Should mention, that’s a general concern. Don’t know specifics of the Canadian app.
I missed that this wasn’t Canadians. Carry on.
Okay.
I downloaded it as soon as I heard about it. Other than weekly reminders that it’s still running and using my Bluetooth, it hasn’t told me anything.
I’m not sure how you justify that assertion. From numbers published at the end of October, schools seemed to be behind anywhere from 10-40% of the known cases, depending on where you lived:
I’m rather certain you’re not reading your link carefully. Schools are linked to 10-40% of known outbreaks, not cases. 2/3rds of cases are “sporadic”, not linked to an outbreak. Your article also mentions outbreaks in schools and healthcare settings are determined by different criteria than other establishments.
The pie charts lump schools and daycare together, despite this different criteria.
Also:
I have it. Pretty much everyone in our lab has it I think. We were talking about it a couple of weeks back during a meeting. It probably isn’t that surprising that a medical lab would have people who would have it though.
Take care of yourself! Hope all works out well.
The app or the virus?
What I concluded from that article is that schools are indeed a major vector for the spread of COVID. Perhaps the biggest, even. So while the decision to keep them open may not be politically-motivated, it certainly doesn’t seem to be based on science. And now that we know that a vaccine is not too far off, I think schools in major cities with rising case counts should all be moving to fully remote, to minimize the amount of deaths and pain until the something - most likely the vaccine - brings the case counts down.
You are simply reading the article wrong. Tell me, why have you decided schools are the problem when there is no distinct number even attached. It is lumped in with daycares.
Let me try this way: the article isn’t talking about cases, it’s talking about outbreaks. One person sick at a daycare is an outbreak. 30 people sick at a meatpacking plant is also just one outbreak.
Yes, I read it but assumed that there isn’t a material difference between daycares and schools, so it’s fair to categorize them together. Perhaps that is a bad assumption. The article distinguishes between outbreaks and cases, but also states that the criteria for what is considered an outbreak includes some evidence of spread. But I agree with you that I may have filled in too many blanks with respect what the article was saying.
That said, at least in the US, there is more and more evidence that asymptotic carriers are a larger source of spread than previously believed, and that high school students; i.e. older children, are a major source of spread due to their lack of symptoms combined with their behavior patterns.
I could be wrong, but data in the article probably doesn’t consider some of the ancillary, but potentially significant, reasons why in-person schooling can lead to more cases. For example, kids doing things together after school, commuting to and from school, etc.
Finally, for full disclosure, my ex-wife and kids live in Toronto and my kids are both high school students in the city, so this is why I have so much interest in the decision-making of their government.
That’s the thing - not for daycares. As I quoted from the article above, a single symptomatic case in a daycare counts as an outbreak.
The app 
Oh good. I’m glad to be corrected. 
No, I do not think this is true. But you are probably right about asymptomatic cases. And high schoolers and younger students differ quite a bit - I posted an article in “Opening Schools” which argues among high schoolers and staff, spread is at about the same rate as the community. But it is lower for younger students. Still, the article has its critics and was written by an economist.
Has its critics?
I debunked the living shit out of that. I had to withdraw a claim that I made because it was based on the shit numbers that she used, which were an order of magnitude different from the actual data. Hell, I even have additional information that I assumed wasn’t needed due to how well I debunked it, but you really need to stop claiming that this opinion piece was anything other than digital diarrhea, unless you want to bring some evidence to back it up. Aside from the incorrect data that I already demonstrated, she claims that her “side-by-side” comparison between state and school data is from October 12th through November 6th. The school data has the actual date range embedded in it and it states that the range is October 12th through October 25th. Until a few days ago, it even had a last modified date on the G-Drive that matched it’s create date, October 29th. It’s pretty fucking hard to show data through November 6th on October 29th.
If that’s the kind of shit we’re going to use to decide on school safety, we are truly and wholly fucked.
You debunked the shit out of it? The NY Times must be so embarrassed.
I’m not sure if the NY times gives a flying fuck how accurate some economist’s op/ed in the Washington Post might be, but sure thing cloudy. Another possibility, and I know this is novel, but you could actually offer a rebuttal to any of the analysis in the thread in question.