Context matters. I have seen studies that for unvaxxed children going maskless in areas of high contagion, 90% should expect to get COVID this semester. Unfortunately, that describes most of Texas. I too think schools need to remain open, but if they refuse masks, that may not be possible.
One rural Texas school district had more cases in the first 2 weeks of class than all of 2020. It is now closed.
So that would be the benchmark for your own personal children? Grandchildren? Family members or dear neighbors? - Death?
I visited two pediatric primary care clinics today and heard report on one inpatient children’s hospital daily census. They are slammed with sick children. Our doctors are pleading with parents to get vaccinated and mask.
We called heath care workers “heroes”. But we will not do everything we can to give them room to breathe and the mental capacity to keep going.
We live in interesting times when no one wants to listen to Pediatricians (who happen to be experts in child health and development) but EVERYONE seems to have their own opinion about “what’s best for kids”.
Like the other COVID threads, I’m done with this one. People be believing what they want to believe. Setting standards that fit into what will give them the lifestyle they want to live.
In the end that’s what everyone will have to decide. Different states (and within them different individuals) will make different decisions in the same way as they do about lots of other social, economic and health issues, some of which are just as controversial and irreconcilable (eg abortion).
In the end this is not a purely medical issue. And even on the narrow issue of medical care, how do you balance what respiratory specialists say is best for their current and prospective patients against what mental health specialists say is best for theirs? There were far more suicides than Covid deaths amongst adolescents in the last year (Youth suicide rate increased dramatically in last decade, CDC says).
The decisions cannot be taken solely on the basis of minimizing infections without regard to economics and other social issues. The US is not going to be like Australia and stay on indefinite strict lockdown to try and eliminate all cases. So ultimately it is a political judgement and you will have to hold the politicians accountable afterwards, either with your votes or by moving to a different state/community.
Since you mention it, I have a (vaccinated) college kid who is infected at the moment. I’m very comfortable with his decisions and his view of appropriate levels of risk. I have another kid who does challenging climbs that come with a risk of death or serious injury (perhaps comparable to the risk of Covid for a vaccinated 20 year old), and I would never try and stop her from doing that either.
FWIW all of his friends are vaccinated, but his expectation based on personal experience is that Delta will spread extensively through his college community over the next few months (with minimal impact on almost all vaccinated people) and he is glad to have got it over with now, without the significant disruption that others will experience once term starts.
I’m starting to muse about whether this will all die down again about 2 months after school starts. In my county 40% are fully vaccinated (all ages, including those too young to vaccinate so they’re in the 60% who aren’t). Another 10% are documented to have had it via positive tests. If there are 3/1 positive untested/tested as many have suggested in the past, then we’re around 70% with some form of immunity.
If school spreads things like it usually does (colds, flu) then I could see another 20% or more catching it once school starts. Couple that with boosters starting in Sept, I’m wondering if by Thanksgiving or Christmas Covid won’t have many more to infect.
ETA: Also noted in our county stats that roughly 1/50 people who caught Covid died from it. We have very close to a 2% mortality rate. Obviously that varies based upon age, etc, but it’s still sobering overall.
We have friends whose son was supposed to be getting married in upstate NY this weekend (because of the logistics, we had decided not to attend). They just cancelled due to COVID; no word on when they will reschedule. Their younger daughter postponed her wedding twice last year then they had just a small family wedding instead.
We were on the beach with a Meetup group when one guy stepped away to take a call. Learned that a good friend of his had just passed away from COVID - very suddenly. That man’s father had it first, he died, the man’s son also got it but survived. So two out of three generations. Our acquaintance didn’t absolutely know but was pretty certain it was preventable.
I wonder how many schools are going to have incidents like these:
I like the final quote:
“If adults choose to disagree and fight among themselves, as my mother often advised my brother and me when we fought, please take it outside, off our campuses and out of our schools,” Leonard said. “The children are watching and learning how we behave, so let’s make the time our students spend in school a joyful and positive experience.”
