outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

tbqh if I were earning fewer "badges" in something called "zearn" I don't know that I would be too concerned

Lol disparate impact

well yes that part's bad i'm just feeling my skin crawl b/c of edtech

I love to go to skøøl and Zearn

Until this March, sending children to school was legally mandated and parents could be jailed if they didn't do it.

So it's not like "school being most people's main source of work-enabling childcare" came from out of nowhere, or is a bougie invention of lazy-ass rich parents. It was literally required, and there is no other comparable infrastructure.

As Deb Perelman writes here,

one might wonder if you’re supposed to educate your children at night. Or perhaps you should have been paying for some all-age day care backup that sat empty while kids were at school in case the school you were paying taxes to keep open and that requires, by law, that your child attend, abruptly closed for the year.

Also if you can work from home (as almost all of us can), or you can afford to just Not Work, you may be speaking from a position of some privilege. Just sayin.

almost all of us? say what???

xpost stopped reading the article you posted at "When we reopen schools, some people at schools — kids, staff — will get COVID-19. Some of these infections would happen anyway, outside of school. Many of them will not be driven by school contacts. But there will be in some in school transmission, no matter how careful we are. This is the unfortunately reality. Some of these people may get very sick. If we are not willing to accept this, we cannot open schools. We also, in that case, should not open anything else. "

Because that's just bad fucking logic. there are a lot of businesses re-opened right now that shouldn't be, but the research is STILL unclear how much children spread the virus. It's not even clear if we have an accurate estimate of how many children truly have the virus since their symptoms are milder, fewer probably get tested AND most of them can't choose to get tested if their parents don't want them to.

There is a wide gulf of difference between reopening a restaurant with patio-only seating and requiring masks and opening classrooms and mushing kids into rooms with poor ventilation, inches away from their teacher. It could very well accelerate transmission much higher than perhaps a restaurant seating outdoors, or a retail store that limits the number of people who come in and wear masks. It might not. We don't know. But these situations are not the same . It's also amusing that she left out the possibility that students or teachers could also die.

I don't think it's an easy problem either, but the fact is - despite the endless optimism that article's author has, schools opening safely will require measures that many state Governors, school boards, school principals, etc aren't willing to enforce. Students may not wear masks (there is nothing required that they do in the guidelines for re-opening schools in Florida). I've already established how in some schools in Orange County, distancing will not happen. And kids, especially younger ones, may not distance when around friends. They may hug, hi-five, etc. I'm not faulting kids for that, that's how kids are, and depending on their age, they might fully understand the gravity. and old habits die hard.

Obviously, there's no way to re-open schools without some level of infection, but the way it's going to be opened in many states, we know from public officials who ALREADY have PUBLICLY STATED they're going to be taking few, if any of the steps that Oster suggested. Orange County California actually suggested its schools do not have any form of social distancing and argued that masks were harmful (but most of the local school systems ignored the recommendations).

Even the American Academy of Pediatrics, who are encouraging re-opening schools, have admitted that doing so safely hinges on a number of things - namely listening to public health officials, and scientists. To wit:

"Returning to school is important for the healthy development and well-being of children, but we must pursue re-opening in a way that is safe for all students, teachers and staff. Science should drive decision-making on safely reopening schools. Public health agencies must make recommendations based on evidence, not politics. We should leave it to health experts to tell us when the time is best to open up school buildings, and listen to educators and administrators to shape how we do it.

Local school leaders, public health experts, educators and parents must be at the center of decisions about how and when to reopen schools, taking into account the spread of COVID-19 in their communities and the capacities of school districts to adapt safety protocols to make in-person learning safe and feasible. For instance, schools in areas with high levels of COVID-19 community spread should not be compelled to reopen against the judgment of local experts. A one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate for return to school decisions."

In Orange County, CA, many of the health officials on the panel that the decision was attributed to said they had next to no input on the recommendations made, and that their names were merely slapped on there to legitimize what the Board said. Desantis and Richard Corcoran are not basing their decisions on what public health officials say - Desantis fired one for daring to report accurate COVID-19 data!

I agree leaving children home full-time is deleterious - it's also deleterious to many adults. But it isn't a solution to a problem if we only accommodate one side of the problem, at the expense of the other. I know several people who have been in the hospital for COVID-19, some of whom have co-morbidities, some who don't. I'm not looking forward to some of my other friends joining them simply because they're crammed into a classroom because they've been told they can't work from home and they're welcome to find another job. This isn't speculation - this is what has been explicitly stated in the State of Florida.

