Latest news with #MichaelHiltzik
Gulf Today
09-06-2025
- Health
- Gulf Today
Study finds lifting school mask fueled COVID deaths
Michael Hiltzik, Tribune News Service Someday we Americans may stop quarreling over our response to the COVID-19 pandemic — lockdown orders, social distancing and so forth — but one category of debate may never become immune to second-guessing. That's the impact of anti-pandemic measures on schools and schoolchildren. According to popular opinion, these were almost entirely mistaken or ineffective. A newly published study from data scientists at Michigan State University knocks one pillar out from under this claim. It finds that the abrupt removal in 2022 of mandates that children wear masks in school contributed to an estimated 21,800 COVID deaths that year — a shocking 9% of the total COVID deaths in the US that year. 'We were surprised by that too,' says Scott A. Imberman, a professor of economics and education policy at Michigan State and a co-author of the paper. On reflection, he says, given the mixing of children and staff in the close quarters of a classroom, 'it's pretty easy to see how COVID could propagate to the wider community.' In February 2022, about 50% of public school children, or more than 20 million pupils, were in districts with mask mandates; then, over a period of six weeks, almost all those districts rescinded their mandates. "You can see how that would create a pretty substantial surge in infections." Most of the surge, Imberman told me, was a "spillover effect" in the communities outside the schools themselves. The Michigan State finding undermines several myths and misrepresentations about COVID spread by the right wing. These include the claim that children are virtually impervious to COVID, which has been refuted by the injury and death toll among children. A related misrepresentation was that children can't pass on the infection to adults. In fact, because many children didn't show symptoms of the infection or had only mild, flu-like symptoms, they functioned almost like an undetected fifth column in spreading the virus to adults. Among those who vociferously promoted these myths is Jay Bhattacharya, the former Stanford medical professor who is now director of the National Institutes of Health, a subagency of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Department of Health and Human Services. In a July 2022 op-ed originally published in the Orange County Register, for example, Bhattacharya and a co-author asserted that 'COVID-19 is less of a threat to children than accidents or the common flu'; that's debatable, and irrelevant, since those are themselves major threats to child health. The article advocated discontinuing mask-wearing for all children, regardless of their vaccination status. But it was self-refuting, since it also acknowledged that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that mask mandates in school had produced 'a roughly 20% reduction in COVID-19 incidence.' The authors also acknowledged that masking in schools could help to shield adults from COVID. But they asked, 'Since when is it ethical to burden children for the benefit of adults?' That was the wrong question. Reducing COVID infections for children was certainly not a "burden" on them, but a sound public health goal. How heavy was that "burden," anyway? Bhattacharya and his co-author posited that "masking is a psychological stressor for children and disrupts learning," and "it is likely that masking exacerbates the chances that a child will experience anxiety and depression." This sounds like guesswork derived from pop psychology, since the authors didn't point to any actual research to validate their conclusions about masking. Nevertheless, they argued that the drawbacks of masking exceeded the benefits. Yet the Michigan State estimate that the removal of mask mandates in the schools contributed to 21,800 deaths in 2022 alone turns the balance of costs and benefits on its head. I asked Health and Human Services for Bhattacharya's response to the study but received no reply. Much of the mythmaking about our pandemic response — indeed, the global pandemic response — is rooted in the absurd conviction that everything we now know about COVID was self-evident from the outset. But COVID was a novel human pathogen. As I wrote in 2022, there was little consensus about how it spread, at what stage of sickness it was most contagious, or who was most susceptible. As a result, most anti-pandemic policies in 2020-22 arose from an excess of caution. Mitigation measures were uncertain, but it did make sense to limit gatherings in small spaces, i.e., classrooms. Many such steps turned out to be effective, including social distancing and, yes, mask-wearing. The subsequent hand-wringing over school closings, accordingly, has the unmistakable smell of hindsight. Not 20/20 hindsight, mind you, but hindsight clouded by ideology, partisan politics and persistent ignorance. For example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican champion of letting COVID-19 freely rip through his population, crowed that the results "prove that we made the right decision" to keep schools open. Is that so? When Florida reopened its schools in August 2021 and banned remote teaching, child COVID deaths in the state more than doubled. One month into the reopenings, the heightened spread of COVID prompted districts across the state to shut down schools again and impose quarantines affecting thousands of pupils. This is how manifestly deadly decisions get redefined as "the right decision" in the partisan narrative. The Michigan State team documented the speed at which school mask mandates were dropped. The timeline begins in July 2021, when the CDC recommended universal masking in schools to enable a return to in-person instruction rather than fully remote or hybrid classes. The CDC's guidelines, the Michigan