Coronavirus Outbreak: Part 3

Walt Disney World
5938

Honestly, I’ve sorted of landed on there not being a lot of value relevant to me in getting hung up in the exact percentages of the various Long Covid risks.

When they’re looking at LC conditions say 6-8 months post infection, that means they’re looking at the ramifications from variants that were in circulation 6-8 months ago, which may have quite different risk rates than for the variants circulating now and in the near future.

So even if they were able to say “With Alpha, the risk of lagging annoying LC symptoms is roughly X% and the risk of debilitating LC symptoms is roughly Y%”, there’s a decent chance those numbers have changed enough they aren’t really usable for any kind of personal current risk analysis.

I think the value in the these threads for the general public is more in understanding the range of possible outcomes and that we are going to have a significant portion of recoveries with long term health impacts to deal with for years. (The historical percentages are of value for those in public health to begin planning for the rehabilitation needs that will be forthcoming, treatment possibilities, needed ongoing studies, etc.)

And it is good to be aware of some specific risks like, “if you are a month out from having Covid (or a suspected case of a Covid) and just one of your legs starts swelling up, it’s imperative you get medical treatment immediately.”

So many people think of Covid as a respiratory disease. While acute cases often are, LC symptoms often aren’t. That awareness is going to be important so people can self-advocate for their needs and those of their loved ones going forward.

All that said, this new data from Israel is encouraging:

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https://twitter.com/epi_michael/status/1479160918999281667?s=21

And, yes, there is something unexpected there with partial vaccination rates being very close to unvaccinated rates, but the fall off for the vaccinated is noteworthy.

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5939

I have a doctor’s appointment Monday to talk about something heart related (fun) that came up when I had an xray for my back injury. (Typing that out makes me feel really old! :joy:) It has not escaped me that this could be related to my bout with Covid in December 2020. :frowning_face: Just completed the previsit check-in questionnaire and they ask if you’ve had Covid. So I imagine they are on the look-out for post-covid issues as well. I guess we’ll find out. I felt lucky to escape long covid, but perhaps I didn’t and the affects were just more hidden.

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5940

I agree. A lot of the things he said are valuable to know.

I guess my only gripe is that in a long thread like his, people will get hung up on the one tweet where he seems to be downplaying the effectiveness of vaccines, which will get circulated more than anything else he says. Experts have to be very careful about what they say about the vaccines, because they’re our one ticket out of the pandemic, and it relies on people receiving them.

Btw, being forthcoming is important, too - you can lose trust by not telling the truth about the side effects and effectiveness. But no need to make them sound less effective than they are. Almost any sentence that cites a limitation of the vaccines needs to add, “but they vastly reduce the risk of hospitalization and death” in the same breath.

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5941

I think that’s sort of his point? School employees followed the plan, likely indeed giving up vacation time, but the plan was not fit for purpose so didn’t accomplish the objective. Very unfortunate and the reason this decentralized model being followed many places is not working well. People are needing to wade in and make decisions in areas they just don’t have the range of expertise to foresee all the twists and turns. “Adapt this plan as needed to fit your situation” is going to be challenging with this step of a learning curve and this fluid of a crisis.

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5942

I hope whatever it is, is trivial and isn’t anything to do with covid :crossed_fingers:t2:

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5943

Yeah, I’m not sure who he even is? That’s something I kind of try to keep in mind when reading any of these sorts of tweets in deciding how much stock to put in them. And it’s a huge amount of data dump to take the time to fact check. So I read to get the gist of his perspective, but it’s not even really a data point for me without establishing his substance.

A few knowledgeable people that I follow do follow him, but they follow thousands of people so I don’t take that as an endorsement.

And it looks like no one I follow retweeted it (despite the volume of retweets it has) so from the start I kind of classified it as a random perspective rather than an established expert opinion.

Does anyone know who he is?

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5944

The objective is that it the school department’s, and only the school department’s, responsibility to monitor the Covid status of children?

Pooled testing was designed to take place during the school year, not vacations.

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It looks like it was presented to parents that the district offered to test all kids before they returned to campus but then were unable to folllow through?

It looks like they actually delayed the start of school by 2 days to do this testing. So the objective was to test everyone who requested it? Or parents were recommended to seek an alternate test if they didn’t take advantage of it?

I think this is the correct district:

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https://www.cpsd.us/district_news/school_closed_monday__tuesday_for_testing

5946

They can test who they have permission to test. The numbers suggest 3k did not show up.

