The daily new infections in Denmark are still on the rise and today all the school kids are back from their holidays. I'm not very optimistic with regards to most things continuing to be allowed to operate. Some restrictions are coming back in I think.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
<24 is not helpful, but in the context of schools (which DeVos runs), everything under 18/20 is very relevant - teenagers are not "stoppers".
I am genuinely asking what the solution is.
Since the vaccine will not eradicate the virus, until when exactly should schools remain closed?
Since the vaccine will not eradicate the virus, until when exactly should schools remain closed?
Finland had couple of weeks with around 30 infections, now 1 plane from Skopje brings 24, all 157 passengers were tested.
Yeah, schools (uk meaning of the word) need to open. Waiting for a virus is not an option. That should be one of the biggest priorities for us as a society. Way more important than pubs, night clubs, restaurants etc.
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While still not denying the incredible seriousness of all of this (and I've stuck religiously to the rules throughout the pandemic and continue to do so) I'm finding myself increasingly jaded by the media coverage.
The Guardian today reports on "Australia's Deadliest Day" so far in the pandemic, which turns out to be 19 deaths in a country of 25 million. Awful for the people and the families involved but there needs to be some sense of perspective.
Such consistent inflammatory reporting can be dangerous as it makes some people exhausted and give up even trying, rather than having the intended effect of making people take things seriously. I get the impression such outlets are afraid to report even slightly positive news as it could be seen as irresponsible, but it wouldn't go amiss now and then.
The Guardian today reports on "Australia's Deadliest Day" so far in the pandemic, which turns out to be 19 deaths in a country of 25 million. Awful for the people and the families involved but there needs to be some sense of perspective.
Such consistent inflammatory reporting can be dangerous as it makes some people exhausted and give up even trying, rather than having the intended effect of making people take things seriously. I get the impression such outlets are afraid to report even slightly positive news as it could be seen as irresponsible, but it wouldn't go amiss now and then.
UK 21 deaths and 816 cases
Just sharing this study from European centre for disease control. Doesn't feel conclusive though. PDF in the link
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/children-and-school-settings-covid-19-transmission
summary
There's older teachers to worry about but also important development and education for young people of all years and the wrong paths some may go down without schools.
Just sharing this study from European centre for disease control. Doesn't feel conclusive though. PDF in the link
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/children-and-school-settings-covid-19-transmission
summary
- A small proportion (<5%) of overall COVID-19 cases reported in the EU/EEA and the UK are among children (those aged 18 years and under). When diagnosed with COVID-19, children are much less likely to be hospitalised or have fatal outcomes than adults.
- Children are more likely to have a mild or asymptomatic infection, meaning that the infection may go undetected or undiagnosed.
- When symptomatic, children shed virus in similar quantities to adults and can infect others in a similar way to adults. It is unknown how infectious asymptomatic children are.
- While very few significant outbreaks of COVID-19 in schools have been documented, they do occur, and may be difficult to detect due to the relative lack of symptoms in children.
- In general, the majority of countries report slightly lower seroprevalence in children than in adult groups, however these differences are small and uncertain. More specialised studies need to be performed with the focus on children to better understand infection and antibody dynamics.
- Investigations of cases identified in school settings suggest that child to child transmission in schools is uncommon and not the primary cause of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children whose onset of infection coincides with the period during which they are attending school, particularly in preschools and primary schools.
- 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.
- There is conflicting published evidence on the impact of school closure/re-opening on community transmission levels, although the evidence from contact tracing in schools, and observational data from a number of EU countries suggest that re-opening schools has not been associated with significant increases in community transmission.
- Available evidence also indicates that closures of childcare and educational institutions are unlikely to be an effective single control measure for community transmission of COVID-19 and such closures would be unlikely to provide significant additional protection of children’s health, since most develop a very mild form of COVID-19, if any.
- Decisions on control measures in schools and school closures/openings should be consistent with decisions on other physical distancing and public health response measures within the community.
There's older teachers to worry about but also important development and education for young people of all years and the wrong paths some may go down without schools.
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Yeah, I did a double take on that headline too. The problem is, we get the headlines we want. All these media outlets have metrics about the type of content that gets the most clicks. And bad news trumps good news, by a country mile. You get traffic jams from people ogling a car wreck but never from admiring scenery.
