How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - Printable Version
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How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - JustAnotherFan - 06-20-2020
Not possible for most large conventional schools, but here is a planning document for reopening a small alternative school in Austin, Texas that I'm involved with.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ri8JwToTrnzx0B9Sg0e0BmEo4Ln09Y79q4o3QkxmFIM/edit
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - M T - 06-20-2020
Thanks for posting this. It looks like some good thought put into it. (I forwarded it to some friends/family in Austin & elsewhere that may find this useful.)
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - magnus - 08-15-2020
Looks like Arizona had one school district's teachers "sick out" forcing school cancellation due to insufficient staffing:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-arizona-schools/school-cancelled-in-arizona-area-after-sick-out-over-reopening-idUSKCN25B067
Though I believe different states have different protections for teachers (I read somewhere that Georgia's teachers could not unionize?), I'm guessing we may be seeing more of this in the coming weeks.
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - JustAnotherFan - 08-15-2020
(08-15-2020, 01:41 AM)magnus Wrote: Looks like Arizona had one school district's teachers "sick out" forcing school cancellation due to insufficient staffing:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-arizona-schools/school-cancelled-in-arizona-area-after-sick-out-over-reopening-idUSKCN25B067
Though I believe different states have different protections for teachers (I read somewhere that Georgia's teachers could not unionize?), I'm guessing we may be seeing more of this in the coming weeks.
Good for the teachers. In Texas they cannot officially strike but the sick outs are a great end around.
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - akiddoc - 08-15-2020
Well, there is no "safe." It is a way to try to mitigate risk. I can think of "safer" ways than that. I understand that they are trying to maximize teacher in person engagement, but less time in the school with one-on-one teacher to student sessions would be even better.
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - magnus - 08-16-2020
Politico has an article about how some European countries are planning to reopen schools. Many seem disjointed and not particularly safe (masks not required?). But Denmark's lack of related outbreaks is a promising sign (they required 2 meter distancing, no masks, 10 or fewer sized groups and handwashing every 90 minutes).
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/16/europe-coronavirus-masks-class-396877
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - Goose - 08-17-2020
There are quite a few schools in Germany that are open. However, like Denmark, they have fairly low case loads compared to the USA. The probability of an outbreak in a school is correspondingly lower, in fact much lower. Therefore, the communities have deemed it an "acceptable level of risk". There are certainly places in the USA where this is also true. Whether the rationality exists anywhere in the USA to make a rational determination of the risk level given local conditions remains to be demonstrated. So far, IMHO way too much politics and not enough rational. Utah seems to possibly be doing a "reasonable" job, but we shall see.
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - Mick - 08-18-2020
Cases spiking in Germany? 1,000 cases per day recently, compared with 350 a day in June.
https://news.yahoo.com/merkel-rules-easing-coronavirus-rules-152025366.html
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - BostonCard - 08-18-2020
Cases are spiking throughout Europe. Spain had a pretty bad outbreak recently, especially in Catlonia. But its all relative; Europe's "spike" is substantially lower than the spike in the US.
BC
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - OutsiderFan - 08-19-2020
Maybe it would help to, you know, actually bother tracking what is happening and making the data transparent?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/coronavirus-spreading-schools-no-one-tracking-all-outbreaks-n1236964?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma
We deserve all the damage we get from this pandemic.
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - Farm93 - 08-19-2020
We can reopen safely by
1) working diligently for 2-3 months to absolutely crush the curve
2) educating the citizens that taking every measure possible to prevent the spread will be critical for 1-2 months after the curve has been crushed
3) testing and tracing ever single new case
4) spending significant sums on PPE for students, PPE for teachers, and plexiglass while improving building ventilation.
If the USA get started right now we might be in good shape for the 2021-2022 academic year.
For those unwilling to wait it might be prudent to spend a year in South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Germany or Norway. They have very highly regarded public schools too, so your children will be safer and smarter.
For those unable or unwilling to spend a year abroad best will be to avoid GA, AL, FL and other states that think they have a clever way to open schools while community spread is generally out of control.
If I was living in New Zealand or Australia I probably would conclude THOSE Americans are crazy or foolish. As I live in the USA I just worry that today's carelessness by many Americans will eventually impact my family in a very direct way no matter how much we try to respect COVID's power.