None of my teacher friends even KNOW if they're going to be in-classroom or working from home. They've all submitted preferences, and none have any idea if they were granted. Teachers union asked to delay re-opening schools until COVID cases were under control, but no consideration was given. They originally delayed it until 8/21, but since that would cause teachers to lose a paycheck, which concerned teachers, it was then moved up until 8/10 earlier this week. Teachers might be less worried about losing that paycheck if there were any kind of Federal unemployment in August that they could apply for as a furloughed employee, but they can't.

I'm well aware that the quality of education dips during a pandemic, in person or via remote, but idk what that point has to do with the fact that nobody I know that's a teacher signed up to be a babysitter during a global pandemic. They're already leading Active Shooter drills, a thing that didn't even exist in my schools growing up. In some places, they're being asked to carry handguns to protect children. Now they're being told they may have to return to work in a possibly unsafe environment (being that we're run by a lunatic), and told their requests to work from home might not be accommodated, and they're welcome to either do this, or quit their career.

I should really walk away from this discussion at this point.

like none of you all are fucking listening to a god damn fucking thing. fuck this

sorry my dear firends legitimate concerns are wishy washy to you. I'll go fuckin tell them

DESANTIS IS FINE, HE'S NO LONGER PSYCHO, since now we're making a point about teachers and lol fuck teachers.

The answer to all of this seems like:

1. Force banks to put a hold on mortagages
2. Cancel rents until the virus is under control
3. Pay full PPP wages to everyone who needs it
4. Don't open the schools - do distance learning instead
5. Find a way to help disadvantaged kids participate in distance learning
6. Wait for vaccines/treatments to bring the mortality rate down to seasonal flu rates.

I'm shocked that 1 and 2 haven't happened. It's completely messed-up and arbitrary that congress is cutting PPP wages.

At least in San Francisco, we are going to have small pods for disadvantaged kids to go for distance-learning.

Florida is deep in the clutches of late-stage conservatism. It sucks that you have to deal with this.

wow xp

my wife's job can be done 100% from home, in fact there is no reason for them to be in the office at all right now, all common areas are closed and no in-person meetings are allowed, and yet she is required to return in 4 weeks. her commute is an hour each way. so, an extremely difficult situation is about to be made much, much worse

Yeah Neanderthal I think you're both mischaracterizing my position, and subsequently going way beyond it to find ways in which it might be twisted to be insulting to you and dismissive of your friends' lives.

It is neither; I am in fact agreeing with you upthread that teachers and parents have both been betrayed by the fucked-upness of the situation. It is a false dichotomy that you are only allowed to care about one of those groups of people, in a some zero-sum smackdown.

What I was responding to was the implication that parents are somehow being selfish jerks if they attempt to return to work, or if they hope for in-person school as a means to doing that. For at least some families that is literally their only way to pay the rent. Which is itself fucked-up, as you noted. Parents did not invent that bind, it has been handed to them.

And like, I don't know why it's necessary to say this but: my parents are both teachers, two of my sisters are teachers - but even if they weren't, I would still not want teachers to be in danger. Of course school would be great but it must be done safely for all concerned and we are obviously not there yet.

We're going to hear no end of hydroxychloroquine for the next 98 days.

From a scientific perspective, the hydroxychloroquine claims are absurd. From a political perspective, it has logic and we're not done hearing about it. A friend's explainer. pic.twitter.com/GIxKWujhVL

— Esther Choo, MD MPH (@choo_ek) July 29, 2020

every time ppl talk trump and his "strategy" while predicting the coming month's events at length my eyes glaze over tbh

fuck is that a potential COVID symptom

i know there's a dedicated thread for this, but Louie Gohmert finally got covid19.

"If I get it," Gohmert told CNN in June, "you'll never see me without a mask."

Dream a little dream

ACTUALLY... here is a video of AG Barr and Gohmert.

While Barr arrived with a mask, it was off when he walked into the hearing room, so both men were not wearing masks at this time. pic.twitter.com/xm6wuq6QvW

— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) July 29, 2020

I apologize for my outbursts yesterday - to caek, YMP, frogs, anybody who was in the line of fire.

👍🏻

No need. I think everybody here gets that your passion comes from a place of great humanity.

and as great - and righteous - frustration

It's a frustrating time fo sho

word

If anybody you know starts to cite epidemiologist Harvey Risch's claims that hydroxychloroquine is effective based on his Ingraham report appearance, he's been eviscerated here:

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/hydroxychloroquine-to-treat-covid-19-evidence-cant-seem-to-kill-it/

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwkvTBgTO7A

Other countries' goverments paid out 75-80% of employees salary so the public could stay home. Didn't not realize that was kind of the standard.
So depressed and angry at our government's endless cruelty and fuck-ups.

