Stay Safe Everyone!

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Sonic Youth
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

Post by Sonic Youth »

Heksagon wrote:Having a low number of Covid cases was nice while it lasted, but now the cases are skyrocketing in Europe again.

I never had a very high opinion of the crisis management skills of European political leaders and health care authorities, but it's just unbelievable how slow they were at reacting to the second wave.
The U.S. is going to echo Europe's performance soon enough. And it's not just the leadership skills (such as they are) of the president, but also of the governors as well. States are going to inevitably shut down again, but the time to shut them down is probably 6 weeks before they actually do. In my state, just as cases are starting to rise, we fully re-opened all the restaurants. Exactly when they should be closed, they instead fully re-open. I understand why. Any governor that shuts the state down now can kiss their political careers goodbye, and some governors and mayors have had their lives severely threatened. It would also be highly ineffective anyway, since few would honor it. It's a no-win situation. It's really discouraging.

(I just noticed this very second an announcement that parts of my state is reversing the re-opening "phases". That's good, but it's probably too little too late.)

And for those who say "all this over a virus with a low death rate, and only kills the elderly and people with comorbidities!". I personaly know four people who've caught it. They are all in their 30s to 50s. Two of them were hospitalized, one of them several times. Two of them have been chronically ill for months with cognitive and neurological impairments. Their symptoms may go away, or they may be permanent. As for the one who was not severely affected - she only had a cold for a week - the virus ripped through her entire family, hospitalizing several of them and killing an aunt. Sorry, but I don't think it's unreasonable - especially as someone trying to raise a child - to not want to get so sick that I have to be hospitalized, or be permanently impaired..
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

Post by Heksagon »

Having a low number of Covid cases was nice while it lasted, but now the cases are skyrocketing in Europe again.

I never had a very high opinion of the crisis management skills of European political leaders and health care authorities, but it's just unbelievable how slow they were at reacting to the second wave.
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

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I do recommend reading the article on The Guardian below though it is profoundly disturbing and upsetting it is one of many stories that must be told:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... oronavirus
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

Post by dws1982 »

Thanks, I'm fine!

And I'm actually cleared to work tomorrow. I had contact with a friend last Sunday who is COVID-positive. He found out last Sunday that his mom was positive so he went home to quarantine. Yesterday he started having symptoms and now he's positive as well. (His mom is now in the hospital with pneumonia.) We wore masks, but we were less than six feet apart for more than fifteen minutes, which meets the CDC definition of "direct contact".

I was prepared to work from home this week (I would just put assignments in Google Classroom and use Google Meets to answer questions) but I got a message a couple of hours ago that I don't have to quarantine because it had been long enough between our contact and his positive test.
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

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dws1982 wrote:I'm working on a thread (which I may get time to complete since I'll probably be at home quarantining this week, and next week is Fall Break) about differing versions of different films and in that one I conclude that the most recent version of Apocalypse Now is the best version of it.
Hopefully you're okay.
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

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Been three weeks, let's update again:

We haven't shut down. We haven't had any active cases in our school. All of the students who were sent home were exposed via family members, but none have tested positive.

Of the ~30 who were sent home a few weeks ago, all are back, we've probably got about 5 out for quarantine now.

Again, we're lucky because we have so few actually on campus and we don't have a single class with even 20 students in it. I saw pictures on social media of teachers at other schools in our district dressing up for Homecoming week last week (schools usually do themed dress-up days) and there was usually a picture of them together with the masks and then an unmasked picture. (But these schools are majority white, and it seems clear from what I've seen that white people don't take this as seriously as non-white people.) They have pictures of students working closely together in groups (wearing masks). We've been told by our admin that even though masks are required, we should still try to keep them distanced and not really do group work if we can't maintain the distance.

I'm not sure how things are going at the other schools in my district--again those are mostly white and more crowded in general, so they can't spread their students out the way I can. They're all still open, but that's about all I know.I know some other schools in the state are having issues--we just won our first region football game in three years* yesterday after the team we were going to play had to forfeit because half of their team was in quarantine.

* - We used to be a football powerhouse, and we won state less than ten years ago, but the program fell on some hard times. The coach left, and some of it is simply due to the shifting demographics at the school.
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

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dws1982 wrote:We've been back in school for two weeks. Might be a good time to give an update for how it's gone.
Hopefully you're staying safe. Thank-you for the updates.
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

Post by OscarGuy »

Thankfully, it will be in the US and not Puerto Rico (poking fun at the Dumbass in Chief), so Trump might actually do something that might conceivably look almost presidential.
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

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Hurricane Laura is starting to eerily look like Katrina.
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

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Reza wrote: as I've said before, the Covid strain appears to be far more deadly in the West than in our neck of the woods.
Maybe. Maybe not.

