vox--2020-07-09--The story behind this iconic Olympics protest

The image of sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists during a medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City is an enduring image of silent protest .
But the key to understanding it goes beyond the black-gloved fists .
All three medal winners , including silver medalist Peter Norman of Australia , wore buttons that read “ Olympic Project for Human Rights.
” The Olympic Project for Human Rights ( OPHR ) was a coalition of prominent athletes formed in 1967 that threatened to boycott participating in the upcoming Olympic Games to draw attention to systemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group , led by professor Harry Edwards , ultimately voted to compete in the games and hold their demonstrations there , which led to the now-iconic display on the medal stand following the men ’ s 200-meter final .
This act got Smith and Carlos kicked off the Olympic team , but it left a lasting legacy about making political statements through sport .
Watch the video above to learn more about the OPHR .
You can find this video and all of Vox ’ s videos on YouTube .
And if you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ journalism , you can become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

The image of sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists during a medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City is an enduring image of silent protest. But the key to understanding it goes beyond the black-gloved fists.
All three medal winners, including silver medalist Peter Norman of Australia, wore buttons that read “Olympic Project for Human Rights.” The Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) was a coalition of prominent athletes formed in 1967 that threatened to boycott participating in the upcoming Olympic Games to draw attention to systemic racism in the United States.
The group, led by professor Harry Edwards, ultimately voted to compete in the games and hold their demonstrations there, which led to the now-iconic display on the medal stand following the men’s 200-meter final. This act got Smith and Carlos kicked off the Olympic team, but it left a lasting legacy about making political statements through sport.
Watch the video above to learn more about the OPHR. You can find this video and all of Vox’s videos on YouTube. And if you’re interested in supporting our video journalism, you can become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube.


vox--2020-07-09--How “abolish ICE” helped bring abolitionist ideas into the mainstream

Before thousands of people took to the streets demanding the abolition of police , “ abolish ICE ” was the rallying cry of activists protesting the Trump administration ’ s immigration policies .
Democrats on the debate stage were asked about the movement to abolish the agency , also known as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement .
Two candidates made dismantling the agency part of their platform , and those who did not still embraced calls for more aggressive reform .
The movement pushed ideas about abolition further into the mainstream , changing the conversation around criminal justice reform .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ movements as intertwined , and say it isn ’ t a coincidence that both have risen to prominence in recent years .
“ The activist communities that are involved in engaging people with the idea that we should defund the police or abolish the police or abolish ICE have a lot of cross-fertilization , ” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández , a law professor at the University of Denver .
“ These are activists who often are people of color in communities where law enforcement agents of various types have a deleterious effect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For lots of people who have been doing this work for many years , they view the police and ICE as working hand in hand.
” Movements to abolish ICE and the police have amassed significant support .
By August 2018 , about a quarter of Democrats supported calls to dismantle the agency , and more than half had come to view the agency negatively .
Similarly , polls conducted in the wake of recent protests have shown an almost 15 percent increase in support for cuts to law enforcement funding .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the movements ’ messaging has had no impact , García Hernández said .
“ The notion of abolishing ICE has become one worthy of consideration by a much broader segment of society , ” he said .
“ There has been an enormous shift.
” Advocates see abolishing police and abolishing ICE as part of the same movement Many of the organizations and movements calling for the abolition of ICE are the same ones that have been working to abolish the police ; they see both moves as part of their objective to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activists ’ definition , ICE , which has more than 20,000 agents nationwide , operates as a police force that targets and criminalizes non-white communities .
“ I don ’ t differentiate between abolishing the police and abolishing ICE , ” said Monica Mohapatra , one of the authors of “ # 8toAbolition , ” a platform for police abolition .
She listed ICE , along with sheriffs , highway patrol , campus police , school safety guards , corrections officers , and military officers , as among the forms of law enforcement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The calls to abolish the police are informed by the work of migrant rights organizers who have opposed detention and family separations and sought to frame calls to “ secure the border ” as a product of American imperialism , Mohapatra added .
Police have long worked in cooperation with ICE to arrest immigrants , leading to their detention and possible deportation .
During recent Black Lives Matter protests in Phoenix and New York City , ICE agents worked alongside police to take protesters into custody , even though that ’ s prohibited @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ICE can send a written request to a local jail or other law enforcement entity asking officers to continue to detain immigrants for an additional 48 hours beyond when they would otherwise be released so that the agency can take them into custody and begin deportation proceedings .
ICE doesn ’ t need court approval to issue these requests — it can do so even if an immigrant isn ’ t facing any pending charges , and without probable cause that they have committed any violation .
ICE has access to a number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immigrants to deport , including those of the Department of Motor Vehicles and the National Crime Information Center .
But police can also informally share information with ICE to notify them of someone in their custody whom they suspect may have committed an immigration violation .
For many unauthorized immigrants , coming into contact with police for an offense as minor as a traffic violation could result in their deportation .
Advocates have therefore understood the importance of police reform at the local level .
This cooperation between the two agencies is why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sanctuary ” policies barring local law enforcement from complying with detention requests or sharing information .
The Supreme Court recently left in place a California law that prevented most state and local law enforcement officials from providing detainees ’ release dates or home addresses to ICE unless it ’ s already public information .
That law also barred immigrants who have not been convicted of a crime from being transferred to immigration custody absent a court order , with some exceptions .
But those sanctuary policies can ’ t entirely shield immigrants from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states have taken the opposite tack , encouraging cooperation between police and ICE , such as with Arizona ’ s SB 1070 .
That controversial law was largely struck down by the Supreme Court in 2012 , but one provision that still stands requires immigration status checks during law enforcement stops , arrests , and detention .
“ Immigrant rights activists have been very clear about engaging local elected officials for many years on policing reforms , ” García Hernández said .
“ [ Being stopped ] in the street because of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of criminal activity becomes the key moment that then sets the tone for whether or not this individual ends up in ICE ’ s hands and potentially getting deported.
” The movements to abolish the police and to abolish ICE often work in tandem .
Some activists work on both causes , and others see their work as ideologically sympathetic .
ICE and the police are “ built on the same foundation of racism and white supremacy , ” said Silky Shah , executive director of Detention Watch Network , one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detention .
“ For police , it was to patrol and ‘ catch ’ enslaved people and protect white property and corporations .
For ICE as an agency , it was an isolationist and Islamophobic response to the September 11th attacks , ” she said .
“ The call to abolish ICE is a call to shift away from a system that targets , abuses , and exiles immigrants to one that values migration and human life.
” Abolish ICE shifted the Overton window — but the movement ’ s goals are broader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at least the 1960s and ’ 70s , when activists focused on mass incarceration .
At the time , abolishing prisons felt “ almost inevitable , ” as Joshua Dubler and Vincent Lloyd wrote in the Guardian in 2018 .
Even a commission created by the Nixon administration , which later went on to espouse a “ tough on crime ” stance , proposed the closure of all juvenile prisons and acknowledged “ overwhelming evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it.
” But the ensuing decades brought crackdowns on both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a crime wave that peaked in the early 1990s , with violent crimes jumping almost fourfold during that period .
The federal government reacted by increasing prison sentences , making it harder to challenge wrongful convictions , enabling police searches and seizures , and enacting strict criminal codes .
As crime dropped in the ’ 90s , the federal government turned its attention to immigration .
In 1996 , the Clinton administration backed what is now recognized as one of the most punitive immigration laws on the books , the Illegal Immigration Reform @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which was touted as centrist at the time , is largely responsible for the federal government ’ s massive detention and deportation engine as it exists today .