Sigh, when a district does something that the city/community (or anyone else) is not doing- they don’t deserve that criticism. Did your district offer free screening testing after vacation?

I would love to hear all the examples of the districts across the country that tried to do that.

Most of us have just been dealing with all the sick, positive students that are growing daily.

My parents grew up in Cambridge. I was born there. My mom retired from Harvard (admissions). My husband lived in Cambridge and graduated from Latin HS. My dad taught in the same Cambridge HS he graduated from, as did his dad. We were townies.

I am amazed they got 3600 tests. I will they could have provided transportation. I am in awe of them tonight.

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5947

Same. I wish my city had done what Cambridge did. Truly. My assessment of the situation as someone who is reasonably well plugged into the education landscape, as a parent of an elementary school student, and as a person who lives in one of MA’s gateway cities, is that our districts are doing the best they can with underwhelming guidance and support from the DOE and often less than underwhelming resources. I witness over and over again how hard educators, school administrators, and school staff are trying despite putting themselves at risk every day. Thank you.

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5948

One final piece for people outside of MA, or those outside of the greater Boston area.

The governor order rapid tests and distributed them to 100 communities (was it 100?) across the state. Many of those cities/towns gave out those test to every student as they left for vacation and asked them to test the day before they returned to school.

My city parents don’t understand why our schools (where I live, not work) did not do this. Every day Facebook was filled with posts.

Cambridge tried to do something.

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5949

Every school district in the country should have had a policy of:

(1) push the start of school back 2 days
(2) saliva PCR for every student on Day 1
(3) results on Day 2
(4) students with negative tests go back to school on Day 3

This country (and each state) spends so much money on so many things that are less important than protecting kids. This should have been simple, but instead it has been a mess. It is infuriating.

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5950

We do lunch with our kids and even though it’s a bit of a pain, it’s been worth it to us to keep them safer and even now that they are vaccinated keep them out of what I call the Covid Cafeteria and getting their younger (not yet eligible to be vaccinated) siblings sick.

Last year our kids were only in person from March-May, numbers were trending in a great direction & the school had good lunch plans so we were less worried about it. The lunch plan last year was spaced out and staggered lunchtimes in the cafeteria and every possible day that they could eat outside, they took it. It was just when PE had to be indoors (so they lost half the cafeteria to PE) that instead of cramming them into the half a cafeteria (because if PE was indoors then lunch couldn’t be outdoors either), they had them eat in their not so distanced classrooms. We weren’t quite comfortable with 25-30 unmasked kids with only 18 inches between desks even with numbers going down, so we would go eat with them on indoor PE days (PE was every Tue and Thur and if the kids didn’t know it was outdoor PE, I would call the school 15 min before the start of lunch to verify- sometimes it would get announced the day before that lunch would be outside, but mostly it was a day-of decision).

This year, our spread has been high and hasn’t really come down since Delta started climbing in the summer and ICU’s have been functionally full since Aug 23rd. We would’ve gladly done online school this year, but the program our kids are in wasn’t offered online so we’ve been doing a lot of mitigation ourselves for our kids to be in person this year. Same school but a new principal and while she is a very sweet lady who has very kindly worked with us on every accommodation we have asked for she is pretty much back to normal business this year, including lunch (from what we’ve peeked at when the cafeteria door is open and we are sitting on the the adjacent lawn while we eat, the lunch aides have the kids do a chant when it’s time to be excused and there’s obviously no masks on, plus no distancing at all, hence why I call it Covid Cafeteria- they do have assigned seats for contract tracing and they space the kids out as much as they can but told us up front it was not going to be as much as last year because they weren’t staggering lunches anymore). And so we block out everyday 11:45am-1pm (thankfully DH and I have flexible jobs and very understanding bosses to be able to block out that time) to have them eat in our car or on the lawn if it’s a nice day.

After the second week the school office got to know who we are really well and they realized we weren’t taking them off campus, so told us not to sign the kids out ( the kids just come straight to the office while the rest of their class comes to lunch & the office windows look right over the parking lot and front lawn so they could absolutely keep eyes on us the whole time if they wanted to- and I think the main secretary generally keeps an eye out on that front lawn & parking lot anyway, she is always noticing a lot of the goings on when I chat with her).

So I think if you have the flexibility in your day and it would put you at ease, it’s absolutely a great idea, especially if your hospital capacity is looking anything like what we are about to run into in our neck of the woods (not good).