I think like a lot of the general public I feel a bit overwhelmed by the media bombardment but some of it in fairness has been positive reporting too. One of the paper headlines today is 'Britain is finally winning the battle against virus'. I really don't know anymore.
This with bells on, get kids back in school and back in sport.
If you can’t control the spread to a maintainable level, pubs, restaurants, whatever else should of course close instead.
Absolutely. If mortality levels are at a regular level or “nasty flu year” level, it should barely make the news. When mortality rates soar, I get that it’s headline stuff and rightfully so.
As soon as “daily deaths” became a thing it all got out of hand in my opinion and many lost a lot of perspective.
Sadly though, as Pogue said, bad news trumps good for clicks.
Australia loses on average 440 lives every day, why the feck is 19 deaths today a massive Worldwide headline? It’s as though we’ve forgotten that people die every day and that due to the biggest risk group with Covid-19, many of those 19 likely would have been in the 2020 deaths even without Covid.
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I pretty much stopped watching most of the daily news months ago. I pop in to this thread and occasionally the BBC to keep track as best I can but the daily bombardment does nothing for my wellbeing.
I just do what is recommended and then add a bit of extra safety to it.
Work is crazy enough and very stressful (not in a health carer way I admit) and I can't add the daily bombardment on to it every day.
Best wishes to each and every one of you let's hope next year is better.
I just do what is recommended and then add a bit of extra safety to it.
Work is crazy enough and very stressful (not in a health carer way I admit) and I can't add the daily bombardment on to it every day.
Best wishes to each and every one of you let's hope next year is better.
I stay away from the news too. Sometimes checking threads like this can be bad for your mental health, as well.
Some posters always putting as negative spin as possible on every bit of news.
Some posters always putting as negative spin as possible on every bit of news.
Who exactly is going to run the schools if/when teachers become sick/quarantined/hospitalized?
SC, for example, currently has 1 in every 50 teaching positions unfilled, older teachers are retiring, teachers with preexisting conditions are resigning, and substitutes are retiring or just refusing to work this year.
SC, for example, currently has 1 in every 50 teaching positions unfilled, older teachers are retiring, teachers with preexisting conditions are resigning, and substitutes are retiring or just refusing to work this year.
If we run out of teachers, we run out of teachers. Hopefully their understandable anxiety will ease over time. The alternative is keeping schools closed indefinitely, until a vaccination program is completed. Which is really not an option.
About closing schools
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/world/africa/Kenya-cancels-school-year-coronavirus.html
I guess Kenya can't afford any outbreaks to reach this problematic solution
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/world/africa/Kenya-cancels-school-year-coronavirus.html
I guess Kenya can't afford any outbreaks to reach this problematic solution
That definitely won't do any long term damage, none at all.
Every country have their own specifics. It will cause damage no doubt, but a rampant outbreak in a country with way less resources and less options than developed countries it could be maybe devastating?
The truth is that I don't know and should be cautious to judge a society way more different than ours
There’s plenty of evidence that young schools are absolutely not a prime mover in the spread of this virus.
With that in mind it seems extremely disproportionate to make the kids pay like that.
That's an extremely low vacancy rate for any organisation, however important they may consider themselves to be. I'd say SC should be looking at reducing teaching salaries to spend elsewhere there is need.
I suppose the difference is, from a selfish POV
I know that the chances of getting killed in an accident or something is unlikely
But with Covid it’s highly contagious and if I catch it with my background then I have no doubt I’ll end up ventilated or worse. I can within reason take precautions for other things but with this, it’s invisible and I feel like it’s just pure luck whether I get it or not
Are you sure on this? We have an evolving situation and I saw something today that indicated new research was showing children were more vulnerable than previously thought and were also able to spread the disease more than previously thought.
We’re already ranked somewhere around 35th out of 50 as far as average teacher salary. Our average starting salary is around $6000 a year lower than the national average. That’s one of the reason we don’t have enough teachers. Lowering that will make the teacher shortage worse.Also, for every vacancy, that’s 25-30 students per class period being placed on other teachers rosters, which makes it even harder to socially distance, which makes it harder to stop a contagion from spreading through a school.
There is plenty of evidence that we don't know enough yet. I read that they are superspreaders. then that they are not (and being not being a superspreader doesn't mean that they could be as much as) that they have milder symptoms than adults but 100 times more viruses in their throat and nose than adults, etc...
