Last minute plan B if schools don’t open?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here’s an op-Ed headline: “Have we forgotten what it means for kids to get sick?” - meaning the thousands of viruses they bring home every single year from daycare and school.

I sort of feel like my background of coping with anxiety has actually made me more rational about covid. I am That Mom who worries about her 9 year old choking on a hotdog at camp. If it were up to my anxiety brain, he’d have a 1:1 Mary Poppins following him around everywhere making sure he is having fun and all his food is cut up into tiny pieces. I realize this is completely crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:LUNCH IN THE CAFETERIA IS THE PROBLEM

I see this has become the new drumbeat. It’s always something.

Some of us have had no choice but to send our kids to school or daycare of done kind during the pandemic. Those of us with younger kids may have tried to tough it out at home for a bit, but you cannot keep a 5 yr old at home full time while also working full time, especially if you have to be in person for any of that time. Many people don’t have room or money for a nanny, and some kids need to be in a classroom environment for socio-emotional reasons.

Point is, many of our kids have been in school environments where they wear masks except for meals for months and months. And what we’ve learned is that it’s fine. Meals are a time when it’s relatively easy to keep kids social distanced, and with proper ventilation, the risk really doesn’t seem to be high. Could a child come in shedding virus and transmit it during lunch? Yes, but it’s as if not more likely to happen at a time when the kids are close to each other and interacting. Combined with other precautions (temp checks, strict rules about kids staying home with ANY symptom, and quarantine rules for travel, plus masks and good HVAC) it’s okay and outbreaks are minimized. My kid’s PK has not had a single positive case all year, and kids had to be tested after any travel even if asymptomatic.

You need to stop getting hung up on what you perceived as individual flask points of risk. Outdoor lunch every day is not feasible because of weather and the limited outdoor space at many schools. So let’s look for other ways to mitigate and not obsess over this one thing. Big picture.

exactly. I think this fixation also comes from an unfortunate overestimation of the protection afforded by cloth masks.

And from a fixation on the perceived risk free environment of school and cafeterias the entire time they have had children prior to Covid.

+1 It is an uncomfortable but inevitable truth of parenting that there are lots of threats to your kid at any given time even without a pandemic. So many parents (and people in general) are basing risk assessments based exclusively on the novelty of risk instead of the actual threat posed. Covid is novel and thus VERY SCARY and cars are mundane and thus an acceptable risk. But your child is far more likely to be injured or die in a car accident than to get sick or die from Covid. And yet you have people screaming about outdoor lunch and then packing the kids up the SUV and driving 5 hours on highways to grandmas house twice a month. It's exhausting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can I just remind people that this disease isn’t that bad for children? It’s not.

Do you send your kids to school during flu outbreaks? Your kid with underlying medical conditions? You probably do, although from now on you may not because everyone is suddenly afraid of every child being at all ever sick.

Keep reminding yourself this, because it’s not going away.

Oklahoma pediatric ICUs are now full and are diverting to other states.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-children-risk-of-covid-19-death-or-serious-illness-remain-extremely-low-new-studies-find-11625785260?mod=djemalertNEWS

This is not a study of Delta, which is resulting in more serious infections.

There is zero evidence Delta is more severe for children. Stop.

That’s just not true. Look at hospitalization data for children between the original strain, alpha and delta.

Everything I have seen says that yes, delta is more severe, but risk of severe disease in kids is still very low. Kids have higher risk of poor outcomes with flu and car crashes. https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/kids-and-the-delta-variant-should

We. Can. Mitigate. Risk. For. Flu.

Also Emily Oyster should not be relied on for anything. She doesn’t have the credentials.

She is a HEALTH ECONOMIST. her actual job is to analyze health data and assess costs and benefits.

but yeah, let us know your credentials?

and of course we can mitigate covid. mitigated covid from last year of school and all summer of camp tell us school with mitigated covid measures is fine. Let me say it again: ZERO children died of covid in DC. (or MoCo.)

Keyword: economist. Zero medical training. The folks with medical training are screaming from the rooftops right now. You just don’t want to listen because you care more about free childcare.