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5951

There is not the supply. To have the supply, I think everyone would have had to have seen omicron coming from much further ahead. School had been pretty safe (with masks anyway) and the vaccines for kids were on the horizon.

But seriously there are so many school kids in this country. Would have been nice but not feasible especially when everyone comes back from break pretty much the same day. Not even like start of school when it’s staggered over a month by region. :frowning:

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5952

I don’t know any school districts where I live that do any kind of testing in schools at any time. So that kind of policy was never going to happen here. I don’t know if I would want them to honestly. Apparently you can test one day and be positive the next. I just saw an ice skater tested positive for Covid after getting vaccinated, boosted, isolating from holiday gatherings and testing negative to be able to go to the US championships. So in your scenario, students could test, get a negative and then be unknowingly positive on day 3.

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5953

Our school screened the whole campus on the way into day 1 after break and had at least one positive case with class in modified quarantine on day 2.

I’m still happy they did the testing as it weeded out some post holiday cases. But it’s not a zero Covid strategy. It’s a keep enough staff healthy to keep school open strategy. (So I’m agreeing with your point.)

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5954

16 days until WDW. People travelling with us decided to take antigen test, since the trip is soon - 1 turned up positive :woman_facepalming: (Asymptomatic) Hopefully the others stay negative. The one is getting a PCR test to confirm & isolating from the rest of the household. I plan to do antigen test two days before - in case I have to cancel the flight :crazy_face: (…granted, I’m low risk, work from home, avoid people)

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5955

Again, I think you are missing his point. (And mine.)

Sadly, I think you are (understandably) reading through the eyes of an educator that has been beat up at every turn and have come to expect it. I really don’t think that’s his intent at all. (And it certainly wasn’t mine.)

This is where he starts:

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This is where he lands:

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I think his point is “how are people that don’t do this professionally every day supposed to keep up when we as professionals can barely keep up.” And “here is the chart someone should have given them so they realized why the plan couldn’t succeed as written.”

It was a good plan until Omicron. Because Omicron.

Educators have been asked to do the impossible the last 2 years. Most have truly stepped up and done their absolute best.

I initially brought up his subsequent post to help anyone else from getting into the same situation if they are doing pooled testing. Bringing up the original post was not to criticize the district, but demonstrating why it is an important consideration, not just some math guy showing off some algorithms.

Sort of. We have a testing center. I’m not sure it’s well utilized.

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But it’s kind of pointless when we literally have some people on the board (enough to control the votes) and some amount of staff that think we shouldn’t be doing ANY mitigations. And a good number of parents. We should treat it like the common cold or flu. And really, wouldn’t it be best to just let all the kids get it already so we can go back to normal? Apparently seeing my kids wear masks is traumatizing for their kids? I’m not exaggerating. They don’t come right out and say that (well, some of the parents do), but it’s obvious that is their mindset from what they do say.

As a district as a whole, they are doing what the state of Texas requires and not much more. They’re only posting a dashboard because they know people will submit endless Request for Public Information forms if they don’t.

Those that do care (which includes a lot of teachers and some admin) are trying to do what they can within the governor’s orders and without having access to the resources they could if the district chose. My understanding is the district was entitled to more money for mitigation but didn’t ask for it.

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5956

This would be a huge waste of money and resources. Even if we weren’t strained for testing and lab space, this would still not be smart. It would cost school districts thousands upon thousand of dollars to test millions of asymptomatic kids. It would be one thing if after testing they only interacted with people in their class, but they don’t. After school most kids are going to be exposed to several more people during activities or play dates and their parents will be exposed while working as well.

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5957

Yeah, I really don’t know.

Quite a few experts think this Omicron wave could peak third week of January. We are literally in the situation we talked about in Spring 2020. “Flatten the curve so hospital systems don’t get overwhelmed.” Some are already overwhelmed. Hospitalizations will likely peak 2 weeks after cases peak.

This keeps getting worse:

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https://twitter.com/jeremyfaust/status/1478955853625626631?s=21

This isn’t just about Covid patients. This is about life-saving healthcare availability in general.

Would testing every kid on their way back into school help flatten the curve enough to save some lives? Maybe?

“Get it now or get it later” does not yield the same result. Now equals more deaths. After the hospitalizations peak equals less deaths.

Sure, some families are conducting themselves in a way that means they have a lot of exposure points besides school. But a number aren’t.

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