August 11th, 2020 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin.

[0:00:05 Speaker 1] The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. So I

[0:00:11 Speaker 0] tell people on a regular basis there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called

[0:00:16 Speaker 1] Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raised her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room? Hello

[0:00:34 Speaker 0] and welcome to the second reading podcast for the week of August 10th. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. And I’m welcome. Happy to welcome back Josh Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project. Are you ready for back to school, Josh?

[0:00:50 Speaker 1] When is back to school?

[0:00:52 Speaker 0] That is a good entree. Excellent set up. Uh, today I think we’re going to start by talking about back to school. One of the big policy stories in this state is blooming return of K through 12 and for that matter, higher ed to, uh, back to school. And we want to talk a little bit today about how this is gonna happen about across the state to the extent that we know that. But it’s probably, you know, one of the pressing matters. I think in terms of public policy right now, how it’s gonna happen, what the impact will be on the kids themselves, obviously, how it’s gonna be shaped by the public health situation going in. But on the other end, how it may impact the public health situation and then, ultimately, our usual themes here, Um, what? The impact of how this all plays out is on politics. There’s already a lot of politics on the input side. You can actually see what the politics look like once we see what the outputs are, you know? So I think in summary is a lot riding on this on how this goes. Let’s start a little bit by talking about the public things. We’ve done some polling now, as school is getting closer, there’s a lot. There’s a lot more national polling going on, you know, we found out what people thought in Texas, and that was that about 65% of Texans, when we asked whether school was they thought, Texas thought it was safe to send the kids back to school. 65% thought it was unsafe. 35% said safe, and that was back in late June. I kind of think before people would really thought about the reality. And, you know, the situation was still fluid and and bad.

[0:02:36 Speaker 1] Yeah, I would say, I mean, but the other thing is, you know, contextually, You know, that kind of fell in the middle in terms of, you know, we asked about, I think, 10 to 14 different activities that people could engage, and we just wanted to get a, you know, sort of ah, heat check of whether people thought this was safer, unsafe. So at the high end of safety, you know, 72% of Texas that it was safe to go grocery shopping at the low end, 16% that it was safe to go to protests. That’s a separate conversation for another day, a little more complicated,

[0:03:04 Speaker 0] um, outlier and getting other dimensions in there.

[0:03:08 Speaker 1] Yeah, but the second lowest item in terms of safety was 21% of people thought it was safe to attended indoor events, so 35% saying it’s safe to send Children to school was basically in the middle. Not as safe is maybe, you know, let’s say eating in a restaurant or staying in a hotel according to Texans on average, but safer than maybe going to a gym or a bar or a movie theater. You know, I don’t

[0:03:29 Speaker 0] know that we’ve talked about this. What do you you know, what is I Look at these and you know, we talk us. We did talk about this a little bit when we got the result back. But, you know, there’s kind of ah familiarity or necessity breeds risk insensitivity at work here. I mean, if you look at the things that scored high, you know, Goto work and going grocery shopping were among got among the highest safety ratings thes air, things that more people have kind of had to do right now in the middle of that is get a haircut and I don’t really you know, I’ve never quite understood what the rush to get haircuts. Waas, Um not that I don’t, you know, enjoy a good regular haircut in the, you know, in these small chance that my stylist was to hear this podcast. I enjoyed the experience when I went regularly. It was very valuable to me. But when people were really just chomping at the bit to go get a haircut, I gotta say, I didn’t really understand the risk equation, But the point here being, you know, everybody was still kind of going grocery shopping. I mean, there are people that can afford to get groceries delivered. I’m just wondering if you you know, if you think that has an impact on it, I’m not sure. I mean, there’s something about Well, I’ve got to do this anyway. And it doesn’t make me wonder if that’s gonna impact kids going back to school. Even though the kids are not as subjective and first person Is those other experiences?

[0:04:54 Speaker 1] Yeah. I mean, I think you know what you’re talking about here. I mean, I think is only sort of scratching at the surface of the complexity of trying to understand how people you know, assess risk in this environment, you know? And like I mean, we could talk about this for 30 minutes easily, so it will try not thio. But I mean, I think you know what you’re talking about. is one possibility. Right? So one dimension of this is that there’s activities that people, you know, sort of either a have to do and therefore have, like, you know, already broken the seal. If you’ll they’ve already they’ve already gone grocery shopping because they have Thio. They didn’t get sick. They’ve got to

[0:05:24 Speaker 0] go to the HDB. And I survived it.

