I’m not medical or scientific. That said, I would think that your daughter’s risk might be higher, but not exponentially higher.
How much time in the course of a day are you both in close contact? An example might be reading a bed time story. You could wear a mask until you see how the local numbers are doing. If you’re cooking supper and she’s in the living room, there’s little risk.
As for your daughter being shunned because you’re a teacher. Maybe the folks in your neck of the woods are smarter than the ones around here. I doubt very much that anyone - outside of a health care job - around here would consider a teacher or a school to be high risk. They just congratulated themselves for having senior graduation only a month late. In the group photo all 39 of them are standing shoulder to shoulder in rows on bleachers. In the sun, to be sure.
I flew a few weeks ago without incident. We were in four different airports on our cross country trip. The airports aren’t crowded so it’s easy to social distance in the terminals. Flights are sold out but with everyone in masks (required on all flights) it brings some level of comfort.
Keep in mind that food can be hard to come by - they don’t serve meals or even snacks on most flights right now, and in some airports restaurants and even many shops are closed. So bring granola bars or something to snack on in case you can’t grab a bite to eat during a layover.
I do not have a medical or scientific background but here are my thoughts.
Yes, I think your daughter’s risk is significnatly higher based on your exposures as a teacher. Though as an adult, rhe current stats show that you are more likely than your daughter (assuming she is otherwise healthy) to have serious complications from the virus so I would be worried about yourself too.
No, I don’t think there will be social ramifications for her. I would not want my child at your house, but almost everyone i know would be fine with it. Most of my friends are not too concerned about the virus.
DH and DS21 & 28 flew over the past month and did just fine. They’re familiar with wiping everything down as I’ve done that for years because of my meds, and they’re pretty good about masks.
I booked them in first class just for extra space, so they got boxed lunches, although they couldn’t eat it because of the masks- this was not an airline rule, but since they had n95 masks it sort of defeats the purpose.
DD26 will be flying home for a couple of weddings this summer, and I’m less worried about her now that the others have flown without problems, so if she wants first class she’s got to pay. for it herself, poor child!
No, it’s not exponentially higher. It’s somewhat higher, how much is unclear, but I’m not sure you should feel guilty about it.
Schools don’t seem to be the hotbed of transmission that one would think they should be, given their importance in pandemics of the past, lack of social distancing and hygiene of the population. High schools may be more of a risk than junior high or grade school because of the age of the students.
We talked a lot about this in this thread-. If you scroll through, you should find some references, Masks on kids - #24 by QwertySC I’m guessing your school district made some of their choices based on the evidence there is, so far, on kids & COVID19.
My DH is a doctor in primary care, so he’s in close contact with people who may have the virus- even clinical screening for it will miss about a third to half of people with it. Other people in clinical settings will have far higher risk than that- an anesthesiologist friend of mine doesn’t even go home for weeks at a time due to the risk.
So risk is definitely relative. I’d worry more about children at my house than yours. I myself am immunosuppressed, so this is something I think about. We can go on worrying about every possibility or we can try to educate ourselves as to the actual risk. It’s hard when this is a potentially serious issue that has never come up before in our lifetimes, and we’re used to (at least believing) we’re safe and in control.
Personally, because of your concern, I think you’ll take every precaution possible, and my kids could go to your house anytime.
I think the authors forgot that this decision is not the CDC’s to make.
But short of a NYC-style outbreak (which is unlikely or it probably already would have happened) I think most governors would hesitate to ratchet down again, I’m not sure the populace would tolerate it.
To be fair, however, Rep. Stanton is twisting the facts a bit. Arizona still has far fewer total cases than NY, and far fewer than NY had at their peak, which they are well past. He’s comparing apples and oranges. Here’s the retweet from another Rep:
This fear mongering is dangerous. AZ is 24th in per capita cases. NY has more than 400% more cases.
Arizonans are DONE w/ gov't mandates. We are smarter about COVID than we were in March. The left may want to shut down the economy & society, but we can't let it happen again. https://t.co/YXl2OS696Z
But, IMHO, Biggs is off base a little, too, because there HAS been a sharp rise in recent cases. But, I’m getting to the point that as long as they don’t exceed their ICU bed capacity, this may be the way it is going to be.
I think we going to have to learn to live with the virus. The cavalry is not going to ride in with a vaccine to save us in time. I believe most governors have gone back to the original use of the shutdowns & other NPIs, that is- they flatten the curve. They don’t eliminate the virus and may not even decrease deaths, except the ones that occur from lack of medical resources.
Definitely true. And definitely more so among people who are either neutral about or against the protests. Not to mention the president about to embark on his own mass gathering.
It’s going to have to be lockdown the vulnerable populations you can (nursing homes) and beg the rest to voluntarily do as much as they can (wear masks, social distance, etc).
Anything else will set off more (other) protests.
I am now feeling less and less confident about whether in person schooling will be allowed to happen.
Yes. And test, test, test the vulnerable populations, if you can’t test everyone.
I do wish, however, that they didn’t have to beg people to do things voluntarily. The messaging on this has been so bad, at least where I am, I guess I can’t blame people for letting the precautions slide, plus there are so few cases in my state. I just hope we don’t have to learn the hard way.
I feel like standing at the top of our Main Street and yelling “Yes! We have no cases! Now, wouldn’t you like to keep it that way?”
Arizona is a scary situation in my book. I have a lot of loved ones there and it’s where I grew up. Sure, right now the ICU’s are ok and the numbers per population might not be as big as NYC at it’s peak. BUT the numbers are rising sharply and we know this is or can be exponential in growth. So I am really worried about what will happen in the next few weeks. Just hoping my elderly father continues to stay locked down. And hoping I’m wrong and the numbers either level off or start declining.
I know it would upset tons of people, but for the overall good, I think schools really need to consider a worst case long term scenario for the school year that accounts for the children of essential workers. This spring, the solution was private daycares and whatever friend/relative support they could find. Layered with distance learning.
Seems like the better solution would be to have schools open for only essential workers kids who want it, plus a lottery for any additional spaces that would allow social distancing. At least those kids could continue to have a normalish education as an offset to their parents being at risk.
Other kids would need to distance learn. I’d be one of those, which I’m not happy about, but it seems like it’s for the good of the community.
Teachers with health concerns (or household health concerns) could oversee the distance learning students. Accommodate other teachers’ preference of assignment as much as possible.
I’m not hearing anyone discussing this as an option though.
HISD sent out their parent survey this morning. One of the questions was how you felt about distance learning only, distance learning + traditional face to face learning, face to face but with fewer students per classroom, and simply sending everyone back to school in the fall. My two HISD kids are all flipping over to a hybrid model, so I filled out the survey mostly for kicks (there were some questions also about how distance learning worked out for your kid).
I think I’m mostly expecting to see some form of kids in classes 2x a week as usual for our hybrid school, but then being prepared to flip over to distance learning if/when there are positive COVID tests among students/staff. While kids DID tend to spread stuff around on campus last year (I work there), I do feel like going 2 days a week often means that my kiddo picks something up on campus but then our days are home days and they are sick over home days and thus it’s less likely to spread. Of course there are always parents who send sick kids to school, so THAT will have to be addressed.
Flipping back and forth is going to be a hot mess among the kids who rely on structure and routine though if it gets to be a regular thing.
High schools may be more of a risk than junior high or grade school because of the age of the students.
