–Highlights–

 

• 39,131,360 Cases World-wide (Johns Hopkins)
• NEXT WEEK'S CONVERSATIONS
• TUESDAY– Resilient Leadership Seminar Part I
• THIS WEDNESDAY– Rosalind Wiseman and her new book, The Distance Learning Playbook for Parents
• Recruiting talent in the time of COVID-19:  Answers!
• Safety for Everyone in a Costume
• Focus on Science:  The Holy Grail
• Second wave in Europe and a Third Wave in USA

–QUICK LINKS FOR BUSY PEOPLE–

Today's Quote to Consider: 

 

" International teachers take leaps of faith with every new assignment and so fortunately they are a pretty resilient group.  When you have lived through evacuations, military coups, weather disasters, etc. you build resiliency. We find the leaders being honest about what the challenges will be in an interview is essential for hiring talented faculty. "

–Deb Welch and Art Charles, CS&A

 

NEXT WEEK'S

LEADERSHIP CONVERSATIONS 

with International School Leaders Around the World

PART ONE (three parts- three Tuesdays in a row): Building Your Own Resilience

• Define resilience and learn what the research tells us about how to build and maintain our own resilience during stressful times
• Through the practice of a narrative strategy, reflect on what has helped us be resilient thus far, identifying personal resilient acts and new strategies to use in the future.

Please Join Cultures of Dignity co-founder and best-selling author, Rosalind Wiseman for a conversation on strengthening family well-being and supporting parents while their children are distance learning. Rosalind will use her new publication The Distance Learning Playbook for Parents to give school leaders concrete skills to help parents during this uncertain time.  

• Developing tools for self-compassion
• How to help parents guide children as they navigate their friendships online
• Helping parents set appropriate limits around screen time while supporting children's friendships online.
• Concrete skills to increase family communication; especially in times of conflict or anxiety
• How these challenges specifically impact international school students

Weekly Learning as a Community– All international school senior leaders are welcome.  A 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 our Thursday CONVERSATIONS, since the very beginning. 

The weekly Thursday CONVERSATIONS between Latin America school heads and senior leaders in collaboration with Tri-Association and AASSA. All are welcome to join the discussion. Our sessions are hosted by Sonia Keller and Dereck Rhoads.  

Thanks to all who came to today's conversation about strategies and tools during our second week of discussion on AAIE New School Principle #1:

 

ADAPTIVE CHANGE - “WE USE FEARLESS INQUIRY TO CONTINUALLY INTERROGATE AND SHED EMBEDDED PRACTICE THAT DOES NOT AMPLIFY AND INSPIRE PROFOUND LEARNING THROUGHOUT OUR SCHOOL COMMUNITIES.”

 

In this morning's session we reviewed some great curated resources around the principle gathered by Bonnie Ricci and Anna Sugarman (which you can find on our Curator's Padlet here: bit.ly/aaiensp2 .) And then we broke into small groups to begin discussing how to begin living the Adaptive Change principle by looking at what we would stop doing, what we would continue to do, what new approaches we would take, and what of our current practice we would modify or tweak?  All discussions will be collated and shared at next week's meeting. 

 

THIS COMING WEEK:  We take on Principle #2:

 

CAPACITY:  WE DEVELOP THE CAPACITY IN OUR PEOPLE TO  IMPLEMENT HIGH QUALITY AND SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS IN A TIME OF RAPID AND UNMITIGATED CHANGE.

 

Building school capacity will be the focus of our work next week as we spend time in discussion, deepening our understanding of the meaning and language of the principle. The more participants we have in these conversations, the more clarity and power we can bring to this work. So please join us if you can, and bring a friend or two as well. 

RECRUITING TEACHER AND LEADERSHIP TALENT IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

Carney-Sandoe and Associates, International Schools Services, RG175 and Search Associates

Answering Your Questions and

Updating Leaders on Recruiting Talent State of Play

–THANK YOU–

• Jessica Magagna, Xiaohang Sumner, Brent Mutsh:  SEARCH Associates
• Laura Light, Beth Pfannl, Pauline O’Brien:  International Schools Services
• Art Charles, Deb Welch:  Carney-Sandoe and Associates– (and for your written answers too!)
• Coreen Hester- RG175

Question - How does the HoS prepare for virtual interviews to maximize the experience online, in preparation for IFairs as well as during the process and as followup?

