COVID-19: Chapter 4 - OPEN FOR BUSINESS

As a 55 year old

https://twitter.com/aslavitt/status/1265830745345581062?s=21

Schools

Itā€™s idiotic to throw together tens of millions of the main disease vectors of humanity without being pretty damn sure they arenā€™t going to set off a huge wave. If Iā€™m a teacher with any conceivable comorbidity including late middle age Iā€™m not spending all day everyday with them and only cloth masks for protection.

Raised 5 kids. After every big holiday something went through the house. New bugs get brought in from people traveling w kids and all the little cousins exchanging germs and taking them back to school after Xmas break.

The downside is just too big. The fact that society (at least in US) canā€™t figure out how to feed and house people thru a pandemic means nothing to a virus. Find warm body. Multiply. Find next warm body.

Assume the kids are contagious. Heck even if they are 1/4 as adults it will still increase spread significantly overall. Anything else is just wishful thinking. 56 million kids mingling 6 hours a day 5 days a week. You can reduce spread by any reasonable non 0 factor you want x 56 million and still get a shit ton Of spread.

You want schools to open? Solve the damn ventilation/mask efficiency issues. But I suppose that costs too much. Easier to pay in lives than dollars.

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What is the likelyhood more than half of Americans contract COVID in the next three years?

  • <5%
  • 5-25%
  • 25-50%
  • 50-75%
  • 75-95%
  • 95+%

0 voters

Apparently, republicans in the Pennsylvania State Legislature, while pushing bills to open up the state, were testing positive for Covid and not telling anyone outside of GOP leadership. Yet they were still showing up at the Capitol and putting lives at risk.

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Does this data include NY?

They were also quarantining from their own families because they were positive. Which shows they know its dangerous and canā€™t really play the hoax card.

PA has a democratic gov and AG. Hopefully they go after them hard. This is super, super fucked up even from Republicans. Of course you expect them to lie about positive tests, but not while still going into fucking session for weeks.

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To me the wide variety of symptoms and effects gives hope for improving treatment because if you can mitigate any one of them it helps, you donā€™t necessarily need to find a silver bullet.

I htink a lot of studies are going on about repurposing existing drugs with known safety profiles as part of a treatment regimen. eventually some combination of several of these might lead to a major improvement in mortality rates (e.g. if one drug can reduce the risk of cytokine storm and another reduce the risk of stroke and pulmonary embolism and a third shorten the overall infection time or reduce overall viral load) then the three together in a well defined treatment regimen could actually make a big difference in IFR.

One example is here. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31042-4/fulltext

I think over time treatment will continue to evolve and improve in this way without needing approval of new medications

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I agree with you that a novel small molecule treatment is years away. 5 to 6 years is pretty much warp speed in my experience. But I agree with Johnny that better treatments can come about from many other various ways. (Not that I think you disagree with that.)

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Thatā€™s exactly what I expected since the spike protein is what gives it efficient entry to the cell. But about a month ago there were some reports of rapid mutation including some mutation around the spike protein. I guess everything we read needs to be considered very preliminary until we have multiple redundant findings.

Schools have always had outbreaks of nasty stuff (influenza, meningitis, whooping cough, measles, etc.) that have prompted closures and lots of that stuff has sadly killed kids/parents.

For the zero tolerance for risk/holding your kids out of school folks - how are you planning on gauging when the COVID-19 risk falls to whatever level that you were previously comfortable sending your kids out into? I canā€™t really figure out how weā€™d ever know when it is ā€œsafe enoughā€ again, and that seems to be a really important part in this process that we arenā€™t really getting much guidance on.

The problem is the 5x or so more deadly than flu for the teachers.

We have to get very serious with screening and physical technologies to minimize spread. Just sending the kids back w the tools we have now (cloth masks and the magical 6 feet) is not sufficient.

Itā€™s probably true but points to how bad humans analytical abilities really are.

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Are there kids currently in schools throughout the world now? I assume with hemispheres and stuff, it isnā€™t summer vacation everywhere. How are other countries handling this? I mean, to me it seems absolutely certain that in the vast majority of the US, kids are going back to school in the fall. Iā€™m guessing that means a wide range of precautions from almost nothing to masks, distance, schedule modifications, and if students/staff come down with COVID-19, the school shuts down for a bit for ā€œdeep cleaningā€ then back to it sort of like when other deadly stuff would hit a school in the past.

Do you guys really think that grade schools arenā€™t going to open in late August/September? At least in my bubble, this doesnā€™t really seem like it is on the menu.

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I am a high-school teacher and schools in Germany have been opening up since late April.

In my federal state it is ornganized in a way that only half the class is attending physically and the rest are still being instructed at home and we switch every week. Some schools switch every day or have other systems. This has been rolled out year by year every other week (so right now half my school does this, but the younger students start next week and the youngest start two weeks later).

Teachers and students are not required to wear masks, but are asked to. I would say around a fifth of teachers and almost none of the students do. The students do not have to switch rooms but are physically present in the same room the whole day and have to spend their breaks outside.

Students who are members of ā€œrisk-groupsā€ or have a household member with elevated risk can continue to learn from home. Teachers can only continue teaching from home when they are at risk themselves.

Our school year will end in seven weeks. There are currently no plans on how things will progress after the summer holidays.

Some federal states discuss getting rid of the 6-feet-rule for primary schools and opening them up for all the students at the same time by the middle of June. There is a lot of backlash to that, but also lots of people asking to move to a regular schedule more quickly.

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i sincerely hope social distancing and work from home goes on forever. iā€™m having the time of my life rn

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In the CR, kind of.

Classes with up to 15 students are allowed. However, teachers donā€™t have to hold them and students donā€™t have to attend them. The laws on masks are that they are still mandatory on public transport, inside buildings and enclosed spaces. So in theory masks are still required but I doubt itā€™s being enforced.

That said, Iā€™m not holding any until (maybe) final exam week. Many of my students live very far away from the school. So to have them travel up to 2 hours round trip on public transport for a typical 45 minute class is unfair.

Ha ha, only 48y 9m here, enjoying my magical shield of youth immunity. Gonna head to Applebeeā€™s now, suck it boomers.

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Vegas casinos opening up next week. I need to get out of here

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I dunno. Chris V? Otherwise S America is Fā€™d right now and Africa is getting its turn w covid.

We completely realize that school will OPEN and probably with minimal protections. That WHY we are so upset.

I keep have to keep saying this. Magically by 14 days I am genX. I hate those boomers too.

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