I essentially never dealt with the parents of my kids’ friends. Hard to imagine it being a problem. I stood around at some bday parties pretending to care about sports once in a while, but, not a big deal and I got some cake. PTA or something?
Here is the key paragraph from the blog post you just linked to:
We calculated district-wide case rates for 3,775 school districts for this analysis, from only those districts reporting enrollment data (both total and face-to-face enrollment) and a minimum of two COVID-19 cases in their schools.
The findings?
Fewer than 3% of open school districts reporting data have school case rates below 5 per 100,000.
That means 97% of school districts currently open and reporting cases do not fall into the “lowest risk” category for reopening schools.
If you filter the cases for students only enrolled in face-to-face instruction, only four districts have school-district case rates of fewer than 5 per 100,000. Four. Not four percent - four total districts. Three are in Virginia - a state that has made it difficult to track cases in schools, and the fourth is in Michigan.
It’s a little hard to tell exactly what’s going on because the explanation is unclear and the data is almost impossible to look at, but it appears that they filtered out the school districts with the fewest cases, then reported that the remaining population had a bunch of cases!
Yeah I squinted at this and moved on, because I was sure I must be misreading it, but maybe not. You’d need a student population of over 40,000 to get < 5 in 100,000 with at least 2 cases in the district, and population over 40,000 describes only about 1% of school districts in the US, but she said the number qualifying was “less than 3%”, implying more than 2%, so who knows.
Also can we talk about how insane a criterion < 5 in 100,000 is? There are what 330 million people in the US, so 5 per 100,000 would be 16.5K total active cases in the entire country. Like no shit you can’t open schools if that’s going to be your criterion, I don’t need a super sick analysis to tell me that.
Frankly Danspartan I have a hard time believing you actually read any of this shit before posting it.
Ah, actually, filtering for districts with >= 2 cases is going to introduce a selection bias which means her sample of 3,775 districts contains mostly larger districts, so it makes sense that she’d end up with a number greater than 1%.
Note that she is applying a filter and criterion here which is mathematically impossible to meet for 99% of the districts in the country.
Indeed.
Since we’re doing the schools thing again, this recent article in JAMA concludes it’s very likely more years of life were lost by closing schools. So just straight up comparing death from increased covid spread to the lower life expectancy from the kids.
Throw in the enormous losses to academic/social development, and honestly I think it’s hard to justify closing schools (at least primary schools) at this point.
Yeah but what if this is misinformation tho.
how do they calc lower life expectancy for the kids?
Wow that is lot of assumption and speculation.
Beyond that it’s a false choice. There is a way to have schools reasonably open and not have runaway community spread. We just refuse to do it.
Close the unnecessary stuff. Mandate masks and better ventilation. Pay for the above at the federal level. Then do limited attendance strategies and or burnout cycles with the schools or society as a whole of say 6 weeks with moderate opening and 2 weeks tight shutdown.
Just so many complete bullshit false choices and idiotic straw men around this and so many other covid related topics.
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Missed educational instruction has snowballing effects (for example, it’s a good predictor of not finishing high school) which culminate in reduced life expectancy for various reasons.
I don’t think the final result of life years lost is to be taken seriously at all, there’s way too much uncertainty and speculation involved, but it’s a good way to get an intuitive idea of kids missing school being a serious problem, as it’s typically been handwaved away on this forum.
This is the standard guidance for mild cases. You can say “fuck the CDC”, but the WHO is saying 10 days after first symptoms and 3 days after last symptoms.
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i see. speaking as someone without kids, i do somewhat empathize with both parents who want their kids in school and those who are deathly scared of sending theirs there. i just can’t really believe so few leaders/journalists have brought up the trade off, we can open schools if you consistently test/enforce masks/close bars/etc. i think it’s worth it, but i’m also biased because i don’t depend on a bar for rent.
fwiw, i had more faith in distance learning but i get that it needs a lot more gradual integration, or mix-in pods or whatever. my job went fully remote, and it was ok for awhile until i started absolutely flailing and going stir-crazy wfh.
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Isn’t that a little different when it’s a few kids missing out for whatever life reasons and not everyone missing out because of a pandemic?
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Right, I feel like almost everyone here would handle this pretty similarly if we took over:
Start with a 1-2 month shutdown to flatten the curve. Pay everyone enough to sustain them.
Open essential businesses and schools, require masks in public, reduce allowable indoor gatherings of adults, properly fund schools for safety measures (masks, ventilation, plexiglass, etc).
Keep bars closed, limit restaurants to outdoor/takeout/delivery. Keep gyms closed. Keep whatever else is non-essential that the experts say needs to be closed, closed. Give these people CARES level unemployment.
Do rolling shutdowns as needed.
The problem is, USA#1 has decided bars and restaurants have to be open no matter what, and those come before schools. It’s so unbelievably fucked up. So we’re getting into a lot of arguments with the Aussies and Euros because you guys live in functional societies that are at least trying to keep community spread low enough to keep schools open safely
Here it seems that closing bars and restaurants til this is over is a complete non-starter, lest people start killing governors, so that’s the context in which we choose what to do with schools.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but the CDC is saying “fuck the symptoms” and just going with 10 days after first symptoms, even if you’re still symptomatic and haven’t been tested. That seems… crazy.
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You can be around others after:
*10 days since symptoms first appeared and
*24 hours with no fever without the use of fever-reducing medications and
Other symptoms of COVID-19 are improving
*Loss of taste and smell may persist for weeks or months after recovery and need not delay the end of isolation
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I mean you can still have a cough though. It’s tricky because I can have a cough for a month after a virus, but if I had covid and that was the case I’d be getting two negatives before being anywhere near anyone.
I’m not proud of what I’d like to see happen to people like this. Fuck them so hard.
Thanks for the input around my situation. It’s helpful even just to hear different perspectives from this group. These are not fun decisions to make. Doing a deeper dive into some of the studies re: how long are you contagious. Will share anything worthwhile back for the benefit of those itt.
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Is she from the MAGA part of the family?
Up to 21 days with ZERO cases in my state in Australia. Shutdowns of ALL but the most essential businesses and mandatory masking works. We had schools fully closed but I really can understand that policy is a very very difficult one for lower socio-economic countries like USA. Crazy thing is in hindsight the government decision making will be so popular with the populace here (and would be in USA imo).
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