• Understand the platform, do screening, reach out to connect.
• Use the database in place to be proactive in working with your team.
• Divide up the workload and identify support stakeholders.
• There's a benefit to online teams managing behavioral observations; note taking and so on.
• Also an opportunity to upskill team members to observe and learn the process.
• Virtual Portfolios allow a candidate to shine in ways not seen before. Videos of classroom activity show them in action.
• We will see some kind of blended recruiting approach for the foreseeable future with increased productivity and efficiency, a reduction in costs without losing the personal touch we value.

Question - Candidates appreciate conversation. How do you warmly invite candidates into that conversation?

• Virtual cocktail or tea party. Not an actual interview (although all interactions generally are) but it allows the team to get to know a different side of the candidate.
• Online tours reimagining what we do normally and adapt it. Tours conducted by students at the school give a different perspective.
• Children of prospective candidates can take a tour with a matching grade level student/peer.

Question - What additional cautions beyond the virtual interview are recommended?

• Reference checking is even more important today.
• Either a phone call or face to face call with schools talking to the previous supervisor to understand the candidate's style and attributes.
• Boards are more proactive with due diligence taking a divide and conquer approach especially with a search for a Head or Superintendent specific to their handling of Covid.
• Complete and thorough reference checks from all perspectives. This was important before and even more so now.
• Community members are in the mix. Candidates are upfront in offering more pathways to connect to learn more from multiple interactions.
• Coaching Boards and Heads to ensure a virtual candidate interview with the community that they will have the responsibility to lead.
• When asking for letters of reference, obtain current phone numbers and email addresses. 
• Never hire someone without directly having a conversation with a former supervisor or two. Review resumes carefully for gaps of hiring history and ask questions about them. Do research and pursue any questions that you might have about credentials or background.
• Ask for short videos of teachers in classrooms teaching/holding a parent conference or administrators in a leadership team/faculty meeting or working with Board members.
• We find the way the virtual interview is set up, is so important.  If a candidate is being interviewed by five or six people around a conference table, it can be difficult for the candidate to connect with the group and thus not result in gaining an accurate picture of the candidate. It can be challenging for the candidate to determine who is speaking as usually the camera doesn’t follow the speakers. Run tech checks so that things go smoothly and remember that it is a two-way interview.  How can you immediately put your candidate at ease? Make sure the candidate comes away from the conversation with all of his or her questions answered.

Question - Strategic thinking across schools. What is the value add that recruiters bring to schools? What are you doing to help the school grow and attract diverse talent across schools?

• We have to create environments where diverse talent is respected and encouraged. From the point of view of the recruiter, that means purposefully using organizations, networks, alliances to seek candidates and encourage them to be a candidate.  It means asking what the individual needs to be successful and then providing it whether it be resume reviewing, coaching for interviews, supportive emails, etc.
• We recently sent out a “sneak preview” about a position to an intentionally diverse first group of candidates. The response was overwhelming when potential candidates came back and said, “you made me feel so special,” and “what a wonderful email to wake up to,” and “thank you for thinking about me.  This position isn’t a fit but could we talk about what I would like to pursue?”
• Need to have hard conversations first and examine as recruiters how to diversify the candidate pool.
• Actively recruiting through pipelines and outreach where international schools group hasn't been before.
• Building networks and ensuring unconscious bias training for all interviewers.
• Educate Boards as well.
• Heads of Schools have little time to do training. It's up to recruiters to do that training and bring diverse candidates to the schools and boards.
• Develop talent from within the school...there is much talent already within the house. 

Questions: Are there benefits to recruiting talent in the time of COVID-19– are you seeing unique opportunities emerge that can support the talent needs of international schools?  What are the downsides to recruitment we all must be alert to for the coming months?  

• The benefit is cost and time. Virtual recruiting is less expensive as people do not have to attend fairs and productivity is not lost due to jet lag or lost days. More people can be brought into the hiring process who might have been closed out due to geographic location, work or family commitments, or for financial reasons.
• The down-side is not meeting people face to face and the inability to see people interact nonverbally and verbally with others. The hiring cycles were already more dynamic but still somewhat predictable. We find that predictability to be less prevalent and anticipate that it will be even less predictable in the future. That necessitates a lot of nimbleness on everyone’s part.

Question: Why should schools pay extensive fees to access a database of information that could be made accessible for free?  What is the essential value a recruiting agency provides if they are passive repositories of files? 

