Though it is recognized that pupils whose schooling is being disrupted by Covid-19 are suffering immediate learning loss, there exists a lack of understanding as to how this disruption might affect longer-term educational outcomes. Will Cook (Manchester Metropolitan University) examines the effect of school disruption in England due to restrictions put in place to manage the Foot and Mouth Disease epidemic in cattle in 2001 and analyzes whether primary schools that had been significantly disrupted by the epidemic experienced lower performance in standardized tests for pupils aged 11 in the year of the outbreak and in subsequent years.  He explains to Tim Phillips that, although there certainly are falls in achievement immediately after disruption,  this effect fades over subsequent years.

Graziella Bertocchi (University of Modena & EIEF) uses a detailed individual-level dataset from Cook County, Illinois, to explore the relationship between COVID-19 mortality and race. Not only are Black Americans disproportionally affected by COVID-19, but they also started to succumb to it earlier than other groups. Such asymmetric effects can be traced back to racial segregation introduced by discriminatory lending practices in the 1930s.

As governments start to consider the recovery from Covid-19, Estelle Cantillon, Université libre de Bruxelles, explains how  achieving green goals can go hand in hand with rebuilding economies. Some sectors heavily affected by the pandemic, such as transport, tourism and energy, were already heading towards or overdue for structural change anyway, so this is an opportunity to accelerate that move forward. Encouraging this green recovery is not only about budget and spending it is also about revenue, and measures such as putting  a firm price on carbon and making government help conditional can be used as leverage in sectors that have previously been reluctant to become greener.

The scientific community has come together in an unprecedented effort to find a COVID-19 vaccine. However, the success of any vaccine depends on the share of the population that gets vaccinated, and in a middle-of-the-road scenario with central estimates of model parameters, a vaccine will benefit public health by saving many lives but nevertheless may fail to achieve herd immunity. Linda Thunström (University of Wyoming) talks to Tim Phillips about a recent Covid Economics paper reporting on a survey of American attitudes towards vaccination. The results of the survey suggest that 20% of the American population may refuse a COVID-19 vaccine.

Linda Thunström's Paper can be found in Issue 35 of CEPR's Covid Economics Papers