@Tigerle Are you in Germany? I’m trying to remember…
All of the photos I’ve seen of any kids at school anywhere are wearing masks.
There was a day camp going on in the park near us with maybe 60 kids, divided into groups of ten. Every time I swung by there, they were all in (cute!) masks and seemed to be playing and having fun. I do think this younger set adapts. These kids ranged in age from 5-9. I don’t see why they wouldn’t wear them to school. I’m sure that would give the school a better chance of making it work. As in most school districts, six feet apart at all times is going to be way harder than asking kids to wear masks.
@roycroftmom yeah, ok, I’ve never spoken to a teacher?. So if the numbers do t align with your opinion, they’re inflated. Got it.
I see a lot of “villages” coming together. Sorry if it doesn’t fit into a specific narrative.
Again, there are obviously a lot of downsides to a pandemic and who doesn’t wish this was t the reality, but it is and a lot of people are working hard to help.
I’m in Germany. No masks in class, but in the schoolyard where the pictures are taken!
France: masks in classrooms from middle school up, not in elementary.
Denmark: no masks.
Sweden: no masks in elementary and middle schools, high schools still online as far as I’m aware.
UK: still fighting about it…
It’s all over the place, really.
I think elementary schools really are a no brainer, masks or no masks. Both will work, much better than forcing parents or vulnerable grandparents into supervising them or have them alone at home or in the streets.
Everything else is worth the debate about risk mitigation, but not the little ones.
Actually, @roycroftmom, I do have experience in those districts, but I’m not even going to take the time to document it in some misguided attempt for validation. And, if you look at your previous posts, I usually agree with your statements about the need for in-person school options for kids in poor districts. You are usually on point with your statements about the risks of food insecurity, child abuse, neglect, etc. I appreciate that you are usually the one person who pushes back against the elitist tendencies that dominate this thread, and CC in general. You clearly didn’t understand the focus of my critique.
@Leigh22 was spot on with my her interpretation of my post. Instead of a thoughtful, nuanced argument about the challenges facing certain populations, @TatinG 's post relies on stereotypes about the animalistic nature of poor people, that could care less about school and simply want to terrorize their neighborhoods through gang activity. It was a blatant stereotype (to say the very least, so I don’t get a timeout), that relied on fear mongering and the dehumanization of a group of people. Of course gang activity and drugs are part of poor communities, but they do not define those communities or the people that live in them. As always, society loves to criminalize and dehumanize certain people and populations.
Again, the fact that posters cannot see the obvious problems with references to lawless, feral citizens is astounding. (Though given recent, and historical, events in our society, it really is par for the course.) Feel free to dismiss my criticism as wanting people to be “PC.” If it makes everyone feel better about their prejudices, go ahead.
If @TatinG had said this, I wouldn’t have a problem. But that was NOT what was expressed. You’re putting words in her/his mouth, while putting forth YOUR ideas. (That I happen to agree with on many levels.)
@chardonMN — I think that my son’s SLAC north of Chicago is an example of what you described. His college seems to have about 15% more freshmen enrolled in First-Year seminars than the number of freshmen enrolled last fall (and they are still accepting applications for freshmen and transfers.) As of this moment they are still planning to allow everyone back, but virtually everyone will be in single rooms and the school has rented at least a whole hotel to house the overflow. Some classes are scheduled to be in person or hybrid, but the majority will be entirely remote. They don’t have a big endowment, but they seem to be spending a lot to try to make this work, and so far they seem to be getting a bumper crop of freshmen.
I keep seeing students getting off the waitlist (e.g. Northwestern) even though we are now into the end of July.
Is this normal for this time of year or has the uncertainty of fall enrollment, deferrals, gap years etc due to CV-19 increased colleges going deep into the waitlists?
The local health department said it was conducting contact tracing to narrow down the extent of the cluster. However, “responsiveness has been less than satisfactory, with many refusing to answer our question,” the health department said.
I have very little faith in college students to behave in a way that isn’t going to put communities at risk.
@socaldad2002 not normal. We know kids still getting off waitlists at big reaches. It’s pretty late to be changing plans at this point but I think colleges that are still allowing deferrals might be looking for more freshmen. Some colleges (I know Cornell) are allowing deferrals all the way up until the first day before class starts.
