I was thinking about a week, maybe 10 days, before people have enough symptoms to start getting tested and the results come back, get recorded etc.
All true, although I would say masking/distancing/hygiene compliance much better than I would have thought going in. Not perfect, but better than my expectations.
But I will admit that, while my kids have had a safe school experience to date and the socialization benefits are tangible, it would stretch the truth to say I made the decision to send them back from a completely unbiased place and not with some form of “man it sure is convenient if the kids can go back to school” bias attached.
Whole thing just sucks, pass CARES and then best of luck everyone figure it out.
Good luck with your decisions. There are not right answers and you have for sure proven that you are being thoughtful and honest about them which is all we can do right now.
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They key thing is that most here try to make good informed decisions BUT that almost all of us have taken risks beyond what we think is best based on other needs. Kids in activities. Seeing family. It’s hard. I flew when my son needed help. I play indoor tennis (masks on). My wife occasionally goes to a business client office in person.
But as a subset we are in the 90th percentile of safety and our risks probably bleed down to 80th or 70th.
Now what fraction of folks are more typical—60 and occasionally risks down to 40? Not to mention all the YOLOs.
The sad fact is that bottom half greatly shifts the safety factor for everyone. Simply having 1-2 % of the area population running around contagious completely changes the math be 0.1-0.2%.
(Note percentile numbers aren’t made up guesstimates, case density numbers are data).
My 9 year old came into my bedroom Wednesday night absolutely bawling, saying she didn’t have any real friends. She does, of course, it’s just she doesn’t get to see them very often. We need to do more with Zoom meetings with them, and I spent the weekend clearing brush on a hill for sledding, maybe she can have some friends over once it snows. Just a punch in the gut to see the kids miss socializing.
I also blame Punky Brewster - she’s been bingeing that show and I think seeing Punky have fun with her friends is causing some emotions. She and my wife are driving me bananas singing that theme song relentlessly, worst part of the pandemic so far.
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Take advantage of outdoor activities as much as possible. My wife’s historical society house had some young scouts volunteer. They planted bulbs, rake leaves and chased each other. Then they roasted marshmallows and hot dogs. All outside. Temp was in the 50s(F).
The kids all wore masks and sat with their parents when eating.
Sledding/skating sound perfect. Back in my day (the 70s) we would play outside all day unless it was raining regardless of temperature.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/30/coronavirus-covid-live-updates-us/
Vietnam confirms first case of locally transmitted coronavirus in almost three months
Meanwhile.
I’m spending more time teaching my daughter at home than I am on my real six figures job.
She seems to be getting enough socialization from the internet though since she told my wife “Bye Felicia” and walked out of the room yesterday.
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I haven’t seen teachers mentioned on the vaccine list. They really need to be right after healthcare workers.
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Biden adviser: Many will be in intensive care over Christmas
More leading disease experts have issued dire warnings about the spread of coronavirus in the US after millions travelled home for Thanksgiving, against medical advice.
A coronavirus adviser to President-elect Joe Biden, Dr Céline Gounder, told CBS News she was concerned about the pressure on hospitals after the November holiday.
Dr Gounder said “unfortunately, that means that many people who celebrated with family, with friends over Thanksgiving will find themselves in the hospital, in ICUs over Christmas and New Year”.
Dr Gounder issued the warning on Saturday, a day before data showed the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 in the US had reached a record high of 93,238.
Another expert, emergency medicine physician Dr Megan Ranney, likened the strain coronavirus was placing on hospitals to “a natural disaster occurring in all 50 states at the same time”.
As a high school teacher (even in Germany) I feel I have to weigh in here.
During the pandemic I have taught in all three modes: completely remotely, full groups in school and a hybrid model which means half of the students are in school and half are following lessons/ doing instructions at home. All three of these have their disadvantages.
Full groups in school obviously offers a health risk, but in addition instruction is fare more restricted than in non-pandemic times (almost no group work / projects etc.)
Teaching remotely has its setbacks, too. At the beginning of the pandemic a lot of students did not have acces to sufficient technology and mostly followed lessons via their mobile. My youngest students (11-12) often did not have sufficient data plans for that, so those classes mostly just received written instructions and a once a week online conference to compare results (they got answer keys too). I had conferences for older students too, but their the problem arose that a lot of them did not feel comfortable with turingn their own cameras on during videoconferences as there was some bullying involved or at least feared. In addition there was a lot of extra work involved in checking on the students who did not hand in their results/ did not take part in videoconferences at all, as the basically just had to say “I had some technical problems” and there wasn`t much I can do. I had the feeling that remote learning was only effective for students 16+, so American high schools should actually do fine.
The hybrid model seems to be the worst actually, as you again have two options. One is to just give the students at home written instructions (which seems to work relatively fine - with the same attendance problems you have in fully remote classes). The other is that students actually follow along, but as most microphones on notebooks are not designed to pick up the sound in a classroom well, the students could just hear me and see the electronic board. Their feedback was that this got very boring even during single lessons and did not seem possible for full days.
So good remote instructions takes a lot of work and doing both online and in person educations is not really possible while doing a full time job.
Personally I feel most comfortable with full classes if the infection rate is not super high (ours is slightly below 100/100000 per week and was at 120/100k at the highest) as long as there is good mask discipline and frequent air-circulation. In classes students do fine, in the breaks mask discipline is a lot worse and students are eating while standing in groups. However they have to spend all their breaks outside, which makes this more managable.
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Probably would be if teachers were dying in numbers anywhere else in the world where schools have been open for the last six months - but, alas, most teachers still live on and the evidence is not there (I think dan found one teacher though, a few months ago, in the US, where most education is by zoom)
No country is reporting the teaching population being wiped out by teaching or you’d hear about it.
I intended no disrespect toward teachers and I wasn’t trying to suggest that it is easy or better to teach over Zoom than in a classroom. I actually work in higher ed, and am intimately aware of the tons of issues encountered to switching to distance modalities and in dealing with inequity of technology resources.
My tantrum was instead directed at folks of any stripes that say “meh, we can’t expect people to figure out how to Zoom if they aren’t PhDs in applied nanotechnology, so I suppose we have to continue having lunch meetings in the big conference room rather than teleconference”.
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Sorry to call out your specific situation here but I can’t stress enough how frustrating it is that as a society we are engaged in a narrow but intense argument about what to do with school kids during a pandemic while ignoring the elephant in the room that our society requires that two parents who want to raise kids must work two full time jobs that can be yanked out from under them at any time and all they get for it is tenuous just-barely-enough coverage of middle class quality of life (if that). Instead of asking “what the fuck am I going to do with my kids if schools are closed” people really should be asking “how many yachts must billionaires have before I can raise healthy kids with a reasonable safety net”.
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Hah, she’s already talking about being Punky next Halloween. Crazy that old show is capturing them. She hasn’t reached the refrigerator safety episode yet, I can’t wait.
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You would think the song’s spirit would lift you right off the ground. Seems you can’t be sure of anything anymore.
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Gonna make a second request that we make a separate OFS thread.
This thread is a goldmine of great info. But if you arent interested in this debate, its unreadable everytime it kicks off.
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Ofs “debate” would be a lot more bearable if a few people would stop incorrectly assuming that there are people in this forum that want to close schools but also keep open things like bars.
Nothing but a bunch of strawmen from this group of miserable pedants
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I started an Education thread a while ago that got some COVID-related discussion, but it never really took off.
Also, something that I’m sure will resolve all of the arguments here: EconTalk just released a new podcast with Emily Oster largely focusing on COVID and schools.
