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Assemblyman Bill Essayli, R-Norco, introduced legislation Monday to assert the freedom of teachers to openly communicate with parents regarding their children’s gender transition decisions, based on a Jurupa Valley educator’s firing over her predisposition toward full disclosure. “Public policy should never presume that a parent does not have the best interest for that child,” Essayli said during a briefing outside Jurupa Valley High School Monday. “Concealing information from parents is not only wrong; it’s dangerous and harmful to the safety of trans minors. Parents play a critical role in nurturing and supporting children, and they cannot be removed from the equation.”

Essayli’s proposed legislation, Assembly Bill 1314, would reinforce in the California Education Code provisions already in place establishing a “parent’s right to know,” he said. “This law would reset the appropriate relationship between children and their parents,” the assemblyman said. “Children are the domain of their parents, not the government.”

Essayli was inspired to author the bill after learning about the treatment of physical education teacher Jessica Tapia, who was terminated from Jurupa High earlier this year following her challenge to a Jurupa Unified School District policy that limited her ability to convey messages to parents regarding their children’s gender identity preferences. Tapia ran afoul a district policy linked to AB 1266, which was signed into law in 2014. The bill focused on “pupil rights,” expanding on Section 221.5 of the education code regarding students’ participation in courses.

The thrust of AB 1266 was that a “pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.” There were no explicit provisions written into the bill prohibiting educators from talking with parents about their kids’ gender choices. However, legal guidelines attached in a companion measure cited the California Public Records Act, Article 1, Section 1 of the state constitution and the federal Family Educational & Privacy Rights Act — FERPA — in establishing limits on what educators are permitted to disclose.

“Parents want to know everything happening with their child,” Tapia said during the briefing. “They are trusting us to make sure their child is safe and taken care of.” She said her termination was rooted in an interaction with administrators during which she and colleagues were instructed “to withhold information from parents” whenever they encountered a student who had begun identifying as a different gender. “Right away, a major red flag popped up,” Tapia said.

“I said, `Are you asking me to lie?’ And they said, `Yes, it’s for students’ privacy.’ It was just so bizarre to me, because you’re talking about minors. The decision- making portal of their brain is not fully developed. They need their parents at this time for everything they’re going through. I can’t understand why the school system thinks that we ought to act as though we are the parents.” Tapia alleges that JUSD administrators found her Christian religious principles, which she said guided her in all life decisions, conflicted with the district’s policy regarding non-disclosure, and she lost her job because of it.

She has initiated civil action against the district based on religious viewpoint discrimination, specifically protected under Title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, according to her attorney, Pacific Justice Institute President Brad Dacus. JUSD released a statement last week, saying, “The district denies the allegations raised by Ms. Tapia. The district takes seriously its obligation to accommodate its employee’s religious beliefs. Simultaneously, the district is obligated to comply with all local, state and federal laws, including anti-discrimination laws and laws that protect students’ rights to privacy, which are in place to protect the nearly 2,500 employees and 18,000 students we serve.” “She was fired because of her beliefs and conscience,” Dacus said. “She’s not alone.

There are people across the country who are being fired because of their beliefs, not because of their job performance. It’s outrageous. Parents trust public schools when they drop their kids off.” He said Essayli’s bill “validates what parents already are assuming exists, which is recognition of their fundamental rights over their children.” “Now is the time to send a message to school districts like this that we’re not going to take this,” he said.

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By Amber Dance

One-quarter of parents told lies about kids at height of pandemic

Rampant COVID-related deceptions likely contributed to the pandemic’s spread and death toll, according to the authors of a new study in JAMA Network Open. 

The researchers, from several states and the United Kingdom, surveyed 580 U.S. parents in December 2021 and found nearly 26% had told some sort of falsehood about their kids, such as hiding the child’s COVID-positive status or lying about age to acquire a vaccine early, reports Chia-Yi Hou at The Hill. 

Most commonly, parents didn’t tell a close contact of their child about the kid’s known or suspected case of COVID, or they let the child break quarantine rules. 

Parents cited personal freedom most often as the reason for their actions.

“The goal of the study is to make policymakers aware of how rampant this is,” senior author Angela Fagerlin, a psychologist at the University of Utah, told Angie Leventis Lourgos at the Chicago Tribune. 

Some parents reported they sent their child to school despite COVID illness or exposure because they had to go to work, highlighting the difficulties of working parents during the pandemic.

“I think it’s important that we support families so that parents can make the best decisions for their families, but also for their communities,” Fagerlin said. 