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - BostonCard - 08-19-2020
One of my colleagues is a dual Swiss/American national and he is open about wanting to take his kids to Switzerland (my company is based there) if there is an opening. His wife is an OB/Gyn, so they might have to forgo her career as a doctor, but it sounds like she is sick of it and wants to leave practice as well anyways.
Schools in Switzerland are open. They are also excellent. I would consider a transfer myself, certainly once my son graduates from high school.
BC
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - teejers1 - 08-19-2020
(08-19-2020, 07:11 AM)Farm93 Wrote: We can reopen safely by
1) working diligently for 2-3 months to absolutely crush the curve
2) educating the citizens that taking every measure possible to prevent the spread will be critical for 1-2 months after the curve has been crushed
3) testing and tracing ever single new case
4) spending significant sums on PPE for students, PPE for teachers, and plexiglass while improving building ventilation.
If the USA get started right now we might be in good shape for the 2021-2022 academic year.
For those unwilling to wait it might be prudent to spend a year in South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Germany or Norway. They have very highly regarded public schools too, so your children will be safer and smarter.
For those unable or unwilling to spend a year abroad best will be to avoid GA, AL, FL and other states that think they have a clever way to open schools while community spread is generally out of control.
If I was living in New Zealand or Australia I probably would conclude THOSE Americans are crazy or foolish. As I live in the USA I just worry that today's carelessness by many Americans will eventually impact my family in a very direct way no matter how much we try to respect COVID's power.
1. What does that mean? What does that entail? Shut down of everything - excepting food stores - for 2-3 months? Good luck with that one. But maybe Joe Biden can convince us all that's what we need to do . . .
2. Okay, fine. We should be doing the "smart stuff" now.
3. Does this assume, then, that after the curve is "crushed" (again, definition?) that the US localities will be able to test and trace every new positive test? That strikes me as awfully ambitious, given the track record we've seen to date on track and trace.
4. I'm all for that.
But fundamentally, I always return to this: what is the ultimate goal you're trying to accomplish vis a vis the virus? Is it to wipe it out from US soil? That is just not going to happen . . . is it? The prevalence is too great, and the virus "got away from us" too early.
So if you (a) accept that you are not going to wipe it out, and (b) acknowledge that any activity is going to increase "risk" and likely lead to some spread, then isn't the ultimate goal to ensure that you have enough hospital resources to treat those who need it? That strikes me as a reasonable baseline, and important goal (and one that you can base policy on).
We hear all the time that too great a spread will ultimately lead to Hospital Armageddon. But I don't think we've seen that anywhere, with possible exception of NY very early in the outbreak. Even with all the recent "surges" here and "outbreaks" there, you are not seeing capacity being toppled anywhere. I've read articles that convey that impression, but if you read the articles closely, they do not say "Covid cases are stuffing our hospitals to the breaking point." Instead, they nibble around the edges ("We have more Covid cases than ever; hospital staff are taxed to the limit; etc.) But it's possible I've missed it in some regions. In Santa Clara County, hospital numbers are (and have been) quite good).
None of the above is meant to downplay the importance of being smart, distancing in everyday activities, and refraining from activities that are likely to lead to superspreads, which could well result in hospital breakage. But you don't need to re-engage in a shutdown to be smart and keep hospital numbers reasonable. At least that's my sense after 5+ months of watching this thing unfold.
P.S. Through sheer incompetence, laziness, arrogance, ignorance (what have you), I think the US will stumble along until there is herd immunity (which is "closer" than some think, though still far off) or a vaccine. [And my gut tells me that some kind of herd immunity is what is keeping NY numbers and Italy numbers somewhat in check]. I don't think we'll ever "control" this thing - certainly not the way New Zealand has (or other countries that admittedly have a very different profile than does the US). Sad. But true.
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - M T - 08-19-2020
(08-19-2020, 12:02 PM)teejers1 Wrote: But fundamentally, I always return to this: what is the ultimate goal you're trying to accomplish vis a vis the virus? Is it to wipe it out from US soil? That is just not going to happen . . . is it? The prevalence is too great, and the virus "got away from us" too early.
I'm sure glad we didn't have to get to herd immunity for polio, measles, yellow fever, smallpox, Bubonic plague, and any number of diseases that we've managed to knock down to 0 or almost 0 cases.
Maybe over the next 20 or maybe 50 years, the world population will spend enough time in masks that the incidence of a number of droplet/aerosol-spread diseases will fall to the level that we can wipe some of them out, at least in first world countries that can and do spend the resources to hunt the cases down and isolate them.