Brazilian President Bolsonaro says he has 'mold' in lungs https://t.co/JChk2GCpQy pic.twitter.com/VBu8d00tFc

— Reuters U.S. News (@ReutersUS) July 31, 2020

A bit of a rant:

I made the mistake of having my aunt and uncle (who live in Manhattan) over to visit, because we haven't seen them in months and also maybe because I felt sorry for them thinking they were cooped up in a 1BR apt with their dog all the time.

- We asked them to come in the late PM so it was cool enough that we could stay outside. They came at noon.
- We asked them to wear masks inside. My uncle did for a while and then took it off. My aunt refused because of something incoherent about how the dye could cause an allergic reaction (I mean, she's 75 so it's even more of a risk to her than me but w/e. I kept my mask on).
- It turns out that my uncle is working on site in a store, which they didn't previously tell us. They are also regularly going to stores, like daily.
- They did not maintain distance.
- To make matters worse, they started complaining about how "low class blacks" who they "do not like" are moving into their building. For context, my aunt and uncle are formerly successful professionals from upper middle class families who never saved any fucking money and were saved from possible homelessness a few years ago by winning an affordable housing lottery. They have an amazing apartment in midtown Manhattan for like $700/mo. Their building has tons of amenities. But they complain about it. And now they're complaining about having to live with "low class blacks" -- when THEY LIVE IN FUCKING AFFORDABLE HOUSING, and unlike the "low class blacks" have NO CONCEIVABLE EXCUSE FOR THEIR CURRENT FINANCIAL POSITION.

My aunt and uncle are not trump supporters, but they made me envision typical Trump supporters -- entitled adult children who think life is being unfair to them when they have every advantage. I felt rage. I feel rage today at the risk (admittedly in part my fault for taking it) that they put us at. I felt rage at Texas and Florida and all the places that thought they'd be fine and this would be confined to "blue states," and I had a hard time mustering sympathy even though I know that those suffering now are not necessarily those who oppose masks or were indifferent to New York's suffering. I just feel a lot of rage that I think has been building for a while but had no outlet.

That's awful. I'm so sorry.

Oh forgot to mention the part where (upon "low class blacks") I said "Can you stop speaking that way in my house?" and they ignored it and continued rambling (adding, of course "Oh we're not racist, but THESE people you would not want in your building).

Sounds like you shouldn’t have them over again

definitely not!

NEW from CDC: #COVID19 outbreak at an overnight camp in Georgia infects *at least* 260 campers & staff.
-51% of positives 6-10yo
-44% 11-17 yo
-Camp required a test <12 days before arriving & attempted "pods"
-Masks required for staff but NOT campers
(1/2)

— Amy Maxmen (@amymaxmen) July 31, 2020

it's obvious to me that the reason we haven't seen too many infections in kids is becasue they have been HOME this whole time.

So, the kids are not alright after all? /attempteddarkhumor

it's not that obvious actually. for one thing literally thousands of daycares have remained open the whole time.

https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/triangulating-evidence-on-outbreaks

every new piece of news just makes me think of Samuel L Jackson's "hold on to your butts."

And everyone, cautious or not, should leave this conversation with the sinking feeling that our data isn’t good enough

well this is unfortunate

Early on in this mess I read a quote from an epidemiologist who said quite frankly that collecting accurate statistics about an ongoing global pandemic would be impossible and that it would be a few years before the data which has been collected can be analyzed to the point where a reasonably accurate picture can be assembled. Even then it will rely on the best possible extrapolations from incomplete data.

the problem isn't as much that but that politicians want to ignore the advice of professionals, whose advice is based on caution and worst-case scenarios, and use the imperfect, incomplete statistics as the basis for their policy decisions.

an epidemiologist in March would have assumed if we had 3 cases reported in FL, we might really have, like, 300 or 3,000 due to undetected spread, and shouldn't proceed as if 3 was the true count. our Governor was all like "3? pssh, we fine!"

I thought the research was increasingly showing that kids UNDER 10 spread the virus at much lower rates, and that as you get up in age it gets closer to adult spread. I feel like that distinction gets lost every time "kids" are discussed.

my big question is how sick did the kids get

/And everyone, cautious or not, should leave this conversation with the sinking feeling that our data isn’t good enough/

well this is unfortunate

but yeah as far as I've heard the theory is that people who display light or no symptoms are less likely to spread it which is why apparently kids are less risky

otoh kids spread germs like crazy because they are children so

Cool cool

Faculty at the @uaccn received this email from their dean yesterday directing instructors with children to consider quitting their jobs so that @UofAlabama can hire replacements. pic.twitter.com/d0JZ2sp6hx

— SafeReturnUA (@SafeReturnUA) July 31, 2020

christ

my teacher friend told me a day or two ago that several of her Florida teacher friends got their replies to requests to work from home due to personal needs re: COVID

I'll let you guess what the answer was.

this being the nursing Dean is the icing on the cake xpost