and embrace this flexibility. all our employees are in a competitive labor environment. this is a huge opportunity to learn from what has gone on. caroline: i am caroline hyde. romaine: i am romaine bostic. taylor: i'm taylor reg -- briggs. romaine: caroline: as of today, more than one third of kindergarten through 12th grade students have started cost in the shadow of the highly contagious delta variant. harriet's -- parents are facing fear and confusion as

politicians take diverging approaches. houston cools voted to require mask for students and teachers in defiance of the governor's orders barring officials from doing so. more and more companies are delaying return to office is mandating vaccine. -- return to office and mandating vaccines. it is clear that you keep the recovery on track, get back to the offices, kids in school, economic data. taylor: let's take a look at the terminal. we can see some of that. we have our conversations about, just take a look here at consumer sentiment, the big story, dropping. that caught my eye.

the impact on the consumer has been feeling this. romaine: ultimately, it comes down to the covid crisis. so, keeping it under control. we talked about last summer, the idea of flattening the curb. that now starting to go in the wrong direction. the question is, whether we can contain that because it will ultimately determine whether we go back to work and back to school. for more insight, bloomberg political news director jody schneider joining us now. caroline mentioned a few companies. amazon is delaying. facebook is delaying. they will -- were supposed to bring people in august, now september. now, saying they will wait a little longer. jody: it is confusing for individuals and companies. at first, companies were eager to come up with a plan to get people back and get the economy back. but now, with the fact that

vaccinated people are still unlikely to get covid, still there is a lot of concern and worry about caseloads going up across the country largely among unvaccinated people. it has worried companies. facebook will not require people to go back until january of 2022. we are also seeing a number of other companies. caroline: i was talking to two female co-owners of a scam week. -- ofskim last week. what are people doing if they are bringing people back? and many have. getting people vaccinated is inherently what stops mutations. jody: the trick is to get everybody vaccinated and then you will not see the spread. companies started of with the

carrot, a $500 gift card, and now they are employing these stiff. we saw walmart do -- the stick. we saw walmart doing that with saying all workplace employees have to be vaccinated to come in. washington post said they had to do that. a number of industries have done that. taylor: the politics of back to school are very political. the return to work, how does it impact joe biden? jody: this is not a good impact for joe biden. it may not be his fault, but at the same time, july 4, they were having a big barbecue and called it freedom day and here you are a month and a half later and -- here we are, a month and a half later and it is very different. also, the cdc for giving us confusing messages. pull the basques off. well that's pulling mask that's

pulled the mask -- pull the mask off, oh, no, now you have to wear them. romaine: the federal level -- down from the federal level, there is also confusion on the state and local level. different states and cities are taking different approaches. and then you have texas. jodi: in florida, the governor says you cannot have a mass mandate. they have gotten another wave. starting next week, we will have to show vaccination information to most restaurants in new york city. it is very different in a lot of places. but, we are start to see that that sedation to go a lot of places. i think we will see that more and more. caroline: it is such a bifurcated news environment. she manages to bring it all together in terms of what companies are doing. meanwhile, we speak with and at

all -- we speak with and it anderson -- when and at anderson -- with annette anderson.

romaine: the beginning of the school year is imminent. instead of fretting over bus schedules, most superintendents are worried abouts kids safe, even teachers safe. of course, that means we have to keep an eye on the delta variant and how it is affecting the percent of the population that could be vulnerable. taylor: on a lighter note, i can know it is back to school bye-bye instagram feed.