[0:05:26 Speaker 1] Yeah, exactly. But I mean but But I mean, you know, I think that there’s other aspects to this and again, it’s not gonna affect, you know, every single person in the same way each of these elements. But then the other piece of it is, you know, you think within each activity how you know, you think about how much control do I have over the interaction? How much to control does you know? Let’s say the entity that I’m interacting with, uh, you know, have over the nature of my interactions with other people, right? So if you think about it, you know, about going grocery shopping ultimately, you know, were you know, I mean, not to plug HDB. They don’t need me. But we’re kind of lucky in Texas to have a you know, a pretty big well thought out heavily. Supply chains, H E B. That kind of says, this is the way we’re going to do this and a bunch of other groceries to basically kind of quickly said, Hey, we’re going to start ramping up curbside, pick up all these things that kind of made people say, Okay, they’ve got this under control, you know, they can’t say the same thing for going toe and, you know, pick a random bar out of a hat right where they can’t control the bar, nor the patrons at the bar and school, I think kind of falls somewhere. I mean, I think what you’re seeing here is actually kind of moves to the national numbers. I think school and especially when we asked about it, which was late July, fall somewhere in the middle. I mean, on the one hand, you know, you’ve got a population that, you know, you know, according to some people, is less a risk for the coronavirus themselves, at least in terms of the symptoms they might experience and Children, right? Which is that seems to be true in terms of rates of death and things like that. You know, So you’ve got. But on the other hand, their Children and they can’t make a choice themselves. And generally we try to regret bad outcomes with Children, too. You know, we have less tolerance for bad outcomes with Children. I mean, period, right? So we’re not willing to put them into danger since they can’t make the choice themselves. On the other hand, there’s this other element of, well, you know, the schools and the state are going to control that interaction, right? Eso we’ll put a pin in that. But the idea is, you know, theoretically, there’s an actor there who’s gonna, you know, presumably provides some kind of guarantees of safety now, in July, you know, that was a very open question. Also me. At that point, it wasn’t even clear whether, you know, I mean, there was obviously a lot of move at that point to sort of pushed the idea that everyone’s going back to school, but no decisions had been made since then, you know, and is I think people have waited to get more instruction from their state legislatures from the president from their local school district’s Basically anyone who has information that’s also, and that’s also part of the problem here. There’s a lot of different information. Sources kind of say not exactly the same things about this. What you found was nationally, sort of at the end of July is about a month later. You know, basically, when adults nationally were asked whether they support or oppose, uh, reopening public schools in the fall, 55% opposed at 44% supported it. Okay, about 50 50 split. What about a little bit later? July 31st August 3rd was this was the next polls. A little bit very end of July beginning. Boss of

[0:08:11 Speaker 0] your tips. Sexiest polls,

[0:08:13 Speaker 1] right. These are the types of adults nationally, and they ask how much risk? How much of a risk to your health and well being? Do you think the following activities are right now because of the coronavirus and one of the things you sending your child to school in the fall 30. And this is, I think was mostly actually think this is only asked of, uh, parents. Although honestly, looking at our data, there’s actually no

[0:08:31 Speaker 0] didn’t make parents

[0:08:32 Speaker 1] doesn’t make a difference. Parents, not parents. So just to set that aside. But anyway, 39

[0:08:36 Speaker 0] kids and I care about them

[0:08:37 Speaker 1] Well, yeah, of course. You dio you’re carrying person. 39% of adults said that this poses a large risk. Sending Children back to school was a large risk to your health and well being. 27% said a moderate risk Onley. 13% said there’s no risk to that’s And so that’s kind of I think, where we are at this point in terms and basically, you know, I mean, I would say if you’re gonna take all this and what you know, what sort of the boiler plate You know, where people are. People aren’t sure. Yeah is basically And I would say they’re probably right to be unsure, right?

