Schools and colleges reopening

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fiby41
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by fiby41 »

Sclass wrote:
Mon Sep 07, 2020 5:18 pm
I suspect if it has been an abject failure we’d have heard it all over the news
How much do you want to bet that closing campus a week after the semester started was the plan all along, but they had to lure kids here first to make sure they got that tuition? Says ~ https://twitter.com/ShadyData/status/12 ... 9373877251

This is true here. My_uni resorted to testing only last semester and didn't fulfill teaching part of the equation. This semester, online classes started regularly when they had to ask for fees.
Last edited by fiby41 on Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hristo Botev
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

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This morning we are doing our first day (of this school year) doing the virtual schooling thing again. DD has some sort of stomach bug, and so in an abundance of caution we kept both her and DS home from in-person school today. This has meant a mad dash as we try and remember how we managed from a laptop/internet standpoint to have both kids in virtual school back in the spring with parents working from home as well. Very much looking forward to the kids being back for in person schooling, hopefully as early as tomorrow. We've definitely been spoiled with having the kids back in person, and have gotten out of the lockdown mindset.

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Sclass
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by Sclass »

@HB Wait, does that mean your daughter has to be tested now for her to go back to in person learning? Or do they take your word for it her tummy bug isn’t Covid and she’s clear to return?

@fiby41 that sounds pretty wicked but I guess as they say if you want to figure out motives all you need to do is follow the money.

Hristo Botev
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by Hristo Botev »

Sclass wrote:
Tue Sep 08, 2020 8:44 am
@HB Wait, does that mean your daughter has to be tested now for her to go back to in person learning? Or do they take your word for it her tummy bug isn’t Covid and she’s clear to return?
Both of my kids have picked up on the habit of starting questions by saying, "Wait, . . . ?"; so my natural reaction now when I hear anyone use it (including my kids) is to say: "no one is waiting."

To answer your question, it's up to the parents. If DD develops a fever, then we'll get her tested.

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Sclass
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

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Yeah I was just curious about your school’s protocol. I’ve heard the one in our area is very lax and strict at the same time. It’s a really difficult management problem to pile on top of teaching children.

Apparently the Orange County schools send a child to the quarantine zone of the school if they have symptoms. Then they go home and the family is responsible for testing. That’s fine, but one of the arguments they’re using to reopen here is that kids in our community don’t eat unless they go to school. I’m sitting here scratching my head thinking about the kind of parents who nurture their kid like that may not take the kid in for Covid testing and followup monitoring to get the all clear to return.

It’s like there are too many constraints and not enough. I went over to our school district’s site and read about their plan and it looked overthought and underthought all at the same time if that makes any sense. Like some plans seemed really difficult to enforce while others were just too lax or oblivious to potential calamities.

Peanut
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by Peanut »

@SClass: I heard from a Stanford pscyh professor that fully 42% of the students at the university are majoring in Computer Science these days. Says a lot about our society and future, and some of it is not good...

Agree on the school regulations being all over the place. And there's a valid argument that the obsession over say bleaching all surfaces to the point of wasting a day of school on this activity in hybrid plans addresses very low risk while the refusal to think about airflow ignores much more significant risk.

On colleges, I think the condemnation and especially punishment of students has gone too far. Some of the schools have turned into de facto police states. True, frat parties are idiotic in the best of times and I've read crazy stuff like some students at Notre Dame were actively trying to get Covid so that they would then have the antibodies. But admin made the decision to reopen. There seems to have been zero effort anywhere to provide any kind of alternative forums for socialization. What did they expect these teens were going to do, when nobody else in society from seniors on down has shown much self-restraint? It was about the money.

Hristo Botev
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by Hristo Botev »

Sclass wrote:
Tue Sep 08, 2020 11:09 pm
It’s like there are too many constraints and not enough. I went over to our school district’s site and read about their plan and it looked overthought and underthought all at the same time if that makes any sense.
I just assume there's going to be some sort of an outbreak at my kids' school eventually, and I pray (it's a Catholic school, so I'm allowed to do that) that it's not some sort of superspreader event that shuts down the entire school and/or results in someone in a more vulnerable population getting really sick. Our job is to do what we can to make sure that our kids aren't responsible for the outbreak. But I'm personally not going to overthink this thing. We are all making choices as to what risky behaviors we are willing to accept. For me, it's Mass and the kids going to in-person schooling and soccer practice; with other risky behaviors eliminated like going to the grocery store, or getting on a plane, or going to bars/restaurants.

