Oh, the irony!
Hopefully the mass testing will end soon, similar to the handling of H1N1 in 2009. One can only hope.
I suspect schools we talk about on this board will continue to test frequently. I have already seen communication that suggests next fall wonât be anywhere near normal despite schools requiring students to be vaccinated.
Our school suggested that students who have an exemption may be required to take more covid precautions, ie. wearing masks indoors. They are also expecting to continue some level of surveillance testing.
I just really hope we can avoid mandatory exposure quarantines going forward. I know some school districts are already dropping exposure quarantines, but I havenât heard the CDC recommend it (yet).
ThatâsâŠactually not correct in the case of Pfizer and Moderna. The Yankees with the breakthrough cases all received the J&J vaccine. Hereâs one of a zillion articles covering the later studies released in late March and early April examining this very question:
Salient quote:
âThe study also shows that the [Pfizer] vaccine was 94% effective in stopping asymptomatic infections.â (Emphasis mine)
Moderna performed a parallel study with the same result.
To sum up: the initial trials, which resulted in EUA for the vaccines, studied only whether or not the vaccines were successful at preventing serious illness, hospitalizations, and death. The wonderful news of course is that they are! But it wasnât until later, once meaningful numbers of people had been vaccinated and the impact could be studied more broadly, that studies were done to assess whether the vaccines can prevent infection as distinct from illness.
Here again, the amazing news is that they do!
As widely as this was covered, it was not super trumpeted (especially given the implications). My take is that given the timing of when this came out, the CDC, WH, etc. wanted everyone to keep the pedal down on getting as many people vaccinated as possible, staying masked, etc. which makes total sense.
Anyway, since most kids are getting Pfizer, most kids have extremely robust protection not only from illness but from actual infection.
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Hopefully this should go away by the end of the summer - there is very good evidence against asymptomatic testing of vaccinated individuals.
@DroidsLookingFor
The Yankees cases are being studied right now and the asymptomatic positive test results are a primary inquiry. Those positives are not necessarily positive cases - as in not necessarily breakthrough cases (which supports your point even more - yes the vaccine prevents infection).
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Yesterday was Lawrencevilleâs âsecond doseâ day. Today, there were a lot of students conspicuously missing from classâŠguess the vaccine worked!
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Milton will be requiring all students to be vaccinated this fall unless they have a medical exemption.
Yeah at PA the 2nd doses are today/tomorrow such that some teams are prepping in case they have to compress varsity and JV in order to field a single squad.
@Oyin101
Medical and Religious? I think in MA you have to offer both but not sure, have been wondering about that.
Thatâs a good question. In their email, they only said medical exemptions.
Lawrenceville just announced masks are optional outdoors from today on!!! (alongside a Headmasterâs day tomorrow 
)
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Kiddo told me she heard more shrieks of excitement about the mask change than the Headmasterâs day! So happy you guys are getting a break from the masks for the last few weeks and of course, Happy Headmasterâs Day!
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iâm pretty sure that many international schools are requiring it. beau soleil required it so i got my first dose yesterday!