How are the K-12 schools going to be open? I’m just trying to picture this. They bring it home to parents in late 40’s early 50’s. Decent amount of that age group requiring some kind of medical intervention. High school kids swapping spit, smoking, sharing drinks, elementary school kids with their hands all over everything. How?
Although apparently* a worse experience than its neighbors Norway, Denmark, and Finland.
*Based on confirmed COVID-19 deaths, but those numbers must be considered as lower bounds due to scarcity of testing.
Yes, agreed. Hence the question, was it worth it? Did the economic disruption ( and the inevitable deaths related thereto) outweigh the additional COVID deaths that occured due to a lack of shutdown? In short, how many net life-years were saved, and at what cost?
He gets nothing from the stimulus if he is a dependent student over 17 (that’s a tax thing that students under 17 can qualify for the $2000 child credit; they later added a $500 credit for the parents on the taxes for dependent students, but that didn’t carry over to this stimulus bill). He can file for unemployment for losing his job at the college but it is unlikely he’d qualify as it was a very part time temporary job, but you never know.
U of Wyoming used $2M to pay its students for the rest of the semester because they recognized that some students really needed that money to pay for THIS semester. I think that also included grad students working as TA
I’m VERY concerned about my asthmatic high schooler going back to school in sept. We live on Long Island, a hot spot. Very crowded high school. And he plays on a school sport team. (I cringe at the extra contact). I would prefer to home school but my high schooler tends to want to be like everyone else and would emotionally feel awful to be kept home while his peers attend school.
Just my opinion but for K-12, I think the school district will put measures in place like kids tested for fever before entering the school bus or upon arrival to school, all kids wear masks in class, recess and lunch will be more controlled (i.e. social distancing of kids), no large group gatherings, lots of hand sanitizer and less group class exercises, etc. which will slow the spread of the disease to relatively manageable levels. Kids or faculty with underlying health conditions might have to take more drastic measures (i.e. the new normal).
Remember the main reason we went to “lock down” was to lessen the curve so the health care workers and medical supplies would not be overwhelmed (i.e. we were not prepared for this pandemic). By September (5 months from now) we will be much better prepared to deal with sick kids, faculty, and administration. I don’t think we are going to go back to extreme measures such 14-21 days isolation and then quarantining anyone who might have been exposed and instead we will have to accept the fact that some people are going to get the virus, most will be asymptomatic or mildly ill, some will get more sick than others and the healthcare system will take care of those cases. For example, we may find out something like Z-Pack helps eliminate symptoms much faster than current methods so the kids who were sick can get back to school quicker.
The bottom line is that we need to get to a point where we learn to live with this virus until if and when we find a reliable vaccine and/or herd immunity slows the infection rates down considerably.
One thing to keep in mind is that lots of people are currently working right now, construction workers, accountants, lawyers, city officials, farmers, mechanics, to-go restaurant workers, super markets, gas stations, buses, trains, airport workers, etc. and we are going to have to slowly introduce the other “non-essential” workers back into the economy, including their children.
@Sisternight you said:Based on the timeline laid out by Governor Cuomo this morning, I’m starting imagine the scenario may realistically be that students will not be able to live on campus for most of the 20-21 school year. Based on what he said, it sounds like we won’t be able to return to situations of high density until there is a vaccine that has been administered to the whole population. That would mean no dorm living and no large gatherings, such as sporting events, festivals, etc, until there is a vaccine. In the meantime, we will be able to gradually resume normal activities with protective measures in place, such as masks, gloves, and testing. I think this may mean that if students live locally to their college, either at home, or in an apartment, they will be able to be on campus with the protective measures in place. However, if they don’t live locally, they would be completely online for most, if not all, of the first year.
Today at 11:26 am
Governor Cuomo also said that if businesses are open it means schools are open too. So if businesses are open, colleges are open too. College dorms employ a lot of people. So businesses will not open and colleges stay closed. Colleges are businesses too. There are colleges in NY that plan to open dorms for summer school such as PACE University.
Trump maybe right. If this goes on too much longer, too many people are going to develop mental stress and that will be very harmful itself. It cannot go on forever.
I don’t agree with the premise that “if businesses are open, (residential) colleges will also be open”. Kids living on campus 24/7 is a much more complex living and working environment than a 9-5 business that is open. In addition, colleges can go “online” as an option and still stay in business, on the other hand the hairstylist, the hotel, the restaurant owner, the custom furniture store, the real estate agent, local bar, the coffee shop worker, the dry cleaners, etc. don’t really have any other option than to be physically open. Colleges have options and will take the path of least resistance (i.e. online learning) as long as they can.