The team previously reported that almost 42% of U.S. adults had bent the truth about their COVID status or protective measures, or avoided testing or quarantine when they should have done so.

Study finds nonwhite people suffered more from COVID

A UK-based research team, after examining 77 studies from around the world, found widespread ethnic inequalities in the outcomes of COVID-19.

The team sought to link known inequalities in severe disease and death with infection risk and prognosis. They amassed data on more than 200 million people from studies conducted across six continents, for what they call the “most comprehensive summary of ethnic inequalities in a range of outcomes, during the first few years of the pandemic.” 

The data the team analyzed was all collected before October 4, 2022, so these infections mostly took place during a time without widespread immunity. The researchers wrote they would likely follow up by analyzing groups with different immunity levels, from different vaccines or exposure to different variants.

“We observed large differences in infection risk for minoritized ethnic groups,” the authors write in their paper in eClinicalMedicine. Black, South Asian, and mixed-race people were more likely to test positive than white individuals. The biggest difference was among South Asian populations, where people were three times as likely to test positive compared to white majority populations.

Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous people were more likely to require hospitalization, and death was more likely for Hispanic, mixed-race, and Indigenous groups.

“Response and recovery interventions must focus on tackling drivers of ethnic inequalities which increase exposure risk and vulnerabilities to severe disease, including structural racism and racial discrimination,” write the authors.

Experts tell Congress lab leak warrants more investigation

House Republicans investigated the origins of the coronavirus in their first hearing on March 8.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic heard testimony from former CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield, international relations expert Jamie F. Metzl, and former New York Times journalist Nicholas Wade.

No witnesses offered any new evidence, reports Trevor Hughes at USA Today, “but instead cited events, grant proposals and other incidents as too coincidental to ignore.”

Redfield argued for a “moratorium” on so-called “gain-of-function” virology research, reports Sarah Owermohle at STAT. “I think it’s caused the greatest pandemic we’ve ever seen,” he told the subcommittee.

Simply put, gain-of-function research is a term borrowed from genetics that means giving organisms new abilities, though the term has only been applied to virology recently, often in politically charged contexts. Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology near the pandemic’s epicenter had conducted such studies with U.S. funding before the pandemic began.

The subcommittee’s Democrats also called on Dr. Paul Auwaerter of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He stressed that the origins may never be uncovered, and that claims unsubstantiated by data fuel mistrust.

“We can still learn valuable information from these investigations,” said Auwaerter. “We should use that information to prevent outbreaks and pandemics with environment or human based origins.”

Diabetes drug reduces long COVID risk

The medication metformin is safe, cheap, and available in good supply — and it could prevent long COVID, according to the results of a preprint, not yet peer-reviewed, posted March 6 by The Lancet. 

The researchers randomized more than 1,000 participants to take one of three drugs within less than seven days of COVID symptom onset. They tested metformin, a diabetes drug; ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug; and fluvoxamine, an antidepressant; a combination of metformin plus one or the other drug; and placebo controls.

People who took metformin were 42% less likely to later be diagnosed with long COVID than people who got the placebo. If they took it within four days of symptom onset, their risk dropped by 50%. Ivermectin and fluvoxamine didn’t make a difference.

Scripps Research physician Dr. Eric Topol, who wasn’t involved in the study, expressed excitement on his Ground Truths newsletter. He noted metformin costs as little as $1 to $2 per week and is unlikely to cause side effects if taken for just two weeks, as in the trial.

“If I got COVID, I’d take metformin,” he wrote.

Not everyone might see the same level of reduced risk, notes Ingrid Hein at MedPage Today. Unvaccinated individuals were responsible for the majority of benefit observed in the study.

The study also focused on adults who were overweight or obese, and the drug might work better in that population, said author Dr. Carolyn Bramante of the University of Minnesota. The coronavirus may hide out in fat tissue, and metformin can reduce inflammation in fat. So, Bramante reasoned, people with more fat might be more likely to benefit from the treatment. 

Metformin also boosts T cell immunity, so it might help immunocompromised people, Bramante speculated.

The study took place during the omicron era, when some studies suggest long COVID was already less of a risk than with earlier variants. In unpublished research that will be presented at a conference in April, researchers found that people infected during omicron were no more likely to report ongoing symptoms than people who never had COVID, reports Alice Park at Time.

Paxlovid can also reduce risk one’s chances of long COVID, notes Carly Severn at KQED. The drug cut risk by 25% in a Veterans Affairs study released as a preprint last fall.

