peugeot mongrel

I wonder how many K-12 teachers will become infected before they start to quit in significant numbers?

https://www.sltrib.com/news/educatio...-meeting-utah/

Hondo Gravel

My sister was due back around Aug 17 but her district is delayed. No school for the first two weeks so the first two football games are cancelled. Football is religion here. From there they don’t know it might become online school only this fall. As of today no one knows what they are going to do. . I don’t see them possible having school with the conditions we have now. I’m sure many teachers who can move on to something else will.

Hondo Gravel

And what until a no mask person gets sick orvsomeone close to them do. Several cases like that here with the latest a 30 year old going to a covid party to prove it was a hoax. Got infected and died at age 30. Final words saying he made a mistake thinking it was a hoax. This was in San Antonio, Texas.

peugeot mongrel

My wife is retired San Antonio inner city high school science teacher. My opinion is no safe classroom opening can be done.
This is now a question that is unable to ignore and will become very contentious.
Factor in that all of the plans made by so many different deciding parties will not, in reality, be able to be carried out with the existing systems and locations.

bikemig 

I think the best thing said about Betsy DeVos was Rep. Pressley's tweet that she wouldn't trust DeVos to take care of her houseplant let alone a child.

What DeVos and Trump are doing is criminal. They have no plan to keep children or teachers safe. Trump doesn't care who gets sick; all he cares about is getting re-elected.

noisebeam

I can't say what I want to since this is not P&R

livedarklions

I expect there will be teachers strikes in a lot of places as well as parent's boycotting.

Podagrower

Floridaman is seeking a lead early on this one. School isn't in session and my county has 13 elementary students and 4 staff members in quarantine after an elementary school student in a summer program tested positive and 33 high school football team members and 5 coaches in quarantine after 2 of the players tested positive. So opening schools should be no problem.

Hondo Gravel

Similar here. Strength and conditioning programs started up then quickly shut down because players and coaches were getting sick. And school starts in a few weeks? Going to be chaotic.

tyrion

One teacher said "I didn't sign up to be a martyr."

CliffordK

Of course it isn't just the teachers, but the parents, and grandparents, and all the neighbors, and just about everyone else being put at risk in the neighborhoods.

Kids can be very effective at spreading germs and disease.

CliffordK

On the flip side, they can't just stay home forever, and effective social discipline might be good for a 40 year old, but may be difficult for a 6 year old to understand. Or, perhaps a teenager who already has heard that they will likely get the flu, and be fine.

I think around here the plan is for 2 days a week in school with half of the kids, and 3 days a week of home schooling. It will be an interesting time.

Our county had about 1 "reported" new case a day for the first few months, and now is up to 5 to 15 new cases a day. Still, numbers are quite low for shutting everything down, but could explode quickly.

A lot of the younger generation in the recent cases, due to their doing stupid stuff.

Pouhana

Are you a lawyer?

How many thousands were killed by the Governor of New York?

Are you an industrial hygiene or safety engineer?

More kids dying by gunshot in schools than with Chinese Flu.

Pouhana

Who will transfer the pathogen from asymptomatic children to the nearest nursing home?

If you had thoracic surgery or expertise in diseases of the lungs, you would agree if there are no symptoms, there is no coughing and discharge of droplets carrying the virus.

fooferdoggie 

what is the Chinese flue? covid is not the flue.

Hondo Gravel

All I know is that I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night

DrIsotope

The answer for California is: zero. The California higher-ups already decreed that the schools shall not be opening for the fall. It's "distance learning" again. It worked horribly for the last two months of the 2019 school year. Let's see how it works this time around.

My hopes are not high. But hey, I don't have to drive the kids to school! So a small win for me. I have to update both of their computers, so that's kind of a downer. Comes out in the wash.

Pouhana

Interesting you say that. I will not share hospital slang with you.

Are you a medical professional outsider?