I also hope they prosecute the parent who ripped off the mask physically. Not sure they can do much with the verbal one.
Well I may be updating my behavior sooner vs later, and will likely start wearing my mask all day at work again. I just found out through the grapevine that there are “lots of cases” at my dept’s main building. I was there two days ago unmasked but for < 5 min. (Also note that I didn’t see a single mask while I was there. And of course, nothing has been said officially or publicly.) Another person on my floor - she announced in a zoom meeting that it’s in her house. She has a fleet of kids. I suspect she’ll be out for awhile. And there was an article that a woman in her 40s on the floor below me is in the hospital with a 0% chance of survival. It would go up to 10% if she could get into a hospital with the equipment she needs, but she was rejected by 16.
I hadn’t heard of anyone having covid here in a long time. And now whamo. It’s here.
I agree. Two breakthrough cases I know of were a lot more than a couple of days bother. And my nephew was out ten days, not terribly sick, but sick enough and still tired weeks later. I have another friend who has some autoimmune things going on who was really sick as in just short of going to the hospital for a couple of weeks.
I don’t like wearing masks on hot architecture jobs, but for something like the post office, I’d absolutely keep my mask on - and it’s a KN95 mask or the new Airgami mask (supposed N95 equivalent) which protects me.
I like the Airgami mask and my new Kf94 Savewo masks from Hong Kong. They’ve both been tested to be protective by independent mechanical engineer Aaron Collins.
To me, it’s a no brainer to choose between mild inconvenience/discomfort of a very good mask vs risk getting VERY ill. I have risk factors as does H and my mom.
The thing is, I know at least one person who hasn’t been hospitalized, but who has been, very, very, very, very sick. It was touch and go as to whether they would be hospitalized, but they will be in the statistics as “not hospitalized”.
Yes it will, but that will have also been true of many, many more unvaccinated people. So the ratio of hospitalized vaccinated/unvaccinated isn’t invalidated by that circumstance.
I suspect for those folks who have issues with vaccination that it would have been much worse without (aside from the immunocompromised where the vaxes didn’t work at all).
We went to our first movie in a theater today in over a year - chose to watch Jungle Cruise in 3D. It was cute escapism, though not one I’d want to watch twice personally. We both enjoyed it the first time though.
Only 6 people in the whole showing with H and I being 2 of them. That may or may not be Covid related because we went to a 4:40pm showing on a Wednesday that was also the second day of school. In our area, that’s a slow time even pre-Covid. We happen to like uncrowded showings, regardless of Covid.
It felt good to get into a theater again!
Our youngest and his wife are currently having fun in the mountains of Puerto Rico. They did a 4 hour mountain hike (3 up, 1 down) and then relaxed in a stream. Haven’t heard yet how crowded the flight was or any of those details.
Switching to the start of school, which I am not doing until the Covid wave has passed at least, because it’s totally different to me being in a crowded classroom with no social distancing, vaccinations, or mask requirements, esp as it relates to visiting FIL and needing 10 days of “carefulness” to avoid asymptomatic transfer, it’s looking more and more like I should just retire.
I just read an email from Powers That Be:
I spoke with two concerned parents yesterday about what their children (five freshmen) reported about arriving home after their first day of school. Both mothers had attended our recent school board meeting, where the health and safety plan was reviewed, and masks being optional was reinforced. We spoke to all of you during inservice about the need to be supportive and respectful of everyone’s decision to wear or not wear a mask. It is quite disheartening to hear that five of our freshmen heard comments from several teachers, in the classroom and while walking the halls, about how they would get COVID if they weren’t wearing masks.
In my experience, there is at least a little truth in most circumstances. I do not believe these students had much motivation to try to cast teachers in a bad light, so they most likely heard some type of comments. It would be one thing if we had to deal with students making comments to peers, but to have to remind our faculty and staff about being professionals and keeping their comments to themselves is certainly the most disappointing pill I have had to swallow during the opening of school, if not in my time here at -----. We cannot afford to be our own worst enemies. Please help continue to make ----- the best it can be for all of us. Thanks.