And you’re making my argument for me. Mitigation last year was social distancing/hybrid. Not packed classrooms with an even more contagious varient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s an op-Ed headline: “Have we forgotten what it means for kids to get sick?” - meaning the thousands of viruses they bring home every single year from daycare and school.

I sort of feel like my background of coping with anxiety has actually made me more rational about covid. I am That Mom who worries about her 9 year old choking on a hotdog at camp. If it were up to my anxiety brain, he’d have a 1:1 Mary Poppins following him around everywhere making sure he is having fun and all his food is cut up into tiny pieces. I realize this is completely crazy.

I have been thinking the same thing. The possibility of infection with a scary virus (to me it was and is norovirus) at school has always been on the forefront of my mind. So I have learned to cope with the idea that my kids might catch something terrible at school. I also have a history of catastrophizing about many other dangers, and I have had to teach myself to manage that tendency of my mind. Now there is Covid, and I know how to mentally deal with the what ifs. I think people who have always experienced the world as a risky place are better equipped to handle this situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can I just remind people that this disease isn’t that bad for children? It’s not.

Do you send your kids to school during flu outbreaks? Your kid with underlying medical conditions? You probably do, although from now on you may not because everyone is suddenly afraid of every child being at all ever sick.

Keep reminding yourself this, because it’s not going away.

Oklahoma pediatric ICUs are now full and are diverting to other states.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-children-risk-of-covid-19-death-or-serious-illness-remain-extremely-low-new-studies-find-11625785260?mod=djemalertNEWS

This is not a study of Delta, which is resulting in more serious infections.

There is zero evidence Delta is more severe for children. Stop.

That’s just not true. Look at hospitalization data for children between the original strain, alpha and delta.

Everything I have seen says that yes, delta is more severe, but risk of severe disease in kids is still very low. Kids have higher risk of poor outcomes with flu and car crashes. https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/kids-and-the-delta-variant-should

We. Can. Mitigate. Risk. For. Flu.

Also Emily Oyster should not be relied on for anything. She doesn’t have the credentials.

She is a HEALTH ECONOMIST. her actual job is to analyze health data and assess costs and benefits.

but yeah, let us know your credentials?

and of course we can mitigate covid. mitigated covid from last year of school and all summer of camp tell us school with mitigated covid measures is fine. Let me say it again: ZERO children died of covid in DC. (or MoCo.)

Keyword: economist. Zero medical training. The folks with medical training are screaming from the rooftops right now. You just don’t want to listen because you care more about free childcare.

And you’re making my argument for me. Mitigation last year was social distancing/hybrid. Not packed classrooms with an even more contagious varient.

oh for the love of g-d. do you understand what economists do? what health economists do? that she has more training in analyzing data than most MpHs? That she was the author of a recent CDC MMWR on covid and schools? She’s an expert in assessing the public policy of health issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can I just remind people that this disease isn’t that bad for children? It’s not.

Do you send your kids to school during flu outbreaks? Your kid with underlying medical conditions? You probably do, although from now on you may not because everyone is suddenly afraid of every child being at all ever sick.

Keep reminding yourself this, because it’s not going away.

Oklahoma pediatric ICUs are now full and are diverting to other states.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-children-risk-of-covid-19-death-or-serious-illness-remain-extremely-low-new-studies-find-11625785260?mod=djemalertNEWS

This is not a study of Delta, which is resulting in more serious infections.

There is zero evidence Delta is more severe for children. Stop.

That’s just not true. Look at hospitalization data for children between the original strain, alpha and delta.

Everything I have seen says that yes, delta is more severe, but risk of severe disease in kids is still very low. Kids have higher risk of poor outcomes with flu and car crashes. https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/kids-and-the-delta-variant-should

We. Can. Mitigate. Risk. For. Flu.

Also Emily Oyster should not be relied on for anything. She doesn’t have the credentials.

She is a HEALTH ECONOMIST. her actual job is to analyze health data and assess costs and benefits.

but yeah, let us know your credentials?

and of course we can mitigate covid. mitigated covid from last year of school and all summer of camp tell us school with mitigated covid measures is fine. Let me say it again: ZERO children died of covid in DC. (or MoCo.)