• The essential value of a recruiting agency is the expertise of the recruiters to find candidates that are a match for your desired profile. In order to determine your desired profile, we need to listen carefully to you and members of your school community as well as be intimately familiar with your school’s guiding documents and strategic direction.  We need to synthesize that information and present it to you for feedback. While a comprehensive and extensive database is vital, recruiting agencies also have to search for candidates in different places, via more obscure or less familiar networks or in places that are “out of the box.” Our job is sending you dossiers that offer a complete picture of the candidate’s background and experience and leadership capabilities in a format that is aligned with your profile. That entails research, respectful listening, casting a wide net, careful reading of resumes, comprehensive interviewing and scrupulous reference checking. Leaders don’t have time to do that as thoroughly as recruiters do. And given that we are former Heads of School ourselves as well as consultants on matters of governance, we have a deep understanding of the position as well as sensitivity to the context and culture of each individual school.

A SCIENCE UPDATE (Always Good to Know Where We Stand)

 

The Race for a Super-Antibody Against the Coronavirus
A network of scientists is chasing the pandemic’s holy grail: an antibody that protects against not just the virus, but also related pathogens that may threaten humans.

The group’s antibody is not expected to be in human trials until late December, but it may be worth the wait. Unlike the antibodies made by Regeneron and Eli Lilly, which fade in the body within weeks, Prometheus’s antibody aims to be effective for up to six months. “A single dose goes a long way, meaning we can treat more people,” said Kartik Chandran, a virologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the group’s leader.

 
In mice and laboratory tests, Prometheus’s antibody protects against not just the coronavirus, but also the SARS virus and similar bat viruses — suggesting that the treatment may protect against any coronaviruses emerging in the future. A study published last year recorded about 400 strains of bat-origin coronaviruses in China, some of which had already spilled over into people.

 

Among scientists, Dr. Chandran and Prometheus are famous for careful and clever work that has unearthed critical insights into deadly pathogens. While working on Ebola, for example, the team discovered a new entryway into human cells used by the virus, and used that information to design an antibody combination that works against all major strains of Ebola. “They do very innovative stuff,” said Florian Krammer, an immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “If they find something cool, they dig deep.”

Antibodies are as variable as the people who produce them. Some antibodies are weaker than others; some target a different part of the coronavirus than others; and some are powerful protectors, while a small number may even turn against the body, as they do in autoimmune diseases.

 

Monoclonal antibodies are artificially synthesized copies of the most effective antibodies produced naturally by patients. In late February, AbCellera fished out an apparent winner from among 550 antibodies drawn from the blood of an infected patient. Barely three months later, partner Eli Lilly began the first trial of a synthesized version in patients. Regeneron, which has a $450 million contract from the federal government to develop its treatment, was not far behind. Its drug is a cocktail of two antibodies. One was discovered in a patient in Singapore, while the other was made using a synthetic viral snippet in mice.

 

Both Regeneron and Eli Lilly have stockpiled tens of thousands of doses of their drugs, rather than wait for F.D.A. approval. Without the resources or reach of these bigger companies, Prometheus has lagged behind... CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING

Halloween to Holiday Gatherings

Ideas to Add Value to Your School Safety-Operational Plans: 

More on Mitigating Risk

Overall, controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2 remains challenging, and transmission rates are high in many areas. And now we’re moving into a time when fall and winter weather in many areas of the country may limit outdoor activities. Halloween will be the first holiday to negotiate, and we also have to think about how to make Thanksgiving and the winter holidays meaningful in new ways.

 

This pandemic will not be over any time soon, so we need to figure out how to have enjoyable experiences with friends and family. Nothing is zero risk, but we can all make choices that minimize risk. Innovation is woven into the fabric of America and will be important to creating meaningful holiday experiences while staying healthy. A decision-making framework can help us pace ourselves for this next phase in the pandemic marathon. There are a few core elements to consider as you plan for the holidays and gatherings ahead:

• Outdoors is still better than indoors.This may involve being creative in the winter months, layering up in warm gear, and setting up yards and outdoor spaces such as parks in new ways.
• If you have to be indoors, consider air flow.Ventilation and air circulation are your friends. Open windows, increase circulation, and keep room density as low as possible with fewer people in one space.
• Mask up.Wear masks whenever you are around people outside of your immediate pod (see #4) or household—at all times inside and outside when it’s not possible to be six feet or more away from others.
• Consider a pod. Consider setting up a small group of friends or family with similar mindsets and a commitment to restricting activities outside the pod. You’ll need to consider chains of transmission and avoid interactions with large numbers of people, or with individuals who may themselves be interacting with a large number of other people.
• Download a sample Pod Agreement. Please note: This is a sample resource with public health principles. It is not legal or official health guidance and we acknowledge that these suggestions may not be feasible for all.
• Wash your hands! Hand hygiene remains a critical way to help stem the spread.
• Have a plan for quarantining and isolation. Be prepared in case someone in your household or pod has exposure to a known COVID-19 case, exhibits symptoms, or is diagnosed. Know where you can be tested. Plan for how you would implement a 14-day quarantine if you are exposed. Plan for how you would isolate and care for an infected person in your home for at least 10 days (with an additional 14 days of quarantine after the infected person recovers for the caregiver who was in close contact).
• Getting sick with COVID-19 is not the only risk to consider. We tend to think the two greatest risks of the pandemic are contracting or spreading COVID-19, but there are other risks as well.
• Consider whether anyone has a work or home situation that could be complicated by quarantine or isolation. Not all jobs allow for time off or working from home in the event of a need to quarantine, and some employers may even require testing before returning to work if there has been known exposure.
• Think carefully about travel. Travel brings its own particular considerations. Some states have implemented mandatory quarantines that could impose travel restrictions or fines for out-of-state travel or visitors. If you are exposed at an out-of-state gathering, you may have to unexpectedly extend your stay in that area for 14 days. Traveling out of state may also mean quarantine requirements from your work or child’s school when you return home, particularly if you traveled to an area with high levels of community transmission. If you become ill shortly after you arrive at your destination, you may have to seek medical care in an area away from home.

How about the Halloween scenario?: Halloween Trick-or-Treating
Halloween is one holiday that can probably be celebrated relatively safely, but you’ll still have to weigh the benefits and risks neighborhood by neighborhood. If your area can get very crowded, you may want to leave the candy outside and have a private candy hunt in your own yard or house.  Here are some things to consider:

• All festivities should be held outdoors
  Walk in small groups (e.g., your family or pod) and keep distance from others; don’t congregate in large groups
• Leave candy on a table or a front porch rather than handing out in person, and consider spreading it out on a blanket or table near the sidewalk to reduce crowding around a bowl
• Wear masks that cover your nose and mouth. A Batman eye mask is not enough! You can get creative by including a mask as part of your costume. We might see a lot of ninjas and medical clinicians this October!

–THE NEWS of COVID-19–

39,131,360

Cases Worldwide (Johns Hopkins CSSE)

 

The Second Wave in Europe is Very Real

From France to Russia, from Britain to the Czech Republic, European leaders are confronting a surge in coronavirus cases that is rapidly filling hospital beds, driving up death tolls and raising the grim prospect of further lockdowns in countries already traumatized by the pandemic. The continent, which once compared favorably to the United States in its handling of the pandemic, is being engulfed by a second wave of infection. With an average of more than 100,000 new infections per day over the past week, Europe now accounts for about one-third of new cases reported worldwide. (The New York Times, WHO Covid Dashboard)

 

 

The Pandemic and Declines in College Enrollment

U.S. colleges are seeing sharp declines in enrollment of new students this semester in another sign of the economic toll that Covid-19 is having on higher education. The number of first-year undergraduate students enrolled fell 16%, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center said in a report Thursday. Total undergraduate enrollment slid 4% from last year at this time, led by international students. Empty seats are inflicting financial damage on colleges already reeling from the pandemic. Earlier this year, when the virus began spreading, many schools cleared their campuses of students and refunded housing costs. With enrollment waning, revenue from tuition, dormitories and dining halls is being hurt at a time when some institutions are posting low endowment returns. (Bloomberg News)

 

 

London Lockdown?