Powers That Be’s version of “our own worst enemies” and mine differ completely and if THAT has been his most disappointing time at our school, well then… we differ there too.
I’m currently disgusted that teachers aren’t even allowed to make statements about the dangers of Covid lest they offend the “poor” students or their parents. What next? Are we not allowed to make statements about the dangers of smoking? Using a cell phone while driving? Seatbelts? Drug abuse?
At least as a plus it seems there is masking going on (somewhat) at school. I’d have guessed not many would be masked up. I feel for all the teachers who have to be there - can’t afford to give up their jobs and aren’t old enough or with enough years to retire.
Please do not share this letter verbatim. I don’t want a witch hunt to go on at school if it gets around. It won’t matter to me since I’m really frustrated and highly leaning toward not going back anyway, but who knows who else could be caught. Reword it if you want to share somewhere. I already removed all names.
My son is a teacher in the Rio Grand Valley. His public school cannot require masks or vaccinations. However, students over twelve are almost all vaxxed and wear masks. The RGV was hard hit by Covid and the community embraced vaccines. His fellow teachers all got vaxxed and did so quickly. (I was impressed by the teacher intelligence network that found vaccines for everyone.) But. There is one kid in all of son’s classes whose folks are antivax/mask and so this poor one kid must come to school naked faced. He has been known to don a mask once at school as he does not share mom’s beliefs and hates to be the only one. The other kids avoid him when he is maskless.
Son can say nothing. The students, however, are quite free in expressing their opinions. Many of them lost family members.
Ugh, that poor, conflicted kid.
I feel for the boy. I really wish, at least in schools, teachers were allowed to teach based upon the data, even if, for whatever (dumb) reason, policies aren’t set by them.
Covid is no longer totally new. We have a lot of data out there.
I can’t think of any other topic where teachers are muzzled that’s data based. There’s even a lot of freedom to teach based solely upon theories and personal biases are allowed (business comes to mind).
We’re not allowed to preach religion of any sort (or atheism), but we’re allowed to teach facts about it (history classes mostly - some government).
Covid is somehow “above” religion.
I will add some comments from D2 who is a kindergarten teacher and started the school year this week. All of her littles have been very good about wearing the masks all day in class. What I found interesting is that her assessment of the class is that this year’s kids are really far behind. They don’t understand that they need to be quiet when D2 or others are speaking. D2 thinks it’s because the majority of her class did not go to preschool last year and were at home with parents. She feels like she is teaching a class of preschoolers as only 8 of her 25 are really kindergarten ready. D2 basically changed all of her lesson plans for the next few weeks to teach basics that kids normally know coming into kindergarten.
Data is showing this year’s K kids WILL be behind.
Many articles, here is one:
Additionally, K enrollment dropped off during the pandemic:
Absolutely large groups of kids are not prepared for the grades they just entered. We had a public charter school that held math and English (reading, writing) classes this summer 3 days per week because their 5th graders were doing 3rd grade work. They are trying to get them up to 5th grade before they head to middle school at the end of the year.
I was working with two little girls last year. One was in PreK and she met online with her teacher and about 10 kids for 30 minutes per day on zoom. She did go to in-person classes for 2-3 hours per day in about February. She has no preschool skills going into K. She knows some letters and numbers but can’t write her name or recognize the letters. No reading skills at all.
Her sister is 6 going into second grade. No reading, little math beyond counting. She is really smart, can remember everything, tries reading. She just hasn’t had the exposure to traditional classroom work for 2 full years. She went to three different K classes, but school stopped in March 2020. She was online for first grade in the fall and then in the classroom from Feb on. The family tries, but her parents don’t read and write very well so can’t help.
I would have recommended holding her back, but the entire class is at the same level. The teachers just have to plow through.