It laid the groundwork for ICE ’ s creation in 2003 as a response to 9/11 .
Immigrant advocates have opposed ICE since its inception , arguing that it has criminalized and unjustly targeted communities of color .
But the agency didn ’ t attract widespread scrutiny until Donald Trump came into office and started using the agency to enforce his hardline immigration policies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that began in 2018 .
“ The view of the agency as something that was purely malignant really happened after Trump was elected and ramped up interior enforcement in a way that was tied pretty explicitly to the creation of a white ethnostate , ” said Sean McElwee , the co-founder of nonprofit think tank Data for Progress who is credited with coining the # AbolishICE hashtag .
The abolish ICE movement drew from that of abolishing prisons in developing strategies to “ defund , shame , and create popular dissent around deportation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , most notably Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , popularized the idea of abolishing the agency , bucking the prevailing view of mainstream Democrats at the time who called for keeping the agency intact while reforming it .
Over half of voters in 2018 said they didn ’ t support dismantling ICE , and center-left commentators warned that endorsing the movement would cost Democrats congressional seats in the midterms .
But that never came to pass .
Instead , the idea became a rallying cry for protesters and eventually worked its way into presidential candidates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed breaking up ICE and redistributing its functions to other agencies .
More moderate candidates , meanwhile , positioned themselves against outright abolition while still embracing more aggressive reforms than Democrats had in the past .
Former Vice President Joe Biden , the presumptive Democratic nominee , said he would keep the agency intact but introduce reforms to improve accountability for ICE officials and limit its ability to target unauthorized immigrants who have not committed any crimes .
California Sen. Kamala Harris , who is reportedly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s running mate , was careful to distinguish between her proposal to “ complete [ ly ] overhaul ” ICE and the calls to abolish it entirely .
Centrist Democrats ’ efforts to distance themselves from the abolish ICE movement , however , have had their advantages : The movement was able to evolve outside the realm of electoral politics and without the baggage of the Democratic brand , McElwee said .
“ The fact that politicians won ’ t even come close to touching it has given a lot of freedom , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ embraced it , it would become much more polarized and partisan , whereas as it is now , it ’ s sort of a vision for a different society .
That allows you to change people ’ s hearts and minds.
” Advocates of abolition say their goal isn ’ t just to shift the Overton window , the range of ideas that the public is willing to consider .
They urge people to take them at their word when they say they want to dismantle the police and ICE .
When Detention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2012 , the idea was not the norm for the criminal justice reform movement , Shah said .
But over time , the advocacy community began to embrace the idea of abolition rather than reforming a system that they believe harms and punishes immigrants , especially since it was an idea that originated in the communities most impacted by oppressive law enforcement .
“ To actualize our vision , to move us forward , we have to talk about the world we want to see , ” Shah said .
“ Today @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in ways that seemed far-fetched just a few weeks ago .
There is a lot of self-education happening , a lot of conversations , and a lot of action .
I don ’ t think we can discount the role of powerful slogans in that respect.
” Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

Before thousands of people took to the streets demanding the abolition of police, “abolish ICE” was the rallying cry of activists protesting the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Democrats on the debate stage were asked about the movement to abolish the agency, also known as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two candidates made dismantling the agency part of their platform, and those who did not still embraced calls for more aggressive reform. The movement pushed ideas about abolition further into the mainstream, changing the conversation around criminal justice reform.
Activists for police abolition see the two movements as intertwined, and say it isn’t a coincidence that both have risen to prominence in recent years.
“The activist communities that are involved in engaging people with the idea that we should defund the police or abolish the police or abolish ICE have a lot of cross-fertilization,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at the University of Denver. “These are activists who often are people of color in communities where law enforcement agents of various types have a deleterious effect on them and the people around them. For lots of people who have been doing this work for many years, they view the police and ICE as working hand in hand.”
Movements to abolish ICE and the police have amassed significant support. By August 2018, about a quarter of Democrats supported calls to dismantle the agency, and more than half had come to view the agency negatively. Similarly, polls conducted in the wake of recent protests have shown an almost 15 percent increase in support for cuts to law enforcement funding.
It would be wrong to say that the movements’ messaging has had no impact, García Hernández said. “The notion of abolishing ICE has become one worthy of consideration by a much broader segment of society,” he said. “There has been an enormous shift.”
Advocates see abolishing police and abolishing ICE as part of the same movement
Many of the organizations and movements calling for the abolition of ICE are the same ones that have been working to abolish the police; they see both moves as part of their objective to dismantle repressive law enforcement.
By these activists’ definition, ICE, which has more than 20,000 agents nationwide, operates as a police force that targets and criminalizes non-white communities.
“I don’t differentiate between abolishing the police and abolishing ICE,” said Monica Mohapatra, one of the authors of “#8toAbolition,” a platform for police abolition. She listed ICE, along with sheriffs, highway patrol, campus police, school safety guards, corrections officers, and military officers, as among the forms of law enforcement that her group views as toxic.
The calls to abolish the police are informed by the work of migrant rights organizers who have opposed detention and family separations and sought to frame calls to “secure the border” as a product of American imperialism, Mohapatra added.
Police have long worked in cooperation with ICE to arrest immigrants, leading to their detention and possible deportation. During recent Black Lives Matter protests in Phoenix and New York City, ICE agents worked alongside police to take protesters into custody, even though that’s prohibited under the agency’s guidelines.
ICE can send a written request to a local jail or other law enforcement entity asking officers to continue to detain immigrants for an additional 48 hours beyond when they would otherwise be released so that the agency can take them into custody and begin deportation proceedings. ICE doesn’t need court approval to issue these requests — it can do so even if an immigrant isn’t facing any pending charges, and without probable cause that they have committed any violation.
ICE has access to a number of federal databases that help it identify immigrants to deport, including those of the Department of Motor Vehicles and the National Crime Information Center. But police can also informally share information with ICE to notify them of someone in their custody whom they suspect may have committed an immigration violation.
For many unauthorized immigrants, coming into contact with police for an offense as minor as a traffic violation could result in their deportation. Advocates have therefore understood the importance of police reform at the local level.
This cooperation between the two agencies is why some states and cities have adopted “sanctuary” policies barring local law enforcement from complying with detention requests or sharing information. The Supreme Court recently left in place a California law that prevented most state and local law enforcement officials from providing detainees’ release dates or home addresses to ICE unless it’s already public information. That law also barred immigrants who have not been convicted of a crime from being transferred to immigration custody absent a court order, with some exceptions.
But those sanctuary policies can’t entirely shield immigrants from ICE’s reaches, and other states have taken the opposite tack, encouraging cooperation between police and ICE, such as with Arizona’s SB 1070. That controversial law was largely struck down by the Supreme Court in 2012, but one provision that still stands requires immigration status checks during law enforcement stops, arrests, and detention.
“Immigrant rights activists have been very clear about engaging local elected officials for many years on policing reforms,” García Hernández said. “[Being stopped] in the street because of a traffic violation or because of some suspicion of criminal activity becomes the key moment that then sets the tone for whether or not this individual ends up in ICE’s hands and potentially getting deported.”
The movements to abolish the police and to abolish ICE often work in tandem. Some activists work on both causes, and others see their work as ideologically sympathetic.
ICE and the police are “built on the same foundation of racism and white supremacy,” said Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, one of the first organizations to call for abolishing immigration detention.
“For police, it was to patrol and ‘catch’ enslaved people and protect white property and corporations. For ICE as an agency, it was an isolationist and Islamophobic response to the September 11th attacks,” she said. “The call to abolish ICE is a call to shift away from a system that targets, abuses, and exiles immigrants to one that values migration and human life.”