@DeeCee36 we’ve had issues in our county of people refusing to contact trace. The latest is a youth coach who tested positive, then proceeded to coach kids and then attend several July 4th parties. He/she then refused to cooperate with contact tracing efforts.
Most disheartening are the comments connected to this story online - most are in support of not cooperating.
@kristenpete links to a two month old story with Dr. Mike deBoisblanc at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, California claiming, "“I mean we’ve seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.” This was debunked immediately after it came out. The statement was not true. They had not seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.
When I saw this old story trotted out again, I remembered immediately that it had been debunked, but I forgot my favorite part, which I will repeat for your delectation. Dr. deBoisblanc admitted that, in fact, their medical center hadn’t seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the previous four weeks, but then said,
“If you look at it from a contextual standpoint, I think it’s accurate. If you contextualize in concrete numbers fashion, it’s not accurate.”
That’s what I’m going to say the next time I’m caught in a lie. “If you contextualize it in concrete numbers fashion, it’s not accurate.”
Some colleges (MIT and Harvard for example) still have their waitlists open. Other colleges closed their waitlists just this week (Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth etc). In the past those waitlists were closed in June. Anectodally, some colleges used their waitlists more while others did not as much (even if they lost students) in order to dedensify the campus.
We have some more hard data about an outbreak in a combined middle school (grades 7-9) and high school (grades 10-12) in Jerusalem.
Schools re-opened May 18th. The next day, it was scorching hot (over 104 F) and the mask requirement was relaxed for three days. A week later, two cases were found in students at School A, a regional school for grades 7-9 in one wing and 10-12 in another wing. It turned out both of the students had gone to school in the no-mask period while symptomatic.
This school was a Petri dish for covid: overcrowded, no masks because of the extreme heat, air conditioning running full blast.
Eventually, the School A outbreak included a third of the ninth graders, about a quarter of all kids in grades 7-9, teachers (especially the teachers teaching the infected ninth graders), a few kids in grades 10-12, siblings, friends from other schools, parents, and family members of school staff.
It’s pretty clear that the students infected other students and their teachers:
After schools re-opened in Jerusalem, a bigger proportion of reported cases were in ages 10-19. Before schools reopened, that age group made up 20% of cases; after schools reopened that jumped to 41%.
I’m curious as to which colleges/universities will be starting up first, and so will be the “test cases” we’ll all be looking to. My friend’s daughter will be attending UGA. They have move in on 8/14 and then first day of classes on 8/20. As I understand it, they will have regular housing (doubles), hybrid classes (with masks when in-person) and self-monitoring but not specific university testing.
Which schools are starting before then, or around the same time?
I have read that the “lethal combination” is kids big enough to exhale as many viral particles as grown ups, but dumb enough to not care. Sounds like the definition of most 8 and 9th graders to me…
The description of the school also makes me wonder whether there were any other mitigation measures in place at all. It’s not like the European schools my kids go to are in any way back to “before corona”. Smaller groups, “bubbled” cohorts, distancing observed wherever possible, ventilation, students remain in one classroom as much as possible except for specials and those are heavily curtailed or run much differently (PE all outside, no singing in music class), handwashing and so on.
Opening schools under the pretence that everything is “back to normal” and that the virus “will just disappear” will of course lead to disaster. I wouldn’t blame any teachers union to advocate against that.
Same goes for opening bars, clubs, gyms, indoor dining without restrictions, private parties without restrictions…if conditions aren’t safe enough to open schools, how about closing down those first?
@sushiritto - we all have our own level of risk tolerance. It is very easy for both sides of the argument to hold examples of “evidence” that seem to confirm their claim. The reality is likely somewhere in the middle. As I said, I am comfortable with schools reopening. If you are not, that’s fine. In six months, I doubt I will be running around with a banner saying “I was right” if my understanding of the situation is correct. I don’t see it as “rolling the dice”.
At West Point, we have a motto, “Duty, Honor, Country”. One definition of “Duty” is choosing the harder right over the easier wrong. The harder right in this case is reopening schools with safeguards in place. The easier wrong is locking society down for extended period of time. My opinion, based on the evidence available.
Of those kids in Israel that were infected, are there any stats on the severity of the infections for the kids and/or the extent it was passed on to adults in the schools and their severity?