[0:09:12 Speaker 0] Right. And and, you know, you mentioned, you know, as we look at how this is unfolding in Texas, you know, you know, they’re not. The process of making these decisions is not providing an enormous amount of reassurance. I don’t think you were saying there’s no there’s a lot of cross currents is you were going through some of the risk assessment stuff a minute ago. I mean, as of now, decisions are being made at the district level in consultation, no doubt with schools but at the district level within a framework set by the state through the Texas Education Agency. So the way it looks right now, schools have a window for a start date, but they can adjust. That start date is a I S T. Austin Independent school district. Just did that other district’s prominently have done that. And as I understand it, they can use remote learning for the first eight weeks. But then they’ll need an extension approved by T E A if they want to use ah, holy remote learning model going forward. But this only kicks that they missed. And then they have to make up the weeks later. Yeah, if they start later, You mean Yeah. No. Yeah. They can’t just not say we’re gonna drop that time, right? They still have to follow the skate guide state guidelines for contact hours and all of this. So, in some ways, I mean, I think it’s one might think, Well, that seems relatively straight forward and, you know, in okay adjustment to all this uncertainty that we’re talking about, but it’s actually taking us a bit of work to get this in a lot of a lot of political noise.

[0:10:43 Speaker 1] Yeah. I mean, this is a great example of, you know, building the plane while you’re flying it, right? I mean, I mean, ultimately. I mean, I think one of the difficulties I mean, there’s a lot of difficulties here, right? And this is the thing about this. I mean, we kind of talked about this. There is no one version of this, and I think you know, the state approach kind of. I mean, some ways highlights the this The reality is that, you know, on the one hand, you can see, you know, the state basically wanting to give school districts the flexibility especially to open if they want to and buy. And if they want to, it means, like, you know, Look, if you’re in a county or in I s d where there are no confirmed coronavirus cases, basically none. But there’s, you know, a handful. They have very few cases. Yeah, you know, I mean, ultimately, one thing that the coronavirus has kind of made a parent, I think to a lot of people, is the is the fact the public school system is also our child care system. And if you want people to work and they also have kids, you kinda need to figure out something to do with these kids on DSO. You know, part of it is in some areas of the state that might make a ton of sense in a place like, you know, let’s say Harris County or you know, where they still a large number of cases. It might not make much sense, and they need some flexibility. But ultimately it’s, you know, let’s say just a citizen trying to assess risk here. You know, you’re sort of getting the sense from the state level that, hey, everything’s gonna move forward safely, But we’re definitely moving forward. We’re not trying to stop. We’re not trying to preemptively stop school openings, but also check with your local school district because they may start you late. They may start you hybrid, and also this might change after they started. That’s the other piece of this is, you know,

[0:12:18 Speaker 0] and this happens with an overlay of a public health conversation that’s also not, you know, not just about schools, but when schools come up you’re getting vastly different signals from both political leadership and the public health. I mean, I’ve heard many prominent public health figures say that in areas where the virus is still, you know, running rampant and you know not being controlled, which is a lot of areas that there should be blanket policies of limiting in person schooling, period. Beyond that seems to not be happening anywhere that I’ve seen.

[0:12:56 Speaker 1] Well, that’s the sort of thing that’s, you know, I mean, sort of inexplicable both from a policy, but also a political standpoint, right? I mean, you know, I think one of the sort of e mean one of the common, you know, observations. I would say the last week or so. I mean, you kind of you read about, You know, if you read a lot of politics and commentary, you’ll see this is this is this idea of Well, if you know, if we’re definitely gonna go full board head with sitting kids back to school, that’s gonna become a pretty clear of value of criteria of how we’re handling the coronavirus, because, I mean, to the extent that there have been, you know, let’s say differences of opinion about how serious the viruses and, you know, the reality of case counts and all that kind of stuff. I mean, ultimately, you know, once you start sending the kids back to school, if you can’t keep schools open, it’s hard to say you’re doing a good job containing the virus. Eso This becomes a bit of, you know, the value of component. That’s the interesting thing to me about the politics of this in some way, which is that, you know, in the rush to get kids back to school, I mean, one of the things that basically the state of the, you know, backed up by the attorney general has said, is Hey, you know, public health authorities can’t preemptively keep schools from opening now. However, if the schools open and there’s an outbreak, then the public health authorities can come in and close it Well, I mean, that leads some people to say, Why are you waiting for that to happen? If that’s a possibility, and then I think a lot of the superintendent’s you know, you get the articles I’m reading. Interviews of them are saying, Well, I rely on the county health authorities to tell me what’s safe and what’s not

