. 

Political implications: The return to school of the Newsom children confirms lawmakers' fears that families who can afford private schools have a jumpstart, further increasing the disparity in achievement. This summer, the CTA criticized the governor for allowing private schools to reopen exemptions, which almost all private schools have done.

The admission that his own kids are back in classrooms could raise Newsom's pressure to do more to reopen schools. When the day goes by with low-income public school children dealing with distance learning, expect the personal case of Newsom to become a high-profile example of coronavirus educational inequities. 

What's next: The pressure is on the state to issue more prescriptive guidance for schools to reopen, as security issues are kept up by school reopening talks with teacher unions and the state's local control strategy has produced uneven plans for the six million K-12 students in California.

State-by-State Map of School-Building Closures

 

Public School Enrollment Drops Around the Country

Orange County, Fla., has 8,000 missing students. The Miami-Dade County public schools have 16,000 fewer than last year. Los Angeles Unified — the nation's second-largest school system — is down nearly 11,000. Charlotte-Mecklenburg in North Carolina has 5,000 missing. Utah, Virginia and Washington are reporting declines statewide.

Comprehensive national information is not yet available, but research by NPR and our affiliate stations, along with country-wide media coverage, indicates decreases in enrollment in hundreds of school districts across 20 states. The decline is a departure from recent patterns in each of these districts: big and small, rich and poor, urban and rural. Data from the U.S. over the past 15 years. The Department of Education reveals that the rule has been small and consistent annual rises in public school enrollment.

These fall enrollment declines come six months after schools across the nation shut their doors in the midst of coronavirus lockdowns, as schools have been scrambling to expand remote learning offers and implement safety measures to allow buildings to open for in-person classes, often only a few days a week. The start of the year has been marked in many parts of the world by numerous changes in plans, widespread uncertainty between teachers and families, deep security issues, and concerns about unequal access to technology.

The enrollment declines are particularly evident in kindergarten and pre-K in many countries. We reached out to more than 100 districts for our coverage and heard back from more than 60. The average decrease in kindergarten enrollment in our sample was 16 percent.

And school districts stand to lose money as well.

Public schools are generally funded by states on a per-pupil basis. The first week of October marks the first of two "count days" in many states — a day in the fall, right at the start of the new fiscal year, where school districts must submit an official enrollment count to determine their funding for the subsequent year.

Read full story

Schools Could Offer an Online Option in the Fall

Schools Could Offer an Online Option

There will be a small percentage of parents that will refuse to send their kids to school and these parents will try and ruin it for everyone.  We need to provide parents and students with choices and not a classroom where "one size fits all". 

I keep hearing parents talk about the "new normal" and asking what is school going to look like in the Fall?  I frankly don't think school should look any different for students in the classroom.  However, there could be an online option for kids who don't feel comfortable at school. 

There have been studies that show kids don't pass the virus on to adults.  There have been almost zero cases of Covid-19 among young students and there is zero proof that any kids are passing this on to adults.  

If parents are freaked out about their kids getting the virus at school then maybe there should be an online option.  Most parents I speak with (apolitical) want their kids to be in a normal classroom setting in the Fall.  

The risks are far greater of kids developing learning and social disabilities spending too much time on the computer and not interacting with other kids and adults.  I have heard from several parents of kids with ADHD that online school is hurting their kids learning ability.  Kids need to interact and be social because its just what living life is about.  

Life is full of choices and risks.  Walking across the street is a risk and riding your bike to school is a risk.  Sending your kids to school is not a risk in my view.  Yes, kids are going to get sick and this is part of life that you are not going to change.  However, having an online school option will be a huge benefit so they don't just sit at home being sick and fall behind.  

Many schools recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars constructing security fences around perimeters and installed active shoot emergency plans.  This to me is a much higher risk than sending your kids to school who might get a virus that will have almost no harm to kids.  

I also don't think social distancing in the school should be made an issue either.   There is no point shrinking classroom sizes or sending kids to school on random days or odd hours to keep the class sizes smaller.  

I am not in favor of requiring masks for many reasons as doctors say that wearing a mask too long weakens immune systems and you can't breath properly.  This photo below of a Chinese classroom is frightening and in now way do I want our kids going to school in a Communist like environment.  

Having proper ventilation in a classroom is more important than having face masks or face shields.  I think our school boards need to focus on one thing only to open schools.  Ventilation of classrooms.  I don’t think a lot needs to change other than opening windows and doors for fresh air circulation will help a lot with spreading anything.  

Teachers are the one road block in this discussion if they want to come to school or want to provide an additional online environment.  There are many older teachers that probably could retire as a result of this virus and there are plenty of younger teachers willing to step in.  

Teachers unions are a complicated animal also that will likely want to block anything that creates more work or bureaucracy.   If teachers unions were to strike over the additional work or requirement to provide an online classroom alongside their normal classroom that wouldn't look very good right now.  School boards need to act now so teachers can prepare for providing an online environment.  

Having an online option for kids would not be that hard.  I would imagine the average school might have 10-20% of kids who might want to do an online only school.  If a child has a pre-existing condition or medical risk they can stay at home.  A separate classroom or teacher could be dedicated to these kids through the public school system.  This way it would not disrupt the learning environment of kids in a classroom and the teachers would not be distracted with tech support. 

There are lots of tools that are very easy to use like Zoom, GoToMeeting and Google Meet where students can interact with the classroom.  Google Classroom also provides an online environment of sharing work and taking tests.  

School boards are going to have to take charge and get their teachers and unions organized now.  They cannot politicize this virus and start redesigning the school system as a result of this crisis.  Herd immunity might be coming soon and it is questionable if a vaccine will ever be ready and even effective.    

The history of vaccines also shows that Government policies based around mandating vaccines are political.  Mandating kids get vaccines to attend school would be a massive mistake and would create a war among parents. 

I am also not in favor of testing kids or taking temperatures of kids entering the school either.  There is simply not enough data to support that kids have any greater risk getting the virus.  Imposing regulations on how kids are sent to school is a very slippery slope of regulation.  

A friend of mine read this and suggested that I need to go live in a "red state" if I want my kids to go back to school.  Hopefully he is wrong but it does concern me that opening of American has become political and only the red states are opening now and the blue states are way behind as of May.   

I think there are going to be lots of class action lawsuits on this issue organizing if blue states don't get their acts together and provide some clarity on their plans.  I could even see a scenario where the Federal Government might have to step in an mandate legislation to open.  

Senator Rand Paul, who had the Covid-19 virus expressed his view that opening schools in the Fall is a good idea since mortality rates among kids is near 0%. 

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