Abolish ICE shifted the Overton window — but the movement’s goals are broader
Abolitionist ideas can be traced back to at least the 1960s and ’70s, when activists focused on mass incarceration. At the time, abolishing prisons felt “almost inevitable,” as Joshua Dubler and Vincent Lloyd wrote in the Guardian in 2018. Even a commission created by the Nixon administration, which later went on to espouse a “tough on crime” stance, proposed the closure of all juvenile prisons and acknowledged “overwhelming evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it.”
But the ensuing decades brought crackdowns on both crime and immigration. The US experienced a crime wave that peaked in the early 1990s, with violent crimes jumping almost fourfold during that period. The federal government reacted by increasing prison sentences, making it harder to challenge wrongful convictions, enabling police searches and seizures, and enacting strict criminal codes.
As crime dropped in the ’90s, the federal government turned its attention to immigration. In 1996, the Clinton administration backed what is now recognized as one of the most punitive immigration laws on the books, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The law, which was touted as centrist at the time, is largely responsible for the federal government’s massive detention and deportation engine as it exists today. It laid the groundwork for ICE’s creation in 2003 as a response to 9/11.
Immigrant advocates have opposed ICE since its inception, arguing that it has criminalized and unjustly targeted communities of color. But the agency didn’t attract widespread scrutiny until Donald Trump came into office and started using the agency to enforce his hardline immigration policies, especially the separation of immigrant families that began in 2018.
“The view of the agency as something that was purely malignant really happened after Trump was elected and ramped up interior enforcement in a way that was tied pretty explicitly to the creation of a white ethnostate,” said Sean McElwee, the co-founder of nonprofit think tank Data for Progress who is credited with coining the #AbolishICE hashtag.
The abolish ICE movement drew from that of abolishing prisons in developing strategies to “defund, shame, and create popular dissent around deportation,” Mohapatra said. Leading progressives, most notably Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, popularized the idea of abolishing the agency, bucking the prevailing view of mainstream Democrats at the time who called for keeping the agency intact while reforming it.
Over half of voters in 2018 said they didn’t support dismantling ICE, and center-left commentators warned that endorsing the movement would cost Democrats congressional seats in the midterms. But that never came to pass. Instead, the idea became a rallying cry for protesters and eventually worked its way into presidential candidates’ platforms. Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed breaking up ICE and redistributing its functions to other agencies.
More moderate candidates, meanwhile, positioned themselves against outright abolition while still embracing more aggressive reforms than Democrats had in the past. Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said he would keep the agency intact but introduce reforms to improve accountability for ICE officials and limit its ability to target unauthorized immigrants who have not committed any crimes. California Sen. Kamala Harris, who is reportedly on the shortlist to be Biden’s running mate, was careful to distinguish between her proposal to “complete[ly] overhaul” ICE and the calls to abolish it entirely.
Centrist Democrats’ efforts to distance themselves from the abolish ICE movement, however, have had their advantages: The movement was able to evolve outside the realm of electoral politics and without the baggage of the Democratic brand, McElwee said.
“The fact that politicians won’t even come close to touching it has given a lot of freedom,” he said. “If Biden embraced it, it would become much more polarized and partisan, whereas as it is now, it’s sort of a vision for a different society. That allows you to change people’s hearts and minds.”
Advocates of abolition say their goal isn’t just to shift the Overton window, the range of ideas that the public is willing to consider. They urge people to take them at their word when they say they want to dismantle the police and ICE.
When Detention Watch Network started advocating for abolishing detention in 2012, the idea was not the norm for the criminal justice reform movement, Shah said. But over time, the advocacy community began to embrace the idea of abolition rather than reforming a system that they believe harms and punishes immigrants, especially since it was an idea that originated in the communities most impacted by oppressive law enforcement.
“To actualize our vision, to move us forward, we have to talk about the world we want to see,” Shah said. “Today we have people talking about the issues in ways that seemed far-fetched just a few weeks ago. There is a lot of self-education happening, a lot of conversations, and a lot of action. I don’t think we can discount the role of powerful slogans in that respect.”


vox--2020-07-09--Joe Biden’s surprisingly visionary housing plan, explained

Joe Biden has a housing policy agenda that is ambitious , technically sound , and politically feasible , and that would — if implemented — be life-changing for millions of low-income and housing-insecure households .
According to original modeling by Columbia University scholars , it could cut child poverty by a third , narrow racial opportunity gaps , and potentially drive progress on the broader middle-class affordability crisis in the largest coastal cities as well .
The plan hasn ’ t stirred an intraparty debate or really much attention at all , which could make it politically feasible to enact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bold , comprehensive , and will go a long way in making sure every American has a home , ” Mary Cunningham , the vice president for metropolitan housing and communities policy at the Urban Institute , tells me .
“ It ’ s plainly obvious , in the middle of this pandemic , that home is more important than ever.
” The centerpiece is simple .
Take America ’ s biggest rental assistance program — Section 8 housing vouchers — and make it available to every family who qualifies .
The current @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people , simply because the pot allocated by Congress is too small .
Then pair it with regulatory changes to help the housing market work better for more people .
It ’ s the general consensus approach among top Democratic Party politicians and left-of-center policy wonks .
At the time when most presidential candidates were rolling out their housing plans , Biden didn ’ t have one , dropping his instead right before the South Carolina primary when it was swiftly overshadowed by the dramatic shift in the campaign and then the Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has not provoked much infighting and because key provisions would be eligible for budget reconciliation treatment , which would require a majority vote in the Senate instead of a supermajority , it ’ s the kind of thing that really might happen in 2021 if Biden won .
Federal housing assistance is something of a patchwork of different programs that includes the Section 8 voucher system , which arose in the mid-1970s when the Nixon and Ford administrations introduced it to incorporate market-oriented reforms into the welfare state .
The way it works @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spending money to build housing that is then rented at a discount to low-income people , the government gives low-income people vouchers that landlords can redeem for money and lets them rent whatever kind of house someone will rent to them .
Since the voucher program , when created , became Section 8 of the US Housing Act of 1937 , the vouchers have come to be known as Section 8 vouchers .
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that more than 5 million people receive help from the program .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ most notably , the widespread discrimination against voucher tenants that Stephanie Wykstra has written about for Vox .
Another huge flaw is that that , unlike Medicaid or SNAP — which , at least in theory , provide benefits to everyone who meets the eligibility criteria — Section 8 is capped in the amount of money available to it by the whims of Congress .
As it stands , about three-quarters of eligible people don ’ t get the help because there simply isn ’ t enough money in the pot , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the lives of millions of Americans .
CBPP data shows that receipt of housing vouchers leads to a decline in children experiencing separation from their parents , a decline in domestic violence , a decline in food insecurity , and , most of all , a steep decline in housing instability .
The idea of funding the program at the full level to meet family needs has existed for decades .
But multiple DC-based housing policy wonks tell me it was Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond ’ s Pulitzer Prize-winning book about housing instability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Profit in the American City , that helped put it on more people ’ s radars .
It ’ s a heartbreaking book , and the epilogue speaks about vouchers in a way that stretches beyond the arcana of federal budge policy : “ A universal housing voucher program would carve a middle path between the landlord ’ s desire to make a living and the tenant ’ s desire , simply , to live.
” Stephanie Collyer and Chris Wimer of Columbia University ’ s Center on Poverty and Social Policy helped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a mathematical model .
Looking at detailed data from the 2019 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey , they identified currently eligible households that are not receiving assistance .
They then modeled the impact of getting assistance on household budgets .
