The Mirror | October 2020 | Van Nuys High School | Los Angeles, California USA

4| OCTOBER 2020 |
| C U R R E N T E V E N T S |
theMIRROR
CDC | JAMES GATHANY
TESTING This Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientist was preparing to test a patient’s sample for SARS-CoV-2, using the
CDC 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time Reverse Transcriptase (RT)–PCR Diagnostic Panel.
LAUSD launches covid testing
By ANI TUTUNJYAN
THE MIRROR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
It remains unclear when
students will return to campuses
at Los Angeles Unified
schools, but the district wants
to be prepared when that does happen.
LAUSD has begun launching its
own covid-19 testing program.
LAUSD Superintendent Austin
Beutner believes this program is key to
getting students back into classrooms.
“The moral imperative is to help [...]
all students return to schools in the
safest way possible,” Superintendent
Beutner said in a recent briefing.
A test run has been underway with
staff, their children participating in
the childcare program and students
attending school-based daycare as part
of the first phase of testing.
Tau Langi, a cafeteria worker at James Monroe High
School, first received the test two weeks ago and now
receives them periodically once a week.
“It only took some-hours to get my results,” she said. “I
got tested in the morning and received my results sometime
in the afternoon of the same day.”
“The testing centers make me and my coworkers feel a
lot safer about coming to work. Especially with some cases
being asymptomatic, you never know if the people around
you have contracted covid-19 or not,” Langi added.
She believes that every student and employee should
be tested before returning to campuses.
“There are parents that are against vaccines or tests
and treatments but we’ve never encountered covid-19 before
so a required test for all staff and students is the best
option if we want things to go back to the way they were.”
The second phase of testing will include all staff who
are currently working from home.
All students and staff will undergo two baseline tests:
one sometime in October before schools reopen, and a
second right after.
Once students and staff are back in schools, they will
partake in periodic covid-19 testing.
Additionally, household members who are symptomatic
or may have been exposed to a student or employee
who tests positive will be offered testing.
Individuals will be notified via email and/or phone call
when it is time to schedule their baseline test appointment.
Testing appointments will be made online through
SCREEN CAPTURE | KTLA5
PILOTING A RETURN Superintendent
Beutner has called for covid-19 testing to
return students to LAUSD campuses.
LAUSD’s website.
The entire process is expected to
take only 10 minutes, with results being
provided within 24 to 48 hours. Testing
is being provided to all at no cost.
The District is providing nasal swab
tests as their primary testing method,
but a saliva test is also available to children
or adults if requested.
Parental consent must be given
before testing is performed.
LAUSD believes that testing of all
students and staff is necessary in order
to safely reopen campuses.
Test results will be shared with
public health authorities in accordance
with the law, maintaining privacy.
A big component of the new testing
program is the Daily Pass, a Microsoft
digital application, which will be used
by all students, employees and visitors to complete a
required daily health check for admission to a campus. It
will monitor for physical wellness and potential exposure
to the virus.
The app will also report any positive results to the Los
Angeles County Department of Public Health and assist in
contact tracing.
Testing for the whole year will cost the district about
$300 per student, with each individual test coming out to
about $30.
Testing is currently being provided at 41 sites, each of
which is located at a school within each Local District’s
Community of Schools.
As of last week, more than 25,000 tests have been
conducted among staff who are currently working on
campuses.
LAUSD has over 600,000 students and nearly 75,000
teachers and employees working across more than 1,000
schools.
Testing will eventually increase to 40,000 tests per day
once the timing for students’ return to classrooms is clear.
“I believe that it [covid-19 testing] is one of many steps
towards the reopening of LAUSD schools,” junior Erick
Casco said. “Of course public health should be the top
priority when reopening schools. Covid-19 is a problem
that won’t go away that easily and with people out in
public they will always be faced with the risk of contracting
covid-19 so to maintain public health standards, all
staff and students should get periodically tested when
we do return.”
Facebook
political ads
censored
before election
CSARINA JARENCIO
THE MIRROR STAFF
In an attempt to limit voter misinformation
and interference on its
platform in the upcoming November
Election, Facebook has announced a
moratorium on certain types of content.
The company will ban new political and
issue-based advertising in the week prior to the
election and indefinitely after the polls close on
Election Day to keep political candidates from
using the platform to manipulate the election’s
outcome and its aftermath.
Facebook will remove posts that seek to intimidate
voters, including encouragement of poll
watching.
The company will also place a voting information
center at the top of its News Feed through
Election Day. The hub will provide accurate, upto-date
information on how, when and where to
register to vote.
The social media platform has widened its
removal of posts that aim to suppress voters.
Posts that cause confusion around who is
eligible to vote, based on misstatements such as
what documents are required to receive a ballot,
will also be deleted.
Facebook has been striving to avoid another
2016 election catastrophe, when the platform
was used by Russian operatives to spread disinformation
through questionable political ads.
Along with the 57 percent of misleading
posts shared, over 3,500 ads on Facebook that
targeted American voters were Kremlin-backed
political ads that were primarily pro-Trump.
Under the direction of CEO Mark Zuckerberg,
one of the world’s richest men, Facebook has
invested billions of dollars to hire new employees
for the company’s security divisions, whose job is
to identify and clamp down on interference and
misinformation before it widely spreads over the
platform.
According to Zuckerberg, over the last four
years Facebook has removed over 100 networks
worldwide that were trying to influence elections.
However, Zuckerberg said most threats that
may undermine the November election are
domestic.
Despite his contention that misinformation
was mainly from domestic sources, the company
said it will not police speech from politicians
and other leading figures for truthfulness.
As the election approaches, Facebook teams
have been training for months to walk through
different contingency plans for how to handle
the situation.
Critics feel that Facebook’s changes may have
come too late claiming that it does not provide a
permanent solution to the spreading of misinformation
on the platform.
“Facebook is in a tough spot. They don’t want
to be seen as fact checkers or the truth police.
Yet you can’t deny the power of false messaging
on social media,” social science teacher Robert
Crosby said. “I believe they could do more to
make it harder to post outright lies or doctored
media.”
SCREEN CAPTURE | TWITTER
DELETED Trump violated Twitter’s terms of service.