[0:14:25 Speaker 0] right and and the attorney general’s guidance was You’re more than welcome to talk to them and you can listen to them. But it’s not their decision. They don’t have authority. They are consultative at those early stages on DSO. You know, I mean, I think you know, before, you know, I kind of want to get in. I mean, that leads to some degree, you know, directly to the partisanship in the politics of this. But I think you know, I think before we get to that, the other overlay we have to think about is that you know, class and economic qualities that you know the same force socioeconomic forces that shape K through 12 that in this state and have shaped it for ever. Basically because of the way schools are organized and attendances schools are administered. Is it play here lower income families or less equipped to bear the cost of remote education from three equipment to flexibility to support and supervised kids you mentioned. You know, the daycare factor which looms large. Um, you know, less well off school district’s have fewer resource is in terms of both economic and social capital to create safe and effective environments for schools that air choosing hybrid or in person learning. I mean, it z gonna work. It’s gonna be hugely expensive. And those resource is there not there.

[0:15:42 Speaker 1] Well, that’s right. And not to mention the fact. I mean, you know, this is the nature of the fact that, you know, schools are populated by the geography is in which they’re placed, right, And we know that, you know, housing is segregated, you know, by socioeconomic status and socioeconomic statuses is highly correlated with race. And so ultimately, you know, some of the schools that air the least resource equipped to deal with this both in terms of, you know, I mean, outright resource is, but even in terms of the quality and size of the facilities relative to the size of the student bodies, right, you know, sort of large, overcrowded, you know? Where are there more overcrowded classes and classrooms right automatically. That creates a bigger problem for a virus that is, you know, fed by close social contact, right? And so, you know, I mean, we’ve talked about this a lot, but ultimately, I mean one of the things I think that’s unfortunate about this whole debate is the reality of the fact that whenever we talk about it just is open schools or don’t open schools, you know? Well, ultimately there, these schools are facing significantly different problems. At the same time, though, you know the solution can’t necessarily be well, we’re gonna open all the affluent schools, right? And we’re not gonna open all the schools where there’s high where there’s a higher risk. Well, because ultimately do that. There’s gonna be a huge equity problem that no one wants to deal with. But at the same time, you have to go and say, Well, what’s what’s the cost if we ignore that?

[0:17:01 Speaker 0] Well, the truth of the matter is that, you know, affluence isn’t gonna guarantee, you know, it’s gonna give you advantages. But even then, affluence isn’t gonna guarantee you. I mean, I would I would be surprised if we don’t see outbreaks in the schools that decide to gamble on that and say we’re we have more. Resource is we can do this, right? And then it goes south on him.

[0:17:23 Speaker 1] Yeah. I mean, I know that I was talking to a reporter. Uh, I think with the San Antonio Express News last week who had gone out and basically, you know, informally surveyed, I guess were the I S d commissioners or the commissioner is one of the head of the I S D. Is that right,

[0:17:37 Speaker 0] Commissioner? Another superintendents,

[0:17:40 Speaker 1] Superintendents, Whereas the word was in my mind anyway, he’d gone out.

[0:17:44 Speaker 0] Probably like to be commissioners. It’s sure Zamora highly ranking name all those superintendents.

[0:17:51 Speaker 1] A super ring. Yeah, I guess it depends anyway. Okay, so that aside, But anyway, you know, he went out and talked to a bunch of superintendents and they had been surveyed, you know, they’ve been doing these pulse surveys and the various larger district at least the kind of see where parents are on this question. And they had broken the data down by race. And they were finding that generally, you know, well, they were breaking down by race, but they were breaking it down by the the race of the school or the predominant races of the school. And they were finding that, you know, in schools with higher shares of students of color, they were higher shares of parents saying they were afraid to send their kids back to school well,

[0:18:23 Speaker 0] and then we could see that in our data to right. I mean that that pattern was evident in the point that we did in June, you know, So I don’t you know. So I think that’s that’s very much at play here, and and it’s seeping into the It’s seeping into the coverage. But I think I’m not sure we’re seeing it seep into the policy yet. Well, because not sure, I’m not sure we’re seeing much rhyme or reason and the policy other than trying to keep trying to define what the lanes are and keeping people in those lanes.

