For those saying the death numbers are inflated because Covid is listed as the cause of death, when perhaps it really was a heart issue that caused the death, there are others who say the number is depressed because the heart issue is listed as cause of death vs the virus. There is some latitude in reporting.
And if the overall case numbers are being inflated to benefit Biden, then why are the numbers in republican led states like FL, AZ, TX, GA the highest they have ever been?
Everyone won’t always be wearing masks. That’s not possible. Many schools will have lunch at school, breakfast in classrooms, mask breaks, kids drinking water, people not always keeping the mask on, taking mask off to blow nose or scratch, wearing mask wrong, etc. Covid is airborne. School reopening plans don’t account for this fact. Many schools don’t have desks spaced 6 feet apart and 6 feet isn’t magic.
[quote=“Faithabove, post:12060, topic:2088334”]
Are you reading that herd immunity is possible? Do you have any links? The most recent thing I saw, but didn’t read in detail, was that doctors and researchers now think herd immunity isn’t possible with this virus because people don’t maintain the antibodies to it for long. It is possible we do retain some type of immune response in things like t cells and etc, but not in IgG for long.
I think sadly we will see great spikes, a bunch of teacher deaths, some student deaths, a lot of family/guardian/friends of students who get sick and many who will die. I think reopening schools will increase spread a lot. Indoors, masks that have gaps, airborne illness, people not wearing masks all the time, many schools unable to provide even 6 feet of distance between people. Teachers in some states encouraged to remove masks to teach. Some states with very, very low use of masks, even 20% in someplace of someone I know and no request to even wear a mask in the school where he teachers.
To clarify, I’m talking about public school, not college.
Regardless of how you come down on the NYT article… how do you feel about the stats, decision matrix and plans set out by YOUR D/S’s school for Fall. Feel free to include both K-12 and college.
I’ll start… I have one of each. S22 will be virtual until after labor day, school has moved to a block schedule which will remain intact if/when school returns to f2f. Plans are still in flux due to Texas state politics… and hopefully as we get closer to 9/7 we will see some of it get straightened out possibly through the courts. I hope for a return to f2f WHEN it is safe.
D20 will start ON campus at UT. I think the plan as set out on their Protect Texas website is good, has lots of details on how and why decisions about campus openness. We have had lots of discussions on Ds behavior and that of others… She seems to realize that she can only control her behavior and will be at the mercy of others who care less about others than themselves (in the name of freedom).
Princeton reports cases every week. Below is how they report employee cases. I don’t think most would suggest Princeton has an agenda on this, even though they don’t detail cases they suspect were contracted at an off campus dinner party in March (for example). I don’t even know how a health system (let alone a newspaper conducting a survey) would do that, honestly.
“Employees
296 employees have been tested for COVID-19. Of those: 46 have tested positive. Of which:
35 have recovered and discontinued isolation.
11 are in their respective homes in self-isolation and receiving appropriate treatment.
219 have tested negative.
30 tests are pending results
1 has resulted inconclusive. The employee will not be retested, has recovered and returned to work.“
In this case they are being intellectually dishonest. I generally respect the New York Times but I’m not a cult follower of anyone or anything… they should be at absolutely called out on this, and I’m glad UCONN did and hope most schools do. they knew perfectly well that those numbers did not represent students on campus and that’s what everyone who reads the story will believe. the survey didn’t specify where the infections happened (and when) then it was a sh**ty survey. Terrible reporting - we don’t need BS stories like this to add to the misinformation campaigns being led by our government and outside governments.
The UConn stats were very wrong, unfortunately. However, even the true stats are concerning to me as CT has very, very low numbers total and so I’m surprised the true numbers are as high as UConn reports (not counting the Farmington medical center). I would think they would be lower. School was closed down right away and the whole state went into stay home, and in spite of that, they had 29 or whatever cases. What will happen when things open? The only differences now are greater awareness and also high rates of using masks. But a whole lot of quarantine fatigue. How can UConn or any school keep numbers down low enough so they can keep schools open for any in person learning? I am hoping they all can. I’m not sure how.
True. But at our schools the plan is masks and class ending at 12:50 so no lunch. Only half of the kids going at once to have more chance to social distance.
The school district where I work has plans but I’m not sure if they will be sufficient to keep spread from happening. The thing we have going for us is that our state has very low numbers and this part of the state has even lower than average numbers. However, because of that, many there don’t take the virus so seriously and aren’t social distancing enough. Stores and businesses mostly enforce masks and social distancing but some don’t and citizens of the town often don’t it seems. The plans include breakfast in classrooms, which obviously isn’t a great idea. Lunch will be with kids spaced far apart with plexiglass and much safer, but breakfast sounds poorly thought through. Kids will be 5-6 feet apart with most 6, but don’t appear so far to be 6 feet from teachers’ desks and where teachers stand to teach. Hope that changes. Some will opt to distance learn and that might make more space in rooms. There will be hand sanitizer stations but not hand sanitizer in each room. Previously teachers were prohibited from being in things to clean our own rooms but that is lifted and we are ‘allowed’ to bring in things to clean our rooms, our own hand sanitizer for our room, etc. We are encouraged to do as much teaching on the computer meaning not pass out much in the way of paper or supplies to students. Students will stay in classrooms and teachers will rotate. The governor changed his mind and we will be having art, health, PE, music, tech, etc. We did not make smaller than usual class sizes. Kids will have mask breaks and I am hoping those will be out of the classroom. We will be encouraged to open the window when weather permits. It can be extremely hot in August and September and even October at times. With people in masks, opening the window might not be a good thing as we will overheat even more. If any fans are used they are to be near the window to help draw air out, not blow into the room. Kids will have lunch and either PE or Music daily. Music will be in another very large room and it seems they will be singing and playing instruments. I’m not sure how those things can be done safely. Speech teachers, Music teachers, etc are allowed to sub in shields for masks. Teachers have been kind of encouraged to consider taking masks off when we teach (unsafe in my opinion, shield or not as the virus is airborne). I understand only teachers who teach a student will be informed if that student gets Covid. It can be in the building and we might not be told. I don’t like this. Contact tracing doesn’t seem like it would include letting teachers and classmates of students who ride on the bus with an infected student know about this. Doesn’t seem logical to me.
