Coronavirus Thread

[RonJohn]

You have to wonder how many teachers are willing to go back to school? How many teachers will get sick and have to be out weeks at a time (if they're lucky)? How many teachers or support staff (admins, teachers helpers, cafeteria staff, janitors, etc.) will be out due to catching Covid. Also, school will come at a time when Flu is at its height, so now you're fighting Covid and Flu.

What's the point of having kids go to school if there's no one there to teach and support them? Also, I don't know if people remember, but a quarter to a third of people teaching and working at schools are usually in the age range of high risk of hospitalization from Covid. If you're a 40-60 year old part time substitute teacher or cafeteria worker, is it worth going to school and catching Covid without health benefits? If you're a 40-60 year old FULL time staff member or teacher is it worth going to school even if you have full benefits?

My friend's wife is an Atlanta public school teacher and she is freaking out at the prospect of having to go back to school. They have a 4 year old, but the bigger issue is their parents help out with their daughter, and come over often to spend time with each other. All that stops for their parents once school starts because now my friend's wife will have pierced the bubble of quarantine they had so they can have their elderly parents over.

I think the debate about starting schools and sports is showing the spiderweb of affects Covid has on any given scenario. It's not as easy as "OK, let start up X".

It also isn't as easy as put everything on hold until there is a vaccine. There are some promising vaccines, but no guarantees that there will be one that is effective available in one year, or five years, or ever. If it takes 10 years to get a vaccine, what do kids do in the meantime? Do their parents teach them at home? Do we do online only schooling for 10 years? Online schooling requires active participation of the parents. If we have parent only teaching or online schooling for 10 years, what happens to children in poor families and poor areas? Do they get even further behind where they would be if they were actually receiving in person instruction from a caring teacher?

My point isn't to say that school must open and be exactly the same way that it was in February. My point is that life must continue. We can't permanently shut down everything except for businesses that produce food, water, energy, medicines, etc. Shutting down indefinitely until there is a vaccine available is the same thing since there is not even a guarantee of ever having a vaccine. What we need to be doing is developing ways to work more safely than before. We should have done that well before we began "re-opening". During "re-opening", we should have concentrated more on how to keep the public more safe. People are too extreme with either "we have to let it rip" to "we have to stay completely isolated". There will be risk in going back to school. We should work to minimize that risk, but risk will have to be taken in order to keep life moving forward.

 

[Techster]

It also isn't as easy as put everything on hold until there is a vaccine. There are some promising vaccines, but no guarantees that there will be one that is effective available in one year, or five years, or ever. If it takes 10 years to get a vaccine, what do kids do in the meantime? Do their parents teach them at home? Do we do online only schooling for 10 years? Online schooling requires active participation of the parents. If we have parent only teaching or online schooling for 10 years, what happens to children in poor families and poor areas? Do they get even further behind where they would be if they were actually receiving in person instruction from a caring teacher?

My point isn't to say that school must open and be exactly the same way that it was in February. My point is that life must continue. We can't permanently shut down everything except for businesses that produce food, water, energy, medicines, etc. Shutting down indefinitely until there is a vaccine available is the same thing since there is not even a guarantee of ever having a vaccine. What we need to be doing is developing ways to work more safely than before. We should have done that well before we began "re-opening". During "re-opening", we should have concentrated more on how to keep the public more safe. People are too extreme with either "we have to let it rip" to "we have to stay completely isolated". There will be risk in going back to school. We should work to minimize that risk, but risk will have to be taken in order to keep life moving forward.

Agreed. You can't put life on hold. I'm just pointing out the difficulties are at many levels, not just are we exposing kids to Covid.

I think we can all agree that we are past the point shutting anything down anymore. We did that already, and we weren't stringent enough, and now it would be economically crippling to try to do it again. Unfortunately, it doesn't make it any easier or safer for us to go on living life amid all of this.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

False.

True.

Administration does not want to enforce or even recommended CDC guidelines for school reopening. The very kinds of guidelines that were used in Germany, Denmark, Sweden etc.

We have no plan.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

You have to wonder how many teachers are willing to go back to school? How many teachers will get sick and have to be out weeks at a time (if they're lucky)? How many teachers or support staff (admins, teachers helpers, cafeteria staff, janitors, etc.) will be out due to catching Covid. Also, school will come at a time when Flu is at its height, so now you're fighting Covid and Flu.

What's the point of having kids go to school if there's no one there to teach and support them? Also, I don't know if people remember, but a quarter to a third of people teaching and working at schools are usually in the age range of high risk of hospitalization from Covid. If you're a 40-60 year old part time substitute teacher or cafeteria worker, is it worth going to school and catching Covid without health benefits? If you're a 40-60 year old FULL time staff member or teacher is it worth going to school even if you have full benefits?