[0:18:51 Speaker 1] But I think that’s but that’s right. That’s right. I mean, ultimately, you know, if you think about it, you know, policy is complicated. Politics is about being simple. Usually, I mean, usually, I always think, you know, you could disagree. I mean, you know, e I mean to me, I always I mean, this is like a rule of thumb for me, and you could disagree with this 100% but like, you know, if you’ve got two arguments and one requires a sentence and the other requires two sentences. I don’t know anything else about it. I bet on the one that’s one sentence. Generally you know them or explaining you to do the more difficult it is. And I mean, like and ultimately, I actually think that’s part of the difficulty here because look, even if we let’s say, let’s say it’s true that you know kids are asymptomatic and have a really low complication. I mean, like, exceedingly low, so low that we’re, you know, we’re setting aside. You know how many kids need to get terribly sick for this to be okay, which is ultimately the policy discussion. You’d actually have to have to think about this, but, you know, uh, even setting all of that aside, the issue here is not necessarily that the kids were going to get sick. It’s the fact that the kids are going to go home and get their parents sick, get their grand parents sick. And if you think about again the same things we’re talking about here, who’s likely to live in a multi generational home, who’s likely, you know, to basically be in a community where they’re more, you know, more likely to be surrounded by their elders, you know? And I mean, that’s not a Hispanic only thing or an African American only thing at all. But ultimately, you know, that’s actually it’s the second order effects. And really, people aren’t talking about that when people say, Well, you know, kids don’t get that sick So it’s fine. Well, that’s not actually from a public health standpoint where the concern lies here, but this gets too complicated. I mean, when you’re really just talking about sending kids to school or not, we’re not talking about who needs to send their kids to school. We’re not talking about whether the schools were able to absorb them. We’re not talking about second order effects in terms of spread beyond just the kids we’re talking about with the teachers. But it kind of just sort of stopped as if this is some sort of an isolated, clustered. Well, we may have to close the school. It’s like, and also the town may get overrun. I mean that zits, not the conversation, is being had right now because it’s too complicated because it’s really ultimately the virus isn’t contained.

[0:20:52 Speaker 0] Well, I mean, I guess that’s why I’m wondering about this. You know, the politics policy distinction you made there. I mean, you know, on one hand, we’ve set on this podcast and discussed on the, you know, multiple times You know, the difficulty people have and thinking systemically or thinking about, you know, use the term second order effects. I mean, thinking about, you know, relatively complex systems really systems at all. And that’s really what this is. Uh, on the other hand, maybe I’m just a neg head, but I don’t think it’s that complicated to tell people kids don’t live at their schools and they go home and they can carry the virus to other people.

[0:21:33 Speaker 1] Yeah. I mean, when you say that’s

[0:21:34 Speaker 0] a long sentence, but it’s only one well and and, you know, and frankly, it leads me, you know, to the you know, Thio, to feel like you know, we can’t in good conscience talk about the political overtones and not talk about the degree to which people are willfully simple, you know, oversimplifying or miss being misleading about things. I mean, you know, it’s hard for me to think that anybody that stands up and says either kids can’t get it or if kids get it, they don’t get very sick. Is, you know, as a public official has not been told multiple times that it’s a little more complicated than that and that it’s not that much more complicated.

[0:22:18 Speaker 1] Well, I mean, I would I would. I half agree with you is that I mean, the way you phrased it, not complicated. And I would say, you know, objectively True, right? I mean, again, they don’t live in school, and that’s the thing. But ultimate. Then the question becomes what I mean, once you start allowing in other considerations into that, you know that calculation Well, you know, then it becomes very political again, and it’s not so simple, right? It’s like, you know, okay, if we open schools and the rate of death amongst let’s say, you know, on the under 18 population from Cove, it is, let’s and I’m just making this up. I don’t know what it is. Just to be clear, I’m just making their but let Z X or like 180.0 x percent or something, right? I mean, ultimately, someone’s got a good We have a lot of public school students in Texas. You gotta do a calculation and say, Well, okay, that means you know why number of students would die. Now, that’s one thing we could bring into that makes more complicated, right? The other thing that we could bring into it is I mean, ultimately, this is kind of underlying all this is some notion of, like, people’s liberty to be risky.