There are so many factors involved. This short article that recently appeared in The Guardian pretty much sums up some of the differing views. Only time will tell: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... are-rising
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

Post by Big Magilla »

My youngest sister, aged 57, is retiring so that she can home school her grandchildren, her daughter's two daughters and her son's son so that their parents can go to work and the kids don't have to be exposed to the virus. Interestingly, her husband and her daughter are both teachers in the school in upstate New York where all three kids would be going.
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

Post by Reza »

dws1982 wrote:We've been back in school for two weeks. Might be a good time to give an update for how it's gone.

We're a small school, 435 students 6-12, and 70% Black and Hispanic. These communities in general seem to take this pandemic more seriously than white communities, so almost half of our students opted for virtual courses this fall. I think we have about 250 students attending in-person campus.

I think my admin has done a pretty good job at mitigating risk and such; masks are required all day, temperature checks are required for staff and students; we have to submit seating charts so contacts can be traced; they've kept class sizes small (my biggest class has 11, and most are capped in the 15-17 range) so that we can spread the students out as much as possible in the room. It's not perfect, but if we are going to be in school in person, this is a good way to do it. There's just no way to account for every variable that has to be accounted for though.

Our policy (not sure if this is district wide or state wide) is that a student with COVID symptoms goes home to quarantine for either two weeks, although if they get a COVID test and it is negative, they can return when symptoms subside. Anyone who was in direct contact with a student (less than 6 feet for more than 15 minutes) with COVID symptoms is also sent home for either two weeks or until that student is able to return. A student who fails a temperature check is sent home for two weeks or until they present a doctor's note to return (they do not have to have a negative COVID test).

I'm teaching a virtual AP Statistics class this year in my planning (which they're paying me for), and have access to rosters for classes at other schools in our district, and most of those schools have many class sizes in the mid-20's. Those schools are also majority white, and had a smaller proportion of students opt for virtual.

The result is that those schools had sent dozens of students home within the first week (an entire football team at one school, all three volleyball teams at another), and we had only sent a few home due to temperature checks. A couple of others were quarantining because they were in direct contact with family members who were positive. We were doing pretty well.

Then Tuesday, one of my best students is out of my first period, and I got an email later that evening that he had developed symptoms on Monday evening, and was waiting the results of a COVID test. Anyone who was in contact with him would have to be quarantined until his test results came back, and if it was positive, they would quarantine for two weeks. He's in band, so about five other band members go out, and combined with other students he had been in contact with, you've got about ten students on quarantine.

Thursday, I noticed on the attendance report that all of these students were coded "COVID Quarantine Exposed" through August 31, which meant that there was a positive test. Then Thursday, another group of students start getting called to go to the nurse and bring everything with them. By Friday we had several others out. From Monday to Friday, we went from about 4 out to quarantine to about 30.

The threshold for shutting schools (and/or systems) down in flu seasons is 20% absence. There's a little bit of uncertainty here, because no one is quite sure how to account for all of the virtual students, and whether it should be 20% of all students to shut down or 20% of on-campus students to shut down. Meanwhile, it's widely known that staying in school until the Labor Day holiday (which is four weeks of school) means some type of 10-15% increase in federal funding. Right now our district seems to be playing a game of chicken to see if we can make it to Labor Day.
This is very interesting and the results quite chaotic as expected. I know many anxious mothers here in Pakistan as schools re-open in September. Have shared your post with them. The SOPs you describe are rightfully very stringent and which our school systems here for sure will not follow.....or at least to the extent as you describe yours. Its going to be pretty chaotic here too although, as I've said before, the Covid strain appears to be far more deadly in the West than in our neck of the woods.
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

Post by dws1982 »

We've been back in school for two weeks. Might be a good time to give an update for how it's gone.

We're a small school, 435 students 6-12, and 70% Black and Hispanic. These communities in general seem to take this pandemic more seriously than white communities, so almost half of our students opted for virtual courses this fall. I think we have about 250 students attending in-person campus.

