Coronavirus May 2020 - Observations, information, discussion

Parent Cafe
2141

I agree we’ve too many cases to track but not that we let the virus spread undetected. The blame for that belongs to China and WHO. Taiwan warned that there was human-to-human, the other two insisted there wasn’t past the point they both knew there was.

As to the rest, I’m not sure what you’re saying. The original idea, the one that most countries are still sticking with, most certainly was to flatten the rate of infections, not to get it ‘under control’. There is no way to do that, other than a cure/vaccine or to cease interaction between people to the point they die of something else.

For those who are concerned about what is looking more and more like a break for the lockdown exits, why not consider the logical conclusion to the argument for continuing lockdown to avoid a spike in cases/deaths/needless suffering?

Shut it down completely to protect all the workers that are making it possible to stay home, because they’re at risk and have been for months. Tell these people they shouldn’t work:

Amazon warehouse workers and all the people getting up each day to bring our orders to us.

Walmart, Costco, Trader Joe’s and every other grocery store.

Farmers, and all the people that provide them with what they need: seed, fertilizer, herbicide, diesel mechanics, equipment companies, packing, transport, etc., etc., etc.

Meat packing plants, all of them.

And… tell the housekeepers they’re on there own until you feel safe, because it’s the right thing to do.

(add your own… it’s a tremendously long list of people providing the services that are enabling… oops, telecommunications workers, too… us to stick tight, while complaining about how reckless others are being.)

2142

It completely depends on the quality of the course. My homeschooled daughters have taken many online classes over the past four years. One learned Spanish through excellent online providers and entered a classroom for the first time ever this past fall to take Advanced Spanish (post-AP level) at our local state college. None of our local public or private high school kids have ever done that. She will take 400-level courses at the college next year as a 12th grader. Her few years of online Spanish learning well prepared her for these advanced college courses. The online courses were interactive, the teacher met with students multiple times a week over Skype, and a TA also met with students weekly. Classes were live and in group Skype fashion.

Her online science courses had home labs. Her chemistry class was especially excellent, well-organized, with a 24/7 discussion board with students from around the world and TAs ready to answer questions, usually within the hour. The teacher himself browsed the boards frequently, and a student could also email him with questions and he’d answer almost always within the hour. Assignments were interactive, there were videos, websites, textbooks, etc. Most of the students in that class score a 5 on the AP Chem exam. Tons of discussion through the discussion board, private study groups that sprung up online/via email, etc.

D23 took math courses through precalculus during middle school with Art of Problem Solving. AoPS enrolls top math students around the world. AoPS is unique in its approach and IMO the best way to learn math out there. D23 was well-prepared for her AP Calculus course this year (that class was also online).

In other words, there are excellent providers out there that offer excellent online instruction.

Then there are courses that just offer a bunch of questions, almost no teacher interaction, and boring presentations. It’s best to avoid those.

Bear in mind my comments above apply to middle school and high school learning. I personally don’t like the idea of elementary school kids sitting in front of a computer all day. Mine didn’t.

2143

@garland Out of curiosity, why did you let your kids off the hook for class once it was remote? S19 is in a non-fiction writing seminar with 12 kids. They meet once a week for three hours. The prof still had them meet in real time for those three hours. Gave them a 15 minute break in the middle to grab a snack or hit the bathroom I guess. The class was run exactly as it would have been. Everyone was responsibly for editing everyone else’s papers in the six days between classes as well as writing and rewriting their own assignments. She also set up times to talk with each student privately once a week to discuss their work privately.

S19 would say all of his classes were harder online. Not because the assignments changed but because he was home with all of the distractions of being here and not being in the swing of things at school. The rigor in his classes was clear to us. He worked his butt off for the last seven weeks (even though his classes are mandatory Credit/No Credit).

2144

The 90% came from a survey quoted on another thread on these boards. If online learning was anywhere equal to F2F, all those parents wouldn’t be demanding discounts on tuition.

2145

@homerdog I didn’t “let them off the hook” – I focused on what they really needed to learn, and got them there however I could. My approach was for two reasons:

First, our university requested we do whatever we can to keep the students moving forward. It IS easier to drift off in these circumstances, especially as they occurred as an emergency, not because any of us signed up for them. It was good for the students and also for the university, to keep them engaged and supported, even going at great lengths to do so.

And most importantly–look, I don’t know where you live. But here? Many of my students have had parents or others with Covid, several have lost family members. At least one lost two. Some have been sick themselves. Add to that–many work in vulnerable jobs, and/or their parents do. So they are scared and worried. Of course they’re depressed and miss their lives. That’s probably true everywhere, but here near the center of the pandemic, it’s, I imagine, worse. Plus some had bad, or no, wifi. I had students doing all their work on their phones. Or sharing the one laptop in the family. Or babysitting siblings while parents were working.