[0:23:13 Speaker 0] Well, understand, Tradeoffs. Sure,

[0:23:16 Speaker 1] Yeah, but I mean, but that’s what I mean. Ultimately, the question becomes, you know, I think for some people would say, You know, hey, I understand there’s a risk to me in my family, but I want my Children

[0:23:25 Speaker 0] to continue, and that’s and that’s and that’s another thing. And that’s and that’s and that I’m Well, that’s a conversation. I’m willing tohave, I guess. You know what I’m zeroing in on is, you know, the multiple messages that air out there, you know, including, you know, from some of our top elected officials and not, you know, not not as much in this state. I’ve I’ve seen it from legislators saying that it’s not a big deal because kids don’t get sick.

[0:23:50 Speaker 1] Yeah, and the reality is, I mean, well, and the reality is I mean, I think the mawr, you know, I mean, one of the more reasonable messages to my mind would be to start asking, Look who who needs their kids to be back in school because that’s really the fares. I mean, that actually speaks to equity, too, which is ultimately, some people can absorb the cost both of, you know, remote learning and also, you know, being being having their kids at home all the time and basically not, you know, in the public schools and some people can’t right. And that’s just that is fundamentally a reality here. And, you know, I mean, the thing that I sort of thought about a lot is, you know, especially for these schools, you know, for the schools that have a mix of students to the extent that you know, schools do, which in Texas schools are pretty segregated, so, you know, unlikely, but universally not universally, but in schools that do have a mix honestly, you know, their success in reopening kind of requires people who can keep their kids at home to keep them at home, because the schools aren’t really big enough to accommodate social distancing and full enrollment as it iss, right? I mean, it’s not as though I mean, you know, lots of you were in a Texas public school. I’ve been in relatively frequently. It’s not like these rooms have an extra, you know, Hunt, you know, let’s say 203 100,000 square feet of space to spread the desks out 6 ft apart. And so

[0:25:05 Speaker 0] that’s not That’s not happening.

[0:25:07 Speaker 1] But ultimately, this is a much more complicated discussion than anyone’s really having at a public level.

[0:25:12 Speaker 0] And for that matter, you know, you know, that applies the higher ed, and I think we’re probably just gonna talk about that. But we should probably, you know, let that go for time’s sake. But you know, we should mention, though, that there’s also considerable anxiety and back to school about what’s gonna happen in colleges and universities around the country. And that is also continued to be a moving target. As you know, plants have been made and unmade on the terrain of the of where the viruses, you know clearly they’re also major public health risks at work here, particularly four year schools with large numbers of students that are residential, you know you’ve got communities. I mean, there’s a pretty good piece in the New York Times, I think, last week about college communities now weighing, you know, not wanting everybody to come back for the public health risk, but also looking at if people don’t come back, what are the economic hazards, which is, you know, another example of the complicated policy issues

[0:26:08 Speaker 1] well and right. And the main difference here is the fact that, you know, it’s sort of not a girl, not yet a woman, right? That’s a Britney Spears song, to be clear. But the idea here is, you know, these air You’re not Britney Spears. Some people might now, but

[0:26:22 Speaker 0] anyway, appearance in the podcast.

[0:26:25 Speaker 1] Well, I’m working on it, but I mean, but this is the thing you’re dealing with 18 year old. So So I mean, the problem is that these are technically adults who can make their own decisions about how they’re what they’re going to do and how they’re going to proceed. But also just barely. And just legally it is, you know, in the reality of

[0:26:42 Speaker 0] your talking about freshman. Yeah.