My friend's wife is an Atlanta public school teacher and she is freaking out at the prospect of having to go back to school. They have a 4 year old, but the bigger issue is their parents help out with their daughter, and come over often to spend time with each other. All that stops for their parents once school starts because now my friend's wife will have pierced the bubble of quarantine they had so they can have their elderly parents over.

I think the debate about starting schools and sports is showing the spiderweb of affects Covid has on any given scenario. It's not as easy as "OK, let start up X".

This is the problem. People keep framing this as percentage of risk among certain populations. That is the wrong metric. Countries that have reopened schools did so after breaking the chain of infections. Our infection rate is going up not down.

 

[RamblinRed]

We have to re-open schools, but we do need a plan which we currently don't have from a national standpoint.
It's pretty clear already that some states are not going to be able to open schools on time. It's also clear that there is going to have to be a variety of out of the box thinking in different areas to make them work, some places will be able to have kids in schools with proper mitigation measures, some will not have that ability, at least at the beginning of the year.
The Gov of AZ and WV have already announced they are delaying the start of the school year. I doubt they will be the last. Bwelbo can correct me on this if I am wrong I believe I saw that the Gov of SC said he would not allow schools to resume if the cases didn't go down.
NYC has announced if kids go back to school in the fall it will be for 1-3 days a week in person. The superintendents in S FL have said they won't open schools unless they can advance to Phase 2 in their areas.

In Australia the state of Victoria has been locked down from the rest of the country due to outbreaks. They have a group of public housing homes in Melbourne that are under Wuhan style lockdown - people are not allowed to leave the buildings at all. They have connected that outbreak to a local school. They have not determined which way the outbreak went (did it start in the homes and move into the school or the reverse).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07...-covid19-cluster-melbourne-truganina/12437584
The school is called Al-Taqwa College but it is a K-12 school.

More importantly, we simply don't have things as under control as other countries did when they re-opened. The key is how many cases are circulating. If it is few enough that you can test and trace and keep outbreaks in check, then there is a relative safety there. That is where European schools were. We are not there currently. European counties were below 20 cases per million (7 day avg) when they started going back to school, US is currently over 150 cases per million and rising.
When you open up it is critical you are in a place that you can quickly react if an outbreak does occur. That has happened in other countries, but they have been able to quickly respond and keep outbreaks from spreading too far into the community. At this time we have too much community spread, too little testing capacity, and too few contact tracers to be able to pull off what Europe did. There are places in this country that are in an environment that they can carry that out, there are other places that are not.

 

[RamblinRed]

Unfortunately right now there are no positive numbers for the US.
Even deaths have started rising. Deaths flattened out last week - from Tuesday through Friday the 7 day avg was between 527-530. It dipped over the weekend due to low reporting. but it has shot back up this week. As of yesterday the 7 day avg was 553. This basically matches what a couple of the long range models have said for weeks now which is that deaths would bottom out either the last week of June or first week of July and then start slowly increasing through July and August. Hopefully they are incorrect and it doesn't rise very much over the next 6 weeks, but at this point we are unlikely to see any significant downward trend, holding steady would be a win.

The US positive test rate is 8.1% which is the highest since May 10th, the difference is that on May 1oth the numbers were decreasing, now they are increasing.
US COVID hospitalization has increased over 50% since June 12th -and that doesn't include FL since they don't report COVID hospitalization so that is likely an undercount in terms of percentage increase. (The Gu model's estimated COVID hospitalization is up 67% since June 18th).

Hospitals have surge capacity, but having to go to that is not great. As you move into surge capacity the level of care goes down as doctors and nurses get spread thin and supplies can become an issue.

This is a great message from a doctor in Austin about how we all need to help out because they are getting close to a breaking point.


I really just want to start to get this back under control because the longer it takes to do that the farther away we get from a new normal and the longer it will take for us to recover both from a health and from a financial standpoint.
We need to do the simple things consistently so we don't have to do the harder things.

 

[WreckinGT]

We have to re-open schools, but we do need a plan which we currently don't have from a national standpoint.
It's pretty clear already that some states are not going to be able to open schools on time. It's also clear that there is going to have to be a variety of out of the box thinking in different areas to make them work, some places will be able to have kids in schools with proper mitigation measures, some will not have that ability, at least at the beginning of the year.
The Gov of AZ and WV have already announced they are delaying the start of the school year. I doubt they will be the last. Bwelbo can correct me on this if I am wrong I believe I saw that the Gov of SC said he would not allow schools to resume if the cases didn't go down.
NYC has announced if kids go back to school in the fall it will be for 1-3 days a week in person. The superintendents in S FL have said they won't open schools unless they can advance to Phase 2 in their areas.