DeadGrandpa

I haven't been keeping up with the latest propaganda, but it's my understanding that children of school age (<18) are the least likely to die or have severe symptoms, so their risk is least. Not insignificant, but the least risk. The teachers have significantly more risk. I have no children, so this isn't personal.

Do we now have the goal of zero new cases, zero new deaths, or the more realistic expectation that everyone is going to contract the virus, and we're just trying to keep the hospital facilities from being overwhelmed? Not everyone is ready to hear that the virus will get them, eventually.

In my view, the only way to stop the virus spread entirely is to shut down society and the economy for a year, and I don't see that happening.

bikemig 

You're calling this the Chinese Flu? Seriously? That's sad.

Are you paying attention to how poorly we are doing compared to other wealthy democracies? Here is a graph showing the difference between the US and the EU (roughly similar population).

https://www.gzeromedia.com/the-graph...-spike-28-june

So the response of our government is grossly incompetent. But that's what happens when you have a president like Donald Trump who has ignored the advice of public health experts and has treated the pandemic as a messaging problem rather than as a public health problem.

CliffordK

There seem to be reports of people who are fully asymptomatic spreading the disease. It is hard to discern for sure, or how the disease is spread. Did they take their temperatures regularly?

Singing and probably yelling seems to be forceful enough to spread the virus. Ever hear kids shout or yell? Laugh?

If one can get the virus by touching one's mouth or face, one can probably spread it in the same manner. Chewing a pen or pencil?

As winter comes along, kids will get the "common cold", "allergies", and perhaps even the flu (influenza). Irritant sneezing? How many parents will ignore a mild case of COVID as probably something else?

Will kids be sent to school when they probably should have been kept home?

Yep, I was one of those in the past that would rather go to work or school when I knew I was sick, but felt more of a responsibility to go to work than to stay home.

CliffordK

Yes, kids seem to have low risk of acute complications. We may not know for a few years if there is some more persistent complication like scarring int the lungs, or cardiac anomalies.

Yet, kids contact parents and grandparents. And, someone cares for them when they're ill. And, those parents and grandparents have contact with neighbors and coworkers. A few infections can be a whole community quickly.
We don't know if there will be an effective vaccine or not. I believe I managed to evade the 2009 Swine Flu, and stupidly never got vaccinated, and think it finally caught up with me around 2016 or so.

Assuming a resurgence of COVID this fall and winter, a good number of people will be able to evade it this year.

Then the question is whether we will have an effective vaccine before it comes back around next year or every few years.

So far, none of our local nursing homes has had a significant outbreak, or any deaths. People can be effectively isolated. Forever?
I believe North Korea was able to fight down the numbers without a significant shutdown.

However, I've also wondered what the effects of say doing a periodic 2-week COVID Holiday would be. Shut down everything including grocery stores for 2 weeks. The only thing open would be Emergency Medicine. Then, as one reopens, be very careful to isolate any individual or family that demonstrates illness.

Vietnam apparently would shut down entire communities for a single case, then hit it hard, and reopen once the cases were resolved.

Unfortunately we are so far behind the curve that it will be hard to catch up. I do think we could knock out the illness locally with contact tracing (county of 300K+ residents), but it is difficult to prevent re-importing the diseases from neighboring areas.

Hondo Gravel

The Houston Oiler have a healthy Warren Moon and will win the 2021 Super Bowl. The Oilers are free of any ailments but they tend to choke when they have a lead in the fourth quarter. Get behind the Oilers and the future 2021 Super Bowl Champions.

DeadGrandpa

Thank you for the most reasoned reply I believe I've ever read here on BF. I don't know if "herd immunity" applies in this situation, but I've heard that the (Covid) mortality rate in the K-12 age group is many times less than the mortality rate for the regular flu. We don't close schools because of the flu. Maybe we should.
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Seattle Forrest

​​​​​​Are those our only two choices? We can't drive down infection rates while we await a vaccine? A lot of other countries did, so it's possible ... why aren't we up to the task?