100% this. Sending kids back to school wasn’t supposed to be a signal to resume everything. If anything, we needed to scale back to make sure schools can stay open.
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Sadly I don’t think this is happening as much as it should. We’ve had the most positives/ and deaths reported today in months. I just got word my daughters gymnastics will be closed for two weeks due to a positive in one of their staff (disclaimer- my daughter is in a private pod made up of just a few of her quaranteam friends).
I looked at our town by town map and yesterday and the positives are closing in around the towns surrounding our.
I hope parents are paying close attention and take this more seriously, we all want our kids in school, for their sanity and for ours!!
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What about all the households withOUT kids in school? Would they agree that is what THEY want most?
My single sister?
A 20-something starting out?
My in-laws whose family has long grown?
The people who work in the restaurants? gyms? shops?
Even me as a homeschool family. While I do want kids back in school, that’s not what I’m most after on this road to recovery.
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My kids’ schools have been open for in-person almost 2 months and we are finishing the first marking period, 1/4 of the school year, on 10/23. Not everything is open completely around here, but gyms, many churches, my kids extra curriculars, etc, are mostly open. My family is taking our precautions, but my kids are attending school in person and we are participating in community activities. My parents go to their gym. None of these activities, including school and the gyms are the driving force behind the numbers here. I take things seriously, but we aren’t going to close off our life to everything and my kids are still attending in person school. I think where you live makes a difference.
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Absolutely. The amount of community spread in an area greatly impacts the risk profile of any activity. We are in a suburban community with moderate community spread. One of our friends goes back and forth between our area and visiting family in a rural area with very little community spread. When our friend is home in the suburbs, she and her husband and kids don’t visit with anyone and don’t go into stores (only delivery for groceries and restaurants), but while in the rural area, they go to stores and restaurants and visits with friends and family.
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I live in a suburban area with moderate risk as well. But we do go out into public areas. But we have been a part of the gradual reopening, so that does make a difference.
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Two of the local school districts near me recently switched from hybrid to all remote. One sent a note along with the announcement essentially saying that the switch to all remote is the parents’ fault for not making responsible decisions about risk outside of the school.
I’ve heard a number of people in my area justify decisions to engage in certain activities by saying the kids are already in school so we already have that risk. That is the wrong way to evaluate risk. The proper way is to think of the community have an allowable risk basket … when some risky activities like in-person school are added, the appropriate action is to reduce other risky activities.
I hear things like “it’s ok to have an indoor playdate at a friends house since the kids are already exposed to each other in school.” The correct way of thinking about risk allocation is: the community already has a fair amount of risk from kids being in school, so those with kids in school should significantly cut back on other activities (other than school and work) that have some risk. For example, if you have kids in school, then no indoor playdates, no multi-family get-togethers, no trips to the gym, no indoor restaurants)". Otherwise, the community risk in total gets so high that there will be inevitable outbreak and school closures.
To address @qwerty6 point about people without kids in school. I suspect (just my guess) that most areas would do ok if only the families with kids in school cut back on activities outside of school and those without kids in school took on a little more risk in other areas.
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I guess it depends on what people are doing. In our area we have heard of number of adult bday parties with 25-50 people (outside, but no masks or distancing), and lots of small indoor kids playdates and adult dinners consisting of 2-3 families. The virus loves that stuff. It is a good way to get schools into remote learning.
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Again, my family and I know many others as well, have not cut back on activities and my kids’ schools are doing well. I really think that it depends on where you live and what risks you are willing to take. And it seems that schools are not the vectors of these outbreaks.
I’m not getting into the details of my life, but my guess is, you would consider what my family does as high risk, despite some of the precautions I take.
We’ve had in person learning for a little over a month now in my town, and so far, no school positives or quarantines.
The next town over started in person learning yesterday, and by the end of the first day, have a positive and are now quartantining at least one class and a bus load of kids.
NJ is finally on the road back to reopening - indoor dining is open again, as are most stores, albeit on a reduced occupancy. Masks are still required.
I have a theory that towns that were later to go back to school here are struggling with positives partly bc of the delay. All that extra time led kids and parents to go out and be less cautious out of desperation and boredom. I can’t prove that, but I shop in that town, and saw a lot of unsupervised kids congregating.
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I hope it stays that way in your area. In our area the schools were going great for about 7 weeks. It seemed like all was going well and hybrid would continue for the semester. Then last week there were multiple emails of kids/staff testing positive at a number of the area schools. This week the announcements of switching from hybrid to remote started.
EDIT TO ADD: Thus far, there has not been mass spread within the school. The cases appear to have been acquired in the community. The schools switched to remote due to the level of community spread (not because of spread in the school).
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My kids’ school district has had quarantines and positives, few in number, but that doesn’t surprise anyone. But everyone has continued to carry on and I find my kids’ school district to be handling the situation very well.
Where you live, are you in a region where hospitals are at risk of being overwhelmed?
Probably not. My guess is that I would probably consider it low-medium risk at the individual level, but I would consider the community risk of many people engaging in those activities to be not prudent from a public health perspective. I would consider going to an indoor event with 50+ people and no masks/distance to be high risk. From your other posts, it doesn’t sound like those are the types of risks you are taking.
Not at the moment. Overflow hospital capacity was needed in April/May. We are ok now, but it wouldn’t take too much to get back to where it was.
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No, we have not put ourselves in that kind of situation without a mask.
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I also think my view is colored by what I have seen. I have had a number of family and friends who have had Covid (some mild, some not). Two friends of my friends (in their 30s) were on ventilators. A guy DW went to high school with lost both his parents to Covid with a 3 week period. My best friend lost his uncle to Covid.
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I’m concerned that we haven’t heard anything from her on this thread recently. After starting the thread in January, she has posted most days. It has now been a couple week since we heard from her.
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That’s exactly where it seems to be spreading right now.
We see this play out here. New Orleans has more people in close daily proximity to each other, so community spread is a greater risk. Im literally just 10 mins away but suburban. Our spread is less equating to less restriction. New Orleans has to be stricter than our state restrictions just because of the environment people are living in.