According to the website and graphing feature that the teacher who is collecting stats on student infection rates from newspaper reports, as of 9/1/20, there are 1,350 schools reporting infection with 4,953 cases and 37 deaths.
The map is striking to me in that you could put a line in the middle of the country on that map and find the majority of the dots on the eastern (right) half of the country. I can only guess why that is. But just throwing a guess out there – most of the states in the west are remote learning only. Until recently and partially because the middle of the country is less populated, the midwest had lower infection rates.
The spreadsheet the teacher is keeping is very detailed with info about each reported death. She (or someone) is doing a great job in keeping up with that spreadsheet.
In the discussions of school reopenings, there’s often some discussion of how it’s beneficial to open schools, outweighing some potential for community spread of infection because not opening schools would have a negative impact on children’s mental health. While that may be true, there haven’t been any studies on it that I’ve seen. This is the first study I’ve seen about it. This study says that some teenagers’ mental health has improved since the shut down.
In addition, the study found that social media use increased but stress levels did not increase along with it, giving some evidence that social media use is not the only factor causing stress in children, as is sometimes posited.
Interesting editorial published in Science. It starts out with a position that children “may be less susceptible to infection than older individuals but probably spread the infection at similar rates” (both counts quite open for debate) but then give guidelines much looser than Harvard’s GHI’s.
Up to 50 infections/100K community background rate okay and not masks in classrooms?
If appropriate physical distancing and hygiene measures are applied, schools are unlikely to be more effective propagating environments than other occupational or leisure settings with similar densities of people.
I guess it depends what other activities are open that have similar densities of people. I can’t think of anything that’s open today that shoved 30 people into a small room and holds them there for hours.
Here is a thing we are seeing. It won’t be 30, it will be 10 or 12 because at least 50% will opt for remote. If you are doong hybrid, that’s halved again. But school isn’t school. For us, at least, we are finding that if we are equally responsible for remote and in class kids at the same time, and in fact well over half are remote, the only feasible thing to do is design remote lessons and have the kids in class basically following along. So either way, they are on their chromebooks, wearing headphones, remote collaborating. It makes it safer, but it also makes it seem sorta pointless.
NY Times tracker for coronavirus cases in colleges and universities. As of Sep. 3, 2020, there were over 51,000 cases from over 1,020 schools. There are totals by state and a search bar to search for a particular school. They also note that they left in cases from universities with teaching hospitals or other medical units.
[may be paywalled but it wasn’t when I looked at it.]
These are two very different types of environments (colleges/universities vs elementary/middle schools) and will have two very different types of results. College life includes many, many more opportunities for close contact than school does.
People in my town are trying to raise money to test all the kids and teachers before they go back to school, and from time to time after that. I’m not sure how many students would be physically on site at a time.
That seems like a good idea. I wonder how the teachers feel about it.
Argh. We got an e-mail last night: there’s a cluster of 11 positives at one of the fraternities linked to a large/illicit party held on August 29th. Looks like they let us know a few hours before the media.
We were talking at lunch on Friday, waiting for something like this to happen…makes those of us who have always worked off-campus in a satellite office (and currently from home) glad that we’re not in the thick of it on campus…
I wonder how many colleges and universities are really going to make in through Thanksgiving without having to send everyone hope again. All this testing and making sure 100% of the students tested negative before being allowed on campus and then bi-weekly testing of all students and weekly testing of all on-campus faculty and staff, and there are still cases almost immediately…it doesn’t make me especially hopeful.
That tracker might be something useful if they both normalized by size of student/staff population of the programs (100 of 40,000 means something different than if 4,000), and differentiated between programs that are screening all students at least once if not routinely and those testing those symptomatic or close contact only. Another likely order of magnitude or more of difference in significance. It would further be useful to compare to rates in the same age groups not in college in their regions.
regular mandatory testing for those on campus
Initial mandatory testing for those on campus
Testing only for those with symptoms, or those who request it.
Same age group not in college
I wonder how many colleges and universities are really going to make in through Thanksgiving without having to send everyone hope again.
Speaking as someone who works in higher ed … probably a lot of schools will stay open through Thanksgiving, actually. I anticipate that mine will, although I wasn’t sure at the beginning of the semester. Sending students home is always a choice, not a “have to”; institutions can make other choices too, and at the moment there are a whole range of responses going on at different colleges and universities, ranging from “put the whole campus on lockdown and make everyone stay in their dorm room” to “do almost nothing.” (I am not saying that either one of these is a GOOD response, but time will tell.) In general, I think the pendulum has swung away from “close down the whole campus for the entire semester” to “do something more moderate, like quarantining infected students and their close contacts, or going online for two weeks but telling everyone to stay put” over the course of the last few weeks, in large part because the UNC debacle got so much bad publicity.
They may hope that if they close everything, go to remote classes and all but restrict kids to dorm rooms, lots will go home, but not be in a position to demand refunds.
The smaller colleges, say 2,000 students or less and especially those in remote towns and all or most students live in the same housing are definitely going to come out better on this because they can set up more controls and have a smaller group to manage. A friends kid goes to a small Christian college in Colorado and they are basically going to be in quarantine until winter break.
My kid’s school just decided to resume preK-2 as in school for four days per week, starting at the end of September. Unless they change their mind again. The decision was supposedly made by an advisory panel of parents, teachers, and administrators. As my wife asked, “are there any scientists on the panel?”
Unless the school changes their mind again, I expect we’ll send our second grader. Other districts in the area are open, but at less than two weeks of school so far, it is probably too early to draw any conclusions. Or, none have closed, and no stories of outbreaks have hit the news.
We decided to start the year by going Total Remote Learning with the added statement that the district would reassess the situation at the end of the first quarter which, for us, is Halloween. The unofficial word already, however, is that we will stay remote until the beginning of the 4th quarter at the earliest.
It makes sense. Viruses are generally most benign in the summer, especially in July and August when it is hot and sunny. With the flu season coming up, it is very likely that the virus will make a comeback much like flu and cold viruses do.
Going hybrid on November 1st after staying Total Remote in August? Not likely.
We started the year in a “near normal” scenario, with masks everywhere (including us teachers unless we can keep six feet of distance to the nearest student) and hand sanitizer and two subjects over the whole day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We shall see how it goes, but it’s only been two days of full classes.
I certainly wish you all good fortune and hope you can pull it off. Loyola and U of W at Madison started full attendance, and both have had to close down and go Total Remote. On the news last night, it was stated that at least 20% of the UW-Madison students were testing positive. That was stunning considering it is only September.
My children’s school got a waiver for K-6 and will be opening next week. It’s a really tiny school, fewer than 30 kids total (!), and they’re dividing it up into three cohorts anyway. My older child is in a cohort of 4 and my younger child is in a cohort of 9, and before they got the waiver the parents of younger kids had already basically formed pods corresponding to the cohorts anyway. For my younger child’s pod/cohort I had to fill out a whole detailed thing on how much risk we were taking, promise to eschew any kind of group or indoor activities, etc. Anyway, I’m totally not concerned about that school reopening. A couple more private schools got waivers and will be opening in my area. All of them are fairly small, even if not as tiny as my kids’ school.
The public schools (which I yanked my younger kid from this summer) are not pursuing waivers yet, which I think is very wise of them – much larger schools, much larger cohorts, more possibility for community spread. Our part of the county looks OK but the county as a whole is in the governor’s “you suck” range of his metric. (We’re in California.)