City council voting today on bill to force school closings

[Anonymous]

They are going to take up a bill by that nutjob Robert White that would force schools to close when coronavirus cases reach certain thresholds (that they will inevitably reach). Contact your representative and tell them vote against this bill.


https://twitter.com/maustermuhle/status/1478128022561693700

[Anonymous]

The devil is in the details. What is the proposed threshold because the one suggested by that WTU offshoot group is absurdly low?

[Anonymous]

Also, the public health consensus is that case rates are becoming divorced from hospitalization and deaths. If you get 20% of kids out with the sniffles, do you close schools so no one else gets sniffles?

Case rates are a bad metric, and blanket mandates are bad at recognizing individual circumstances.

Man, I hate writing to the Council all the time about this sh*t. I used to LIKE Robert White....

[Anonymous]

So stupid. I support each school having a threshold focused on the teachers (i.e. close if >15% of teachers are unavailable) but not students and certainly not city-wide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So stupid. I support each school having a threshold focused on the teachers (i.e. close if >15% of teachers are unavailable) but not students and certainly not city-wide.

Yeah, tying it to staffing makes sense. But case rates don't mean anything without more context -- how many kids are sick? Are all grades equally affected? How many are really ill? Is there in-school spread? What mitigation measures is the school already taking, and are there more that could be implemented (ventilation, for example)?

[Anonymous]

We know about the long-term effects of influenza and the common cold on the human body. We know next to nothing about the long-term effects of COVID-19. We have to look beyond the short-term symptoms (or no symptoms) that COVID causes. Until we have a greater understanding of what COVID truly does to the body, I have no problem with public policies designed to reduce exposure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We know about the long-term effects of influenza and the common cold on the human body. We know next to nothing about the long-term effects of COVID-19. We have to look beyond the short-term symptoms (or no symptoms) that COVID causes. Until we have a greater understanding of what COVID truly does to the body, I have no problem with public policies designed to reduce exposure.

Reduce by how much is the question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They are going to take up a bill by that nutjob Robert White that would force schools to close when coronavirus cases reach certain thresholds (that they will inevitably reach). Contact your representative and tell them vote against this bill.


https://twitter.com/maustermuhle/status/1478128022561693700

Yes contact your Representative!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We know about the long-term effects of influenza and the common cold on the human body. We know next to nothing about the long-term effects of COVID-19. We have to look beyond the short-term symptoms (or no symptoms) that COVID causes. Until we have a greater understanding of what COVID truly does to the body, I have no problem with public policies designed to reduce exposure.

Well, if you want long-term data you have to, by definition, wait a long time. We can't afford to disrupt schooling for that long, and we shouldn't, given that all the available data is pointing in the direction that the long-term effects of Covid aren't that different from influenza or the common cold.

You can't live life based on What-Ifs. That has never been a wise approach.

[Anonymous]

I support that bill. Finally, some common sense to release pressure off our hospitals - where you could end up TODAY, by slipping on the ice. Surely you want adequate care for your broken hip? Lots of people get heart attacks when shoveling out - surely you don't want them to die because the EMS services are slow getting them into hospital? There were waits of several hours last week from pick-up to hospital bed.

[Anonymous]

I thought they weren’t voting on this for some procedural reason?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We know about the long-term effects of influenza and the common cold on the human body. We know next to nothing about the long-term effects of COVID-19. We have to look beyond the short-term symptoms (or no symptoms) that COVID causes. Until we have a greater understanding of what COVID truly does to the body, I have no problem with public policies designed to reduce exposure.

For how long, and at what cost? This is now the third year of disrupted education for these kids. How long do we keep them out of school? Long-term effects, by definition, take a long time to manifest. How many years of education are you okay with? And how much exposure are we reducing? Kids who aren't in school have to go somewhere, and at least at school you can somewhat enforce masking, control ventilation, do testing, etc. And parents still have to work, restaurants and bars and gyms are still open...why is it kids (and working parents) who have to keep taking it on the chin?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I support that bill. Finally, some common sense to release pressure off our hospitals - where you could end up TODAY, by slipping on the ice. Surely you want adequate care for your broken hip? Lots of people get heart attacks when shoveling out - surely you don't want them to die because the EMS services are slow getting them into hospital? There were waits of several hours last week from pick-up to hospital bed.

Okay, then let's close all restaurants, bars, gyms, and other non-essential businesses, rather than SCHOOLS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So stupid. I support each school having a threshold focused on the teachers (i.e. close if >15% of teachers are unavailable) but not students and certainly not city-wide.

Yeah, tying it to staffing makes sense. But case rates don't mean anything without more context -- how many kids are sick? Are all grades equally affected? How many are really ill? Is there in-school spread? What mitigation measures is the school already taking, and are there more that could be implemented (ventilation, for example)?

I agree. "Positive" does not equal sick, but when it does I think schools need to make sure they're giving the teachers time to recuperate.

Generally, I would think that making it more grade-specific from the staffing side could be a good thing. But with the complete absence of subs, a an absent teacher in one grade means they yank a teacher from another grade. At least at my school, "grades" get blurred a bit due to overall staff shortages. The 2nd grade SPED teacher might be subbing for the 5th grade science teacher tomorrow. It's really a confluence of factors that create the closures. I don't give the alarmist harpies of DCUM a ton of credit for nuance, but I do hope that people can see that the teacher shortage is driving a lot of the pain, the shortage existed before the pandemic, and that the shortage exists because teaching is a really undesirable profession for lots of reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I support that bill. Finally, some common sense to release pressure off our hospitals - where you could end up TODAY, by slipping on the ice. Surely you want adequate care for your broken hip? Lots of people get heart attacks when shoveling out - surely you don't want them to die because the EMS services are slow getting them into hospital? There were waits of several hours last week from pick-up to hospital bed.

Okay, then let's close all restaurants, bars, gyms, and other non-essential businesses, rather than SCHOOLS.

Agree. What is the threshold for closing bars and cafes? Schools should close last.