London is on the brink of a local lockdown that would bring another nine million people under tough restrictions on socializing and traveling. Sadiq Khan, the mayor, briefed the capital’s health chiefs about the move into the “high” Tier 2 coronavirus category after a meeting of the Joint Biosecurity Centre yesterday and an announcement could come as soon as tomorrow. The meeting, chaired by Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, also recommended that most of the northwest and northeast and large parts of Yorkshire and the Midlands be placed in the “very high” Tier 3. (Times of London)

 

Paris Curfew

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a night-time curfew in Paris and eight other cities to try to curb the rapid spread of coronavirus. The measure - from 21:00 to 06:00 - will go into effect from Saturday and last for at least four weeks, Mr Macron said in a televised interview. A public health emergency has also been declared. (BBC News)

 

Countries Stepping Up for the Chinese Vaccine

Indonesia is taking steps toward approving emergency usage of Covid-19 vaccine candidates from China, a senior health official said, a move that would make it the second country outside China to do so. The United Arab Emirates approved a Chinese vaccine for emergency use last month. Within China, hundreds of thousands of people, from front-line medical workers to customs staff, have been injected with vaccines outside of clinical trials. Indonesia’s government says it will procure 18 million doses by the end of the year from China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd., Sinopharm and CanSino Biologics, whose vaccines are still undergoing clinical trials in various parts of the world. (The Wall Street Journal)

 

Another USA Record

The United States topped 62,000 new coronavirus cases Thursday, the country’s highest daily count since it reported more than 66,000 cases on July 31. Cases in the Midwest began to surge during October. On Thursday, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, North Dakota, Montana, New Mexico and Colorado tallied new single-day highs for positive test results. Fourteen states exceeded their 7-day averages of new infections. (Washington Post)

 

Coronavirus Cases Hit Records in Europe,

Surpassing the United States

Europe set a record this week for new coronavirus infections, overtaking the United States in cases per capita, and a top World Health Organization official warned on Thursday that death rates on the continent this winter could be five times worse than the April peak if people are not strict about masks and social distancing.

 

The WHO is seeing “exponential increases” in daily cases in Europe, said Hans Kluge, the agency’s director for the continent, noting that at 8,000 deaths a day, covid-19 is now Europe’s fifth-leading cause of death. In just the past 10 days, a million new coronavirus cases have been recorded in Europe, raising the total since the start of the pandemic to 7 million in the WHO’s 53 European member countries.

He said that by January, daily deaths could be “four to five times higher than what we recorded in April.”

 

The alarm echoed warnings from London to Latvia that the virus is rapidly spiraling out of control. France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Croatia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic all posted records Thursday. Britain would have as well if not for an earlier glitch in its case counts. Case numbers are higher now than in the spring in part because testing is more readily available, but other indicators, such as the positive rate of tests and hospitalization rates, are also blinking red. Death rates, though far lower, are also creeping upward.

 

Europe clamped down hard on the pandemic this spring, and the payoff was a summer that was more normal than many people had expected. Cases remained low, even as many countries reopened their economies. Some Europeans ventured on vacation. But by the end of August, infections were again on the rise, with more cases concentrated among younger people — who perhaps considered the virus a more remote threat. Now it is spreading to their parents and grandparents, and medical systems are beginning to feel the strain. (Washington Post)

 

A Pandemic, Financial Crisis and Sustainability

World Bank Chief Economist Carmen Reinhart said the coronavirus pandemic is turning into a major economic crisis and warned of the possibility of a financial crisis emerging. “This did not start as a financial crisis but it is morphing into a major economic crisis, with very serious financial consequences,” Reinhart said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “There’s a long road ahead.” Reinhart, who took her new role in June, is best known for her work with then-Harvard colleague Kenneth Rogoff on the last financial crisis in their 2009 book “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.” (Bloomberg News)

 

 

A Safe Vaccine, Less Effective on Older Adults

A Chinese Covid-19 vaccine candidate based on inactivated coronavirus is safe and elicits an antibody response, preliminary results have shown. The research, published in the journal Lancet Infectious Disease, is based on small early phase randomized clinical trials involving 640 participants. Scientists said those aged 60 and over were slower to respond, with antibodies taking up to 42 days to be detected in blood tests, compared with 28 days for participants aged 18 to 59. They also found antibody levels to be lower in those aged 60 to 80 years, compared with those aged 18 to 59. (The Daily Telegraph, thelancet.com)

 

Why School Safety Plans Must Be Effective and Stay the Course

Young and healthy people should be prepared to wait their turn for immunization, experts warned this week. The World Health Organization’s chief scientist suggested that the delay could last well over a year for some among the young and healthy. “People tend to think, ah, on the first of January or the first of April, I’m going to get a vaccine and then things will be back to normal,” Soumya Swaminathan said in an online WHO question-and-answer session on Wednesday. “It’s not going to work like that.” “There will be a lot of guidance coming out, but I think an average person, a healthy, young person, might have to wait until 2022 to get a vaccine,” she said. (The Washington Post)

