Her complaints I thought were frivolous as in… she was complaining about stuff in old rooms. Dusty, rusty stuff. Like no one had been roomed in them. Uh, yeah. Food sucked. Only 3 bottles of water (like the water coming from the rusted sink was “bad”.) And like she couldn’t fill them back up from either the in room wash basins or the fountains in the halls.
Hubby noted she went “home” to quarantine which “required” riding a bus (thus potentially infecting who knows how many) and the cost of a hotel room might be a bit more than staying in the “crappy” dorm room. She didn’t go actual home with her parents… they apparently are covid susceptible.
I did not want my baby going back. Since all of her classes are online she could have stayed home. The only plus is her room mate is her best friend. Oh, and delivered food that doesn’t happen at home. I mean, I cook, but sometimes you want McDonald’s.
She was infected before getting there… I guess U of I thought their students might know about quarantining after being in a high risk area (she was at an ER 5 days before getting to school.)
That said… despite knowing my kid will wear a mask when needed, will wash her hands and is going to be a Nurse or PA… her being my baby combined with this pandemic… leaves me in a maelstrom of anger, sadness and, a teeny fraction of, hope.
We might be seeing folks at XMas. Turkey Day I don’t feel good about.
As I walked the dog this a.m., I saw school busses prowling the streets - so I imagine at least SOME local schools are open. And this a.m.'s thread had a lengthy article about kids going to college classes - even if their classes will be 100% on-line. And another article essentially predicted an uptick in COVID this fall, due to several factors - including schools.
I thought about posting this as a new thread, but thought this might be a better place to reach those in the know - what, if any effects do you think will result from current school activity at grade school through college level? I’m having a hard time imagining that there won’t be SOME sizable uptick.
Just checked the local school website. Says K-5 will be in person full time - w/ option of remote. Middle school is hybrid, in school 2 days/week - w/ remote option.
My kid lives 2 suburbs over - her dtr is starting kindergarten today remotely. Which I think unfortunate.
In all honesty I expect there to be an explosion of new cases, easily reaching 100,000 a day by the ides of October, and a second lockdown before New Year’s. We pulled the kids out so, so early on, when there were fewer than 4,000 US cases, that it’s foolhardy to think we have a solid idea about how well they spend the disease. Recent studies suggest, though, that they’re probably as good at it as we are, which is horrible news considering the vast number of parents who think nothing of sending sick kids to school. Add asymptomatic spread…It’s going to be like the Philadelphia Liberty Loans Parade was, in dozens of cities all within a couple or three weeks.
Schools open or shut some regions with high rates of infection that are pretty wide open will be having big upticks seasonally. Many of these places are just opening even High Schools with little mitigation in place.
Schools open or shut some regions with lower rates, positivity rates under 10%, not wide open, and good compliance with mask-wearing, will be seeing more modest rises seasonally. Many of these regions are not even letting elementary and special needs students have in-person education.
Rates in New York as it opens might be able to tell you something. But you have to look for places that are fairly matched for other behaviors and background rates that differ pretty much only by level of school opening to be able to say much of anything.
Daughter’s room mate posted this morning that there are 100+ positives and today was the first day of classes. A few hours later it was on the local news along with stories about bars being packed with college kids.
I read somewhere that college openings are really a bait-and-switch so they can charge on-campus tuition. Their plans hinge on the students diligently and proactively following all coronavirus and administration guidelines, which is laughable. Then when all these entirely predictable outbreaks happen, the school blames it on the bad behavior of the students and goes to online only.
Bars being open in a college town right now is reckless.
Big school, over 36K, but 100+ at arrival is still a lot. Then again this was the confirmed infection rate in the population based on NOT being on campus, living in their parents’ homes.
Daughter is on campus but has all online only classes. But we really can’t complain: UofI has her on a scholarship (from them) so we’re only paying ~$6,000 a year when it could be ~$30,000.
They (her room mate and her) don’t drink so I know they weren’t at the bars. I must honestly amend that: she drinks at home but so little as to be laughable compared to the rest of her alcoholic family.
When we dropped her off (45 minutes because we have this down to a science) and gave our last hugs … I reminded her that the odds of staying in the dorm were low.
I think I’d best be getting on cleaning up her room (Late spring to almost fall occupancy and she’s a slacker when it comes to cleaning, just like her older brothers) so when she’s back she can pit it out again. I just hope she won’t have to quarantine when she comes home: she’s spent the last few years pretty much quarantining in her bedroom. The years before telling us she was transgender and this last year she has self-isolated while getting comfortable in her skin.
Iowa City is one of the best places she could be other than… the other students who just don’t seem to care about Covid19.
Well, if nothing else, we should get some good data from this experiment!
Plenty of different models to compare and contrast. Like I said, in my W Chicago suburban area, adjacent (and overlapping - in the case of public vs private) school districts have adopted vastly different approaches.
So when there is no rapidly increasing community spread in the Western suburbs, is it evidence that opening was safe or that those closed kept it from happening? (Or in the converse if there is rapidly increasing spread that closing schools was ineffective, or necessary?) When there are cases identified is open private schools (as there definitely will be because there are people part of the community at large) what do you judge those case numbers against? An assumption of zero among those not at in person school?
Man, I sure don’t know. I’ll leave the data interpretation to those more expert than I (which likely includes just about EVERYBODY! ;)) But there sure will be data to interpret (even if that data consists of dead bodies!)
For the most part the data will be near impossible to meaningfully interpret, but going out on a limb here, that won’t stop any of any already held position from stating how much it proves what they already believe! “Interpretation” in this case will be much like the interpretations of a haruspex …
Most part.
But seriously one should establish what would show what ahead of getting “the data”. Find communities similar to each other other than in how they are approaching school opening. I’ll make a prediction to test that some communities with high community rates will see big High School flares but relatively little in elementary schools that cannot be explained by exposure from and between teachers (possibly not following rules) and from outside the school. I’ll predict in that hypothesis testing mode that for any school making any reasonable mitigation effort teacher infection rates per capita will be less than or at most equal to rates of matched by age and demographic others working in the community providing less essential services.
I’m confused. My dtr lives in Lombard - 10 min W of me. I live in Elmhurst. Villa Park is between. While there are some differences in income/home value/etc, density/size of high schools/etc are pretty similar.
Lombard’s schools are closed, Elmhurst’s are open - elementary fulltime, middle school hybrid. If Elmhurst experiences a sizable uptick among people related to the schools - teachers/students/extended family - isn’t that at least suggestive that the way Elmhurst opened schools contributed?
I suspect the issue is that there is so much overlap between the systems. People live in one community, work in the other. Teach on one system, send kids to school in the other. Shop across boundaries. If you want to track the impact on public health as a whole, it gets really blurry.
The real issue is that the ISBE didn’t want to stir up a political hornets’ nest by mandating a blanket policy for every school district in Illinois, so they left it up to each individual school district in the state to come up with their own recipe for 2020-2021.
There is actually merit to that policy because COVID-19 affected different areas in Illinois in very different ways. The drawback is lack of continuity.
But that’s still a rise in absolute cases, right? You’re moving a bunch of adults from a “very low rate of transmission” zone–self-isolating–into a much higher rate zone. So even if they catch it at the same rate as grocery store and health care workers, that’s still more cases. If R is over 1, it’s even more cases.
I also am a little worried that “as long as they follow the rules” can turn into a no-true Scotsman scenario. In many cases, the rules can be confusing and hard to follow and are more about “just in case” and avoiding liability than actual feasibility. If you investigate any cluster, you’re sure to find someone who did something “wrong”.
