The “case rates” I referred to are the ones being used by Health Officials and Governments to make decisions about how open or closed a state/county or city is. At that macro level, all of the pain we have been through in California seems unnecessary when a state like Florida had fewer restrictions yet similar outcomes.
2 Likes
I agree with @roycroftmom - I would add that there is plenty of data from US and international schools to show how they can be opened and run safely, efficiently and without $billions.
5 Likes
Florida recently had almost double the cases per 100k population in the most recent 7 days than California.
1 Like
Have to love the Netherlands offficial guidance on school hygiene-open a window, wash hands, wear masks, and carry on. I dont have any personal stake in this issue, but I really feel sorry for those that do. With a substantial portion of US AFT teachers refusing the vaccine, things will get more ugly, I fear.
3 Likes
California should be leading the pack. They’ve been locked down for almost a year straight lol.
But I do wonder if the new school semester is having some effect. For example, I just read that Duke broke up a party of 50+ people. I’m sure it’s not the only one.
1 Like
Opening all of the windows and doors is probably one of the more effective mitigations available when having class in-person. (But that may not work if the school is in a building where many classrooms do not have any windows.)
2 Likes
Here in SoCal, post Thanksgiving to mid-January, some of our local hospitals had to set up temporary quarters in garages and tents, no ICU availability, ambulances unable to divert elsewhere, refrigerated trucks lined up outside our local mortuary…and daily deaths over 1,000. Do you know anyone who had a non-covid emergency during that time? I do…let me tell ya, when a kid is in pain waiting for 12 hours because there are so many people ahead of yours that are in dire need, it is brutal. So maybe the case rate was the same btwn CA and FL, but it seems clear to me that having a population of 40 million vs 20 million makes a heck of a difference in a state being able to handle that same case rate. I could not disagree with you more that we had ‘similar outcomes’ and all of our pain seems ‘unnecessary’. You must not know many health care workers…
6 Likes
I drove past my local middle school and the windows were all open (it’s 35 degrees here). I am friendly with a guidance counselor at the school, and she said that they were told not to open the windows because the district installed special filters in the building that don’t work as well when windows are open, but individual teachers are disregarding this. Well it looks like most of the teachers are disregarding this. There is little trust in official proclamations.
1 Like
@2ndthreekids , I do not doubt that Southern California has suffered terribly. Apparently, whatever policies were pursued there to stem the crisis appear to have failed, or have been at best ineffectual. While it is true CA has a higher than average hispanic population and thus was at more risk of hospitalizations, other states with similarly large hispanic populations seemed to have far fewer problems. I would not have considered CA to be a place with inadequate medical resources, but perhaps it is, per capita? That would have an impact on the ability of reopening of schools.
Los Angeles (whether you look at the city or the county), the epicenter of the recent outbreak issues, is generally poorer than the state overall, in addition to being 71-73% racial/ethnic minorities who appear to be more vulnerable to COVID-19.
Los Angeles also saw a new variant, B.1.149 or CAL.20C, become common. It is still not known whether it is more contagious than other variants.
2 Likes
I looked at per capita medical resource data when it was bleak here in January, and the initial info I looked at related to per capita hospital beds and ICU beds did not reveal CA to be under-resourced but I could not find data in terms of access to non-hospital urgent care in poor or hispanic areas for ex, as one factor perhaps impacting hospitalizations. Per capita means nothing if the resources aren’t available exactly where they need to be available…and the geographic resource allocation imperfections are magnified by a population of 40 million (vs 20 million in FL). Obviously our #'s are significantly better now and I’m all for getting the kids back to school who are not there yet based on current hospital trends, vaccinations, etc. But-if the argument is that CA should have just been FL and our healthcare system wouldn’t have suffered any worse if all our schools were open when we were peaking, I just don’t see that. After Thanksgiving when our hospitalization rates started trending badly, many school districts and private schools that were open/hybrid had mini out breaks and higher cases, no way to know if it was from schools or just community transmission but still, many of those schools went remote a week before Winter break and several weeks after, at least in my county of 4 million. Concurrently, the state was under a modified stay at home order and fewer kids were in school…and numbers came way down, though it took a month or so. Thinking of larger school districts not back in person at that time, like Los Angeles Unified (78% of students are Hispanic), Santa Ana in my county (80% Hispanic)…these are school districts that are more crowded per classroom and generally less resourced budget wise to start with…sending these kids home to their extended families with even minor transmission rates ? I don’t know. I was legitimately worried that our health care system was going to break at that time. I don’t know how much longer the amazing health care workers could have continued. All I know is that this pandemic is patently, cruelly, unfair to segments of our population, in many ways, with the educational impact being one of the worst. Last note: the CA covid strain has been determined to be more contagious than others (no shock there). It will be interesting to see what research ultimately shows in terms of whether or not the CA is more potent/requires more medical intervention on average, which could explain the hospitalization stress here that other states have not experienced.
3 Likes
Thats an interesting point about the variant. I wish we knew more about it, and how the variants compare to each other, not just to the original strain
1 Like
The commonality of all the variants is that they’re all more contagious due to natural adaptation and selection. What’s really puzzling is why at least some of them are more deadly. Variants that kill their hosts too quickly are themselves at risk of extinction.
1 Like
@2ndthreekids - I live in CA and work in healthcare. My point is that there is little evidence to support the lockdown had any impact on case rates. Yes, we have had a rough go here in California. The hospitals I’ve been to had several trailers as a temporary morgue. What was the driver of our post Christmas spike? Could it be that so many are so fed up with the restrictions that they gathered for the holidays anyway? Other then put us all on house arrest, what would have stopped the spike? Its only because Newsom fears a recall that things have changed recently. Its not the ‘science’, its the govenor’s self-preservation. In spite of reduced restrictions, case rates in the state are dropping. Maybe the lock downs don’t work.
What damage has been done to the mental health of our state? How far behind will our kids be in school because of the current policy? As point out above, CA is recovering faster than Florida. Maybe its time to open schools. In typical CA form, we have to overthink it, design a process that is expensive and unproven (assumption on my part).
4 Likes
delete
you said this much better than i could. Here is an article hot off the press. https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-02-23/california-homegrown-coronavirus-strain-looks-increasingly-transmissible-and-dangerous
Many people largely started giving up on trying stop the spread, regardless of government restrictions. In November/December, indoor family gatherings were the likely drivers of the spread, even though people may still have acted to avoid “stranger danger” (i.e. believing that the other person in the grocery store is a virus carrier and acting accordingly, but believing that their friends and relatives are “safe”). The virus exploits these trust relationships.
We are only a few months away from victory (vaccine general availability), but so many people want to give up now.
2 Likes
All around the world, strict lockdowns have unanimously worked. Look at Europe and Australia.
3 Likes
In the US, we had “lockdowns” that were enough to be annoying or worse in terms of other effects, but not strict enough to stamp out community transmission of the virus like in New Zealand, Australia, etc… So we get the worst of both worlds, suffering from both the virus and the continuing restrictions.
10 Likes
8 countries in Europe, including the UK and Belgium, have higher per capita Covid death rates than the US. Another 8 European countries are close to the US rate. I do wish people would stop with the misinformation that things are so much better elsewhere. In NZ, yes. Portugal? No.
9 Likes