Also, I am sure that is plenty of evidence that they are 0% spreaders, so maybe Kenya thought that they can't afford even that. As much as you ask respect for Sweden approach (that I respect till we see results long term) you should do the same, because each country should have their own approach depending on their situation. And Sweden and Kenya are worlds appart
Uh, what?
If we run out of teachers then there won’t be in person school - which means we are right back to where we’ve been (teaching virtually) with the added problem of all the teachers who’ve now been fecked by the virus when we could have just been teaching virtually the whole time.
Georgia reopened schools last week and have already had multiple districts have to shut back down and go to virtual learning or quarantine large numbers of students and staff again because of outbreaks in the schools happening within days of opening the doors.
About to start teaching in-person lab in 2 weeks. Thankfully the lab course instructor has health issues herself, and has mandated a 1/3 reduction in enrollment, masks+shields, and installed new hepa filters, so we should be ok.
The reports I've seen seem to suggest that below 9 is the age group who are least affected although that could well be partly a reporting artifact relating to the age you move to middle school in some systems. Lumping adults or near legal adult students in with the very young makes no sense.
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I do private teaching and was considering a hepa air filter for the classroom. Is it a good idea, and does it have any effect on a virus such as this one? Or is it more to do with dust and allergies?
Probably not useful for viruses. Best way to get rid of the viruses in a classroom would be proper ventilation flow. Fresh air needs to be coming inside all the time.
Teacher's health doesn't seem to be a big enough concern IMO.
And high schools in NSW are currently our biggest concern and center of our 2 biggest active clusters.
HEPA filters can remove viruses as they are large enough to be filtered out but I'd guess that most domestic machines aren't that powerful so may not filter air fast enough to be very effective. And then you have to clean the filter I assume which may put you at increased risk.
If the weather allows it airflow from outside or even being outside if possible is the best prevention.
Thanks lads. I have big windows and an air conditioner but I don’t know it that’s enough to keep a good flow of air recycling around. I have got in seperate desks and protective glass, alcohol dispensers, sensor bins and the like but still don’t feel safe enough. I have also got distancing between the desks (1.5 meters)
I was hoping that the filter would add another layer of protection for the students (decent sized room with a maximum of 6-7 people at a time, but usually smaller numbers)
Eating into my savings, but it’s so hard to know. The style of class and circumstances of students means it has to be physical classes as the quality just isn’t there online. It’s not reliable or feasible.
It’s so hard to know what it means to be “protected”
I don't think any where with "air conditioner" installed can be claimed as circulatory
correct me if I'm wrong
It sounds like you are doing what you can. If it isn't too expensive a decent HEPA filter can't do any harm and may give your students some extra reassurance (except be careful when cleaning the filter).
What do you teach that can't be taught online?
Ducted airconditioning will circulate air, but probably only between rooms in the same building. Most other airconditioners will only move air around a bit within the room and not exchange air with the outside.
I teach English as a foreign language, but some students in some groups have no consistent internet access, while others would have tremendous difficulty following online.
I chose to suspend classes for everyone so we can try and keep groups together and keep everyone involved.
Ye, i don't think anywhere short of full contained laboratory condition can be categorized as zero contagion risk. But realistically speaking what he did could be claimed as more than adequate protocol wise. Not trying to be semantic, just saying that new normal protocol isn't water tight, it's just the most practical things the masses could try to help.
I think you might find a decent webinar program - Zoom is pretty good - would work well enough for you but there isn't much you can do if your students don't have a good enough internet or mobile hotspot connection.
I've just brought our entire institutions exams and intensive workshop/seminars online which were formerly F2F and even with most of our students having enough bandwidth to work/study from home a few have issues connecting to webinars and video based proctoring services.
Yeah, I think I would end up losing quite a few students who might feel left behind. I have a good relationship with them and would hate to make certain students feel like we were moving on without them. I am not confident of maintaining the same quality of teaching online either, even for those that could follow the classes.
At the same time, we can’t wait forever. It’s a tough decision. The social side is key for so many too and a big reason a lot of them study in the first place.
Not all students are the same so I'm not saying that what worked for my students will work for yours but many of our students were apprehensive about moving their seminars online but after the first one the feedback has been almost universally positive. Many even thought the experience was better. And using features like breakout rooms, where a subset of the main group could interact, helped maintain social connection.
Our decision was driven by a desire to allow students to continue with their studies (not to mention the income that comes from their continued progress).