September 24, 2020

Early research reported by the Washington Post suggests the coronavirus is not spreading widely inside school buildings, a preliminary finding that complicates the case for keeping millions of children in remote learning. Catholic schools in Madison, Wisconsin see a surge in enrollment as public schools remain closed, and Orange County, California begins what the LA Times calls a major test case for safely reopening schools. The emerging data on school transmission, while still incomplete, challenges the assumption that in-person education inevitably drives community spread and frames the school closure decision as one whose costs—educational, developmental, and economic—may exceed the viral risk.

A woman is tasered at an Ohio high school football game after refusing to wear a mask, an escalation of enforcement that generates viral video and competing narratives about proportionality and compliance. Uber announces it has banned more than 1,250 riders for not adhering to its mask policy. In the UK, a 76-year-old man with dementia is told to leave an Asda supermarket for not wearing a mask, and a Marseille official brands Paris’s order to shut bars as a “catastrophe” for the city. Europe braces for what officials are calling a “twindemic”—the simultaneous surge of COVID-19 and seasonal flu—while Belgium’s health minister says the first coronavirus vaccine is expected in March.