This, fundamentally, is why my wife is so reluctant to return to the classroom. This disease hasn’t been studied long enough for us to say we really understand it. With that in mind, better to be safe than sorry.
Unfortunately, this is pretty unrealistic. Ask any teacher. Kids come in with coughs, runny noses, upset stomachs, etc. all the time. In winter in any classroom, there’s a veritable sniffler’s chorus. One might think during a pandemic, parents would be more cautious, and most might, but when you factor in common, less serious viruses going around (so that it really could be “just a cold”) and that parents who work often can’t get days off or short-notice childcare, mildly symptomatic kids are bound to show up. Not all of them will have fevers that could be detected at the door.
One hope is that there won’t be as many seasonal colds (or flu) because all the precautions we are taking will limit them. And parwnts who are already WFH because of COVID may be in a somewhat better place to keep a kid home than they were last year, when they had to go to work themselves. This will apply more in affluent areas, of course. Essential worker parents will have less flexibility (though unemployed parents may have more! Layers!)
On the other hand, seasonal allergies can look like COVID, if you are serious about any symptoms. I don’t see how we can keep kids with allergies home all season.
FWIW while the number is non-zero, relatively few, kids or adults, have runny nose/sniffles as the presenting sign of COVID-19. Symptomatic SARS-CVoV-19 in kids, like adults, is mostly fever and cough. No question even in pandemic times exhortations to keep sick kids home will sometimes fall on deaf ears, but coughing kids declare themselves pretty quickly and can be put into a separate room waiting for parent pick up pretty quickly. 100% perfect no.
That’s not a nuance school systems can make, IME. The guidance we have gotten puts all COVID symptoms, from fever and shortness of breath to headache and sore throat, on the same list. You know, just in case. So what we have is a list that literally covers every symptom imaginable, and anyone who has any of them has to either stay home 14 days, get signed off by a doctor, or have 2 negative tests 14 days apart. I honestly have no idea how willing doctors will be to sign you off as COVID free when you have what is almost certainly allergies. They may be reluctant, also just in case. And two tests will be prohibitively expensive, especially if this cycle repeats ifself.
So effectively everyone will be missing weeks of work on and off all year. Not clear if we will be paid, or have to use out sick leave. If we have to use our sick leave, do we run the class from home while not getting paid? Seems unfair to either us or the students. But can they afford a sub if they don’t take our sick days?
So what you have is a stupidly broad list that strongly encourages people to just ignore symptoms. Whereas a more focused list, like fever, shortness of breath, cough, would be much more effective because it’s realistic.
Of course you are right (believe me I know that if I hear “out of abundance of caution” what comes next is going to likely be extreme and imbalanced to any consideration of potential harms)… but at least the one that perhaps has the most yield of identifying those who may actually be showing signs of symptomatic COVID-19 is the one most obvious to every teacher: not the missed sniffle, not the unreported belly ache or loose poop, but the cough and fever.
I don’t see too many teachers just letting the coughing student just stay in class unquestioned.
That said the rule for all interactions should remain universal precaution: a person who is breathing may be contagious with SARS-CoV-2 and should interacted with accordingly, with reasonable social distance and masking as appropriate.
The difference is people per volume of air by time. They’re showing that COVID is spreading through regular breathing, not just cough/sneeze. A grocery store has a lot more space per person in it than a classroom. Plus the average shopper is there for, what, an hour? Classrooms are together for 6 - much more time for the virus to transmit.
The most important rule of handling a firearm is to assume it’s always loaded.
That’s one of the questions on the Concealed Child Carry test.
Related to that, I pointed in a different thread about some students that make a sport of getting into the skin of the educators, something that I know for personal experience.
What could go wrong when now they know that instead of just metaphorically speaking they know that they can carry something that will go under the skin of educators literally?
They will be better, not worse. Being a smart ass doesn’t mean you are a sociopath who wants to kill your teachers.
Kids who think it’s funny to cough on someone in a douchey manner will be dealt with very quickly.
The vast, vast majority of kids will do their best to comply. However, they will make a lot of mistakes.
My child is back in daycare and the thing that is different is not the parents – well, I hope we are at least a little different, but the thing that is really different is that the daycare is being much much stricter about sick kids. If your temp is more than 99.0, you don’t get to go in and you have to stay home for 72 hours after that. Whereas I imagine I would have sent a kid with a temp of 99 regularly in the “old days” and it would have been no big deal, because not only would I have figured it was no big deal, neither I nor they would even have taken my kid’s temperature (which is why I say “I imagine” – I figure I did it, but I don’t have any proof either way).
Well, our county officials announced today that local schools should not resume in-person instruction before September 28, so we will be distance-learning for at least six weeks. I am relieved to hear it. The uncertainty has been weighing on me. I truly look forward to being able to get back to normal, in-person instruction when it is safe to do so here, but I think this is the right call. Hopefully by the end of September the situation will be better, but who knows?
On a related note, a local church hosted a youth camp a couple of weeks ago with 300+ kids. Photos from the camp show the kids mixing together in large groups without social distancing and without masks. Several of the kids have subsequently tested positive for coronavirus.
So, yeah, this is what we are up against and this is why schools are not going to open yet.
Reposting here in case anyone missed it in the COVID Breaking News thread, with thanks to lobotomyboy63: Florida’d largest teachers union sues state over reopening.
My cousins in Belgium went back.
I guess it’s better to put the link on a separate line?
Some pictures…
A school in Oregon had to cancel sports practices because they had an outbreak. Kids were doing conditioning only, no contact, small groups, temp checks.
I feel like this shows two things. One, opening gyms is as crazy as opening bars. I don’t care about masks and wiping things down, its the deep, deep breathing in enclosed spaces that is the problem.
Second, the 15 year old took it home and gave it to the whole household. To me, that’s strongly suggestive that teens can be “super spreaders”. If you have 1000+ teens on a campus in an area that has a lot of COVID in the community, it seems like a mass spreading event is inevitable.
Are the any differences between the USA and Belgium?
The organization that runs sports for California secondary schools has canceled all autumn athletics and moved them to the early spring.
I was just saying.