on the more serious side. the good news is that the percent of cases relative to population is much lower, confirming earlier evidence we had last year that youth do not seem to be transmitting it. really, pushing that narrative in an effort to reopen schools. we have a net anderson deputy director of the johns hopkins center for safe and healthy schools. she is currently helping school districts return to in person learning. i met, -- and at -- annette, what are some of the biggest questions? annette: have we done enough? we are planning for students to

come in buildings in just a few weeks. in some schools in the south, children have been quarantined already. we are in year three of pandemic education. they are just hoping we can bring students back. but, they want to make sure we have done everything possible to make that happen. that includes whether we need to change future vaccine mandates. heavy -- have we looked at where the windows are located? whether ventilation will be upgraded. many schools are using cares act funding to try to improve ventilation. but, we are running against the clock. it is important that district administrators continue to communicate to parents what the cases look like locally. romaine: a lot of the changes that have to be made to prepare kids are changes that have

already been made in the hybrid year we came out of. a lot of these are physical. you have a lot of disparities. some schools have windows that could open. some schools do not. how do you address that disparity? annette: that is the question. it is the question of the century. we have so many underrepresented students, our most vulnerable students, going into classrooms that are often over 100 years old. some of those buildings have been able to be upgraded. many have not. then, we are thinking of sending students back into buildings wearing masks for seven hours a day, that are sometimes not even air-conditioned. so, we need a way for students to successfully reengage in learning in person. that is the most important thing. caroline: what are creative ways

you are seeing administrators think and act on that? i know you have really been a spearhead when it comes to equity within school provision. when we think about the children left behind at the most underserved schools lacking air-conditioning and space, they are also the most left behind if they are sent back home and do not have the access to internet that others have or the equipment that they need. >> one of the lessons of the pandemic has been that education does not have to take place in a classroom. at the same time, what we have seen is that schools need to make sure that students have access to digital technologies and equipment but we have not yet reached a place where all students are at a one-to-one ratio of the right equipment as well as the software and internet at this they need to engage. i think we have to be thinking about that as we think about hybrid options.

romaine: i am curious as to where we look for direction here. obviously, you want to look for the federal government but schools are run by states, local municipalities, each with their own ways of doing things, their own politics of how they want to do those things. is there any hope for us as a united nation that we can find some guidance that gets us all out there safely? annette: the responsibility for schools or falls to local districts. the state and federal agencies also have a deep responsibility. it is high time that we all get on the same case. i wrote an op-ed with two colleagues say we need a blue ribbon commission to provide oversight. a guaranteed one stop shop when it comes to trying to get information about back to school , and trying to parse it together themselves. we do not have a clear and coherent message about where

people should go to get information about back to school . it keeps changing and that is unsettling for parents, especially parents of students not eligible for the vaccine. we have got a heavy lift to make sure we are communicating in this country. i think that is where we should try to get on the same page. we have got to get federal agencies giving us clear-cut guidance so parents can trust that what is coming out is going to be consistent. parents are now wondering, is it safe to send my child back to school? that is disconcerting or it to be august and parents to be trying to figure that out area caroline: and for the teachers as well i am sure. annette, have any other countries been more consistent? annette: from our equity school plus work, you will see that you

have a lot of high income countries that have been doing some amazing work in terms of extended day. in high income countries they both have extended the summer and also the school day. they are having saturday school as well. so, those are the models we need to look to this year. think about how we can recoup some of the learning lost over the last year. in some high income countries, you are seeing an intentional effort to try to make sure students have an opportunity to make up any endemic learning that may have been -- pandemic learning that may have been lost. romaine: that is great insight from dr. annette anderson. the johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health is supported by michael r bloomberg, the founder of blue erg lpn blue erg philanthropies -- bloomberg lp and bloomberg

philanthropies. college students are also going back and facing the delicate task of all of these universities trying to update safety protocols. 45% of 18 to 24-year-olds are fully vaccinated. that is a stunning statistic for me. how do you do that when these college kids have more freedom? taylor: the only sort of good anecdote we can bring to the story is the cost of tuition. it has been out of control. in the past, it is usually been that you see huge increases. here we see the cpi in college tuition being more affordable. from some of the stimulus checks, schools have done a good job passing out stimulus to individual students and using more from their endowments and stopping some tuition freezes as they try to share the burden.