Staff meetings mostly online. Schedules shifted a bit so some come staggered in order to accommodate bussing needs to make busses less crowded.
There are situations where teachers will have to quarantine and might not get paid, i think. I have to read that again. We are not to come to work if we have any of the many possible symptoms until we have a doctor’s note or test result except in the case when we can provide a note ahead of time regarding things like allergies. That could be a lot of sick days. How many days do you get the most minor head ache, tiny little bit of a sore throat, minor sniffles, sneeze a bit, cough a couple times? Can’t go to work or not supposed to go.
They have three models. All day in person (current plan as far as I know), kids coming a reduced amount of time (every other day with every second day working from home), and fully online. We keep hearing what things will be and being told that it is changing sometimes by the hour so we don’t know what will happen.
The state is going to set acceptable limits of Covid in schools and that will be what the regional health dept enforces. Superintendents seem to have great power in decision making regarding when to close schools or not. The district plan does seem to talk about a 1-3 day closing if there is a case. I know if people are exposed we should test between 3-6 days after exposure so not sure how such a short closing can work well.
I think contact tracing is only going to look at people who were within 6 feet of a person diagnosed with it for more than 15 minutes. That should theoretically always exclude everyone if we stay 6 feet apart. And 6 feet isn’t magic, so again, not sure how well that will protect us from spread.
I’m really surprised by this comment. Do you realize these numbers are predominantly from March and April when CV was circulating widely in CT/NY/MA before anyone knew how it spread and were not using masks etc? For example, I know several college students who picked up the virus in late Feb early March on spring break or from roommates in their apartments or dorms. This was BEFORE the northeast locked down.
The numbers in this article are absolutely useless and the story is disingenuous. If you’re an admin employee at the University and we’re working from home in April, but picked up the virus from your spouse (say an essential worker) it would be counted here. Total garbage reporting.
A overnight summer camp in Georgia cohorted the kids, but did not require masks for the kids, did not open up doors and windows to increase indoor ventilation, and featured loud singing and chanting. Apparently this camp was run by idiots who thought that wiping down surfaces could clean the air. Or something.
Surprise! They had a huge outbreak. Most of the campers and staff were tested, and 76% of those tested turned up positive. Positivity was highest among the youngest campers (6-10 years old, what, you send your six-year-old to a sleepaway covid camp, why?).
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6931e1.htm?s_cid=mm6931e1_w
An MIT update:
"…We had a record high number of admitted students accept our offer on May 1…
…
On July 7th, MIT released those plans, and allowed incoming first-year students to request a gap year up until this past Monday. When those results came in, earlier this week, it turned out that fewer first-year students chose to defer their admission than anticipated. Indeed, the vast majority of students decided to begin their education this fall, even at a distance.
We are delighted to welcome so many of our students to the MIT community starting in September. Unfortunately, this means we don’t have any space in the class for students who have remained on the wait list."
https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-will-not-be-taking-anyone-from-the-wait-list-this-year/
I have one of each as well. D will begin junior year of HS online from her bedroom. The HS is using the regular bell schedule and classes change every 50 mins or so. Just down the hall, her brother will continue his Stanford masters program classes from his room. He only needs to take 3 classes.
I finally read the NY Times article, and for what it’s worth, it does note that the number of cases cited for a given college may include cases that “were identified months ago, in the early days of the outbreak in the United States before in-person learning was cut short” or that “involved students and employees who had not been on campus recently.” Heck, it says right in the second paragraph that the data reflect cases “over the course of the pandemic.” So the article is not claiming that it gives us a picture of current infections, or that all cases represent on-campus transmission (though the article should have made the latter point explicit in the second paragraph as well).
That said, I agree that the article would be much more valuable if the data WERE restricted to recent cases that had been contracted on campus.
Why the constant drumbeat to the effect that people trying to avoid getting sick or getting others sick are cowards?
GK-12 son is an incoming junior and his large public high school hasn’t released the final fall plan yet.
GKUniversity son will move into his off-campus apartment mid-August. A majority of his classes are still scheduled to meet entirely face to face, the 200+ person class included. He only has one online class.
@sylvan8798 You misspelled scared…
Why are you calling them cowards, @syballa, I never did. The infection rate is what it is; if too high for you, don’t go to school in person. 287 infected students might sound like a lot, or 0.5% of the student body might not. Up to each person to decide what works for him/her.
What is GK University? Sorry, but I’ve seen it written a bunch and have no clue what it is.