One nuance here is that the official poverty measure somewhat perversely fails to count the receipt of rental assistance as a form of income , thus saying that unassisted families are by definition no poorer than assisted families .
But the census also publishes a supplemental poverty measure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They find that the properly measured poverty rate falls by 22 percent under this proposal , while child poverty falls by 34 percent .
Not bad for a policy that would cost just a fraction of Trump ’ s tax cuts .
One nuance is that the underfunding of the program mitigates the landlord discrimination problem somewhat , because under the current system , if one family can ’ t use a voucher , that frees up money for someone else .
Will Fischer , the senior director for housing policy and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the real world , “ we can ’ t flip a switch and get a voucher to everyone who ’ s eligible overnight.
” He says it ’ s a critical goal , but to achieve it takes not only money for vouchers but also investments .
“ At the same time we ’ re expanding the voucher program , we should be building our capacity to help families with vouchers rent in a wide range of neighborhoods , and we should be taking steps to increase the supply of housing , especially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a Seattle program Dylan Matthews profiled for Vox last year that involved a partnership between the city housing authority and the housing authority for the surrounding suburbs in King County .
The idea was to give families a bit of extra money as well as hire navigators who would help families understand the value of relocating to “ high opportunity ” neighborhoods , away from concentrated poverty and blight .
Raj Chetty , an economist with the Opportunity Insights team that helped evaluate the project , called it “ the largest effect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social science intervention.
” Seattle ’ s initiative is a fantastic role model but will be difficult to bring to anything resembling mass scale .
“ It isn ’ t just about increased financial subsidy , ” Jenny Schuetz a housing economist with the Brookings Metropolitan Program , tells me .
“ It also requires high-capacity local government/nonprofit partners , ” which simply don ’ t exist everywhere .
But the federal initiative that could at least make it possible would involve expanding the use of what the Department of Housing and Urban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” — basically ensuring that subsidies can be pegged to the cost of renting a house in a nicer neighborhood , not just a pocket of concentrated poverty .
The Biden plan is a little short on these kinds of implementation details , which is the one area where experts see scope for improvement .
What he does do is try to tackle the other side of America ’ s housing affordability problem , which is that even people who aren ’ t low-income increasingly struggle to find a place to live in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Coast where there simply aren ’ t enough houses to go around .
The basic problem is exclusionary zoning .
When land is expensive and demand for housing is high , the natural market response would be to build denser structures — townhouses or mid-rise apartments or even big towers — so as to spread the land cost across more households .
The origins of these zoning rules were intimately connected to now-forgotten segregation battles in the first half of the 20th century , when the Supreme Court rules essentially that cities couldn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certain neighborhoods but they could try to exclude all low-income people and count on economics to do the rest .
Later , redlining policies excluded Black neighborhoods from much New Deal housing assistance , depriving Black families of wealth-building opportunities and creating pockets of poverty and exclusion that persist today .
Handing out money to those in need helps the problem on one side , but breaking down the zoning barriers on the other is important as well .
Biden picks up a proposal from Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. James Clyburn to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Block Grants or Surface Transportation Block Grants to develop plans to change zoning rules that block development of more housing types .
While expanding vouchers is a straightforward liberal pitch , changing exclusionary zoning involves more complicated politics .
Many of the most exclusionary places in America are affluent inner-ring suburbs of big coastal cities — places that these days send Democrats to Congress , but that presumably don ’ t want to be made to change their zoning rules .
The potential good news is that , conceptually at least , liberalizing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Emily Hamilton , an urban policy scholar at the libertarian Mercatus institute , does caution that “ the surface transportation part would lose a lot of free market people ” because it smacks of federal coercion to some degree , but adds she thinks it ’ s justified “ given that the federal government has done so much to encourage exclusionary zoning through transportation spending and otherwise.
” Her colleague Salim Furth adds the additional caution that “ nobody should trust HUD to evaluate zoning changes ” because it ’ s too easy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while retaining its substance .
He thinks incentive plans should be pegged squarely to outcomes rather than input changes , something that ’ s compatible with the text of the Booker/Clyburn proposal but would have to be refined at the implementation phase .
But even without nailing down all the details , one shouldn ’ t neglect the transformative potential of Biden ’ s core idea , especially given the current crisis .
America is on the edge of housing crisis As Jen Kirby details for Vox , America is on the verge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moratoriums expire even while the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage .
Additional extension of emergency measures would help .
But fundamentally , the United States can ’ t really build a housing system around the assumption that landlords will allow tenants to live indefinitely without paying their rent .
And from a tenant perspective , while not being evicted is much better than being evicted , a moratorium simply leaves unpaid debts to pile up and creates problems in the future .
When precarious renters need in the short term is actual financial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And what the country needs is a more robust housing safety net of the kind that would be created by turning Section 8 into a universal program .
Under the status quo , capacity to help people with the rent doesn ’ t expand along with need .
Under universal vouchers it would — household economic pain would be cushioned by automatic expansion of funding , and the economy as a whole would be stabilized by spending ramping up when needed .
To an extent , the entire housing topic has fallen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ news agenda .
But as a tool for stabilizing a pandemic-ravaged economy and l for breaking down entrenched forms of housing segregation , it ’ s hard to beat an expanded and improved housing voucher program .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

Joe Biden has a housing policy agenda that is ambitious, technically sound, and politically feasible, and that would — if implemented — be life-changing for millions of low-income and housing-insecure households.
According to original modeling by Columbia University scholars, it could cut child poverty by a third, narrow racial opportunity gaps, and potentially drive progress on the broader middle-class affordability crisis in the largest coastal cities as well.
The plan hasn’t stirred an intraparty debate or really much attention at all, which could make it politically feasible to enact.
“Biden’s plan is bold, comprehensive, and will go a long way in making sure every American has a home,” Mary Cunningham, the vice president for metropolitan housing and communities policy at the Urban Institute, tells me. “It’s plainly obvious, in the middle of this pandemic, that home is more important than ever.”
The centerpiece is simple. Take America’s biggest rental assistance program — Section 8 housing vouchers — and make it available to every family who qualifies. The current funding structure leaves out around 11 million people, simply because the pot allocated by Congress is too small. Then pair it with regulatory changes to help the housing market work better for more people. It’s the general consensus approach among top Democratic Party politicians and left-of-center policy wonks.
At the time when most presidential candidates were rolling out their housing plans, Biden didn’t have one, dropping his instead right before the South Carolina primary when it was swiftly overshadowed by the dramatic shift in the campaign and then the Covid-19 pandemic. But precisely because the plan has not provoked much infighting and because key provisions would be eligible for budget reconciliation treatment, which would require a majority vote in the Senate instead of a supermajority, it’s the kind of thing that really might happen in 2021 if Biden won.
Universal housing vouchers, explained
Federal housing assistance is something of a patchwork of different programs that includes the Section 8 voucher system, which arose in the mid-1970s when the Nixon and Ford administrations introduced it to incorporate market-oriented reforms into the welfare state. The way it works is that instead of the federal government spending money to build housing that is then rented at a discount to low-income people, the government gives low-income people vouchers that landlords can redeem for money and lets them rent whatever kind of house someone will rent to them. Since the voucher program, when created, became Section 8 of the US Housing Act of 1937, the vouchers have come to be known as Section 8 vouchers.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that more than 5 million people receive help from the program.