In Australia the state of Victoria has been locked down from the rest of the country due to outbreaks. They have a group of public housing homes in Melbourne that are under Wuhan style lockdown - people are not allowed to leave the buildings at all. They have connected that outbreak to a local school. They have not determined which way the outbreak went (did it start in the homes and move into the school or the reverse).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07...-covid19-cluster-melbourne-truganina/12437584
The school is called Al-Taqwa College but it is a K-12 school.

More importantly, we simply don't have things as under control as other countries did when they re-opened. The key is how many cases are circulating. If it is few enough that you can test and trace and keep outbreaks in check, then there is a relative safety there. That is where European schools were. We are not there currently. European counties were below 20 cases per million (7 day avg) when they started going back to school, US is currently over 150 cases per million and rising.
When you open up it is critical you are in a place that you can quickly react if an outbreak does occur. That has happened in other countries, but they have been able to quickly respond and keep outbreaks from spreading too far into the community. At this time we have too much community spread, too little testing capacity, and too few contact tracers to be able to pull off what Europe did. There are places in this country that are in an environment that they can carry that out, there are other places that are not.

View attachment 8522

We couldn't open summer camps without outbreaks occurring.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/07/07/us/ap-us-virus-outbreak-summer-camps.html

This school year is going to be a mess. Not only do we not have a national plan, we don't even have a state plan in Georgia. Every district/county/city is doing their own thing and its all over the place. It's hard to imagine this ending well.

 

[GoldZ]

OK, let's move on to a topic most of us can use.....any tips on sources of GT masks? Thanks, Z

 

[RonJohn]

OK, let's move on to a topic most of us can use.....any tips on sources of GT masks? Thanks, Z

https://www.ramblinwreckstore.com/g...erings/t-34166541+d-0105217583+z-94-918243474

I think all of the fanatics sites have these.

I have several that my wife made for me with fabric that she purchased. I have an old bright gold colored one. I have a couple with the newer correct color of gold. I even have one or two the @Supersizethatorder-mutt would like because they are blue.

 

[armeck]

We couldn't open summer camps without outbreaks occurring.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/07/07/us/ap-us-virus-outbreak-summer-camps.html

This school year is going to be a mess. Not only do we not have a national plan, we don't even have a state plan in Georgia. Every district/county/city is doing their own thing and its all over the place. It's hard to imagine this ending well.

We couldn't even conduct activity with a small subset of a single high school without an issue.
https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news...itive/93-20609b1a-1484-46d3-93a4-b3e49101ded4

 

[armeck]

You have to wonder how many teachers are willing to go back to school? How many teachers will get sick and have to be out weeks at a time (if they're lucky)? How many teachers or support staff (admins, teachers helpers, cafeteria staff, janitors, etc.) will be out due to catching Covid. Also, school will come at a time when Flu is at its height, so now you're fighting Covid and Flu.

What's the point of having kids go to school if there's no one there to teach and support them? Also, I don't know if people remember, but a quarter to a third of people teaching and working at schools are usually in the age range of high risk of hospitalization from Covid. If you're a 40-60 year old part time substitute teacher or cafeteria worker, is it worth going to school and catching Covid without health benefits? If you're a 40-60 year old FULL time staff member or teacher is it worth going to school even if you have full benefits?

My friend's wife is an Atlanta public school teacher and she is freaking out at the prospect of having to go back to school. They have a 4 year old, but the bigger issue is their parents help out with their daughter, and come over often to spend time with each other. All that stops for their parents once school starts because now my friend's wife will have pierced the bubble of quarantine they had so they can have their elderly parents over.

I think the debate about starting schools and sports is showing the spiderweb of affects Covid has on any given scenario. It's not as easy as "OK, let start up X".

I spoke to one of my son's middle school teachers. She is also terrified of going back. She has a son with Autism who is too scared to go and she is a primary caregiver of her grandmother who just had a stroke. Little of the discussions about opening up are even considering the teachers, admins, cafeteria workers, etc.

 

[dtm1997]

https://www.ramblinwreckstore.com/g...erings/t-34166541+d-0105217583+z-94-918243474

I think all of the fanatics sites have these.

I have several that my wife made for me with fabric that she purchased. I have an old bright gold colored one. I have a couple with the newer correct color of gold. I even have one or two the @Supersizethatorder-mutt would like because they are blue.

This one in the middle is VERY cool.

@Supersizethatorder-mutt

 

[Deleted member 2897]

You have to wonder how many teachers are willing to go back to school? How many teachers will get sick and have to be out weeks at a time (if they're lucky)? How many teachers or support staff (admins, teachers helpers, cafeteria staff, janitors, etc.) will be out due to catching Covid. Also, school will come at a time when Flu is at its height, so now you're fighting Covid and Flu.

