I very much agree with this statement. We need national support and guidance informed by local conditions. The lack of either has been appalling.
The only thing I would add is that people who work in schools need to be present in these conversations at every layer. I saw an awful meme today–someone was asking, “how do we social distance during active shooter drills?”. As crazy as that sounds, it’s a real concern. We don’t all have active shooter drills, but we have for drills. Do we cancel them? Has that occurred to anyone at the APA or CDC?
I feel like teachers (and other adults in the building) are not being given the benefit of the doubt. The assumption seems to be that we are not raising concerns in good faith, but are just being difficult or looking for excuses. I understand that some of that is just that the people at the top are themselves floundering and there isn’t a lot of time to sit down with teachers. But part of it also feels political, like the powers that be just want school in session so that we can go back to “normal”.
At my daughter’s university, she has found that Zoom faculty meetings are more efficient - and faster - than in person ones. The people who make useless noise tend to shut up. So there is hope.
The conference I’m involved in has done 20 person online meetings long before the pandemic. It is very efficient.
This isn’t a model, but a tool to let you look at the implications of various models. Your model says that kids have a very low transmission rate? Change that parameter in the spreadsheet and see what calculations come out. What are the implications of high or low community transmission, a closed room or well ventilated room, small class size or regular, etc.?
I’m generally impressed by the thought that goes into your posts, but this seems like you’re dismissing the work of multiple epidemiologists. This tool isn’t coming from some rando, but a professor of atmospheric chemistry who studies the airborne transmission of pathogens. Maybe he’s a crackpot with tenure; I don’t have the expertise to evaluate that. Any reason these experts should make worse assumptions than other experts? I know that is a big part of the problem here. There is not enough data yet to come to a well supported consensus about what is safe and what is not safe.
From your earlier post, the spreadsheet allows you to change mask compliance. Does it let you adjust mask effectiveness? Does it adjust how effective distancing is or merely how much distance people are keeping?
I have a feeling that there are a bunch of assumptions built into your spreadsheet even if it is highly adjustable.,
Thanks! I’m also starting a new position as our school’s AIG teacher, which in this context means hell if I know what it means, nobody else does. All I know is that this year isn’t going to be boring.
And 100% on getting teachers involved in the planning. There are so many weird little bits to teaching that folks who work in the state capitol won’t even think of. Trying to reopen schools without constant teacher input, you may as well be predicting hurricane paths with a map and a Sharpie.
It’s not my spreadsheet, it was created by Professor Jose-Luis Jimenez, with advise from many others. Mask effectiveness is what is adjusted. People not wearing a mask can be simulated by setting the effectiveness to 0.
From the FAQ on the spreadsheet:
How do I model a situation in which only some people are wearing masks?
You can run two cases, one with masks and one without, and that will bound the probability of infection.
To get the average effect, you can multiply the mask efficiency by the fraction of the people wearing masks, for both emission and inhalation. So for example if 50% of the people are wearing surgical / clothy masks, you would enter 25% (0.5 * 50%) for emission efficiency, and 15% (0.5 * 30%) for inhalation efficiency
To estimate a specific case (e.g. infected person not wearing a mask, susceptible person is wearing a mask), just adjust the efficiencies of emission and inhalation accordingly in the sheet.
The spreadsheet does assume that people maintain separation. With sufficient air mixing in the room, separation may not matter, as quanta will be distributed evenly. A large room with fewer people means each person is less likely to encounter quanta, and a small room with lots of people increases the concentration of quanta, and the chance of a person inhaling it.
Of course there are assumptions. There are always assumptions. I can’t imagine an assumption free model of disease transmission. Maybe such things exist, it’s outside my field. What’s important is being explicit about the assumptions, and understanding what violations of the assumptions do. In my field, some models are robust to assumption violations, but others become biased. In a “known unknown” sense, we often know what assumptions are being violated, which ones are not being violated, and which ones we don’t know if they’re being violated.
When I saw that cartoon models of COVID-19 are exactly what I thought of. Almost all have suffered by making assumptions with much greater confidence than was warranted. Including some of the most respected modeling groups around. The results have been results all over the board.
So this tool makes some big assumptions that we should have little confidence in. For example it assumes all spread to the same degrees while the data strongly suggests great heterogeneity in spread efficiency. I don’t think averaging the bounds captures that. And from there it is a tool to let users play making models with other wild guesses.
I might not often agree with DSeid and the new cloudhelmut in this thread, but I completely agree in this case.
There are so many assumptions multiplied by so many other assumptions, divided by this or that unknown, that you basically end up with scaled random numbers.
I’m sharing this because it underscores a concern Manda_JO and others have had about the danger to teachers. In Arizona, three teachers who shared a classroom and, though masked, social distanced, and using hand sanitizer, got COVID. One died. The other two are still struggling with symptoms. Though the article doesn’t explicitly say so, there apparently were no other children in the room.
From the superintendent: “I think that’s really the message or the concern that our staff has is we can’t even keep our staff safe by themselves … how are we going to keep 20 kids in a classroom safe? I just don’t see how that’s possible to do that,” he said.
This is anecdotal, and one could argue it’s a fluke, but as I said, it underscores the concerns.
The money to open schools safely isn’t going to come from cities, which are broke, it isn’t going to come from states, which are broke, and it isn’t going to come from the Federal government which doesn’t see that there’s a problem.
That wasn’t true in San Antonio. People were strongly encouraged to test and testing was very accessible. The positivity rate was low. Things started going bad not long after memorial day and phase two of the reopening. Only just last week were residents encouraged not to test unless they had symptoms. This was only to make sure that people who were really sick were getting testing. Positivity rates skyrocketed to 22% from less than 4% in a matter of weeks.
Hmmm. We’ve had the online screening tool (I’m sure you do too) but I don’t think that precluded anyone from testing. It’s only been the last two weeks or so that the mayor was asking people to not test. I don’t remember if they said that there were no tests available. Just that priority needs to be given to people who are sick or exposed to someone who is sick. It took it to mean preventing sick people from having to wait in long lines.