It has various flaws, including, most notably, the widespread discrimination against voucher tenants that Stephanie Wykstra has written about for Vox. Another huge flaw is that that, unlike Medicaid or SNAP — which, at least in theory, provide benefits to everyone who meets the eligibility criteria — Section 8 is capped in the amount of money available to it by the whims of Congress. As it stands, about three-quarters of eligible people don’t get the help because there simply isn’t enough money in the pot, which is a huge missed opportunity to improve the lives of millions of Americans.
CBPP data shows that receipt of housing vouchers leads to a decline in children experiencing separation from their parents, a decline in domestic violence, a decline in food insecurity, and, most of all, a steep decline in housing instability.
The idea of funding the program at the full level to meet family needs has existed for decades. But multiple DC-based housing policy wonks tell me it was Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book about housing instability in Milwaukee, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, that helped put it on more people’s radars.
It’s a heartbreaking book, and the epilogue speaks about vouchers in a way that stretches beyond the arcana of federal budge policy: “A universal housing voucher program would carve a middle path between the landlord’s desire to make a living and the tenant’s desire, simply, to live.”
Stephanie Collyer and Chris Wimer of Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy helped me quantify the impact more precisely with a mathematical model. Looking at detailed data from the 2019 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey, they identified currently eligible households that are not receiving assistance. They then modeled the impact of getting assistance on household budgets. One nuance here is that the official poverty measure somewhat perversely fails to count the receipt of rental assistance as a form of income, thus saying that unassisted families are by definition no poorer than assisted families. But the census also publishes a supplemental poverty measure that corrects for this and other flaws.
They find that the properly measured poverty rate falls by 22 percent under this proposal, while child poverty falls by 34 percent. Not bad for a policy that would cost just a fraction of Trump’s tax cuts.
Moving to Opportunity
One nuance is that the underfunding of the program mitigates the landlord discrimination problem somewhat, because under the current system, if one family can’t use a voucher, that frees up money for someone else.
Will Fischer, the senior director for housing policy and research at CBPP, cautions that in the real world, “we can’t flip a switch and get a voucher to everyone who’s eligible overnight.” He says it’s a critical goal, but to achieve it takes not only money for vouchers but also investments. “At the same time we’re expanding the voucher program, we should be building our capacity to help families with vouchers rent in a wide range of neighborhoods, and we should be taking steps to increase the supply of housing, especially in the tightest markets.”
One model is a Seattle program Dylan Matthews profiled for Vox last year that involved a partnership between the city housing authority and the housing authority for the surrounding suburbs in King County. The idea was to give families a bit of extra money as well as hire navigators who would help families understand the value of relocating to “high opportunity” neighborhoods, away from concentrated poverty and blight.
Raj Chetty, an economist with the Opportunity Insights team that helped evaluate the project, called it “the largest effect I’ve ever seen in a social science intervention.”
Seattle’s initiative is a fantastic role model but will be difficult to bring to anything resembling mass scale.
“It isn’t just about increased financial subsidy,” Jenny Schuetz a housing economist with the Brookings Metropolitan Program, tells me. “It also requires high-capacity local government/nonprofit partners,” which simply don’t exist everywhere. But the federal initiative that could at least make it possible would involve expanding the use of what the Department of Housing and Urban Development calls “small-area fair market rents” — basically ensuring that subsidies can be pegged to the cost of renting a house in a nicer neighborhood, not just a pocket of concentrated poverty.
The Biden plan is a little short on these kinds of implementation details, which is the one area where experts see scope for improvement. What he does do is try to tackle the other side of America’s housing affordability problem, which is that even people who aren’t low-income increasingly struggle to find a place to live in metro areas in the Northeast and West Coast where there simply aren’t enough houses to go around.
A carrot for more housing
The basic problem is exclusionary zoning. When land is expensive and demand for housing is high, the natural market response would be to build denser structures — townhouses or mid-rise apartments or even big towers — so as to spread the land cost across more households. The origins of these zoning rules were intimately connected to now-forgotten segregation battles in the first half of the 20th century, when the Supreme Court rules essentially that cities couldn’t formally exclude Black people from certain neighborhoods but they could try to exclude all low-income people and count on economics to do the rest.
Later, redlining policies excluded Black neighborhoods from much New Deal housing assistance, depriving Black families of wealth-building opportunities and creating pockets of poverty and exclusion that persist today.
Handing out money to those in need helps the problem on one side, but breaking down the zoning barriers on the other is important as well. Biden picks up a proposal from Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. James Clyburn to require localities that benefit from Community Development Block Grants or Surface Transportation Block Grants to develop plans to change zoning rules that block development of more housing types.
While expanding vouchers is a straightforward liberal pitch, changing exclusionary zoning involves more complicated politics. Many of the most exclusionary places in America are affluent inner-ring suburbs of big coastal cities — places that these days send Democrats to Congress, but that presumably don’t want to be made to change their zoning rules. The potential good news is that, conceptually at least, liberalizing regulation is something Republicans might support.
Emily Hamilton, an urban policy scholar at the libertarian Mercatus institute, does caution that “the surface transportation part would lose a lot of free market people” because it smacks of federal coercion to some degree, but adds she thinks it’s justified “given that the federal government has done so much to encourage exclusionary zoning through transportation spending and otherwise.”
Her colleague Salim Furth adds the additional caution that “nobody should trust HUD to evaluate zoning changes” because it’s too easy to make a show of reducing exclusion while retaining its substance. He thinks incentive plans should be pegged squarely to outcomes rather than input changes, something that’s compatible with the text of the Booker/Clyburn proposal but would have to be refined at the implementation phase. But even without nailing down all the details, one shouldn’t neglect the transformative potential of Biden’s core idea, especially given the current crisis.
America is on the edge of housing crisis
As Jen Kirby details for Vox, America is on the verge of a housing crisis as emergency eviction moratoriums expire even while the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage.
Additional extension of emergency measures would help. But fundamentally, the United States can’t really build a housing system around the assumption that landlords will allow tenants to live indefinitely without paying their rent. And from a tenant perspective, while not being evicted is much better than being evicted, a moratorium simply leaves unpaid debts to pile up and creates problems in the future.
When precarious renters need in the short term is actual financial help that would let them make rent. And what the country needs is a more robust housing safety net of the kind that would be created by turning Section 8 into a universal program. Under the status quo, capacity to help people with the rent doesn’t expand along with need. Under universal vouchers it would — household economic pain would be cushioned by automatic expansion of funding, and the economy as a whole would be stabilized by spending ramping up when needed.
To an extent, the entire housing topic has fallen by the wayside amid a very crowded news agenda. But as a tool for stabilizing a pandemic-ravaged economy and l for breaking down entrenched forms of housing segregation, it’s hard to beat an expanded and improved housing voucher program.


vox--2020-07-09--I’m an epidemiologist and a dad. Here’s why I think schools should reopen.

Covid-19 is upending our lives and forcing us to make complex decisions with little information and conflicting guidance from authorities .
Summer , typically the season of staying up late and popsicles in the park , offers no escape .
Many of us are already turning to the fall , and the fate of schools .
What will we do with our kids ?
Can we really send them back to school ?
If we keep them at home , will they forget how to read ?
If we send them to school , what might be the consequence ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ this is where we are .
The choices are high-stakes and plagued by uncertainty .
Even thinking about them makes me sweat .
I am the father of three girls ages 16 , 13 , and 10 , and like every parent in America , I am worried about the fall .
I ’ m also an infectious disease doctor and epidemiologist , and have spent the past four months drinking from the fire hose of Covid-19 science , designing infection control policies for my hospital , and caring for patients on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reopening committee for my synagogue and for my school district .
I consult for businesses as they reopen .
I have a first-row seat to the coronavirus pandemic , both as a parent and as a professional .
