The San Diego County school board is looking at a blended approach, with parents perhaps having a say. The school districts will have to figure out what they can do, want to do, and how much parent input to consider. So no specific overall plan at the moment.
I always have trouble remembering names - I once went to a three day award event with my husband and everyone had to wear name tags all the time - it was great!
Perhaps with students, schools could get a bunch of white masks and let kids personalize them with their names using markers or stickers. Then instead of looking out at a classroom of masks, teachers would look at a classroom of names.
In other news, the surgery center called re my husband’s rotator cuff surgery tomorrow. Contrary to what he was told in his pre-visit, but as I expected, I am not allowed inside at all. He will have to muddle through without my comforting presence ;).
How large is your school that you would anticipate several students dying? The death rate of those under age 18 is minimal. Our high school has roughly 1200 students. IF those with certain medical conditions don’t return (as I expect will happen), I don’t really think any would die even if all got sick. I would expect a “typical” number to be hospitalized, but I don’t even think that’s a high number for the high school age group.
I worry far more about teachers and staff.
And yes, any deaths would hit hard (as I mentioned before). We lost 5 students at once in a car accident a few years back. I don’t want to ever relive such a thing. But… I don’t see Covid causing that many deaths among students given what we know about it at this point.
You’re right that parents and other relatives or family members being affected would also hit the students.
If the virus doesn’t become tamer by itself or because the medical folks get an effective treatment, it is going to be a bad year for many students regardless of what path gets chosen.
Those types of things impact learning and impact students’ emotional health. Adding more when we don’t have to do that, when we can make mask wearing universal and take other simple precautions, as well as move to distance learning on a case by case bases if there are spikes seems like the best way to protect both students and teachers. Students would be very impacted if they did not wear masks and their teacher ended up in the ICU or dead. That’s something we should actively try to avoid, not calculate what is an acceptable loss of teachers and students and make reasons people can’t wear masks. Some people can’t wear masks. That is true. But most can and in our school we will be wearing them and we anticipate the state shutting us down in the fall because of a spike in cases and moving to distance learning. I don’t decide any of this but I am the one deciding if I go to work or not. I would not work if the person deciding my fate was expressing a lack of support for masks or lack of concern for the loss of teacher and student lives and neither would most anyone else I work with. Teachers have to feel we are valued and reasonably protected to get us to go into a risky situation. To us one student life lost that could have been saved will not be acceptable.
We wore masks all day when we were in China because the pollution was so bad - the tour guide gave them to us. It’s not impossible for most people, but I am intrigued by the idea of using face shields. I too have found that masks have been great for hay fever. Never thought of wearing them before!
We have students with seriously underlying conditions. There is one very dear to me and I worry greatly about what would happen to her if she got it. She is not the only such student. Even if all that happened was that a number of students ended up being very sick and in the ICU for a length of time, that would put stress on the student body and teachers. Our teachers have not opted out as far as I know and we have many who are high risk teachers.
Students can also be vectors of spread to their own families and that would be devastating as well, I’m sure.
I just received the following email from my supervisor. I work for a nonprofit organization (a professional association) in Wisconsin.
“At this point please be aware that there will be no members and no events allowed in the building through October. As time goes by decisions will be made about November and December.”
Most of the 100 or so employees were ordered to work from home starting March 17, 2020. A group of no more than 25% will be allowed to work in the building beginning July 6. Until July 6, the rest of us (those not part of the designated 25%) can make appointments to go into the building to engage in specified tasks, such as retrieving items from our work stations. Beginning July 6, the rest of us will not be allowed into the building for any reason, at any time.
Not to mention that a young person dealing with, say, a parent who has (or dies from) covid-19 is affected quite directly, making it most definitely a “young person issue”.
From what we know, K-12 students, even those with serious underlying conditions, do not seem to be at more than negligible risk of death from covid. In areas hard-hit by covid, like Brooklyn and northern New Jersey, the number of children who died was tiny.
Edited to add: And therefore, I am skeptical of any claim that any individual school is likely to experience deaths among students, or that any particular child with underlying conditions is at serious risk of death from covid.
So, this virus is much less deadly for young children than the standard ordinary flu by all the numbers.
We don’t freak out about children and the flu every year, why would we with covid-19? This statement is strictly in regards to children and the direct impact this has on them and it’s relation to other causes of death.
It is not a young person issue.
Of course any child would be affected by a family member’s death. I am not referring to that issue. I am talking about the child’s life/death.
@dfbdfb, if only one child under 18 died has died of covid in Maryland, and if the number of children dying of covid in the US is very small, then that particular risk is not one that we ought to take big, expensive steps to avoid.