that has maybe been a bright spot in all of this. caroline: annette was just speaking to inequity within the school system. but also, in the university systems. universities that are incredibly wealthy, with incredible endowment, have had record years in 2020. they are able to support their overall student population and said -- perhaps bring down costs. i wonder how much we will see balanced universities that do not have a profit margin keep going when they have to charge people less. taylor: this could all come back to markets. as we think about the rebalancing of endowments and stocks at record highs, they are now more fully funded than they were before. people can use that money to maybe help students. certainly, we are seeing conversation here that will be continuing. with delta variant on the rise

and younger children still in vaccinated, we will have emily oscar of brown university to talk about why schools are not the super-spreader they appear to be. that is coming up next. this is bloomberg.

caroline: the start of the school year has many parents nervous. with the delta variant spreading and some children still unvaccinated, emily oster, a professor from brown university has become a calm voice in favor of schools reopening. she is joining us. ivy league economists, parenting expert. i know you from the books you wrote about children.

>> in the summer of last year it seemed like there was no systematic effort to collect detailed data about schools and covid. we went through, seeing very consistently that covid cases in schools were mirroring the community but it did not look like schools were driving covid cases or there was a significant spread in schools even in high risk areas. those are just numbers we got from earlier in the year. we saw similar things throughout the year. caroline: as in the delta variant unfolds, do you think the data still holds up? is it a case that people might

need to be more masked when they return to school. i have toddlers who are not the best at wearing masks, but potentially, we could make it more normal for them. do you think that will remain the case? emily: i think the best evidence we can look to for this is in the u.k.. they had schools open for in person schooling throughout the delta wave. we did not see a lot of spread happening in schools. so, i think that, along with everything we saw from my a lot of data over the will year suggested that it is possible to operate schools safely in person. i know you are talking about been to nation -- ventilation as very important and vaccine testing and things we can do to get kids in the classroom and keep them in the classroom. romaine: with regards to some

local school districts and state school boards, how many of them have latched onto your data are used it in any meaningful way. emily: by the end of the year, we had many pieces of data with details, contact tracing, hundreds and thousands of kids in new york. they did detailed contact phrasing and complicated testing. it ended up being a portion of a lot of different pieces of data that pointed in a direction. the confluence of all of those is really why the cdc has pushed so hard or in person learning this year. taylor: understandably. also, for the sake of the parents. what are you hearing about the biggest insurgents for parents? emily: i think parents are -- the biggest concerns for parents? emily: i think parents are

feeling like they are struggling to get answers. do i have to send my kid to school? why is there so much discussion about masking? there has not been enough consistent messaging to parents. we are simultaneously telling them, schools are safe. we are also telling them, kids are at a lot of risk. somehow, that messaging is getting garbled in a way that is leaving parents feeling a little lost. caroline: it is interesting that you referenced the u.k.. what happened recently in the u.k. was suddenly everyone was being told they had been in contact with someone who had the variant and needed to isolate. the ramifications of that from a school perspective was classrooms were no longer able to go back. how do you think that contact phrasing will be in the united

states? emily: the cdc has said that even dive that -- that if everyone is masked, even an exposure does -- an exposure does not count as a close contact. if we have masking in schools, which i hope schools will, we can limit how much quarantining we need to do. having kids full-time in person in school and then out for two weeks is not going to be helpful. romaine: it is always great to get your insight, emily oster. we will catch up with her soon, i am sure. as a reminder to all viewers, you can scope -- subscribe to our weekly podcast called what you missed this week available wherever you listen to podcasts. caroline: that does it. taylor: that doesn't for the

week, but stay tuned, bloomberg -- that does it for the week, but stay tuned, bloomberg technology is up next.

announcer: from the heart of where innovation, money, and power collide, in silicon valley and beyond, this "bloomberg technology" with emily chang. ♪ emily: i am emily chang. this is "bloomberg technology." i will speak with our