[0:26:44 Speaker 1] Yeah, I think about freshman. I mean, Sure e don’t wanna make anybody mad. Well, that’s not true, but anyway, but yeah, it was too late. But on the other hand, you know, everybody’s talking about the, you know, the college experience and moving these kids long, they have to get back to college. And for some kids, they do, for all the same reasons we’re talking about in terms of equity and access and everything at the U. K. Through 12 level still applies in college because you’re in college. I mean, you have access to Internet or a safe place to study and learn at the same time. All this idea this talk about, you know, got to get the kids back to college. Well, you know, all the patterns of social life in college they’re gonna be, you know, either erase or completely, you know, changed. And so, you know, on the one hand, you Well,

[0:27:24 Speaker 0] the question is, Can can you do that, E? I mean, real question e. I mean, I would put it, you know, just I’ll do this without Britney Spears or a gender preference and say, you know, on one hand, we are dealing with adults, so the problem poses differently at the higher ed or, you know, near adults in the, you know, some 18th use of 18 folks that show up for college. On the other hand, the social patterns we associate with college life, especially residential college life, they don’t lend themselves to social or physical distance. E no, um, you know, no matter. You know, I think most college experiences would confirm that. And so I think that, you know, you’re going to see the same kind of, you know, And I think is, you know, to kind of tie these together to some degree and and look at the politics. There’s gonna be, ah, lot policy and politically writing on how are August, September and October go? Yeah, in terms of schools, you know, in terms of the public schools, you know how that shakes out, I think is gonna definitely be something that affects a lot of people that are, you know, looking, you know, perhaps not in their presidential vote or, you know, maybe, but some degree, but But overall, it’s gonna lend to the mood of the electorate in ways that are important, because it’s gonna be a fundamental experience for so many people, whether you are directly involved with the education with by having, you know, a child or a college or working in education or if it has public health consequences. You know, people are gonna be looking around for, you know, Thio. Ask rightly. How did this happen?

[0:28:57 Speaker 1] Yeah, you know, I think it’s something our colleague, Darren Shaw says I don’t always agree with, but I kind of do as I get older, which is, you know, he gets asked this question. You know, why don’t young people vote and he has an answer that that he, you know, usually speaks to him. And I think this is partially true. This idea of, you know, Hey, once you, you know, own a house and pay property taxes and have kids in the public school, you’ll vote. And I remember not paying property taxes or having kids in the public school at that point. Time and thought, Yeah, you know, you’re

[0:29:21 Speaker 0] a nerd. You voted anyway,

[0:29:23 Speaker 1] e. I voted anyway because I’m a nerd. But you know, But then you go and you start. You know, you start, you have houses, you have the house, your property taxes, but especially you do have kids in the public school. Honestly, it draws you into the politics of the place. You live in a way that, you know, Very few things do. Honestly. And I mean, I think that you know what I’ve been saying to people, like, especially reporters a lot about all this, you know, take Donald Trump out of the equation, which is impossible. And, you know, he works. And he has He is, you know? I mean, he, you know, exerts pressure on both sides of this argument, but take him out and just say what if we were just living in this time and you had a Democratic or Republican president? Doesn’t matter in the White House. And the pandemic response has gone the way it has, right. 4% of the world’s population. About a quarter of the world’s cases right now, right. Three idea that we’re going to go back to school in the United States, in the United States. We’re gonna go back to school in the fall. Maybe we’re going to shut down. We’re probably not gonna have sports. We’re probably not gonna have new movies or new TV shows. the economy is gonna be dragging along. As you know, on account of this, there’s no reason to expect that President’s party to do very well. E. I mean, it’s just it’s just a difficult, you know, position to be in. But Donald Trump serve exerts this whole other pressure on top of that that I think, you know, in normal times, I think, you know, if you had a George W. Bush and even George W. Bush in the White House right now, I think you’d see, you know, Texas elected officials create trying to create more distance and more space from him in a way that they really can’t afford to do with Trump at this point, which serve a different discussion. But, you know, it does sort of led to the fact that, you know, I think the school thing is going to be a pretty big consideration on voters minds come November. Unless it just goes. I mean, even either way it could go spectacularly well, and I think that will be a consideration. I think if it goes poor or very poorly, I think that’s gonna be a pretty big consideration for people.

[0:31:12 Speaker 0] Yeah, and I think that it’s also gonna I mean, you know, it’s gonna be so noisy. I mean, it’ll be interesting to see I you know, when we pull in this environment, you know, I think it’s gonna contribute. Uh, you know, I’m of a, you know, sort of mixed minds. Whether when we go and ask people what’s the most important issue, they’ll say education. But I think education is going to be one of, you know, how how things go in the schools is going to be one of the things that really shapes people’s overall sense of whether things were going well or not and think, or whether things are being handled well or not right, You

[0:31:49 Speaker 1] know what I mean?