State study says, applied to all students whether they were vaccinated or not and all school districts, whatever the levels of COVID infection and transmission within their community. In the fall of 2021, about 65% of all students were subject to a state or local mask mandate. The mask mandates were highly controversial: "Many schools encountered pushback from politicians, parents, and community members" who questioned the efficacy of masking, the study relates. The districts that rejected the mandates tended to be "less urban, less diverse, and more likely to have voted for Trump in the 2020 election." On Feb. 25, 2022, the CDC eliminated its recommendation for universal school masking. Its rationale was that the exceptionally contagious Omicron variant of COVID had passed its peak and thus immunity had increased. But many districts had removed their mandates starting several weeks before the CDC revised its guidance, suggesting that the CDC was following, rather than leading, state and local preferences. The removal of mask mandates ran counter to scientific evidence that masks did indeed reduce the spread of COVID. Indeed, a study from Boston and Chelsea, Mass., found that the removal of mask mandates resulted in an increase of 45 COVID cases per 1,000 students and school staff — nearly 12,000 new cases — over the following four months. But in this particular, as in others related to pandemic policies, politics and ideology trumped the hard evidence, warping the public health response. Bhattacharya's record as an authority on pandemic measures is not encouraging. He was one of the original three authors of the "Great Barrington Declaration," a manifesto for herd immunity published in October 2020. The core of the declaration was opposition to lockdowns. Its solution was what its drafters called "focused protection" — allowing "those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk," chiefly seniors. Focused protection, the drafters wrote, would allow society to achieve herd immunity and return to normality in three to six months.
Gulf Today
01-05-2025
- Health
- Gulf Today
Inside the GOP's secret plan to destroy Medicaid
Michael Hiltzik, Tribune News Service You may have heard some of our federal lawmakers attest to their respect for Medicaid and its generally low-income enrolment base. Listen to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Fox News a couple of weeks ago talking about the need to preserve the state-federal programme so it serves 'young single mothers down on their fortunes for a moment, the people with real disability, the elderly.' As articulated by Johnson and other GOP lawmakers, this idea seems pretty unexceptionable. Unless, that is, you examine what's really behind this declaration of service for the less fortunate among us. What they're really talking about is killing the Medicaid expansion that was passed as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. They have a plan to do exactly that. It's not exactly secret, but it's abstruse enough that they hope most people, who aren't fully conversant with the complexities of the programme, won't get the drift. So I'm here to explain what they're up to. To understand, you have to be aware of two facts. One is that the federal government contributes 90% of the cost of medical service for expansion enrollees. The other is that the federal match for traditional Medicaid, which principally serves low-income families with children, is lower. It varies state by state and ranges from 50% for wealthier states such as California to more than 70% for poor states such as Mississippi, Alabama and West Virginia. The idea floating around in the GOP caucus is to reduce the expansion match to each state's level for traditional Medicaid. The idea can be found in Project 2025 and in a proposal from the Paragon Health Institute, which has been funded in part by right-wing foundations, including the Koch network. Make no mistake: This is an effort aimed at destroying Medicaid expansion programmes. The healthcare of as many as 21 million Americans is at stake; that's how many people are receiving health coverage via the Medicaid expansion. 'Medicaid expansion is responsible for the largest share of the reduction of this nation's uninsured rate,' says Joan Alker, a Medicaid and children's health expert at Georgetown University. That rate fell from 16% when the ACA was passed to about 8% now. Not only would expansion enrollees be affected: Medicaid is the biggest source of federal dollars flowing to the states, coming to $616 billion for state and local governments in fiscal 2023, swamping the sum provided by the second-largest programme, the federal highway trust fund, which funneled $47.7 billion to them. The match reduction would amount to about 10% of total Medicaid funding per year. 'There would be no good way out of this for any state, no matter how rich or well-intentioned,' Alker told me. 'It's simply too much money.' Some Republicans seem to understand that implication, as well as the popularity of Medicaid among the voting public. In an April 14 letter to the House Republican leadership, 12 GOP representatives stated that they would not support any budget bill that 'includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.' They were walking on a razor's edge, however, by also echoing Johnson in endorsing 'targeted reforms ... that divert resources away from children, seniors, individuals with disabilities, and pregnant women — those who the programme was intended to help.' Among the signers was Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, whose Central Valley district has 139,800 expansion enrollees, one of the largest such cadres in California. I asked Valadao's office to clarify his position but got no response. Before delving into how changing the federal match would affect Medicaid, a few more words about the partisan context. Notwithstanding