In both of those roles , I hear the same questions , repeated with mounting urgency : “ Are our kids going to be safe ?
” “ Are our teachers going to be safe ?
” “ Will kids bring Covid-19 home to our family ?
” “ Will opening schools lead to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What are the risks of not reopening ?
” I have spent time reviewing the data and seeking answers to the challenging questions we face .
Having the knowledge to make your own assessment , however , need not be a position of professional privilege .
With this short primer , I hope you can add your voice to the debate and advocate for yourself , your family , and your community .
The good news is , we can hope to send kids back to school in the fall , but there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Are our kids going to be safe ?
If any of us is ever going to send our kids to school again , we need a clear answer .
Fortunately , I think we have one , at least for the children .
Children are less likely than adults to be infected with Covid-19 .
There are multiple ways to study this question , and all the approaches arrive at this same conclusion .
First , when we look at public health reporting , children under the age of 18 make up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US , even though they represent 22 percent of the total population .
Similar studies in Chicago and Massachusetts found that children make up fewer Covid-19 cases than expected , as have studies in Italy , South Korea , and Iceland .
For me , that is a lot of similar results for this to be a fluke .
When one study in one location produces a finding , it is notable .
When five studies from five different settings find the same thing , it is compelling .
One reason case counts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be expected is that we did close our schools in March .
Maybe we protected our kids by keeping them out of harm ’ s way .
But if we send them back to school this fall , will they still enjoy protected status from the coronavirus ?
One way to study this question is to estimate the “ attack rate ” of the disease — that is , the proportion of people exposed who become infected .
Multiple studies from China investigated the attack rate among people living in a house with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that only about 4 to 5 percent of kids developed an active infection .
In comparison , about 17 to 20 percent of adults became infected after exposure .
To be fair , data in the US is more concerning .
In New York state , 57 percent of people living with a Covid-infected person developed an infection .
It is hard to take reassurance from that fact .
But even with such a high attack rate , children were still less likely to develop an infection and there was a gradient over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effect ” for age .
Finally , even in the worst-case scenario , in which a child does contract Covid-19 , the outcomes of the disease are less severe in younger people than among older adults .
In one analysis of more than 550 confirmed cases among children under age 18 in China , Italy , and Spain , only nine people ( 1.6 percent ) had severe or critical disease .
In another study , approximately 5 percent ( one out of 20 ) developed symptoms that required hospitalization , but only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comparison , a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report indicates that among those ages 60 to 69 who have the coronavirus , 22 percent require hospitalization and 4 percent require intensive care .
Are teachers going to be safe ?
There is far less data specifically on teachers and staff than on kids .
One study in France is reassuring .
In that investigation of 541 students and 46 teachers , there were no documented transmission events from students to teachers .
However , while many of us immediately think of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the classroom , we may not consider the additional risk that teachers face in break rooms and staff meetings .
Working in the hospital , I have personally seen that staff have a difficult time maintaining personal protection at all times .
Doctors and nurses tend to let down their guard when they are away from patients and during breaks .
Masks come down , people eat snacks in potentially unsafe spaces , and social distancing lessens .
The same will likely be true in schools .
The potential risk to teachers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Staff risk in schools likely looks similar to the risk of any adult working in a crowded indoor environment during the pandemic .
School opening plans must consider teacher safety in addition to the well-being of students .
Will my kids bring Covid-19 home to our family ?
For most parents , the next question after the safety of their kids will be their own safety and that of loved ones in the house .
Even if the kids are all right , could they bring the coronavirus home ?
Here , again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ large review of over 700 scientific publications found that children accounted for only a small fraction of Covid-19 cases , and that they were rarely the first case in a cluster of infections in a household .
For example , in China , only 5 percent of household clusters were found to have a child as the index case .
Similarly , in Switzerland and Holland , children accounted for only 8 percent of household transmission clusters .
Unfortunately , the US numbers make me a little less certain .
In a Chicago @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 73 percent of infected children contracted the virus from an adult .
However , that means that 27 percent of infections were child-to-child , which is substantially more than 5 to 8 percent .
Still , the Chicago study only examined 15 households , and adult-to-child transmission remained far more common than child-to-child or child-to-adult .
Will someone in America contract Covid-19 from their sick child ?
Yes .
Should I structure my life around such a rare occurrence ?
I do not think so .
Will opening schools lead to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have reached the most challenging question to answer and one that is a holy grail for Covid-19 epidemiologists .
I want to give you the plain answer here — we do not know .
An objective summary of the evidence in hand suggests that schools will play little role in sustaining the pandemic .
A recent review of 210 transmission clusters around the world found that only eight of them ( 3.8 percent ) involved school transmission .
Case studies of outbreak investigations in Ireland , France , and Australia demonstrate almost zero @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demonstrate no clear role of in-school transmission in explaining current Covid-19 epidemiology .
All of this data tells us that despite our gut instincts and parental anxiety , schools will likely be okay this fall .
But the story does not end there .
First , there are examples of in-school outbreaks that did force a second shutdown .
Israel is an example .
Israel reopened schools with limited class sizes in early May and lifted class size restrictions on May 17 .
By June 3 , they had to reclose after a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 116 students and 14 teachers at one school .
Per NPR , one child tested positive without symptoms and the school decided to quarantine the grade .
Next , a child in a different grade tested positive and they closed the school .
At that time , they discovered that they already had more than 100 cases .
It is not certain that all of those children were infected in the school , but the story is concerning and it raises the bar on monitoring our schools .
The data that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( or school district ) wants to tell you that schools play little role in transmission , then ask them how their district is different from Israel ’ s .
Why can an outbreak happen in that setting but not yours ?
Perhaps there is a reason , but until someone can give you a good one , be skeptical .
What are the risks of not reopening ?
A discussion of school closures that focuses only on Covid-19 and not at all on education is incomplete .
There are real risks to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact , the risks of staying home are in many ways clearer than the risks of returning to school .
One study using statistical models projects major losses in math performance if we continue with remote learning until 2021 .
Perhaps more compelling than statistics , however , is some simple common sense .
On any given day , it is hard to point to the loss of learning from home .
At the same time , we all agree that education is essential .
If we keep our kids home for another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 12 percent of their total education .
I can not identify the specific losses from that much absence , but I am confident there is a cost to missing that much school .
For perspective , missing 12 percent of school time is the same as missing 22 days of school in a single year .
Further , the losses will not be equal .
The “ Covid-19 slide ” will likely be greatest among the socially vulnerable , such as children with learning disabilities and those whose situation at home is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ acknowledge that the losses will hit people of color much harder than those who are white .
Further , school officials account for approximately 20 percent of formal reports of child abuse and domestic violence .
Without school-based counselors and social workers , these concerns may not be investigated .
All of these harms weighed on the American Academy of Pediatrics ’ guidance that school reopening plans start with the goal of having students be physically present in schools .
What should we do ?
A great mentor of mine , Milton Weinstein @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being the person who introduced the field of medicine to the concept of rigorous decision-science .
The central question to all decision-science is : “ What should we do , given that we have imperfect information ?
” Milt is fond of the expression “ a decision has to be made.
” His wisdom has never been more pertinent than it is today .
We have to make a decision .
There is no choice to do nothing , because either way — go to school or learn remotely — we are making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us , we are making a decision with significant uncertainty about all the risks involved .
Fortunately , this is not the first time that people have been forced to make decisions with uncertainty .
There are approaches to making uncertain decisions in a way that maximizes the chances of a good outcome and minimizes the harm if the outcome is poor .
You ’ ve likely heard of one of them : hedging your bets .