In my view there are significant risks if K-12 students go back to school, bigger risks in the older school ages, and these risks need to be considered, but student death from is not a risk that, in my view, merits much worry.
Can you provide a link that it is less deadly than the flu for the school aged set? The last numbers I saw had it twice as deadly. 0.2% for Covid vs 0.1% or 0.05% for the flu.
In any event, to be fair, when the flu has really overtaken a school (meaning 10-20% affected and out of school or being sent home) schools often close until it’s passed.
With more young folks getting infected as seems to be happening now in places, we should start to get a better idea of the current numbers for hospitalizations and worse. That ought to help schools have more info, though there’s still the staff to think about.
Your school closes for 10-20 percent flu? really? We have at least 40% before we consider closing. I too have read that influenza is more deadly for those under 18 than COVID, as it hits the very young (under 2) much harder. 172 children died of influenza in the most recent cited year. (source: nbc news)
Agree, the normal flu is much more deadly in children than Covid. Influenza B was rampant in my niece/nephew’s school this winter and they did not close. I’ve actually never heard of a local school closing for flu (anecdotal).
Covid is serious and highly contagious, but not very deadly at all for the under 20 age - unlike the flu. That’s a fact.
I talked with my friend who is an ICU PA and was working in a hard-hit area in the Covid ICU during the peak and she told us what it was like for her. Quite incredible and I think I only got a fraction of a glimpse of her experience.
She said we can’t talk about immunity with Covid because we don’t know what it means. She said that some people test positive 8 weeks out and other patients tested negative after 6 weeks but were still super sick in their ICU. (That’s the first I heard of something like that). She said we just don’t know what this is (don’t understand enough about the virus and how it works). She said some she works with have PTSD. One of her friends keeps reliving over and over having to code a very young patient who was completely healthy before Covid and not someone you would expect to die of it. Her final message she wishes she could say to the public, especially those who listened to a particular conspiracy theory video she saw that claimed masks are bad for our health and that we need the get antibodies was, “Please wear your damn mask because we are tired of taking care of people in our ICU!” She also mentioned something snarky about wondering if those who don’t wear them would agree to sign a waiver so they would stay home if they got sick (and not flood ICUs). She is amazingly dedicated and professional and always does her best for each patient, even ones who throw stuff at her (that happens apparently!) Also, quite a large number of staff - mix of hospital jobs - got the virus and they had fatalities. I didn’t ask how many.
I listened to a doctor who specializes in immune deficiency and what he said was aimed at an immune deficient audience but still interesting. He said that Covid started in about December last year because when we look at the donor IgG that is used to infuse into people with low IgG levels, we are not finding Covid in recent samples. Donor IgG takes time to go from the day of blood donation through all the processing, to the patients who use it to infuse and this process is usually 1-2 years time but could be 6 months. If there was Covid in the donated blood that is being processed, they would see it but they didn’t. Personally I felt there was compelling evidence the virus started at least in November in Wuhan, maybe even October, and wonder if China has checked blood donations from that time period for it.
He said he would be shocked if we have a vaccine before March 2021 and that it might not be until Sept 2021 because it will take 1 to 1 1/2 years from March of 2020 to develop in his opinion.
He said that about 2 to 10% have been exposed to Covid and that NYC is higher at about 10%. (Is that the % for NYC? I thought it was higher than that.)
It will take time to have a significant amount of Covid antibodies in the IgG that people low in IgG infuse with, so there will not be enough protective antibodies that to be helpful to immune deficient people for quite a long time with so low a percent of the population having been exposed so far and such a long time for IgG production.
We don’t know how long people keep their antibodies to Covid.
The first vaccine or main vaccine will likely be a live vaccine and that is contraindicated in people with immune deficiency.
According to the CDC, a total of 151 children aged 14 or under have died of covid in the US. If we believe that covid has an infection fatality rate of 0.2% for that age group, that would mean only 7500 children 14 or under have been infected with covid thus far.
So then, we have to believe one of two things: either the IFR of 0.2% is wrong, or the IFR of 0.2% is correct but we don’t have to worry about kids being infected because they don’t get infected. I believe the IFR is wrong.
We don’t have anyone under age 2 in our school system. Even the small preschool class starts at age 3. In high school kids are aged 13-19 (up to 20 for some of our special needs students).
I can’t really imagine any district waiting until 40% of kids/staff are absent before closing, but I’m continually presented with different things happening in different areas on cc.
(All this stated and I still don’t think all that many students would die of Covid.)