Republicans' protestations of reverence for Medicaid, the truth is that they and their fellow conservatives have had their knives out for the programme virtually since its inception in 1965. They've assaulted it with lies and misrepresentations for years. As Drew Altman of the health policy think tank KFF has astutely observed, conservatives' historical disdain for Medicaid derives in part from the divergent partisan views of the programme: 'Democrats view Medicaid as a health insurance programme that helps people pay for healthcare,' he wrote. By contrast, 'Republicans view Medicaid as a government welfare programme.' Thinking of Medicaid as welfare serves an important aspect of the conservative programme, in that it makes Medicaid politically easier to cut, like all 'welfare' programmes. Ordinary Americans don't normally see these programmes as serving themselves, unlike Social Security and Medicare, which they think of as entitlements (after all, they pay for them with every paycheque). From the concept of Medicaid as welfare it's a short step to loading it with eligibility restrictions and administrative hoops to jump through; Republicans tend to picture Medicaid recipients as members of the undeserving poor, which aligns with their view of poverty as something of a moral failing. That explains another frontal attack on Medicaid mounted by the GOP: the imposition of work requirements on Medicaid enrollees. This is a popular idea among Republican lawmakers despite evidence that they fail to achieve their putative goal of encouraging poor people to find jobs. Only two states implemented work requirements when they were authorised during the first Trump administration. Both were abject failures. In Arkansas, more than 18,000 people lost their coverage during the nine months the programme was in operation, before it was blocked by federal Judge James Boasberg in 2019. (He was upheld by an appeals court, and the matter ended there.) In Georgia, state officials expected 345,000 people to apply for eligibility under its work rules; by late 2024, fewer than 4,500 people enrolled, in part because the administrative rules the state imposed were onerous. Georgia also discovered a seldom acknowledged reality about work requirements — they're immensely expensive to administer. In less than a year, Georgia taxpayers had spent $26 million on the program, almost all of it on administration instead of medical services. Work rules for Medicaid are the product of a misconception about Medicaid enrollees, which is that they're the employable unemployed. According to census figures, however, 44% of Medicaid recipients worked full time in 2023 and 20% worked part time. An additional 12% were not working because they were taking care of family at home, 10% were ill or disabled, 6% were students, and 4% were retired. Of the remaining 4%, half couldn't find work and the remaining 2% didn't give a reason. The Biden administration killed work requirements for Medicaid soon after it took office. That brings us back to Medicaid expansion. The Affordable Care Act used Medicaid to cover the poorest uninsured Americans, those with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level, or about $21,597 this year. The federal government would cover 100% of the new expense at first, ultimately declining to 90%, where it is now. A Supreme Court ruling made the Medicaid expansion voluntary for states; as of today, all but 10 have accepted the expansion. In those states, Medicaid eligibility was extended to childless adults for the first time.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Letters to the Editor: This Canadian isn't interested in annexing all of the U.S., but there are a few states of interest
To the editor: With our population being only one-ninth of the U.S., I doubt that we would have much influence in an amalgamated country ("Yes, America absolutely should annex Greenland and Canada. Here's why," Michael Hiltzik column, April 2). Instead, I propose that Canada should invite selected states to join us. We'll take California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. The NFL teams in those states must forfeit their franchises and join the Canadian Football League. Charles King, Toronto .. To the editor: How about making each Canadian province and territory a separate state? Most are left-leaning and adding 26 senators and a handful of representatives to Congress could only be good for Democrats. We could even let Quebec stay independent since Trump has made English the official language. In line with renaming things (Gulf of America) we could call ourselves the United States of North America. Ken Brock, Yucca Valley .. To the editor: Hiltzik is a beacon of light in the L.A. Times. His columns are thoughtful, clear and fact-based. Whenever I see his name, his column is the first thing I read. Laura Noell, La Cañada Flintridge This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Letters to the Editor: This Canadian isn't interested in annexing all of the U.S., but there are a few states of interest
To the editor: With our population being only one-ninth of the U.S., I doubt that we would have much influence in an amalgamated country ('Yes, America absolutely should annex Greenland and Canada. Here's why,' Michael Hiltzik column, April 2). Instead, I propose that Canada should invite selected states to join us. We'll take California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. The NFL teams in those states must forfeit their franchises and join the Canadian Football League. Charles King, Toronto .. To the editor: How about making each Canadian province and territory a separate state? Most are left-leaning and adding 26 senators and a handful of representatives to Congress could only be good for Democrats. We could even let Quebec stay independent since Trump has made English the official language. In line with renaming things (Gulf of America) we could call ourselves the United States of North America. Ken Brock, Yucca Valley .. To the editor: Hiltzik is a beacon of light in the L.A. Times. His columns are thoughtful, clear and fact-based. Whenever I see his name, his column is the first thing I read. Laura Noell, La Cañada Flintridge