Keyword: economist. Zero medical training. The folks with medical training are screaming from the rooftops right now. You just don’t want to listen because you care more about free childcare.

And you’re making my argument for me. Mitigation last year was social distancing/hybrid. Not packed classrooms with an even more contagious varient.

oh for the love of g-d. do you understand what economists do? what health economists do? that she has more training in analyzing data than most MpHs? That she was the author of a recent CDC MMWR on covid and schools? She’s an expert in assessing the public policy of health issues.

and actually my kid’s class last year was normal size.

I’d like to see the health ans education experts clamoring to keep schools closed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s an op-Ed headline: “Have we forgotten what it means for kids to get sick?” - meaning the thousands of viruses they bring home every single year from daycare and school.

I sort of feel like my background of coping with anxiety has actually made me more rational about covid. I am That Mom who worries about her 9 year old choking on a hotdog at camp. If it were up to my anxiety brain, he’d have a 1:1 Mary Poppins following him around everywhere making sure he is having fun and all his food is cut up into tiny pieces. I realize this is completely crazy.

I have been thinking the same thing. The possibility of infection with a scary virus (to me it was and is norovirus) at school has always been on the forefront of my mind. So I have learned to cope with the idea that my kids might catch something terrible at school. I also have a history of catastrophizing about many other dangers, and I have had to teach myself to manage that tendency of my mind. Now there is Covid, and I know how to mentally deal with the what ifs. I think people who have always experienced the world as a risky place are better equipped to handle this situation.

Yep. I admit I overestimated the risk of Alpha and turned down a seat in February. Then promtly saw my kid’s mental health deteriorate. I now realize that normal socialization and life is crucially important to him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can I just remind people that this disease isn’t that bad for children? It’s not.

Do you send your kids to school during flu outbreaks? Your kid with underlying medical conditions? You probably do, although from now on you may not because everyone is suddenly afraid of every child being at all ever sick.

Keep reminding yourself this, because it’s not going away.

Oklahoma pediatric ICUs are now full and are diverting to other states.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-children-risk-of-covid-19-death-or-serious-illness-remain-extremely-low-new-studies-find-11625785260?mod=djemalertNEWS

This is not a study of Delta, which is resulting in more serious infections.

There is zero evidence Delta is more severe for children. Stop.

That’s just not true. Look at hospitalization data for children between the original strain, alpha and delta.

Everything I have seen says that yes, delta is more severe, but risk of severe disease in kids is still very low. Kids have higher risk of poor outcomes with flu and car crashes. https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/kids-and-the-delta-variant-should

We. Can. Mitigate. Risk. For. Flu.

Also Emily Oyster should not be relied on for anything. She doesn’t have the credentials.

She is a HEALTH ECONOMIST. her actual job is to analyze health data and assess costs and benefits.

but yeah, let us know your credentials?

and of course we can mitigate covid. mitigated covid from last year of school and all summer of camp tell us school with mitigated covid measures is fine. Let me say it again: ZERO children died of covid in DC. (or MoCo.)

Keyword: economist. Zero medical training. The folks with medical training are screaming from the rooftops right now. You just don’t want to listen because you care more about free childcare.

And you’re making my argument for me. Mitigation last year was social distancing/hybrid. Not packed classrooms with an even more contagious varient.

oh for the love of g-d. do you understand what economists do? what health economists do? that she has more training in analyzing data than most MpHs? That she was the author of a recent CDC MMWR on covid and schools? She’s an expert in assessing the public policy of health issues.

Economists analyze risk. And individual choice making with regard to risk tolerance.

Her work is extremely relevant and has been very calming for me this pandemic as she relies on actual data plus risk analysis.

We cannot aim to live in a risk free society, and I agree with others who maybe never have thought and worried about all the risks and had to prioritize which ones to mitigate and how in daily life. Which is called coping with anxiety or, I thought, parenthood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:LUNCH IN THE CAFETERIA IS THE PROBLEM

I see this has become the new drumbeat. It’s always something.

Some of us have had no choice but to send our kids to school or daycare of done kind during the pandemic. Those of us with younger kids may have tried to tough it out at home for a bit, but you cannot keep a 5 yr old at home full time while also working full time, especially if you have to be in person for any of that time. Many people don’t have room or money for a nanny, and some kids need to be in a classroom environment for socio-emotional reasons.