I don’t think many of my students are living the kinds of lives your student and his classmates are living.

I mean, who wouldn’t give students a break? Learning needed to happen, and did, but not at the cost of being a human being.

Is that the right answer? Because I am really not sure what you are asking.

2146

There’s a HUGE GAP between saying that online learning is “garbage” and “anywhere equal to f2f.”

No one claims it’s equal to f2f. A good instructor, with enough preparation, can provide a satisfying class - IF the student is willing to exert some effort and intellectual curiosity on his/her side.

Students who find all their online learning to be “garbage” should rethink college until things are back to “normal.”

2147

In our state (NY89% of deaths have some other comorbitiy.
In order:
Hypertension (more than half)
Diabetes (about 30%)
Hyperlipidmia (about 20%)
Dementia (about 13%)
Coronary Artery Disease (about 11%)
Renal disease (about 11%)
COPD (about 9%)
Atrial Fibrilation (about 8%)
Cancer (about 7%)
Stroke (about 6%) and my understanding is that this is really not a comorbidity, but actually the disease creating blood clots)
from https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n

In any even asthma is not on the list. It’s most heart issues and a kidney issues (not helped by a shortage of dialysis machines.)

I would love to get an antibody test if I thought they were accurate and if we knew for sure that there was some sort of immunity. Right now it seems sort of pointless. I felt somewhat weird for much of March - tired like I was coming down with a cold, but I never got sick never ran more of a fever than a couple of degrees for more than a couple of days. So even at the time I suspected it was all psychosomatic.

I’m taking an online Chinese ink painting class. I’m here to tell you it can work. Before Covid it met once a week for three hours, now it meets twice a week for somewhere between 1.5 and 2 hours. Our teacher also critiques any painting we e-mail her. She sends us lots of examples via email as well. If you show up every day and pay attention it works. It’s not perfect. Sometimes the camera dies, or there are interruptions, or the camera isn’t centered on her demonstration, but mostly it works surprisingly well.

I don’t think online learning is garbage, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for elementary schools. I think we might be able to get away with fewer hours and much smaller classes though. There is a lot of wasted time in schools.

2148

Oh, I see. I don’t know! I know the college my son will attend plans to test everyone before the start of school. I hope that will be enough to keep people safe.

Stay healthy, thumper!

2149

I thought COVID19 antibody tests aren’t accurate?

On Mother’s Day, my son and daughter cooked for me.

2150

In our state, only essential workers are supposed to be tested and those with active symptoms that have had significant contact with confirmed COVID19 patient. We have about 2.5% positive cases with this criteria out of over 36,000 tests. 6 or fewer new cases every day these past 24 days.

Tests currently available in our state can’t detect past COVID antibodies, only active infections so they prefer symptomatic patients for greater likelihood of confirmed cases.

2151

Are all these parents asking for an asterisk to be placed on their child’s degree to indicate the education they got was substandard?

2152

This isn’t the black plague. It’s a moderately bad flu.

As the stats stand now, if you are under 55 you are more likely to be killed in a car accident driving to work than to be killed by Covid19. If you are under 25 you are 50 times more likely to be killed in car accident than by Covid19.

In other words, what you did daily before the lockdowns was inherently more dangerous than this.

So go to work people.

If you are scared or believe you are at risk, you should stay home.

2153

There are many who may be at increased risk of bad effects from COVID-19 who don’t get to choose whether to go to work or stay home. If the workplace is “open” they are obligated to work or lose their jobs. There are many reports that this is NOT as mild as “regular flu” Which does not cause Kawasaki like conditions in young children, heart and lung and other issues in people who are afflicted. It is unclear how long term effects from this condition may persist or if they may be permanent.

This thread is not for arguing. The facts are on many websites and people can read what they prefer.

2154

First of all, this is the Parent Cafe, and you’re talking to a lot of people 55 or older.

Secondly, it is untrue that if you’re under 55 you are more likely to be killed in a car accident driving to work than to be killed by Covid-19. People keep putting out these glib comparisons, and covid-19 keeps accepting the challenge.

There were about 37,000 people killed by cars in 2018. However, only about 22,000 of them were between 16 and 55. Most of those people were not killed while driving to work. Let’s be EXTREMELY generous and say that a quarter of the people killed on the road were killed by driving to work, an obvious overestimate. That puts us at 5500.

Let’s see if more than 5500 people under 55 have been killed by covid-19. Today’s cumulative covid-19 death total is about 83,000. So for covid-19 to beat car commuting as a killer of those under 55, we’d need 7% of all covid-19 deaths to be people under 55. Are more than 7% of covid-19 deaths people under 55? Yeah, they are. It’s close, though. On the other hand, covid-19 keeps killing people. In two or three weeks, we’ll be up to 100,000, and covid-19 will be the clear winner here.