Also, if the governor said schools will be open, he means K-12 not colleges.
Do you think the hospitals in the worst-hit areas (NY for example) could have handled the spike, had there not been social distancing that “flattened the curve”? Isn’t that part of the equation too?
My concern is the fact that we know so many kids can carry the virus no symptoms so they get no fever then they come home and infect a parent with hypertension and/or coronary artery disease. It’s risky because this virus is unpredictable. Do we keep some kids out of school?
I expect scientists will study what happened in NYC for years to figure out what went wrong and how.
I don’t think colleges will pursue options that result in plummeting enrollment and financial catastrophe ( such as online) for very long.
How efficiently COVID-19 spreads depends on climate, according to a study by a group of researchers at UMD. In the Northern Hemisphere, they found the virus transmits most efficiently between 30 degree and 50 degree latitude. We don’t see too many cases in Scandinavian countries including Sweden, even with their lax approach. Our northern neighbor Canada doesn’t have too many cases either.
I am not sure how many colleges can stay in business if they go online for any length of time. I would imagine that room and board is a significant income stream for most of them.
Plus, online does not work for many majors, especially those that require labs.
People are going to catch the virus. Most will be just fine. Others may end up in the hospital. Even when we have a vaccine, this will be the case. The problem is that we have to start opening parts of the economy and many people feel that K-12 school must open in the fall. Will kids still get sick? Yes. Will they spread the virus around and maybe to their parents? Yes. We know this. The goal is not for no one to get the virus. It’s to keep the hospitals from getting overwhelmed.
Plans to open the economy or schools is not based on the virus spread being zero. Some people have already had the virus but their illness was not confirmed because so few were tested. If we can test like crazy and we find out that the percentage of people dying is very very low, then the economy and schools can open carefully. Hopefully, people will continue to be vigilant about washing their hands, staying home if they have a fever, and staying home for the course of the virus if it’s confirmed by a rapid test that they have it.
We cannot all just sit inside until there’s a vaccine.
With no reliable numbers for cases, deaths, death rate, and hospitalization rate (the numbers of known cases and deaths are lower bounds, but the actual number of untested cases and deaths could be higher by an unknown amount), most estimates (both in the actual reality and hypothetical situations of different actions or inactions) are based on assumptions that may or may not be the true numbers, due to lack of testing.
We do know that US government agencies (FDA, EPA, DOT) value a generic human life saved between $7.9 and $9.6 million when evaluating whether costs of some action or regulation are “worth it”. If you want to make your own thought experiment about whether saving N lives through some action that costs money is “worth it”, just multiple N by the value of a generic human life. But you may not necessarily have agreement on what N is (and neither you nor anyone else has sufficiently complete information to be that confident about what N is).
The colleges also obviously do not have enough reliable information to make fully informed decisions. At best, they can plan for several possible scenarios, and hope that they will get better information before they must choose one or another.
I hope the antibody tests becomes available soon for anyone who wants it. I believe some schools will discover that this virus burned through their campuses this winter.
@shuttlebus S19 and all of his friends had respiratory viruses this winter. I just kept telling S19 he had a chest cold and to drink a lot. He never had a fever. I visited him in Feb and he was coughing quite a bit and was super tired. He did not go to the health center but three or four of his friends did and all tested negative for strep and flu. They all had had the flu shot.
S19 felt better by early March. He’s started coughing again two weeks ago and now has a headache and stuffy nose but still no fever. This time I think it might be a combo of the virus not kicking out completely and his spring allergies.
All of this to say that so many kids on campuses get sick in the winter and I would bet that a good number of them this year had the virus.
Some colleges are still paying the students even though they are home. He should check that out with the school.
@Homerdog what are you talking about? The goal is not just to keep the hospitals from getting overwhelmed. It is to keep people from dying. Parents, grandparents, maybe some college students. What is happening now is not acceptable even IF we know that a large number of people are infected. This is still not acceptable. There are too many people dying that are too young to die with “underlying” conditions that are way too common–People in their 40’s plus. Kids would literally bring the virus home and could be the cause of death for their own parents. It would happen.
Life won’t be more normal until we have a vaccine but I don’t know how kids go back to school until we have a real treatment that works for those that need it.