I think my admin has done a pretty good job at mitigating risk and such; masks are required all day, temperature checks are required for staff and students; we have to submit seating charts so contacts can be traced; they've kept class sizes small (my biggest class has 11, and most are capped in the 15-17 range) so that we can spread the students out as much as possible in the room. It's not perfect, but if we are going to be in school in person, this is a good way to do it. There's just no way to account for every variable that has to be accounted for though.

Our policy (not sure if this is district wide or state wide) is that a student with COVID symptoms goes home to quarantine for either two weeks, although if they get a COVID test and it is negative, they can return when symptoms subside. Anyone who was in direct contact with a student (less than 6 feet for more than 15 minutes) with COVID symptoms is also sent home for either two weeks or until that student is able to return. A student who fails a temperature check is sent home for two weeks or until they present a doctor's note to return (they do not have to have a negative COVID test).

I'm teaching a virtual AP Statistics class this year in my planning (which they're paying me for), and have access to rosters for classes at other schools in our district, and most of those schools have many class sizes in the mid-20's. Those schools are also majority white, and had a smaller proportion of students opt for virtual.

The result is that those schools had sent dozens of students home within the first week (an entire football team at one school, all three volleyball teams at another), and we had only sent a few home due to temperature checks. A couple of others were quarantining because they were in direct contact with family members who were positive. We were doing pretty well.

Then Tuesday, one of my best students is out of my first period, and I got an email later that evening that he had developed symptoms on Monday evening, and was waiting the results of a COVID test. Anyone who was in contact with him would have to be quarantined until his test results came back, and if it was positive, they would quarantine for two weeks. He's in band, so about five other band members go out, and combined with other students he had been in contact with, you've got about ten students on quarantine.

Thursday, I noticed on the attendance report that all of these students were coded "COVID Quarantine Exposed" through August 31, which meant that there was a positive test. Then Thursday, another group of students start getting called to go to the nurse and bring everything with them. By Friday we had several others out. From Monday to Friday, we went from about 4 out to quarantine to about 30.

The threshold for shutting schools (and/or systems) down in flu seasons is 20% absence. There's a little bit of uncertainty here, because no one is quite sure how to account for all of the virtual students, and whether it should be 20% of all students to shut down or 20% of on-campus students to shut down. Meanwhile, it's widely known that staying in school until the Labor Day holiday (which is four weeks of school) means some type of 10-15% increase in federal funding. Right now our district seems to be playing a game of chicken to see if we can make it to Labor Day.
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

Post by Precious Doll »

That is so radical. To be perfectly honest it may backfire because people who display symptoms may decide not to have a test and in the process spread it to a whole lot of people. I can only speak for myself but if Australia started doing that I wouldn't get tested if I developed symptoms because I wouldn't want to be locked away if I tested positive. Whilst I can appreciate that some people don't remain home when they are directed to and can face heavy fines if they are caught leaving home without a good reason these sorts of tactics (locking up positive people as well as close contacts) is bound to backfire.

For example if my partner and I tested positive and had to go into a facility who the hell will look after my menagerie of pets. One cat has particular dietary requirements and both dogs need to be walked 2 hours a day each. Plus I have caring responsibilities for my mother, who admitably under those circumstances I wouldn't visit until such time as I was no longer infectious (and have planned for that anyway) but she won't let strangers into her house.

Well at least some good news. Melbourne and Victoria have turned a corner and the case numbers are dropping each day. A gradual easing of lockdown will begin hopefully sometime next month and will be staggered until there are no longer any community transmissions.

The situation in Sydney is not where I expected to be I'm happy to say ((I thought we would have been in lockdown by now). What small numbers we had have dwindled down to nearly nothing - we simply have to maintain everything we have been doing to keep the wretched virus under control and hopefully defeated to zero community transmission. What we have accomplished has been through tightening restrictions, tracking, contact tracing, directing potentially effected people to stay home for a specified time and get tested if symptoms emerge. Any venue were a person who has tested positive has been is widely advertised, including the dates and times and people are encouraged to get tested. Police checks are done to ensure that people told to self quarantine do so and fines apply if they do not. People have been largely complied with this. If our one positive test today out of over 30,000 tests can keep up and move down to zero with any luck of lives will resemble a little more than what they did - we can go for a trip to the countryside. Here's hoping.
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Re: Stay Safe Everyone!

Post by mlrg »

So the New Zealand elections will be postponed for four weeks and now any new person infected will be put into a detention center

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zeal ... 7ZGDv6-rV4
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