That may be because Paxlovid minimizes the time the immune system has to react to the virus in the bloodstream, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong of UCSF.

Chin-Hong urged people to assume they qualify for Paxlovid and consider taking it.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Parents across the U.S. are scrambling to find baby formula because supply disruptions and a massive safety recall have swept many leading brands off store shelves.

Months of spot shortages at pharmacies and supermarkets have been exacerbated by the recall at Abbott, which was forced to shutter its largest U.S. formula manufacturing plant in February due to contamination concerns.

On Monday, White House press secretary Jenn Psaki said the Food and Drug Administration was “working around the clock to address any possible shortages.”

On Tuesday, the FDA said it was working with U.S. manufacturers to increase their output and streamlining paperwork to allow more imports.

For now, pediatricians and health workers are urging parents who can’t find formula to contact food banks or doctor’s offices. They warn against watering down formula to stretch supplies or using online DIY recipes.

“For babies who are not being breastfed, this is the only thing they eat,” said Dr. Steven Abrams, of the University of Texas, Austin. “So it has to have all of their nutrition and, furthermore, it needs to be properly prepared so that it’s safe for the smallest infants.”

Laura Stewart, a 52-year-old mother of three who lives just north of Springfield, Missouri, has been struggling for several weeks to find formula for her 10-month-old daughter, Riley.

Riley normally gets a brand of Abbott’s Similac designed for children with sensitive stomachs. Last month, she instead used four different brands.

“She spits up more. She’s just more cranky. She is typically a very happy girl,” Stewart said. “When she has the right formula, she doesn’t spit up. She’s perfectly fine.”

A small can costs $17 to $18 and lasts three to five days, Stewart said.

Like many Americans, Stewart relies on WIC — a federal program similar to food stamps that serves mothers and children — to afford formula for her daughter. Abbott’s recall wiped out many WIC-covered brands, though the program is now allowing substitutions.

Trying to keep formula in stock, retailers including CVS and Walgreens have begun limiting purchases to three containers per customer.

Nationwide about 40% of large retail stores are out of stock, up from 31% in mid-April, according to Datasembly, a data analytics firm. More than half of U.S. states are seeing out-of-stock rates between 40% and 50%, according to the firm, which collects data from 11,000 locations.

Baby formula is particularly vulnerable to disruptions because just a handful of companies account for almost the entire U.S. supply.

Industry executives say the constraints began last year as the COVID-19 pandemic led to disruptions in ingredients, labor and transportation. Supplies were further squeezed by parents stockpiling during lockdowns.

Then in February, Abbott recalled several major brands and shut down its Sturgis, Michigan, factory when federal officials concluded four babies suffered bacterial infections after consuming formula from the facility. Two of the infants died.

When FDA inspectors visited the plant in March they found lax safety protocols and traces of the bacteria on several surfaces. None of the bacterial strains matched those collected from the infants, however, and the FDA hasn’t offered an explanation for how the contamination occurred.

For its part, Abbott says its formula “is not likely the source of infection,” though the FDA says its investigation continues.

Chicago-based Abbott said it is increasing production at its other facilities to fill the gap, including air-shipping formula from a plant in Ireland.

The shortages are especially dangerous for infants who require specialty formulas due to food allergies, digestive problems and other conditions.

“Unfortunately, many of those very specialized formulas are only made in the United States at the factory that had the recall, and that’s caused a huge problem for a relatively small number of infants,” Abrams said.

After hearing concerns from parents, the FDA said last month that Abbott could begin releasing some specialty formulas not affected by the recalls “on a case-by-case basis.” The company is providing them free of charge, in coordination with physicians and hospitals.

Food safety advocates say the FDA made the right call in releasing the formula, but that parents should talk to their pediatricians before using it.

“There’s still some risk from the formula because we know there are problems at the plant and FDA hasn’t identified a root cause,” said Sarah Sorscher of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. ”But it’s worth releasing because these infants might die without it.”

It’s unclear when the Abbott plant might reopen.

The FDA said the company is still working “to rectify findings related to the processes, procedures and conditions.” Other infant formula makers are “meeting or exceeding capacity levels to meet current demand,” the agency said.

Among other steps, the FDA said it was waiving enforcement of minor product labeling issues to increase availability of both U.S. and imported products.

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Since California health officials decreed the end of the mask mandate for restaurants and grocery stores last week, frustrated parents have been asking: When can their kids take their masks off at school?

