–TOMORROW'S CONVERSATION–

with International School Leaders from Around the World

WE KNOW THAT AMERICAN THANKSGIVING TAKES PLACE ON THE SAME DAY AS OUR THURSDAY GLOBAL CONVERSATION. Yet, many of our schools are in session– and so AAIE needs to be online in support too!  Join our weekly CONVERSATION  between School Heads and Senior Leaders. Our discussions continue to be contemporary, important and a time we teach each other.  Thanks to Will Richardson who has facilitated each Thursday since the very beginning. 

–TODAY's POEM TO CONSIDER–

A poem, just for you ...

(thanks yet again to Bob Hetzel)

Thanksgiving

 

 

We walk on starry fields of white
   And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
   We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
   To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
   Of pleasures sweet and tender.

 

Our cares are bold and push their way
   Upon our thought and feeling.
They hand about us all the day,
   Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
   We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives,
   And conquers if we let it.

 

There’s not a day in all the year
   But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
   To brim the past’s wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
   Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
   While living hearts can hear us.

 

Full many a blessing wears the guise
   Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
   Who knows the mask is double.

We ought to make the moments notes
   Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
   Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
   As weeks and months pass o’er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
   A grand Thanksgiving chorus.

 

–Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

STAY FOCUSED ON THE COVID-19 SCIENCE

–THE NEWS of COVID-19–

60,174,732

Cases Worldwide (Johns Hopkins CSSE)

Coronavirus is Roaring Back in Parts of Asia, Capitalizing on Pandemic Fatigue

Compared with the United States and Europe, countries in East Asia have been held up as success stories in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

 

But in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, governments are reimposing restrictions this week, as public complacency, policy blunders and colder weather fuel a new surge in virus cases.

Japan is scaling back a contentious subsidy program designed to encourage domestic tourism and dining out, after it became clear the enticements were helping to fuel a third wave that has resulted in record new infections.

 

In Seoul, officials ordered bars and nightclubs to close and limited dine-in service at cafes and restaurants this week, after an earlier easing of restrictions allowed the virus to roar back.

 

Hong Kong also closed bars and nightclubs, days after officials postponed the launch of a travel bubble with Singapore — a highly anticipated experiment that was set to herald a reopening of quarantine-free travel in Asia — after the virus found gaps in the territory’s defenses to stage a comeback.

 

The numbers of new infections here are a fraction of those in West, with Japan recently reporting more than 2,000 new cases a day, South Korea more than 300 a day, and Hong Kong recording 73 new confirmed cases on Monday — compared with more than 150,000 a day in the United States.

 

Yet the infection rates are still high enough to ring alarm bells, especially given the high proportion of elderly people in places like Japan, as winter approaches and doors and windows close against the chill.

 

Pandemic fatigue is a key ingredient, experts say. After many months of restrictions and with cases seemingly under control for a while, people have become tired of the rules, bored with staying at home and complacent about the risks. (Washington Post)

 

COVID Impact on World Economy

The surging coronavirus is stoking fears of a fresh downturn for the world economy, heaping pressure on central banks and governments to lay aside other concerns and do more to spur demand. Hopes are mounting that Covid-19 vaccines will become available as soon as December, but widespread delivery will take months and infections are rising again in many large economies. Authorities are responding with more restrictions to limit the virus’s spread at the price of weaker economic activity. Wall Street economists now say that it wouldn’t take much for the U.S., Euro area, and Japan to each contract again either this quarter or next, just months after they bounced from the deepest recession in generations. Bloomberg Economics gauges of high-frequency data point to a double-dip downturn, with European factory indexes on Monday justifying that worry, though a U.S. measure of business activity was upbeat. (Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Economics)

 

US Continues to Set Hospitalization Records

The U.S. reported 142,732 new cases of coronavirus and registered a record number of hospitalizations for the 13th straight day. The tally of Sunday’s new infections, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, was down from Friday’s record 196,004—but counts are generally lower over the weekend before rising midweek. The latest daily figure is the highest yet for a Sunday, and total cumulative cases now exceed 12.2 million. There were 83,870 people hospitalized with the disease as of Sunday, according to the Covid Tracking Project. The U.S. has set records for hospitalizations every day since the number surpassed 60,000 on Nov. 10, according to the project’s data. (via The Wall Street Journal)

 

Confusing Information on AstraZeneca Vaccine

AstraZeneca said Monday that its coronavirus vaccine reduced the risk of symptomatic Covid-19 by an average of 70.4%, according to an interim analysis of large Phase 3 trials conducted in the United Kingdom and Brazil. The results, while positive, suggest the vaccine may be less effective than two others. Earlier this month, Moderna and the Pfizer and BioNTech consortium announced their messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines showed 95% efficacy against Covid-19 infections in their respective clinical trials. (STAT News)

 

And Now a Word on Climate Change

Climate-heating gases have reached record levels in the atmosphere despite the global lockdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization has said. There is estimated to have been a cut in emissions of between 4.2% and 7.5% in 2020 due to the shutdown of travel and other activities. But the WMO said this was a “tiny blip” in the continuous buildup of greenhouse gases in the air caused by human activities, and less than the natural variation seen year to year. (The Guardian)

 

Is It the Horseshoe Bat? 