 

Europe Overtakes USA in Daily Reported Cases

The European Commission urged member nations on Thursday to step up preparations against the new surge of coronavirus infections and recommended common measures to roll out vaccines should they become available. With new cases hitting about 100,000 daily, Europe has by a wide margin overtaken the United States, where an average of more than 51,000 COVID-19 infections is reported every day. "Time is running out," said EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides, urging greater coordination in tracing infections. (Reuters)

 

A German Disaster in the Making?– a Warning from Angela Merkel

Angela Merkel is said to be deeply concerned that new coronavirus restrictions agreed by regional leaders do not go far enough and Germany may be heading for "disaster.” The warning comes as Germany and Italy – two countries that appeared to have escaped the worst of the second wave – recorded their highest daily rise in infections since the start of the pandemic. Mrs. Merkel put on a brave face for the cameras after German regional leaders stopped short of agreeing tough new measures she had proposed on Wednesday. But behind closed doors she reportedly lost her temper during  marathon six-hour talks with the leaders of Germany's 16 states, telling them she was "not happy" and warning: "What you've agreed is not enough to avert disaster." (The Daily Telegraph)

 

Calamity in Portugal?

A renewed state of “calamity” has been declared in Portugal as the government tries to contain a significant worsening of the pandemic. Public gatherings have been limited to five people and masks look likely to be made mandatory in busy public places as confirmed case numbers surge well beyond the first wave, with 2,072 on Wednesday alone. The first change to restrictions since September 15 came after slow and steady growth dating back to the middle of August accelerated significantly in the past week. (The Daily Telegraph)

 

What Happens When Covid-19 Meets Toxic Air?

India Is About to Find Out

As a thick quilt of smog wrapped itself around New Delhi on Thursday, signaling the start of the fall pollution season, doctors and scientists warned that the deteriorating air quality could make the city’s Covid-19 problems even worse.

 

One of the most common symptoms of severe coronavirus cases is breathing difficulty. And doctors say that if the ambient air suddenly becomes more toxic, as it does every year around this time in northern India, then more people who become infected by the virus might end up in the hospital or die. "If two people are shooting at the lungs, then obviously the lungs will have more problems,” said Arvind Kumar, a chest surgeon and founder of the Lung Care Foundation in New Delhi, a group that raises awareness about respiratory problems.

 

India is now struggling with two major health challenges that are both assaulting the respiratory system and peaking at the same time.

 

Coronavirus cases are spreading far and wide, putting the country on track to have the largest reported virus caseload in the coming weeks. With 7.3 million reported infections, it is just behind the United States’ 7.9 million. And each day, India outpaces the United States in new infections by around 10,000 more cases per day, even as India’s death rate remains much lower.

 

In the background is India’s vexing air pollution, which shoots up in the fall and winter. The rapid economic growth of the past two decades — and along with it, increased urbanization and congestion — has left Indian cities horribly polluted.

In the fall, air temperatures and wind speeds drop, condensing pollutants over India’s cities, especially in the north. And farmers in the surrounding rural areas burn the stalks and refuse from their crop, sending up huge clouds of black smoke that drift for miles.

 

This year there have been five times the number of farm refuse fires in northern India as the same period last year, and experts say it is a bad sign of what’s to come.

The agricultural sector has been a rare bright spot in an Indian economy that has been shattered by the pandemic, and pollution experts fear that more farming will mean more burning.

 

“My gut is it’s going to be a bumper, bumper harvest and a bumper, bumper combustion event, probably the biggest of our lifetime,” said Jai Dhar Gupta, an Ivy League-educated environmental activist and entrepreneur. “And now that you’ve got the combined impact of a respiratory virus and respiratory contaminants, every public health specialist is holding their breath to see what happens,” Mr. Gupta said. “We’re just sitting ducks,” he added.

 

Doctors say long-term exposure to severely polluted air can cause chronic lung inflammation, which can leave people who are exposed to the coronavirus more vulnerable. A recent study from Italy found a correlation between long-term exposure to dirty air and an increase in excess mortality — a measure of deaths above normal — from the coronavirus. (New York Times)

–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