Point is, many of our kids have been in school environments where they wear masks except for meals for months and months. And what we’ve learned is that it’s fine. Meals are a time when it’s relatively easy to keep kids social distanced, and with proper ventilation, the risk really doesn’t seem to be high. Could a child come in shedding virus and transmit it during lunch? Yes, but it’s as if not more likely to happen at a time when the kids are close to each other and interacting. Combined with other precautions (temp checks, strict rules about kids staying home with ANY symptom, and quarantine rules for travel, plus masks and good HVAC) it’s okay and outbreaks are minimized. My kid’s PK has not had a single positive case all year, and kids had to be tested after any travel even if asymptomatic.


You need to stop getting hung up on what you perceived as individual flask points of risk. Outdoor lunch every day is not feasible because of weather and the limited outdoor space at many schools. So let’s look for other ways to mitigate and not obsess over this one thing. Big picture.

exactly. I think this fixation also comes from an unfortunate overestimation of the protection afforded by cloth masks.

And from a fixation on the perceived risk free environment of school and cafeterias the entire time they have had children prior to Covid.

+1 It is an uncomfortable but inevitable truth of parenting that there are lots of threats to your kid at any given time even without a pandemic. So many parents (and people in general) are basing risk assessments based exclusively on the novelty of risk instead of the actual threat posed. Covid is novel and thus VERY SCARY and cars are mundane and thus an acceptable risk. But your child is far more likely to be injured or die in a car accident than to get sick or die from Covid. And yet you have people screaming about outdoor lunch and then packing the kids up the SUV and driving 5 hours on highways to grandmas house twice a month. It's exhausting.

Folks at many schools last year lunch was handled by small class a eating in their classrooms or outdoors. They were six feet apart. Typically there are between 5-8 classes eating together in the cafeteria at a time, often squashed together and, obviously, unmasked. That is anywhere from 125-200 students together in a small room. I’m not suggesting they’ll all die. But the likelihood of catching Covid is certainly higher in this situation. I think it needs to be addressed. Strategies like eating in rooms or outside were feasible with a very limited number of students in the building but become more complicated with all students back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can I just remind people that this disease isn’t that bad for children? It’s not.

Do you send your kids to school during flu outbreaks? Your kid with underlying medical conditions? You probably do, although from now on you may not because everyone is suddenly afraid of every child being at all ever sick.

Keep reminding yourself this, because it’s not going away.

Oklahoma pediatric ICUs are now full and are diverting to other states.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-children-risk-of-covid-19-death-or-serious-illness-remain-extremely-low-new-studies-find-11625785260?mod=djemalertNEWS

This is not a study of Delta, which is resulting in more serious infections.

There is zero evidence Delta is more severe for children. Stop.

That’s just not true. Look at hospitalization data for children between the original strain, alpha and delta.

I'm looking for this data but cannot find it. Can you point it out?

Certainly the NYT hadn't seen it on July 29.

[Anonymous]

Come on, all the kids in our DCPS elementary school were invited back to our school from early April. Our school didn't have a single Covid case identified through weekly testing of all in the building in the spring. Schools are simply not super spreader events. There's very little Covid in DC even now. DC public schools will be open to all in the fall. That's it, that's all.

[Anonymous]

If the schools close, we’ll homeschool again. We did it last year, and while it was a very heavy demand in our time and schedules, our children had a successful year.

[Anonymous]

Put me down for trusting Emily Oster on these issues. Her books on risk assessment and decision making in pregnancy and parenting are fantastic, and her leadership on Covid has been right in that vein -- how do parents and policy makers assess the threat of Covid and make decisions for children in response? She is much better suited to address this from a policy perspective than individual healthcare professionals because she has so much experience in looking at statistical data and weighing conflicting risks (like the risk of Covid weighed against the risks associated with keeping children at home for months or years).