These bogus comparisons are an endless amusement to me. Gosh, it was only a couple of months ago when covid deniers were saying that more people died in swimming pool accidents than died of covid. My how we’ve grown.

2155

To those wanting lockdown…

The fact is their are a myriad of ways in this world to die. Corvid-19 is just the latest addition to that list. It is the end of the world for much less than one percent of those that are infected.

It will be interesting in time to look back at total deaths from all causes during this time period. I seriously doubt we are seeing greatly increased numbers in overall deaths.

This virus can’t be hidden from. We are not going to lockdown 100% and make it go away. Essential workers (farmers, food packers, delivery people, truck drivers, store employees, mail personnel, security guards, etc, etc etc, are not going to stop being out there and spreading this virus unless of course everyone is ready to absolutely go into full lockdown?? No, I didn’t think so. Even those for locking things down still want their comforts.

My local Walmart, Home Depot, Target, etc are open for all products. Nothing is off the table. You want flowers, mulch, perfume, candy, greeting cards, picture frames, anything, you can get it, in person. Is that worth someone’s life?? Shouldn’t we all lockdown with nothing for a month to make this go away so that no one else will die??

No, we shouldn’t and we won’t. No one has the stomach for that. In my opinion we should open more up with masks and social distancing. Yes, a few more will get the virus sooner rather than later. Yes, some will die sooner rather than later. But it’s not going anywhere. You cannot hide.

People die of many causes every day. No one is getting out of this world alive.

Unless people are ready to do a full lockdown of even essential personnel than I wish they would quit criticizing those of us essential workers that are out there still “risking our lives” to keep the necessities flowing. What makes you so special to be catered to by the essentials.

2156

Clarification to this, “Unless people are ready to do a full lockdown of even essential personnel than I wish they would quit criticizing those of us essential workers that are out there still “risking our lives” to keep the necessities flowing. What makes you so special to be catered to by the essentials.”

I wish these people would quit criticizing those of us that want to open more things up, especially those of us that are essential workers. We are out here everyday providing so called “necessary services and products”.

Totally locking down must be the only answer. Essential workers included. We could save the world. In the long run it’s the way to save so many more lives…

2157

So…no going to stores, work, visiting anyone? You will be staying at home or exercising outdoors in an almost empty area? You don’t live with anyone whom you might unknowingly infect who then goes to a store/work/school/visiting and exposes others? If these are all true, you are right, there is no reason to be tested.

2158

The antibody and antigen tests are highly accurate. Here is a link to the dozen or so approved serology tests:
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/emergency-situations-medical-devices/eua-authorized-serology-test-performance

And a snippet from a Shoreland report:

“FDA has published an assessment of performance results for antibody tests. Per Shoreland’s earlier recommendations, the Architect SARS-CoV-2 IgG (Abbott) and the Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 (Roche) had both sensitivity and specificity over 99.5%. VITROS Immunodiagnostic Products Anti-SARS-CoV-2 (Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics) and the SARS-COV-2 ELISA (IgG) (EUROIMMUN) also had positive and negative predictive values above 99.5%. All the aforementioned tests should be regarded as accurate and reliable. All other high throughput tests and all rapid point of care antibody tests reviewed had less than optimal performance.”

Up thread someone mentioned that there have been post-market tests of Abbott’s ID Now rapid diagnostic test (for active infection) showing a high level of false negatives, including from a study by Cleveland Clinic.

Those results were based on samples being put in viral transport media, which diluted the sample, which in turn impacted testing accuracy. FDA and Abbott eliminated this option from the product directions/recommendations, now the only approved method is to place the swab directly in the machine. Specificity and sensitivity of that process are in line with data that resulted in the test being approved.

https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/product-and-innovation/customer-update-on-our-idnow-covid-19-test.html

https://www.medtechdive.com/news/fda-abbott-coronavirus-test-updated-instructions-accuracy-concerns/576586/

These are the types of issues that can arise when products are rushed to market with emergency use authorization. It’s one thing when it’s a dx or serology test, another thing entirely for a vaccine or treatment.

2159

@MarylandJOE

Part of the reason for non essential workers staying at home is to keep essential workers safer. The fewer people out and about - the less chance essential workers have of contracting the virus. This is especially true for our health care workers.

You, as an essential worker, will be at a much higher risk of getting CV19 when your state opens up, as will your family, co-workers and friends.

2160

There is a difference between a course that was set up as an online course, and one that transitioned from in person to online. You can PM me for why I’m saying that.