Of course, all those diseases were controlled during a time when we had relatively free flow of information, pre-HIPAA.
I've occasionally seen news articles questioning whether herd immunity can be achieved. That seems odd when the evidence seems to be that individual immunity is limited. If immunity were to last 2 years, and you needed 50% of the people to be immune to reach herd immunity, then you'd need 75M cases a year in the US. Think again!
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - BostonCard - 08-19-2020
Since even the earliest cases of COVID-19 were less than a year ago, speculation as to whether immunity wanes after a year or a couple of years is, just that, speculation. Immunity may only last only a short while, or you may get tetanus-like immunity (5 - 10 years) , or you might get polio-like immunity (lifelong). Even if immunity wanes a bit, you may still be protected from life-threatening consequences. But these are the sorts of things we won't know for sure until years from now.
For many of the diseases you cite, we did reach herd immunity through vaccination. Others, which are not transmitted person-to-person, have been dealt with by dealing with the reservoir of disease (mosquitoes for yellow fever, rats and their fleas for the plague, unsafe water for cholera, etc.)
Measels requires herd immunity to stay up because its R0 is about 10, so unless 90+% of people are immune through vaccination, you will get outbreaks, as we saw last year in New York.
BC
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - Farm93 - 08-19-2020
Teejers,
1. What does that mean? What does that entail? Shut down of everything - excepting food stores - for 2-3 months? Good luck with that one. But maybe Joe Biden can convince us all that's what we need to do . . .
Dr. Birx says its what we should have done. It also worked for Italy, China, and others..
2. Okay, fine. We should be doing the "smart stuff" now.
We can work on the education now, but with cases all over the place people just throw up their hands and say it is hopeless. So we need the cases near zero so that the population is more motivated to keep it that way. "Crush the curve" is more or less what the EU nation states did and those same nation-state leaders often note the USA is failing because we keep opening up on the downward slope rather than when new cases are much closer to zero per day... when back down the case mountain you have crushed the curve. A number of national and global leaders talk about crushing the curve daily. So I would recommend our good friends at Google should you really want to know more about the definition and origin of the concept beyond the idea of driving new cases to near zero before opening up activities.
3. Does this assume, then, that after the curve is "crushed" (again, definition?) that the US localities will be able to test and trace every new positive test? That strikes me as awfully ambitious, given the track record we've seen to date on track and trace.
Yes, it strikes you as awfully ambitious because we have too many new cases. That's why #1 and #2 are required.
4. I'm all for that.
But fundamentally, I always return to this: what is the ultimate goal you're trying to accomplish vis a vis the virus? Is it to wipe it out from US soil? That is just not going to happen . . . is it? The prevalence is too great, and the virus "got away from us" too early.
You got it. Prevalence is too great. The vaccine path alone will be fools gold because too many Americans are going to refuse to take a new vaccine and efficacy of the vaccine may not match our dreams. So given the questions on the vaccine path it might be best to actually utilize the proven path. I would say use it for a second time, but the USA has not had a national shutdown yet.
Italy had a pretty wicked outbreak and their full scale lockdown did wonders. So a lockdown can be done, but needs a serious commitment.
Bama packing fans into a football stadium while hospital ICUs are near capacity is not part of that serious commitment.
In the end, we won't do the steps necessary for crush the curve. As you noted.
That is why if someone really wants a safe K-12 in 2020-2021 it might be time to become an expat for a few years in a country hat has citizens actually committed to battling COVID19.
The alternatives are not great, but hoping for a miracle is not a good plan.
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - teejers1 - 08-19-2020
(08-19-2020, 05:07 PM)Farm93 Wrote: Teejers,
1. What does that mean? What does that entail? Shut down of everything - excepting food stores - for 2-3 months? Good luck with that one. But maybe Joe Biden can convince us all that's what we need to do . . .
Dr. Birx says its what we should have done. It also worked for Italy, China, and others..
2. Okay, fine. We should be doing the "smart stuff" now.
We can work on the education now, but with cases all over the place people just throw up their hands and say it is hopeless. So we need the cases near zero so that the population is more motivated to keep it that way. "Crush the curve" is more or less what the EU nation states did and those same nation-state leaders often note the USA is failing because we keep opening up on the downward slope rather than when new cases are much closer to zero per day... when back down the case mountain you have crushed the curve. A number of national and global leaders talk about crushing the curve daily. So I would recommend our good friends at Google should you really want to know more about the definition and origin of the concept beyond the idea of driving new cases to near zero before opening up activities.