[0:31:50 Speaker 0] Whether it registers directly is education, and it might. But I you know, there’s somebody. It’s connected to so many other things. That’s kind of what we’ve been talking about.

[0:31:57 Speaker 1] Well, you know, I mean, we say sometimes, you know, I mean the idea that you know, if you think about you know, generally people’s interactions with government in real life, you know the two most kind of fundamental interactions that ordinary people have, or with the schools or with the police And honestly, neither of those either of those air looking like banner issues to run on right now

[0:32:16 Speaker 0] in terms of feeling good about about how government interactions or even General, Yeah, I think that’s right. You know, we should also notice, you know, and, you know, flag, that this conversation is also coming is you know, we’re seeing reports of a big national increase in positive test results among Children. And this is, you know, adding to the anxiety given that, you know, the fatality rate among Children is still very, very low, but not zero. And but the increase in positive test doesn’t, you know, comes at a time that people are paying a lot of attention to how the virus is and how the pandemic is touching Children and touching that age cohort just as a public health matter. And it comes also as we’re seeing a not entirely explained slowdown in coronavirus testing in this state, and we’re gonna run out of time. But, you know, we’ll end on this happy note that you know the average number of tests, um, as reported in a couple of different media outlets based on state data was a little over 36,000 last week, and it was over a little over 62,000 couple of weeks before. And so that means we’re going into this time with, actually, you know, it seems like less information than we had than getting and that, you know, the testing things has been a problem since the beginning in Texas, and it’s something that has not has not been licked.

[0:33:41 Speaker 1] Yeah, well, you know, I mean, ultimately, we should talk about this just a little bit for a second. I mean, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of reasons why this might be the case. I mean, you know, honestly, you know, urgencies weighing a little bit. I mean, we saw the peaks and then, you know, we’ve seen a decline in the number of, you know, let’s say in the increase in new positive cases, even though the again, the positive rate has been going up. So the share of people who are testing positive out of the number tests is going

[0:34:06 Speaker 0] up the number of

[0:34:06 Speaker 1] tests going down you were seeing less new cases per day, although still ah, lot, I mean, that’s the other thing compared to other places, the world still a ton, right? But, I mean, this is something you know we’ve been talking about for a while, which is, you know, one. You know, the overall environment is that, you know, we’ve never tested enough in Texas or anywhere, period. That’s just, you know, from any sort of public health standpoint for testing to be effective. We’re not doing enough, you know. This decreases, you know, it’s probably not nefarious. I think it’s just people like it’s just people reacting to the environment. So in July, we saw a big spike in cases, uh, coming out in June rather coming out of, you know, July basically Memorial Day weekend and the opening up of the state that a last in July and people were getting tested. And then people, you know, people withdrew one. You know, the state closed down a little bit. People started staying in a little bit more, probably because of the surge in cases in the state. And ultimately, you know, if you’re asymptomatic and haven’t interacted with anybody, there’s really little, you know, at least desire to go get in a three hour line to have, ah, you know, 68 inch long Q tip shoved up your nose

[0:35:10 Speaker 0] in a few weeks and then wait two weeks for results,

[0:35:13 Speaker 1] right? And then wait two to hopefully only two weeks to get results after, at which point you would have basically been quarantined and either through the virus or in the hospital or whatever. And so, you know, so I mean, I think actually highly another piece of this is one. I think people’s concern have probably gone down is they’ve, you know, interacted less because there’s actually more going on out there. But at the same time, also, all the news about the fact that these virus tests aren’t actually getting returned to people in any useful amount of time. I mean, I think that would also discourage a lot of people from getting tests.

[0:35:43 Speaker 0] Yeah, it certainly is. So it’s not just you know. I mean, it’s just not the availability of the tests, although that was the early issue. It’s also the regime in which it’s embedded in the execution of it, all of which has been substandard.

[0:35:56 Speaker 1] Yes, eso with that Have a

[0:35:59 Speaker 0] great week, folks. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back next week with more good news on the second reading Podcast. Don’t forget you confined this podcast on all the usual outlets, and you can find lots of the underlying data we tend to discuss on this and mawr at the Texas Politics Project website. That’s Texas politics dot utexas dot e d u. Thanks and really do try to have a good week. The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin