Caitlyn Peetz on Twitter: 8am MCPS press conference for a “COVID-19 update”

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

What did you think having kids was going to be? An endless round of birthday parties? Raising kids takes some effort.

If you want to do those things you need to be part of the solution.

And given that nearly 2 years of restrictions, and 1 year of availability of vaccines that remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, hasn't allowed us to get back to normal, the only plausible option left is letting Omicron burn through the community as fast as possible.

If we let covid run rampant (not that we seem to have a choice at this point) it will be over in 3 weeks. I say let it burn.

Agreed. We saw this in South Africa. Give Omicron the 3 weeks to run through.

Also, it is clear that we are not shutting down other aspects of society - hair salons, bars, restaurants, hookah bars, strip clubs, Caps games - all continue as normal. If we’re not going to go around shutting everything down (which I agree that we should not), we need to just accept that this needs to work it’s way through.

Ok but I’d prefer it “work it’s way through” with the idiots who won’t take precautions or vaccinate.
I’m tired of always being careful and then having no option but to send my kids to school with kids whose parents aren’t being careful.
I’m tired of hearing people say we need to just accept this. I’ve done virtual funerals for family members (front line workers) who died from Covid and I have a close family member who never recovered a year after getting Covid the one time she had to leave lockdown.

Letting this “run through” will overwhelm hospitals. It may also allow more mutations.

Hogan is not exactly a good guy - he’s not going to close certain businesses but it doesn’t mean MCPS can’t do the right thing and close for 2 weeks to protect kids and teachers. Just because salons and restaurants are open doesn’t mean we have to go in.

Your post would make a lot more sense if it wasn’t for the fact that we can’t actually stop the spread of covid. All we can do is slightly slow it down, but it will still hit everyone that isn’t continuing to go to extreme measures to isolate themselves. Reducing the rate of transmissions could help hospitals, but only if they're successful at reducing transmissions to the elderly, unvaccinated, and medically frail. Stopping low-risk kids from going to school, while keeping all adult-oriented activities and facilities "business as usual" isn't going to do that.

+1 agree with the pp

Yes to this

[Anonymous]

We need to stop the transmission to unvaccinated adults.
How can that happen?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:They should have just all gone virtual for two weeks and let the surge pass, staff get healthy, and return to "normal."

That’s ridiculous. Why shut down the whole system against prior assurances, needlessly punishing all 157,000 students? I might be Ok with it if they said 2 weeks and then ending quarantining of students until/unless they test positive, and a real assurance that no schools would ever close again. But in reality, we’d find ourselves in exactly the same place 2 weeks from now.

If staffing really becomes a problem, they should simply close for a week and add those days back with the makeup days in the calendar. 2 weeks would be too long to do that, but 5 days could be done fairly easily.

Doesn’t matter how you choose to close, they are all making their way to closing. Wait until school testing numbers return in the next two weeks, it will be almost everyone at this rate.

Perhaps parents will wise up that opting-in to testing only hurts the kids in the school. Or perhaps the next week of incredibly high covid numbers will drive people to accept the reality that covid is neither avoidable nor terrifying.

What is this bananas line of thinking? What hurts schools are unvaccinated morons who send their kids to school and/or selfish idiots who send their exposed and/or sick kids to school. Not testing doesn't make covid go away. Are you a toddler who thinks that because you have a blanket on your head, everyone can’t see you? It’s this nonsense that’s perpetuating covid and therefore new variants.

Do you not realize that most of these schools are located in highly vaccinated zip codes? Blame the unvaxxed all you want but everyone I know who has Omicron is vaccinated.

And FYI, no one has been at school for two weeks. These cases are not from spread at school.

Exactly. But people like the PP prefer to ignore facts to promote nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We need to stop the transmission to unvaccinated adults.
How can that happen?

Why? There are not that many unvaccinated adults in this county anyway. And vaccinated people can catch and transmit Covid. And also get sick.

We can’t stop transmission. You can’t stop a virus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to stop the transmission to unvaccinated adults.
How can that happen?

Why? There are not that many unvaccinated adults in this county anyway. And vaccinated people can catch and transmit Covid. And also get sick.

We can’t stop transmission. You can’t stop a virus.

If omicron is mild like the claim, and most people are vaccinated in the county then let people get the virus, recover and get on with their lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to stop the transmission to unvaccinated adults.
How can that happen?

Why? There are not that many unvaccinated adults in this county anyway. And vaccinated people can catch and transmit Covid. And also get sick.

We can’t stop transmission. You can’t stop a virus.

If omicron is mild like the claim, and most people are vaccinated in the county then let people get the virus, recover and get on with their lives.

Today's Post had an article that said, among other things, "The risk to individuals is low, while the risk to society is high." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/03/omicron-lockdowns-covid-2022/

Most people will get the virus, recover, and get on with their lives, but in the meantime "out of control virus dynamics pose existential threats to society". For example, increased absences of firefighters, teachers, medical personnel, overwhelmed hospitals, etc. -- those are all real issues that need to be acknowledged and dealt with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to stop the transmission to unvaccinated adults.
How can that happen?

Why? There are not that many unvaccinated adults in this county anyway. And vaccinated people can catch and transmit Covid. And also get sick.

We can’t stop transmission. You can’t stop a virus.

If omicron is mild like the claim, and most people are vaccinated in the county then let people get the virus, recover and get on with their lives.

Today's Post had an article that said, among other things, "The risk to individuals is low, while the risk to society is high." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/03/omicron-lockdowns-covid-2022/

Most people will get the virus, recover, and get on with their lives, but in the meantime "out of control virus dynamics pose existential threats to society". For example, increased absences of firefighters, teachers, medical personnel, overwhelmed hospitals, etc. -- those are all real issues that need to be acknowledged and dealt with.

Those aren't existential threats to society like never-ending COVID mitigation policies are. Things will be busy. There will be some negative outcomes in the near-term. But life will go on if we let it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They should have just all gone virtual for two weeks and let the surge pass, staff get healthy, and return to "normal."

That’s ridiculous. Why shut down the whole system against prior assurances, needlessly punishing all 157,000 students? I might be Ok with it if they said 2 weeks and then ending quarantining of students until/unless they test positive, and a real assurance that no schools would ever close again. But in reality, we’d find ourselves in exactly the same place 2 weeks from now.

If staffing really becomes a problem, they should simply close for a week and add those days back with the makeup days in the calendar. 2 weeks would be too long to do that, but 5 days could be done fairly easily.

Doesn’t matter how you choose to close, they are all making their way to closing. Wait until school testing numbers return in the next two weeks, it will be almost everyone at this rate.

Perhaps parents will wise up that opting-in to testing only hurts the kids in the school. Or perhaps the next week of incredibly high covid numbers will drive people to accept the reality that covid is neither avoidable nor terrifying.

This doesn’t rest solely on a test self-report. When kids and staff go missing for 14 days at a time because they are sick with Covid it’s pretty obvious without reporting. Out ‘sick’ for weeks is a perfect tell. If staff go missing the reason why doesn’t matter as much. Now you have parents and teachers affected from newly closed schools (their children, siblings) on top of that who will then have to stay home with their children—which leads to greater staff shortages. If nobody reported a single new case this would still happen.

You're not wrong per se, but you're not thinking about the implication of that. Parents aren't going to test. And they're not going to keep kids out of class any longer than they can justify without invoking COVID.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s the plan for yellow schools?? Anyone?

Wait until they turn red? Probably during the next random testing day.

Exactly this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to stop the transmission to unvaccinated adults.
How can that happen?

Why? There are not that many unvaccinated adults in this county anyway. And vaccinated people can catch and transmit Covid. And also get sick.

We can’t stop transmission. You can’t stop a virus.

If omicron is mild like the claim, and most people are vaccinated in the county then let people get the virus, recover and get on with their lives.

It is mild. The problem is that the case rate is so high, we are still filling hospitals.

Right before Thanksgiving, the case rate was 49 per 100,000.

It's now 1600 per 100,000.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to stop the transmission to unvaccinated adults.
How can that happen?

Why? There are not that many unvaccinated adults in this county anyway. And vaccinated people can catch and transmit Covid. And also get sick.

We can’t stop transmission. You can’t stop a virus.

If omicron is mild like the claim, and most people are vaccinated in the county then let people get the virus, recover and get on with their lives.

It is mild. The problem is that the case rate is so high, we are still filling hospitals.

Right before Thanksgiving, the case rate was 49 per 100,000.

It's now 1600 per 100,000.

Make that 1800. It was 1600 yesterday.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s the plan for yellow schools?? Anyone?

Wait until they turn red? Probably during the next random testing day.

Exactly this.

Maybe someone here can help me understand this--If a school has over a 5% Covid positivity rate, the transition to virtual happens. Once a school returns past the 14 day quarantine, then what? Do the high numbers reset or tally up immediately? How likely is it the back to school is just another 14 day quarantine pretty quickly?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s the plan for yellow schools?? Anyone?

Wait until they turn red? Probably during the next random testing day.

Exactly this.

I find it highly unlikely that a school that goes yellow will go back to green before going red. There's too much of a lag between infection and positive results... And the shortage of tests makes it worse.

[Anonymous]

Jawando just said he wants to change the in-school testing program from opt-in to opt-out. Parents would have to proactively opt out of having their kid tested in school.

Isn't that a serious informed consent issue?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jawando just said he wants to change the in-school testing program from opt-in to opt-out. Parents would have to proactively opt out of having their kid tested in school.

Isn't that a serious informed consent issue?

Can the council, acting as the board of health, require it?