They didn’t get any answers during a much anticipated press conference Monday hosted by California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly, who said the state would wait until Feb. 28 to potentially change masking rules at schools.

The California Teachers Association, one of the state’s largest unions with over 300,000 members, supported the decision to “pause and gather more information” before revising the mask mandate for schools.

But some parents and educators, who until recently supported strict mask rules in the classroom, are losing their patience.

“I really started thinking, why aren’t we talking about the masks coming off?” said Dr. Will Sheldon, an Oakland parent and a family medicine doctor. “There was no discussion of what the off-ramps are going to be.”

Concerns over education quality

Parents and educators interviewed by CalMatters said the social and emotional harms of long-term masking need to be weighed against what appear to be the minimal benefits of masking amid rising vaccination rates and receding case numbers.

Sheldon said his daughter has had a harder time making new friends because masks cover her facial expressions. But of greater concern, he said, are the kids he sees in his clinic who are deaf or have other language delays and rely on reading lips to learn speech and reading.

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“I think they were a good idea early in the pandemic,” Sheldon said. “At this point, I’m more than ready for them to change. I think we’ve gone to an extreme.”

Meanwhile, public health experts are saying masks will play a smaller role in 2022’s pandemic playbook.

“As omicron quiets down, we’re approaching a point where we can take masks off,” said Robert Schooley, a professor of medicine at UC San Diego. “But if I had a 5- to 12- year- old who wasn’t vaccinated, I would still want them to keep the masks on until they get vaccinated. It’s not always trivial when a child gets COVID.”

High-quality, tight-fitting masks have been shown to protect against transmission, but they don’t completely eliminate the risk of getting COVID-19. And with the low risk of serious illness for kids, some parents are saying it’s time to lift the mask mandate and take a step towards normalcy.

While not all parents oppose masks in schools — CalMatters spoke to parents who thought they should embrace all measures to reduce the death count — some worry the masks are reducing their child’s enthusiasm for learning.

“I want my son to feel excited and connected,” said Patricia Johnson, an Oakland parent of a first grader. “That’s what I’ve wanted from school all along. I want him to love school.”

Jason Peplinski, the superintendent of Simi Valley Unified School District, said public health experts can’t underestimate the effect wearing masks for two years has had on kids. He hopes the mandate lifts for all students. A middle ground, he said, would be a logistical nightmare.

“What I don’t want to happen is for the governor to say if you’re vaccinated you can unmask,” Peplinski said.

“That puts the onus on school districts.”

Some teachers are also calling for an end to the mask mandate.

Bevin Abbe, a vocal music teacher at Santa Susana High School in Simi Valley, said masks have been stifling her students’ creative expression for too long. She worries that more introverted students are hiding behind their masks, delaying their social development.

Abbe said debate over masking has become heated in her county of Ventura. Her district’s teachers union declined to take a position.

“Our union has chosen to respect the different views of our membership and society, at large,” said union president Amanda Hogan. “We have not taken a position on masks in the past and are unlikely to in the future.”

Public health experts endorse masks

The California Department of Public Health issued its school mask mandate in July as most of the state’s school districts were set to return to fully in-person instruction for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The mandate placed the responsibility of enforcement on local school officials.

As the omicron surge led to record case numbers among students, teachers and staff, many schools were pushed to a breaking point. But as case numbers decline, more states are starting to lift school mask mandates and taking steps towards normalcy . Lawmakers in some more conservative states are working to ban mask mandates altogether.

Simi Valley’s Peplinski and parents opposing the mask mandate say it doesn’t make sense for a vaccinated child to be able to eat at a restaurant or shop for groceries without a mask but have to put one on in the classroom. Public health experts, however, say the comparison isn’t completely valid because education is compulsory and students spend most of their time at schools.

“If you want to go to a restaurant, that’s your choice,” said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. “But kids need to be in schools, and I’d like to see them protected as much as possible.”

Noymer said masks should be required at schools to eliminate the possibility of returning to virtual instruction. That said, he thinks the mandate could be lifted in the next month or so once case numbers and hospitalization rates are back down to where they were last May.

Noymer said the state could set various thresholds for case numbers, hospitalization rates and vaccination rates that would trigger an end to the mask mandate for schools. But on Monday, Ghaly provided no concrete metrics.

He said the state would continue monitoring a variety of data points for the next two weeks.

Until then, some parents will remain exasperated.

“All they did was announce that they’re having another press conference in two weeks,” said Sheldon. “It felt like they were just kicking the can down the road.”

Joe Hong | Contributed

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