This is the start of the school year for the NYC public school system, and it’s the first time my kids have been to in person class in 18 months. The school system is taking a number of precautions including:
All teachers are required to receive first dose of vaccine by September 27. Any teachers who are currently not vaccinated will need to take weekly COVID tests.
Everyone inside the school is required to wear a mask
All classrooms have two air purifiers and will have windows opened.
Students must complete health screening questionnaire every morning before class.
Social distancing of 3 feet or more will be maintained inside school.
Random testing of 10% of students every two weeks with protocols for quarantining or closure in the event of positive tests
I think this is a pretty good set of measures, although a vaccine mandate for students like in LA would also be nice. My kids are in elementary school, so a mandate wouldn’t affect them immediately, but it would help make sure everyone gets vaccinated when it becomes approved for younger kids. In addition to these requirements, my kids have KN95 masks and will wear face shields during lunch and snack times.
General conditions in the city are mixed. 71% of the total population in Manhattan is fully vaccinated, and the number is 61% for the city at large. The 7-day moving average of new confirmed and suspected cases is around 1,500 and falling. That’s several times higher than it was last September, when the city was still mostly locked down and the Delta variant hadn’t yet arrived.
So apparently New York State is still contact tracing folks who receive lab-confirmed positive results.
Interestingly, the guidance you receive is that you need to fully quarantine away from family/others for 10 days following the beginning of symptoms. Once the 10 days hits, even if still symptomatic, you are free to end quarantine and return to gen pop. There is no requirement or suggestion to perform any additional testing or obtain any kind of negative result prior to ending quarantine. This is for a fully vaccinated individual, not sure if the guidance is different for the unvaccinated.
That seems strange to me as I was considering how I’d handle things if I ever was pozzed. I feel like I’d want symptoms to end + some kind of negative test before leaving my bunker, but I guess not?
“Most of them will not make it out of here, the nurse tells me. In fact, at this particular ICU on the Southern Gulf Coast, COVID-19 patients needing a ventilator have a fatality rate approaching 100%. Over the last year, hundreds of them spent time here. Seven of them survived.“
“ She had been positioned on her back so family members could sob over her lifeless body. She was attached to a dozen machines, on the precipice of death, completely sedated and paralyzed. Her chest rose and fell with the ventilator’s hum.
Really needs at least weekly whole population testing (some doctors will say at least three times a week), but better than most sets of measures.
Im skeptical any of this is going to stave off the majority of unvaxxed kids getting COVID pre vaccine approval, but SF going pretty well so far with protective measures so that gives me some hope.
Im somewhat skeptical that we actually have given the current testing infrastructure in the hot spots. Maybe we have, and some of the non hot spot places are coming down, but I dont think the data we are getting is accurate enough to measure given some of the experiences of trying to get tested shared upthread.
Return to school going to hurt, but magnitude comes down to how much mitigation measures help. In general in the northeast seems that seems like a combination of fully vaccinated staff tugging against precautions, but precautions that are generally fewer/lesser precautions than last school year, combined with a more highly contagious variant.
I think high schools can muddle through, but Im very skeptical it is going to work for the younger populations, particularly as we hit respiratory virus season in the north and kids havent been vaccinated. My kids schools precautions are still about as good as it gets right now, what econophile posted with weekly testing and all staff already fully vaccinated and outside lunch, but I still expect both my kids will catch COVID by year end with no vaccine.
I’m freaking out mentally. Like I’ve been good isolating from my mom but I did see her the morning after so who knows. I want to go scream at my sister that I hope believing in her hateful right wing bullshit was worth possibly killing her mom but I know it’s not a good idea
It’s still true isn’t it that the morning after exposure would be too soon for you to be able to spread it to her? I’d like to think you’re safe in that regard, not that I wouldn’t be worried in your spot anyway.
The recommendation that only one dose be given - which the CMOs said could be looked at again in the spring - is related to the very rare risk of a condition called myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle.
It can cause chest pain and heart palpitations, but cases are usually mild and children recover quickly with standard treatment.
The risk is tiny after one vaccine dose and slightly higher after two, with 12 to 34 cases seen for every one million second doses.
Boys are at higher risk than girls.
And most of the benefits from the vaccine, which reduce the small risk of illness, are gained after one.
