Love to hear your hunches out loud: Trent Greene from Legacy builds on what others implied. We're targeting teachers first, at least in part, because it's low-hanging fruit.

Gary Warner asks if other states are prioritizing teachers first. @OregonGovBrown dodges and says she is unaware - I can confirm that Colorado initially planned to vaccinate teachers first, but changed their minds after significant pushback.

I know I ask a lot of hard questions about schools reopening -- to be very clear, schools are incredibly important. Far beyond learning, they're the primary place children receive social services. Opening schools should have always been our priority, above any business.

But we have always known how to re-open schools, and it's something the governor has continually pushed back against: instituting a true lockdown, until transmission is low enough to test, trace, and contain new cases.

Near the end of the summer, I asked if the Gov. would institute a lockdown before schools reopened to stem rising cases ahead of the increased transmission. She said no.

I asked because Fauci had advocated for a pre-school shutdown.

Cases continued to rise, reporters continued to ask. And we learned that contact tracers in populated counties had basically given up trying to contact trace altogether.

Right now, the governor's reopening benchmarks are 'advisories.' Counties can make their own choices to re-open, even if cases are out of control.

if we had time for more questions, I'd want to:
- note again that opening schools will increase transmission
- ask why we aren't taking any additional steps to slow transmission before schools open.

Students live with parents and grandparents. Teachers live with spouses and partners and parents and grandparents.

We cannot say for sure that you can't transmit the virus once you get vaccinated.

Teachers returning to work should keep that in mind.

Teachers might be safe, but there's no protection for their families, students, or families of those students.