I just shared this on FB this morning!!!
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So glad to hear from you! Your contributions to this thread are much appreciated, but I totally understand that everyone has busy lives and sometimes needs to take a break.
Sorry about your inconsiderate friend. The least he could do was let you know his diagnosis before coming over. 
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Thanks!
My friend is not known for his common sense, which is surprising for such a smart guy. We used to joke that he had so many kids because he needed a couple of spares. But you could never find a nicer guy, or family, for that matter. Weāll miss them, COVID and all 
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I hope youāre able to get moved in without too many hassles. Iām a pack rat so detest moving! So weāve been in our house 20 years. Which is ample time for much pack ratting.
Thatās really unfortunate about the exposure. I really wish we could get more people on the same page with at least the basics. (āStay home if youāre sick!ā would seem pretty straightforward?)
Have you started up on the contact tracing as well? Or just focused on the move right now?
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Thanks, I think weāre getting through the move well. Fortunately, DH can load things on one end and DS22 can unload them on the other- I just drive back & forth like a maniac.
Aside from the initial cases weāve not had any more, so I have been getting off easy as far as contact tracing goes. Iām surprised but grateful in many ways.
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My mother and I were just discussing this situation this morning. We used to go there when I was a kid. Itās hard to believe that people can be that dense or just uncaring. (Without more info, Iāll optimistically attribute it to the former.)
Do you know if there are any legal consequences for breaking isolation with a positive diagnosis? I have this knee-jerk reaction that there should, but Iām not sure if that would do more harm than good. It might just stop people from getting tested, making it harder to evaluate where and how much Covid there is in the community. Still, it would rub me the wrong way if someone could hurt or kill someone out of negligence or malice, and there were no consequences.
Iām sorry that you are now mostly back to remote learning. I hope that things get better and you can start more in-person schooling again later this year.
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Iām so sorry to hear you are having to flip to virtual. That is so disappointing.
Itās not knee-jerk at all, my limited time as a contact tracer has shown me just how little people trust public health authorities already. Your thoughts are also in line with the non-punitive attitude of modern public health when it comes to addressing communicable disease in general.
But IMHO, itās the recent failure of the latter thatās partially responsible for the former. Weāre in a situation where people just will no longer comply. I think there are things that could have prevented this but in the long run, Iām not sure how much difference it makes regarding the spread of this virus. But it may have done long-lasting harm to the reputation of our public health system, from the WHO to the CDC and all on down from there.
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I thought this was an interesting article.
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I read this Earlier and then started noticing more couples where the man was maskless. Coincidence or evidence?
Coincidence. I think I see more women with no masks here. Though I only really go out to the supermarket and I guess there are more women there.
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Iāve noticed way more men going maskless in our area.
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Shut yo mouth! 
Iāll need to check in with my friend in Betmudaā¦againā¦,
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Iām hoping for a mild tropical storm swirling in the Atlantic and dissipating harmlessly far from land. 
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I think Iāve seen several people who wondered if we could all just wear masks and go about our business. If the goal is to keep the rate of infection from growing (ie keep R0 below 1), this indicates that masks alone may not be enough. (The fact that the school closure was associated with a drop in cases does indicate that there was transmission via schools. I do wonder how much of the spread was during unmasked sports. If it was significant, then this example is less telling.)
A few key parts:
The state had mandated that students and staff members wear masks in school, allowing unmasked sports practice and competitionā¦ the district seems to have made few adjustments to accommodate social distancing in classrooms.
Corner Canyon High School experienced one of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks at a school in Utah, and possibly the country, with 90 cases within two weeks ā most likely an undercount, since not all students and staff who were exposed or symptomatic got tested.
Mr. Walker said he had heard from some Corner Canyon parents that there was an agreement among mothers at the schoolā¦ not to get their children tested for the virus even if they became ill, to avoid adding to the schoolās case count and contributing to it being shut down.
ā¦once Corner Canyon shut its doors, cases among students and staff fell sharply. After a month of being closed, the school is set to reopen on Monday. As of last Wednesday, according to the districtās dashboard, it had between one and five cases.
This school kind of exemplifies what I fear happening on a large scale - I worry that people wonāt take the necessary precautions, either because they donāt believe theyāre necessary or theyāre just tired of it all, and weāll end up in a bad situation and need to shut large parts of the country down again to get the virus more under control. Well, either that or have a huge number of people infected with the associated consequences (possible long-term harm, death, etc.) I do NOT want another shut down if we can avoid it.
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Whatās the motivation for testing when the school is closed.
Science needs data. With the media hyping anything producing drama, itās difficult for the regular average person to separate fact from hype and act accordingly. While I wish they wouldnāt, I canāt really blame folks for deciding to protect their [perceived] options at the cost of furthering actual information.
If somehow all the media were required to wait a week before publishing any news story, weād be a lot better off.
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I wouldnāt necessarily count 1 district as an example for all. The majority of the schools in this area are doing at least hybrid, some full in-person, and are doing maskless sports (players have to wear masks on the bench). There is no massive outbreaks in schools or with the sports that are playing. One school in our district closed for a few weeks for a handful of cases, all of which came from outside of school. My kids go 4 days per week in person and their respective schools are still open after 2 months with very few cases. Masks are required in school and the school does not test. My 8 year old plays rec soccer without a mask and no one on his team has gotten ill. I live in an area with a lot of people who believe in āpersonal freedomsā and cheat with masks, so there is not 100% compliance in the community. I donāt think this one district is a reason to panic. There may be other factors that need to be looked at as well.
Oh and just to add, I have no issues with personal freedoms per say, I was just giving you an idea of what my area is like without being political.
On the other hand, schools over here are all in person and no masks are required. Cases are going up rapidly but there doesnāt seem to be spread in schools.
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About the same as the motivation to get tested when the school is open but cases are rising and school might close if cases keep going up. Finding out if youāre putting a household member at risk, helping the community to better understand where the virus is, etc. Some people will get tested, and some wonāt. I imagine that cases would be under-reported in either situation.
Nope, I wouldnāt either. Agree with you 100%. An n value of 1 is very poor, from a scientific POV! I wasnāt trying to make any definitive statements. I just havenāt seen much data at all from places doing masks but very little else. This is the first that Iāve come across, actually, and thought it might be of interest.
Iām not panicking. My kids are hybrid (with masks), and I am very happy to have them so.
My point was not to say that the sky is falling. My point was to say that in this one case, just wearing masks and basically carrying on as usual didnāt seem to work out. Thereās not enough data to say why that was the case here and how it would work out elsewhere. But it does indicate that the strategy might not work out well. Iād need to see exploration of how, where and when masks could adequately suppress viral spread before I could personally support such a strategy.
(I do have a larger concern about how viral spread is growing when weāre still in the early fall, and what that portends for the winter. This larger concern is not a result of this one schoolās situation. Itās just represented by it.)
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