That said, I don't know a single healthcare professional who is advocating in favor of closing schools, or would say that a single limitation (like needing to do lunches indoors) should torpedo IPL by itself. Most doctors and nurses I know have had their kids in some kind of group care (whether school or daycare or similar) since April or May of 2020 because they have to work in person. Some have nannies or tutors instead, but even those folks have been letting their kids go to activities and other group settings (yes, even indoors) for months and months and months because the benefit to their kids far outweighs the risk of Covid.

Anyone who is approaching this conversation without centering the premise that kids need to be in school is arguing in bad faith. Do some people have outlier kids who will be fine with IPL? Sure. Is this most kids? No. Most kids need to be in school. The question is what risk mitigation measures can we take to make that as safe as possible, understanding that nothing is 100%.

Now, if Covid were killing or paralyzing kids in high numbers, totally different analysis. It isn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:LUNCH IN THE CAFETERIA IS THE PROBLEM

I see this has become the new drumbeat. It’s always something.

Some of us have had no choice but to send our kids to school or daycare of done kind during the pandemic. Those of us with younger kids may have tried to tough it out at home for a bit, but you cannot keep a 5 yr old at home full time while also working full time, especially if you have to be in person for any of that time. Many people don’t have room or money for a nanny, and some kids need to be in a classroom environment for socio-emotional reasons.

Point is, many of our kids have been in school environments where they wear masks except for meals for months and months. And what we’ve learned is that it’s fine. Meals are a time when it’s relatively easy to keep kids social distanced, and with proper ventilation, the risk really doesn’t seem to be high. Could a child come in shedding virus and transmit it during lunch? Yes, but it’s as if not more likely to happen at a time when the kids are close to each other and interacting. Combined with other precautions (temp checks, strict rules about kids staying home with ANY symptom, and quarantine rules for travel, plus masks and good HVAC) it’s okay and outbreaks are minimized. My kid’s PK has not had a single positive case all year, and kids had to be tested after any travel even if asymptomatic.


You need to stop getting hung up on what you perceived as individual flask points of risk. Outdoor lunch every day is not feasible because of weather and the limited outdoor space at many schools. So let’s look for other ways to mitigate and not obsess over this one thing. Big picture.

exactly. I think this fixation also comes from an unfortunate overestimation of the protection afforded by cloth masks.

And from a fixation on the perceived risk free environment of school and cafeterias the entire time they have had children prior to Covid.

+1 It is an uncomfortable but inevitable truth of parenting that there are lots of threats to your kid at any given time even without a pandemic. So many parents (and people in general) are basing risk assessments based exclusively on the novelty of risk instead of the actual threat posed. Covid is novel and thus VERY SCARY and cars are mundane and thus an acceptable risk. But your child is far more likely to be injured or die in a car accident than to get sick or die from Covid. And yet you have people screaming about outdoor lunch and then packing the kids up the SUV and driving 5 hours on highways to grandmas house twice a month. It's exhausting.

Folks at many schools last year lunch was handled by small class a eating in their classrooms or outdoors. They were six feet apart. Typically there are between 5-8 classes eating together in the cafeteria at a time, often squashed together and, obviously, unmasked. That is anywhere from 125-200 students together in a small room. I’m not suggesting they’ll all die. But the likelihood of catching Covid is certainly higher in this situation. I think it needs to be addressed. Strategies like eating in rooms or outside were feasible with a very limited number of students in the building but become more complicated with all students back.

Why would it be more complicated? There are enough classrooms for all the kids to be in class at the same time, so kids can still eat in classrooms, and everything I've heard from our school is that they will continue to do so. I don't understand where this fear is even coming from. Have you talked to your school, and have they said they are going to lunch in the lunchroom just like pre-Covid? The only place I've even heard this suggested is on DCUM.

Stop just making stuff up in an effort to scare people out of IPL. If you don't want to send your kids to school, don't. You can homeschool. But I cannot homeschool, it's not even on the table for me.

[Anonymous]

I am not reading all the freaking out. We will leave DC if schools close, or send our kids to private school at whatever cost. Out 10 year old has suffered immeasurably both academically and socially. We also have a younger child who was able to stay in daycare, but will need to be in real school this coming year, and there's just no way we can manage that child at home while also working full time. Other states managed to mitigate risk and keep their schools open for the entire year.