Biden at odds with CDC director over teachers after promising to follow science

Yet, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, a Biden appointee, has said it is safe for teachers to return to the classroom.

“I want to be clear. There is increasing data to support that schools can safely reopen and that safe reopening does not suggest teachers need to be vaccinated,” Walensky said Wednesday.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, appeared to walk back Walensky’s comments, saying they were not policy.

“They have not released their guidance yet, from the CDC, yet, on the vaccination of teachers and what would be needed to ensure the safe reopening of schools. We’d defer to that [guidance], which we hope to see soon,” Psaki said Wednesday. “The president himself has talked about the importance of a priority of vaccinating teachers.”

During the 2020 campaign, Biden repeatedly said he would listen to the scientists regarding the pandemic. “Let’s end the politics and follow the science,” Biden urged during a speech in October.

Critics are charging that Biden is placing teachers unions ahead of science.

“I think the science only matters when it fits the Biden administration’s narrative,” said Rep. Gary Palmer, an Alabama Republican. “But the science is clear. It is safe for teachers to return to school.”

Many local teachers unions, including ones in Los Angeles and Chicago, have refused to return to in-person instruction unless teachers are prioritized for COVID-19 vaccines.

It isn’t just Republicans criticizing Biden. Recently, Mike Bloomberg said, “It’s time for Joe Biden to stand up and to say, the kids are the most important things, important players here.”

Bloomberg is a former GOP mayor of New York City who, in 2018, switched to the Democratic Party and ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

But a lack of codified guidance from the CDC does not prevent the Biden administration from encouraging teachers to return to the classroom.

“I think it’s a combination of concern about the continued spread of COVID-19 but also amplified by resistance from teachers unions,” said Sean Higgins, a research fellow specializing in labor and employment issues at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Biden is listening to the unions, and that is tipping his decision in that direction.”

Teachers unions wield considerable influence among the Democrats, having contributed $5.9 million to Democrats in the last election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Most research suggests that the risk of getting the virus in school is very low for teachers. In late January, three CDC researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association that “there has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission.” A recent study in the Journal of Pediatrics of 11 school districts with a total of 90,000 students found that “no instances of child-to adult transmission of SARS-CoV-2 were reported within schools.”

Yet, other experts say that there are reasons to be apprehensive about teachers returning to the classroom.

“The risk for teachers is low, but the caveat is that schools need to pay reasonable attention to mitigation measures,” said Susan Hassig, an epidemiology professor at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

Indeed, research has shown that schools need to require masks, use social distancing, and have proper ventilation to keep the risk of coronavirus transmission low.

“That’s not always the case in every school district,” Hassig said.