When multibillion-dollar investment funds make a choice to invest , they recognize that they could be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ versus out decisions .
Instead , they hedge their bets .
They may think that the newest beach toy is destined for greatness , but just in case of a rainy summer , they also invest in umbrellas .
When I look across all the data , I see an uncertain decision .
First , I propose that the balance of data that we have now suggests that we need to try to open schools in the fall .
The risks of reopening are uncertain ; the harm of staying home is clear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data above to you that “ schools are safe , ” ask your school board : What is the plan beyond reopening ?
What if we are wrong ?
How will your district know that things are going well ( or not well ) ?
Don ’ t let the conversation stop at “ data suggests that schools are safe.
” Don ’ t let the plan stop with “ symptomatic people should call their doctor.
” If we are going to open safely in the fall , we must have the capacity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outbreak occurs .
Israel is an important cautionary tale .
When Israel closed down its schools again , it had only identified two school-based cases , yet in the end it discovered that more than 100 students had been infected .
To do this well , and to do it safely , we must have school-based Covid-19 symptom screening , testing , contact tracing , and isolation .
“ School-based testing ” does not mean that the test themselves must occur in school buildings .
“ School-based testing ” means that students and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contacting the school , and that the results of those tests are sent directly to the school district in real time .
That seems straightforward , but it is not .
The community does not yet have adequate testing , contact tracing , or isolation .
Schools currently have nothing .
It requires building new capacity in schools for testing and contact tracing .
It requires a budget .
It requires a formal plan .
Ideally , that budget should come from the federal government and be directed to states and ultimately school @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Covid-19 testing strategy .
Realistically , given the lack of any such national plan , the funds need to come from individual states .
Building such infrastructure comes at a cost and many districts are already facing budget shortfalls .
Districts that rely only on their existing testing infrastructure will not have the real-time information they need to make good decisions .
Imagine a child has a fever and cough in October and is told by the school to call the doctor for a Covid-19 test .
Results are typically returned in two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
After another day ( or two ) , the data might make it to the school district .
So it will take at least four to five days for the district to have any information .
We need testing within the school system to shorten the delay at every step of the process and reduce the turnaround time for the test to only a day .
With that kind of time resolution , we can increase awareness of the situation at our schools , along with the ability to react appropriately .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and gambling with the health of our children , teachers , and community .
Ultimately , when I look at the decision about school as both a father and a scientist , I see a difficult decision that must be made despite uncertainty .
The risks of opening are uncertain , but the benefits are clear .
We need to try to reopen .
We have been wrong before about Covid-19 .
In March , the epidemiology world was quite confident that transmission could not occur before a person develops symptoms .
Three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asymptomatic people were likely one of the main drivers of the pandemic .
In March , the CDC and the US surgeon general told the public that masks play no role in controlling the spread of the disease .
Now we see masks as a central component of our reopening strategies .
We could be wrong about schools , but we can not afford to wait to find out for certain .
We need school-based Covid-19 symptom screening , testing , contact tracing , and isolation .
Opening without a plan to test @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children ’ s health .
Benjamin P. Linas is an associate professor of epidemiology and an infectious disease physician at Boston University School of Medicine .
Find him on Twitter @ BenjaminLinas .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

Covid-19 is upending our lives and forcing us to make complex decisions with little information and conflicting guidance from authorities. Summer, typically the season of staying up late and popsicles in the park, offers no escape. Many of us are already turning to the fall, and the fate of schools.
What will we do with our kids? Can we really send them back to school? If we keep them at home, will they forget how to read? If we send them to school, what might be the consequence? We are living a nightmare, but this is where we are. The choices are high-stakes and plagued by uncertainty. Even thinking about them makes me sweat.
I am the father of three girls ages 16, 13, and 10, and like every parent in America, I am worried about the fall.
I’m also an infectious disease doctor and epidemiologist, and have spent the past four months drinking from the fire hose of Covid-19 science, designing infection control policies for my hospital, and caring for patients on the front line. I serve on the reopening committee for my synagogue and for my school district. I consult for businesses as they reopen.
Related Reopening schools safely is going to take much more federal leadership
I have a first-row seat to the coronavirus pandemic, both as a parent and as a professional. In both of those roles, I hear the same questions, repeated with mounting urgency: “Are our kids going to be safe?” “Are our teachers going to be safe?” “Will kids bring Covid-19 home to our family?” “Will opening schools lead to a second wave and lockdown?” “What are the risks of not reopening?”
I have spent time reviewing the data and seeking answers to the challenging questions we face. Having the knowledge to make your own assessment, however, need not be a position of professional privilege. With this short primer, I hope you can add your voice to the debate and advocate for yourself, your family, and your community. The good news is, we can hope to send kids back to school in the fall, but there is a lot of work to do.
Are our kids going to be safe?
If any of us is ever going to send our kids to school again, we need a clear answer. Fortunately, I think we have one, at least for the children. Children are less likely than adults to be infected with Covid-19. There are multiple ways to study this question, and all the approaches arrive at this same conclusion.
First, when we look at public health reporting, children under the age of 18 make up only 2 percent of cases in the US, even though they represent 22 percent of the total population. Similar studies in Chicago and Massachusetts found that children make up fewer Covid-19 cases than expected, as have studies in Italy, South Korea, and Iceland. For me, that is a lot of similar results for this to be a fluke. When one study in one location produces a finding, it is notable. When five studies from five different settings find the same thing, it is compelling.
One reason case counts may be lower among kids than would be expected is that we did close our schools in March. Maybe we protected our kids by keeping them out of harm’s way. But if we send them back to school this fall, will they still enjoy protected status from the coronavirus?
One way to study this question is to estimate the “attack rate” of the disease — that is, the proportion of people exposed who become infected. Multiple studies from China investigated the attack rate among people living in a house with someone who is infected. They found that only about 4 to 5 percent of kids developed an active infection. In comparison, about 17 to 20 percent of adults became infected after exposure.
To be fair, data in the US is more concerning. In New York state, 57 percent of people living with a Covid-infected person developed an infection. It is hard to take reassurance from that fact. But even with such a high attack rate, children were still less likely to develop an infection and there was a gradient over ages, a sort of “dose effect” for age.
Finally, even in the worst-case scenario, in which a child does contract Covid-19, the outcomes of the disease are less severe in younger people than among older adults. In one analysis of more than 550 confirmed cases among children under age 18 in China, Italy, and Spain, only nine people (1.6 percent) had severe or critical disease. In another study, approximately 5 percent (one out of 20) developed symptoms that required hospitalization, but only 0.6 percent required intensive care. In comparison, a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report indicates that among those ages 60 to 69 who have the coronavirus, 22 percent require hospitalization and 4 percent require intensive care.
Are teachers going to be safe?
There is far less data specifically on teachers and staff than on kids. One study in France is reassuring. In that investigation of 541 students and 46 teachers, there were no documented transmission events from students to teachers. However, while many of us immediately think of the risk to teachers from exposure in the classroom, we may not consider the additional risk that teachers face in break rooms and staff meetings.
Working in the hospital, I have personally seen that staff have a difficult time maintaining personal protection at all times. Doctors and nurses tend to let down their guard when they are away from patients and during breaks. Masks come down, people eat snacks in potentially unsafe spaces, and social distancing lessens.
The same will likely be true in schools. The potential risk to teachers, therefore, goes beyond the classroom. Staff risk in schools likely looks similar to the risk of any adult working in a crowded indoor environment during the pandemic. School opening plans must consider teacher safety in addition to the well-being of students.
Will my kids bring Covid-19 home to our family?