Los Angeles Times
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
California's big, storied past gets a nuanced, superbly researched retelling in one volume
If California were a country, its gross domestic product would rank fifth in the world, behind only the United States, China, Japan and Germany. As a mere state, its impact — cultural, political, mythical — is impossible to quantify. It's a world of its own, a place where people go to dream or start over, to soak in the sun and cower in the face of inevitable natural disaster, the universe's way of exacting a price for so much beauty. It is, in every sense, big. It's hard to fathom wrapping one's arms around it in one volume, as Michael Hiltzik does in 'Golden State: The Making of California.' Hiltzik proceeds methodically but vigorously, and with a healthy dose of skepticism. A Los Angeles Times business columnist whose previous book subjects include the New Deal and the Hoover Dam, he is neither a booster nor a naysayer, although any honest and thorough history of California is by definition also a history of graft, corruption and even genocide. He manages to mix an outsider's sense of wonder — Hiltzik moved to Los Angeles briefly from his native East Coast in his late 20s, in 1981, before returning to New York and coming back for good in the mid-'90s — with a longtime resident's knowledge of the state's many meanings. Mostly, though, he brings to the task a journalist's reluctance to take anything at face value and a distrust of conventional wisdom. These qualities are on full display in Hiltzik's handling of a subject without which there would be no Los Angeles as we know it: water. The story of how a team led by Fred Eaton and William Mulholland gobbled up Owens Valley and delivered its water to L.A. in the early 20th century has been well chronicled, and even fictionalized in the indelible 1974 neo-noir movie 'Chinatown.' The film, as Hiltzik writes, 'transposes the story to the 1930s, treats every claim of official and private skulduggery as gospel truth, and sets it all against a blood-soaked backdrop of murder and incest.' Without excusing any part of the real-life swindle, Hiltzik places nuance above hysteria in addressing the contentious Los Angeles Aqueduct project: 'It is true that the aqueduct made some of the richest tycoons in Los Angeles richer but not true that their greed was all that motivated its construction.' Not that such nuance mattered to the irate Owens Valley residents who took to dynamiting the aqueduct. Then again, the Owens Valley Water Wars were a breezy day at Venice Beach compared to some of the darker days of California history. There was the 1880 Humboldt Massacre, in which unprovoked white settlers slaughtered 285 Native Americans, including women and children, over the course of a week in Northern California. As Hiltzik writes, 'Indian massacres would continue for more than a decade, accompanied by the kidnappings of thousands of women and children into prostitution and slavery.' There was the violent campaign to get Chinese immigrants out of San Francisco (they were more than welcome before they started competing with white people for decent jobs), and Executive Order 9066, which sent more than 120,000 Japanese immigrants and American citizens of Japanese descent — most of them Californians — to incarceration camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And for sheer, brazen profiteering, little can match the creation of the Central Pacific Railroad, which the infamous Big Four — Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins Jr., Charles Crocker and Collis Potter Huntington — managed to turn into their private piggy bank. Here we see that the history of California is perhaps above all a history of money: how to extract it from the land, how to arrive from distant places to accumulate it and how to concentrate it in a select group of hands. Any of these subjects could be (and have been) book subjects on their own; Hiltzik himself wrote the 2020 book 'Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America.' Here he does well to streamline a potentially unwieldy narrative into an eminently readable 448 pages. By necessity, some topics and places get short shrift, including the Summer of Love, the Manson Family murders (and the subsequent panic that engulfed Los Angeles) and the 1992 Rodney King riots, which get folded into a superbly researched chapter on the 1965 Watts uprising. But Hiltzik also excels at creating subtle, almost invisible master narratives. Chief among these is how the state's center of gravity shifted from San Francisco to Los Angeles in the 20th century. The Gold Rush, as Hiltzik writes, 'launched a population surge unprecedented in American history and initiated San Francisco's evolution from a sleepy settlement of squalid tents and combustible wooden shacks into a world-class metropolis.' Some of the book's most sordid (and entertaining) chapters detail the city's growing pains as a Wild West city, complete with widespread vigilante justice. But then the water came to the seemingly limitless, paradisiacal geography of Los Angeles. The dreamers (and the Hollywood dream factory) soon followed, as L.A. became an almost mythical haven for East Coasters and Midwesterners seeking warmer climates and a new world. From these circumstances sprang a city of nearly 4 million people. It's no accident that much of the book's second half revolves around that city. It was the future. In many ways, for better or worse, it still is. Chris Vognar is a freelance culture writer.