3. Does this assume, then, that after the curve is "crushed" (again, definition?) that the US localities will be able to test and trace every new positive test? That strikes me as awfully ambitious, given the track record we've seen to date on track and trace.
Yes, it strikes you as awfully ambitious because we have too many new cases. That's why #1 and #2 are required.
4. I'm all for that.
But fundamentally, I always return to this: what is the ultimate goal you're trying to accomplish vis a vis the virus? Is it to wipe it out from US soil? That is just not going to happen . . . is it? The prevalence is too great, and the virus "got away from us" too early.
You got it. Prevalence is too great. The vaccine path alone will be fools gold because too many Americans are going to refuse to take a new vaccine and efficacy of the vaccine may not match our dreams. So given the questions on the vaccine path it might be best to actually utilize the proven path. I would say use it for a second time, but the USA has not had a national shutdown yet.
Italy had a pretty wicked outbreak and their full scale lockdown did wonders. So a lockdown can be done, but needs a serious commitment.
Bama packing fans into a football stadium while hospital ICUs are near capacity is not part of that serious commitment.
In the end, we won't do the steps necessary for crush the curve. As you noted.
That is why if someone really wants a safe K-12 in 2020-2021 it might be time to become an expat for a few years in a country hat has citizens actually committed to battling COVID19.
The alternatives are not great, but hoping for a miracle is not a good plan.
No one is hoping for a miracle, are they? I think most here are resigned to a bumpy road from here to whenever things get better for whatever reason (which is a ways off).
Last thing: sounds like you attribute all of Italy's "success" in controlling the virus to lockdown and not herd immunity. I have doubts about that. I think areas that take it on the chin, virus-wise generally have greater success later due in some part to herd immunity. How much is attributable to one versus the other is uncertain.
But most things about the virus - including how the world's countries fared in battling the virus - will have to wait until many, many years from now. The retrospectives on this virus will be interesting.
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - BostonCard - 08-19-2020
(08-19-2020, 09:36 PM)teejers1 Wrote: Last thing: sounds like you attribute all of Italy's "success" in controlling the virus to lockdown and not herd immunity. I have doubts about that. I think areas that take it on the chin, virus-wise generally have greater success later due in some part to herd immunity. How much is attributable to one versus the other is uncertain.
Spain was hit as bad (or worse than Italy). If it had herd immunity, you wouldn't be seeing this second spike; the seven day moving average of new cases is about 4000.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/
Belgium was the hardest hit (in terms of per capita deaths) big-ish country in the world (I think only San Marino was higher). Even it is facing a second wavelet (thankfully nowhere near as bad as the first).
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/belgium/
That shouldn't be happening if they approached herd immunity. And that's because if you assume a 0.5% infection fatality rate, and 0.08% of patients have died, then as a crude approximation only about 16% of the population has been infected, and you probably need about 3 times that to reach herd immunity.
Even in Italy, while it is possible that the Lombardi region has local herd immunity, Southern Italy was hit much less hard and is still vulnerable. I think it would be naive to think that a second wave can't happen, even though, thankfully, it doesn't look like we are seeing much of one yet.
BC
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - dabigv13 - 08-19-2020
The NYT had a recent article that touched on many things already discussed on this board on why the threshold for herd immunity may be lower than the 60% initially thought. Part of that is biologic, in that perhaps T-cell mediated immunity to other coronaviruses gives some degreee of immunity to covid19. And part is behavioral. If everyone is wearing masks, or high risk establishments are closed, that reduces the effective reproductive index to a level where herd immunity comes at a lower percentage.
Agree with BC points. While NYC having 20% exposure likely helps in preventing a rapid second spike, there are still plenty of non immune people.
RE: How we can safely reopen (some) K-12 schools - magnus - 08-20-2020
Quote:New guidance from the President Donald Trump’s administration that declares teachers to be “critical infrastructure workers” could give the green light to exempting teachers from quarantine requirements after being exposed to COVID-19 and instead send them back into the classroom.
https://apnews.com/b5ab43d4b0efc89426c814732c2bb05c
Not really a step in the "safely reopen" direction. More in the "how far can we push the envelope" direction.