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fiby41
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

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1.8 million halltickets were downloaded for the engineering entrance exam which takes place every year in March but was conducted from 1st to 6th Sept this year after being postponed twice.
Out of them 0.953 million were expected to showup but no more than 0.8 million actually showed up. Approx 1.5k students gave the paper in every exam center.
Supreme court had rejected the plea filed by cabinet ministers of 6 states to postpone these exams until central government could establish 1 examination center in every district.
1.597 million aspirants are appearing for the medical entrance exam with no more than 500 per center.

Peanut
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by Peanut »

Last week my kid woke up with a runny nose and dry cough, which was a big surprise after half a year of prime health. I thought it unlikely to be covid but he's attending in-person school in a pandemic, and our school's policy basically requires test clearance. The first morning I tried the local clinic which was already booked for the day and I couldn't even get through the pediatrics channel but in the afternoon I got an appointment through peds for the next day. During the registration interview I felt weirdly guilty because it was clear to me (not a doctor just a rational person) from the questions he didn't medically 'need' this test but we were going to use these valuable resources anyway and be approved to do so. 24 hrs after the swab the result came in negative. Back to school the next day, probably two days after I'd have normally sent him back.

A minor blip all in all, but it was only after the confirmation that I felt the stress I'd been under those three days lift. The idea of repeating this experience over and over again this winter is not appealing.

Peanut
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by Peanut »

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/pare ... virus.html

This is an article about how the trial process for the modified version of the covid vaccine that will need to be developed for children has not.even.started.yet. I was already thinking that it would be nearly impossible to vaccinate everyone before fall 2021 even with the speedy vaccine processes underway. Now I am thinking there is 0 chance of this happening for any of the kids. What does this mean? A second year of remote learning? Or a reorientation of people's attitudes towards risk?

tonyedgecombe
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Why would you vaccinate children, the risk of harm is minimal for them.

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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by jacob »

tonyedgecombe wrote:
Sat Sep 26, 2020 8:40 am
Why would you vaccinate children, the risk of harm is minimal for them.
Short answer: Rough metaphor. Roughly for the same reason that people practice trigger discipline at a shooting gallery. The risk to you is minimal if you don't but the risk to others is great.

Longer answer: To prevent them from spreading the disease to those where the risk of harm is high. In each population, there are (WLOG) three types of people. The Susceptible who are healthy but can get infected. The Infected who are or will be spreading the infection to the Susceptible group. And the Recovered/Vaccinated group who can not be infected and who are not infecting others. A vaccine immediately shifts people from the Susceptible group to the Recovered/Vaccinated group. This not only eliminates harm to themselves (insofar the vaccine takes, depending on its efficacy) but also reduces the rate by which the Susceptible group turns into Infected people by basically shorting themselves out of the epidemic equation.

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jennypenny
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by jennypenny »

@Peanut--I think you're in the same area (Philly). We had a similar episode earlier this week with DS and since he'd just gone back to school I called his pulmonologist to ask about a test. She said that the air quality is terrible right now from the smoke that's made it's way across the country combined with the lack of rain. She told me to double his inhaler use at school where they are keeping all of the windows open for better ventilation and make sure to keep the windows closed and run the A/C at home as much as possible to keep the air filtered. She didn't even order him a test (and he's fine now).


I asked the pulmonologist about any potential vaccine. She said it would probably be cleared for 16+ and possibly 12+ with some restrictions unless there are serious side effects that would disproportionately affect kids. She also suggested that by the time any mass vaccine was ready for distribution (she implied next summer), the virus may have attenuated to the point where only high risk people and their families need it, similar to the flu.

That said, she told us to assume there would not be a vaccine ready by the time he starts college next fall and to plan accordingly.

UK-with-kids
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by UK-with-kids »

Our children have had every vaccine going as I'm no anti-vaxer, but I would be very reluctant to give them something that wasn't tried and tested just because the government had decided it was the right thing to do politically to get everyone back to work.

Peanut
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Re: Schools and colleges reopening

Post by Peanut »

Couple articles about the harms of U.S. schools remaining closed on everything from dropout rate to GDP growth to years of life lost:

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pub ... fetime?utm

-"We estimate that an additional 2 to 9 percent of high-school students could drop out as a result of the coronavirus and associated school closures—232,000 ninth-to-11th graders (in the mildest scenario) to 1.1 million (in the worst one)."

Among other things, HS dropouts tend to live shorter lives than they would otherwise.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamane ... le/2772834

-"The decision to close US public primary schools in the early months of 2020 may be associated with a decrease in life expectancy for US children." Their estimate is 5.53 million YLL, and they specifically note they did not include the McKinsey HS numbers in their analysis.

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