Two lab freezers in Asia have yielded surprising discoveries. Researchers have told Nature they have found a coronavirus that is closely related to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the pandemic, in horseshoe bats stored in a freezer in Cambodia. Meanwhile, a team in Japan has reported the discovery of another closely related coronavirus — also found in frozen bat droppings. The viruses are the first known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 to be found outside China, which supports the World Health Organization’s search across Asia for the pandemic’s animal origin. Strong evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 originated in horseshoe bats, but whether it passed directly from bats to people, or through an intermediate host, remains a mystery. (Nature.com)

 

 

Brain Scans Show a Whole Spectrum of COVID-19 Abnormalities We Can't Fully Explain

Among the many serious symptoms of COVID-19, the strange neurological effects experienced by many patients count as perhaps the most mysterious. A sudden loss of smell and taste was one of the first unusual symptoms reported by COVID-19 patients, but stroke, seizures, and swelling of the brain (called encephalitis) have all been described.

 

Some patients diagnosed with COVID-19 also experience confusion, delirium, dizziness, and have difficulty concentrating, according to case reports and reviews.

 

For several months, doctors have been relentlessly trying to understand this disease, and its many manifestations that seem to affect the brain in ways we can't fully explain. To synthesize some of the rapidly accumulating data, two neurologists have now conducted a review of research exploring how COVID-19 disturbs patterns of normal brain function, which can be measured by an EEG.

 

An EEG, short for electroencephalogram, records electrical activity in different parts of a person's brain, typically by using electrodes placed on their scalp. In their review, the researchers collated data on nearly 620 COVID-positive patients from 84 studies, published in peer-reviewed journals and pre-print servers, where the EEG waveform data were available to analyze.

 

Looking at EEG results could indicate some form of COVID-related encephalopathy in these patients – signs of impairment or disturbance to brain function. Approximately two-thirds of the patients in the studies were male, and the median age was 61 years old. Some people also had a pre-existing condition, such as dementia, that could alter an EEG reading, which the researchers considered when evaluating their test results.

 

Among the 420 patients where the basis for ordering an EEG was recorded, the most common reason was an altered mental state: close to two-thirds of the patients studied had experienced some delirium, coma, or confusion.

 

Around 30 percent of patients had had a seizure-like event, which prompted their doctor to order an EEG, while a handful of patients had speech issues. Others experienced a sudden cardiac arrest, which could have interrupted blood flow to the brain.

 

The patients' EEG scans showed a whole spectrum of abnormalities in brain activity, including some rhythmic patterns and epileptic-like spikes in activity. The most common abnormality noted was diffuse slowing, which is an overall slowing of brain waves that indicates a general dysfunction in brain activity. In the case of COVID, this impairment could be the result of widespread inflammation, as the body mounts its immune response, or possibly reduced blood flow to the brain, if the heart and lungs are weak. (SCIENCEalert)

 

The Risk of mRNA Vaccine Development Pays Off

“The vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca have pulled forward the expected timetable of global economic and financial recovery by roughly a month to six weeks. They are a superb scientific achievement. Ten years’ work has been packed into ten months. The gamble on pioneering gene-based technology (mRNA) has paid off. Oxford University’s viral vector vaccine brings scale at viable cost and can be stored in normal fridges. Yet the vaccines come too late to stop Wave Two of Covid-19 sweeping through the G7 economic bloc this winter. They will not avert a certain double-dip recession in Europe, or a partial double-dip in America, or clear away the legacy cost of soaring corporate and public debt ratios. Nor do they change the market calculus significantly. (Daily Telegraph)

 

It Only Takes One Mutation

As the coronavirus swept across the world, it picked up random alterations to its genetic sequence. Like meaningless typos in a script, most of those mutations made no difference in how the virus behaved. But one mutation near the beginning of the pandemic did make a difference, multiple new findings suggest, helping the virus spread more easily from person to person and making the pandemic harder to stop. The mutation, known as 614G, was first spotted in eastern China in January and then spread quickly throughout Europe and New York City. Within months, the variant took over much of the world, displacing other variants. Read the rest. (The New York Times)

 

USA Fatalities Highest Since May

The United States logged nearly 2,100 coronavirus-related fatalities on Tuesday, marking the deadliest day in more than six months. Record numbers of fatalities were also reported in nine states — Maine, Alaska, Missouri, North Dakota, Indiana, Wisconsin, Washington, Ohio and Oregon — according to data tracked by The Washington Post. Tuesday’s tally of 2,092 deaths is the highest the country has seen since May 6, when 2,611 deaths were reported. (The Washington Post)

 

Sputnik V Russian Vaccine at 95% Efficacy?

The Russian government says preliminary results from trials of its coronavirus vaccine candidate Sputnik V have shown it to be more than 95 per cent effective after two doses. This is an increase from the 92 per cent effectiveness reported for the Sputnik V vaccine earlier this month. The latest results are based on a trial in about 19,000 volunteers. Sputnik V is based on similar viral vector technology to that used in the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine candidate, which early results indicate may be up to 90 per cent effective. But a full comparison between the two vaccines will only be possible when all the data is released, said Ian Jones at the University of Reading, UK, in a statement. Each dose of the vaccine would cost less than $10, according to the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). “It’s more than twice as cheap as other vaccines that have the same efficacy levels,” the head of RDIF, Kirill Dmitriev, told a briefing. (New Scientist)

–Tracking the Virus Around the World–

–FROM JOHNS HOPKINS CSSE–

The Cultures of Dignity Resources for Supporting

Social-Emotional Wellness 

A Final Note: The AAIE COVID-19 Briefing is provided to support your leadership for the school community you serve. We encourage you to use these resources in any way, shape or form that helps you, your communications and toward furthering close relationships across your community.  – The AAIE Board