This might be helpful methodology to anyone in an organization doing pooled testing.
https://twitter.com/billhanage/status/1479141798769479682?s=21
(@PrincipalTinker ?)
We donât do pool in my district but yesterday they went to pools of 2. Since you PCR everyone in a positive pool, the numbers were going crazy.
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Needing pools of 2 implies that prevalence is probably 10% or higher. Am I reading that right, @amvanhoose_701479? I mean, Iâm using the chart backwards to derive prevalence, but I assume if theyâre getting too many positive pools by doing pools of more than 2, youâd have to deduce the chart would prevent that if you knew the prevalence and followed forwards.
I came across this thread today from another source and finally read it. I think Twitter is a very poor medium for this kind of information, because people end up only seeing one or two tweets taken out of context. He seems to make a case that vaccines arenât enough to protect us against long Covid, then ends the thread. Then in a coda, he adds something like, âwhoops! the study I was citing only looked at 1 dose of vaccine. 2 doses will protect against long Covid!â
Not everyone will scroll down that far, and it ends up being a very misleading thread as a result.
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Hereâs the relevant part (read from here to the end of the thread):
https://twitter.com/ianricksecker/status/1479056001554739201?s=21
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You hang in there!
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I donât know that works.
I see what youâre getting at, butâŚ
âIf your sauce tastes too acidic, add some sugar. Well, since I added some sugar and it tastes good at this point, it must have been too acidic before.â
Maybe, maybe not?
Iâll have a think on it.
Bill Hanage is at Harvard. Here is his situation that caused him to dig up and share that chart:
The rest of the story is here if anyone is interested:
https://twitter.com/billhanage/status/1478920177232355329?s=21
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Thank you!
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There is so much wrong with his posts. The school department is reporting results of pooled testing of approximately 3600 students. There are about 6600 students in that district.
Districts can only pool test ( or any other tests) students that parents have provided permission.
The state provides free pooled testing for districts. If they did it over the vacation week (I am reading that right? ) school employees gave up their vacation time to do it.
I am sorry but it seems like there is a lot of criticism in that thread. Did all liners depend on the schools to test their kids before vacation? After family visits?
The district followed the state protocols, that were changed yesterday at 3:00.
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Honestly, Iâve 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 theyâre looking at LC conditions say 6-8 months post infection, that means theyâre 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 âWith Alpha, the risk of lagging annoying LC symptoms is roughly X% and the risk of debilitating LC symptoms is roughly Y%â, thereâs a decent chance those numbers have changed enough they arenât 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, âif you are a month out from having Covid (or a suspected case of a Covid) and just one of your legs starts swelling up, itâs imperative you get medical treatment immediately.â
So many people think of Covid as a respiratory disease. While acute cases often are, LC symptoms often arenât. 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:
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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I have a doctorâs 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! 
) It has not escaped me that this could be related to my bout with Covid in December 2020. 
Just completed the previsit check-in questionnaire and they ask if youâve had Covid. So I imagine they are on the look-out for post-covid issues as well. I guess weâll find out. I felt lucky to escape long covid, but perhaps I didnât and the affects were just more hidden.
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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 theyâre 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, âbut they vastly reduce the risk of hospitalization and deathâ in the same breath.
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I think thatâs sort of his point? School employees followed the plan, likely indeed giving up vacation time, but the plan was not fit for purpose so didnât 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 donât have the range of expertise to foresee all the twists and turns. âAdapt this plan as needed to fit your situationâ is going to be challenging with this step of a learning curve and this fluid of a crisis.
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I hope whatever it is, is trivial and isnât anything to do with covid 
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Yeah, Iâm not sure who he even is? Thatâs 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 itâs a huge amount of data dump to take the time to fact check. So I read to get the gist of his perspective, but itâs 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 donât 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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The objective is that it the school departmentâs, and only the school departmentâs, responsibility to monitor the Covid status of children?
Pooled testing was designed to take place during the school year, not vacations.
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 didnât take advantage of it?
I think this is the correct district:
https://www.cpsd.us/district_news/school_closed_monday__tuesday_for_testing
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 donât 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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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 MAâs 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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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 donât 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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