Also continuing UI insurance indefinitely. That’s not really an option financially for the country. It’s a big problem folks.
Schools around here gave Chrome Books to students. If needed, they set up WiFi hot spots for students. It was not an easy task but would be easier with more advance notice than the week or so they had in March.
My kid was in a remote village in Peace Corps. She had very consistent think satellite internet or something…but she totally had it. The bigger issue was she didn’t have electricity so needed a solar charger. But everyone in her village had smart phones and internet. Of they could do it there…they can do it here.
Yes, but less so than during distance learning. So, it seems like an improvement when I think in those terms.
That was a very interesting read comparing oodles of countries and adding in personalities of the countries to explain some of the differences in outcome. Thanks for sharing.
I agree that schools will ideally be open and understand masks can be difficult for some people and impossible for some with health issues. But if we open schools and don’t have masks, many teachers will not be willing to take those risks and might not return to school and so schools would not easily be able to fill all those slots and open. Having a bunch of teachers, staff, and some students die mid-school year will be incredibly disruptive to learning and will damage students in other ways that is very real. I don’t think there is a perfect answer.
Just asking, is there any place outside of nursing homes that had “a bunch” of people die? Even in barracks, ships, and meat packing plants with big outbreaks, death is still quite rare given the infectious fatality rate, so I can’t imagine schools would be different, given they have a much younger population than nursing homes.
I don’t think many people in schools will die, partially because I think those with medical issues, both students and staff, are unlikely to return. However, if the virus gets into staff, there will be difficulties keeping classes going for the duration of the illness - a week minimum for each having symptoms, longer for any who need to be hospitalized. How many subs are out there, esp those who can teach the subjects while managing classes? Our school is short subs in a good year and very few can handle high school subjects.
What about bus drivers?
If there are any deaths, it will hit hard based upon some deaths we’ve experienced before due to car accidents, cancer, and suicides. But I think the bigger issue will be just dealing with the illness.
Hopefully the Italian doctors mentioned before are correct and the virus is mutating to become less deadly. That would be a win for everyone (eventually). Didn’t that happen with SARS and/or MERS or am I wishful thinking?
Our school district has had 3 students die in the past 5 years. Each death was tremendously negatively impacting on the whole school community.
I would estimate given the fatality rate of Covid and the age of our teachers and staff that we could lose several students and I wouldn’t want to even guess at how many teachers, but it would be incredible if we didn’t lose any in the case of trying to open without masks or just face shields. This would be incredibly traumatic to our students and staff. Teachers would not continue to work in this type of environment.
When this started and we were still in school after other districts were already in distance learning I was not comfortable going to work and remember thinking about how it is bad enough that we are asked to prepare to respond to a possible mass shooting and we drill for that type of possibility and have many visible reminders of the fact of mass school shootings (safety precautions) I see as I approach my school, enter it, and move through my school that in past years were not there. Now we have to add a pandemic to that list of things we didn’t sign up for when we became teachers!
It might see like 1% of people dying or half a percent isn’t a big deal, or 10 or 15 or 20% being sick enough to end up in the ICU for weeks or months, but that would be incredibly upsetting to students and to any school. It would impact the school negatively. We had students who had parents in the ICU and on ventilators and they went from being top students to not doing any work and needing us to figure out where they were and reach out a lot and excuse them from assignments and more. It is traumatic even if people don’t die.
There is no good solution. It is a bad situation. We can make it safer by all wearing masks. I think figuring out how to support people in being successful in wearing masks and other precautions is important to keeping schools open.
Our state’s teacher organization surveyed teachers and found some incredible number is not comfortable returning to the classroom this fall. if we do not make schools safe, it will be a problem. I plan to return but am nervous about it. I am only as comfortable with the idea as I am because I know our school will take safety precautions seriously.
It’s amazing that the richest country on Planet Earth cannot do things that every other country on Planet Earth can do.
And the list is incredibly long of the things we can’t do that aren’t even pandemic related. And we say we are “exceptional.” SMH.
Ontario has just announced that 2 of the 3 remaining stage 1 regions (one of in which I live) will be able to progress to stage 2 this week. The last region that is being held at stage 1 is seeing an outbreak among migrant farm workers predominantly from Mexico.
I don’t anticipate it making much of a difference in my day to day life. I got a notification recently from my dentist’s office that they have just reopened but I’m not feeling inclined to visit in the foreseeable future. Dh will be glad to be able to go get a hair cut, but I’m not in a rush. The boys also could use cuts but as they aren’t going anywhere or seeing anyone I think they can wait for now too.
As you pointed out, students die without pandemics, too. And there will continue to be suicides and accidents and cancers which take student lives, all of which are tragic. But it would be helpful to ascertain accurately where the pandemic fatality risk lies, and it surely is not with the under 18 set anywhere, based on data. Students will have a difficult time this year no matter what, even if they stay online.
I need to learn to do all of this. I already have trouble learning 100 new faces/names every fall (possibly most people would find this challenging!). There are also a couple of teachers in departments I rarely interact with, whose names I struggle to remember. I have to say, Zoom/Hangouts with names printed clearly has been a godsend. 
Corrections facilities in Ohio have had several deaths.
Mass testing was only done in a few facilities, then they went back to limiting test. I recall MCI and PCI were mass tested. PCI has a more elderly prisoner population.
MCI (Marion Correctional Institute) has a lot of bunk houses. MCI numbers reported 6/21/19 1 death among 177 positive staff members, 13 confirmed prisoner deaths and 2074 positives (recovered)
Overall 5 staff members and 76 confirmed plus 8 probable prisoners deaths so far in the system.
https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/static/reports/DRCCOVID-19Information.pdf
I don’t think was mentioned previously, but Bowdoin says that only freshman (and some other notable exceptions) will be on-campus this fall. Everyone else will be online. Anyone on campus must have 2x/week COVID-19 testing. I’m wondering how they’ve managed to get a supply of tests in order to do this.
In our area we have a surplus of teachers as it is highly lucrative career. Recent graduates are severely underemployed. For us having older teachers opt to retire rather than risk exposure would be a boon for the younger teachers who are making do with substitute teaching and covering LTO’s.
Name tags. No reason kids can’t have one on the shirts.
I’m going to be generous with myself and say “a bunch” is four, because four deaths is a shocking number of deaths in a short period. If a bunch is four, then several hospital staffs , the Diamond Princess, the Biogen conference, a family funeral and birthday party in Chicago, the Fusco family in New Jersey, a janitor’s funeral in Georgia, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley Colorado, and several prisons have had a bunch of deaths.
SARS and MERS were relatively easily contained because they were much less contagious, particularly during the presymptomatic stage of infection. COVID-19 can infect deep in the lungs (causing serious sickness and sometimes death or disability) like SARS and MERS, but can also infect the upper respiratory tract (enabling easy spread from infected people with no or minor symptoms) like common cold coronaviruses.
It is the combination of easy spread from not-obviously-sick people and a rate of severe sickness, death, and disability that gets attention that makes COVID-19 such a concern among many people.
Let’s say the bonus UI is not extended past July.
Let’s say, there is not enough hours/work for millions of people who seek work, and regular UI is not enough to make basic housing payments, not to mention inflated food costs.
Where is the cost going to be shifted to?