What's the point of having kids go to school if there's no one there to teach and support them? Also, I don't know if people remember, but a quarter to a third of people teaching and working at schools are usually in the age range of high risk of hospitalization from Covid. If you're a 40-60 year old part time substitute teacher or cafeteria worker, is it worth going to school and catching Covid without health benefits? If you're a 40-60 year old FULL time staff member or teacher is it worth going to school even if you have full benefits?

My friend's wife is an Atlanta public school teacher and she is freaking out at the prospect of having to go back to school. They have a 4 year old, but the bigger issue is their parents help out with their daughter, and come over often to spend time with each other. All that stops for their parents once school starts because now my friend's wife will have pierced the bubble of quarantine they had so they can have their elderly parents over.

I think the debate about starting schools and sports is showing the spiderweb of affects Covid has on any given scenario. It's not as easy as "OK, let start up X".

We should learn by what/how Europe did - they haven’t had problems.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

What part was false?

It.

We have very detailed plans. I mean maybe his area doesn’t, but where I am we have incredibly detailed plans based on different scenarios. I have read similar things for tons of other states.

 

[ncjacket79]

We should learn by what/how Europe did - they haven’t had problems.

We’re supposed to copy something that actually works? And from those socialists in Europe? Get out of here.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

We have to re-open schools, but we do need a plan which we currently don't have from a national standpoint.
It's pretty clear already that some states are not going to be able to open schools on time. It's also clear that there is going to have to be a variety of out of the box thinking in different areas to make them work, some places will be able to have kids in schools with proper mitigation measures, some will not have that ability, at least at the beginning of the year.
The Gov of AZ and WV have already announced they are delaying the start of the school year. I doubt they will be the last. Bwelbo can correct me on this if I am wrong I believe I saw that the Gov of SC said he would not allow schools to resume if the cases didn't go down.
NYC has announced if kids go back to school in the fall it will be for 1-3 days a week in person. The superintendents in S FL have said they won't open schools unless they can advance to Phase 2 in their areas.

In Australia the state of Victoria has been locked down from the rest of the country due to outbreaks. They have a group of public housing homes in Melbourne that are under Wuhan style lockdown - people are not allowed to leave the buildings at all. They have connected that outbreak to a local school. They have not determined which way the outbreak went (did it start in the homes and move into the school or the reverse).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07...-covid19-cluster-melbourne-truganina/12437584
The school is called Al-Taqwa College but it is a K-12 school.

More importantly, we simply don't have things as under control as other countries did when they re-opened. The key is how many cases are circulating. If it is few enough that you can test and trace and keep outbreaks in check, then there is a relative safety there. That is where European schools were. We are not there currently. European counties were below 20 cases per million (7 day avg) when they started going back to school, US is currently over 150 cases per million and rising.
When you open up it is critical you are in a place that you can quickly react if an outbreak does occur. That has happened in other countries, but they have been able to quickly respond and keep outbreaks from spreading too far into the community. At this time we have too much community spread, too little testing capacity, and too few contact tracers to be able to pull off what Europe did. There are places in this country that are in an environment that they can carry that out, there are other places that are not.

View attachment 8522

Yes that is not correct on S.C. - there are 3 scenarios from all live, all remote, or mixed. And at any time based on the circumstances in the ground they’ll use one of those scenarios. But they are definitely going back. They are also offering a 100% remote ko matter what option for people who want that.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

We’re supposed to copy something that actually works? And from those socialists in Europe? Get out of here.

The virus isn’t political. Kids don’t spread the virus like adults. Take those comments to the political thread - there is one for that. It doesn’t matter if they are socialist or anything - that has nothing to do with kids and viruses and schools. IIWII.

 

[ncjacket79]

It.

We have very detailed plans. I mean maybe his area doesn’t, but where I am we have incredibly detailed plans based on different scenarios. I have read similar things for tons of other states.

We don’t have a national plan which was what he posted. Some locales may have detailed plans but many do not. But even if you feel each school district should make their own plan some guidance should be available.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

We don’t have a national plan which was what he posted. Some locales may have detailed plans but many do not. But even if you feel each school district should make their own plan some guidance should be available.

We shouldn’t have a national plan for schools. In fact, we should shut down the department of education completely.

 

[ncjacket79]

The virus isn’t political. Kids don’t spread the virus like adults. Take those comments to the political thread - there is one for that. It doesn’t matter if they are socialist or anything - that has nothing to do with kids and viruses and schools. IIWII.

Why was that political? For one thing it was sarcastic, sorry if that wasn’t obvious. But the question was serious. If there is a mode that works why wouldn’t we steal it?