For most parents, the next question after the safety of their kids will be their own safety and that of loved ones in the house. Even if the kids are all right, could they bring the coronavirus home?
Here, again, the data appears reassuring. One large review of over 700 scientific publications found that children accounted for only a small fraction of Covid-19 cases, and that they were rarely the first case in a cluster of infections in a household. For example, in China, only 5 percent of household clusters were found to have a child as the index case. Similarly, in Switzerland and Holland, children accounted for only 8 percent of household transmission clusters.
Unfortunately, the US numbers make me a little less certain. In a Chicago study of 15 households with available data, 73 percent of infected children contracted the virus from an adult. However, that means that 27 percent of infections were child-to-child, which is substantially more than 5 to 8 percent.
Still, the Chicago study only examined 15 households, and adult-to-child transmission remained far more common than child-to-child or child-to-adult.
Will someone in America contract Covid-19 from their sick child? Yes. Should I structure my life around such a rare occurrence? I do not think so.
Will opening schools lead to a second wave and more lockdowns?
We have reached the most challenging question to answer and one that is a holy grail for Covid-19 epidemiologists. I want to give you the plain answer here — we do not know.
An objective summary of the evidence in hand suggests that schools will play little role in sustaining the pandemic. A recent review of 210 transmission clusters around the world found that only eight of them (3.8 percent) involved school transmission. Case studies of outbreak investigations in Ireland, France, and Australia demonstrate almost zero cases of in-school transmission.
Modeling studies demonstrate no clear role of in-school transmission in explaining current Covid-19 epidemiology. All of this data tells us that despite our gut instincts and parental anxiety, schools will likely be okay this fall.
But the story does not end there. First, there are examples of in-school outbreaks that did force a second shutdown. Israel is an example.
Israel reopened schools with limited class sizes in early May and lifted class size restrictions on May 17. By June 3, they had to reclose after a major outbreak. The largest outbreak was 116 students and 14 teachers at one school. Per NPR, one child tested positive without symptoms and the school decided to quarantine the grade. Next, a child in a different grade tested positive and they closed the school.
At that time, they discovered that they already had more than 100 cases. It is not certain that all of those children were infected in the school, but the story is concerning and it raises the bar on monitoring our schools.
The data that’s available is mixed. If a person (or school district) wants to tell you that schools play little role in transmission, then ask them how their district is different from Israel’s. Why can an outbreak happen in that setting but not yours? Perhaps there is a reason, but until someone can give you a good one, be skeptical.
What are the risks of not reopening?
A discussion of school closures that focuses only on Covid-19 and not at all on education is incomplete. There are real risks to keeping our children at home. In fact, the risks of staying home are in many ways clearer than the risks of returning to school.
One study using statistical models projects major losses in math performance if we continue with remote learning until 2021. Perhaps more compelling than statistics, however, is some simple common sense.
On any given day, it is hard to point to the loss of learning from home. At the same time, we all agree that education is essential. If we keep our kids home for another school year, they will have missed 12 percent of their total education. I cannot identify the specific losses from that much absence, but I am confident there is a cost to missing that much school. For perspective, missing 12 percent of school time is the same as missing 22 days of school in a single year.
Further, the losses will not be equal. The “Covid-19 slide” will likely be greatest among the socially vulnerable, such as children with learning disabilities and those whose situation at home is not conducive to homeschooling.
We must also acknowledge that the losses will hit people of color much harder than those who are white. Further, school officials account for approximately 20 percent of formal reports of child abuse and domestic violence. Without school-based counselors and social workers, these concerns may not be investigated.
All of these harms weighed on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidance that school reopening plans start with the goal of having students be physically present in schools.
What should we do?
A great mentor of mine, Milton Weinstein at Harvard, is generally credited as being the person who introduced the field of medicine to the concept of rigorous decision-science. The central question to all decision-science is: “What should we do, given that we have imperfect information?”
Milt is fond of the expression “a decision has to be made.” His wisdom has never been more pertinent than it is today. We have to make a decision. There is no choice to do nothing, because either way — go to school or learn remotely — we are making a decision.
Unfortunately for all of us, we are making a decision with significant uncertainty about all the risks involved. Fortunately, this is not the first time that people have been forced to make decisions with uncertainty. There are approaches to making uncertain decisions in a way that maximizes the chances of a good outcome and minimizes the harm if the outcome is poor.
You’ve likely heard of one of them: hedging your bets. When multibillion-dollar investment funds make a choice to invest, they recognize that they could be wrong. They do not make all-in versus out decisions. Instead, they hedge their bets. They may think that the newest beach toy is destined for greatness, but just in case of a rainy summer, they also invest in umbrellas.
When I look across all the data, I see an uncertain decision. First, I propose that the balance of data we have now suggests that we need to try to open schools in the fall. The risks of reopening are uncertain; the harm of staying home is clear.
If your school district cites the data above to you that “schools are safe,” ask your school board: What is the plan beyond reopening? What if we are wrong? How will your district know that things are going well (or not well)? Don’t let the conversation stop at “data suggests that schools are safe.” Don’t let the plan stop with “symptomatic people should call their doctor.”
If we are going to open safely in the fall, we must have the capacity to know — quickly — when an outbreak occurs. Israel is an important cautionary tale. When Israel closed down its schools again, it had only identified two school-based cases, yet in the end it discovered that more than 100 students had been infected.
To do this well, and to do it safely, we must have school-based Covid-19 symptom screening, testing, contact tracing, and isolation. “School-based testing” does not mean that the test themselves must occur in school buildings. “School-based testing” means that students and teachers can easily access a test by contacting the school, and that the results of those tests are sent directly to the school district in real time.
That seems straightforward, but it is not. The community does not yet have adequate testing, contact tracing, or isolation. Schools currently have nothing.
It requires building new capacity in schools for testing and contact tracing. It requires a budget. It requires a formal plan. Ideally, that budget should come from the federal government and be directed to states and ultimately school districts, as part of a national Covid-19 testing strategy. Realistically, given the lack of any such national plan, the funds need to come from individual states.
Building such infrastructure comes at a cost and many districts are already facing budget shortfalls. Districts that rely only on their existing testing infrastructure will not have the real-time information they need to make good decisions. Imagine a child has a fever and cough in October and is told by the school to call the doctor for a Covid-19 test. Results are typically returned in two days to the doctor’s office. After another day (or two), the data might make it to the school district. So it will take at least four to five days for the district to have any information.
We need testing within the school system to shorten the delay at every step of the process and reduce the turnaround time for the test to only a day. With that kind of time resolution, we can increase awareness of the situation at our schools, along with the ability to react appropriately. Without it, we are flying blind and gambling with the health of our children, teachers, and community.
Ultimately, when I look at the decision about school as both a father and a scientist, I see a difficult decision that must be made despite uncertainty. The risks of opening are uncertain, but the benefits are clear. We need to try to reopen.
We have been wrong before about Covid-19. In March, the epidemiology world was quite confident that transmission could not occur before a person develops symptoms. Three months later, there is consensus that asymptomatic people were likely one of the main drivers of the pandemic. In March, the CDC and the US surgeon general told the public that masks play no role in controlling the spread of the disease. Now we see masks as a central component of our reopening strategies.
We could be wrong about schools, but we cannot afford to wait to find out for certain. We need school-based Covid-19 symptom screening, testing, contact tracing, and isolation. Opening without a plan to test is irresponsible and a gamble with our children’s health.
Benjamin P. Linas is an associate professor of epidemiology and an infectious disease physician at Boston University School of Medicine. Find him on Twitter @BenjaminLinas.