Covid Update from Central Office

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Update: Jimmy D'Andrea, chief of staff for MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight, said the district didn't commit to daily updates of color-coded school data on COVID-19 cases. Actually, McKnight did promise the updates, a video shows.

https://twitter.com/BethesdaBeat/status/1479524997257437184

This is a career ended for me. No way people can defend her “leadership” anymore.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:We are so happy to see this update! Upgrade your masks everyone and go to school!

Only complete idiots think this is good news. Enjoy your kid’s subpar education for the remainder of the year, stuffed into auditoriums with no teachers. But they are socializing! (If you actually talked to your kid, you’d know the kids are absolutely miserable in the buildings right now)

They're not going to be stuffed in auditoriums without teachers for the remainder of the year. But if they pivoted to virtual, we know they would be stuck in that special slice of hell for the remainder of (or near to) the year. At least as of today, this is a big victory for many across teachers, students, and parents.

No, WE do not know.

You have no source at all for this invention of your imagination, except, what? That MCPS stayed virtual longer than it expected to when a novel virus first hit and people were dropping like flies, and no one was vaccinated?

Literally every district around here did the same. Some didn't stay virtual as long, but all of them "lied" when they said it was for "2 weeks" because it was a very specific situation with almost no information.

But sure, that definitely means that any pivot to virtual would end the same way. Absolutely.

I can't believe that those of us who advocated for a sensible, orderly preemptive pivot to virtual before all this mess were called the "hysterical" ones operating on "feelings," not "data."

The DATA predicted all of this spread, staffing issues, etc. would very likely happen if we reopened normally after winter break.

If we listened to you, we have DL and a Covid surge. This way we only get a Covid surge. I am rabidly anti-DL but I agree we all knew this was coming. Just like we all know it will be over on four weeks so closing and reopening schools isn’t worth it. Just get boosted, get a good mask, and cross your fingers.

Yes, if you "listened to me*" we'd certainly have a COVID surge, because we were always going to. And we would have DL, because that's what I suggested.

With "your way"-- achieved by "not listening to me"-- we have:

-A bunch of reactive nonsense and confusion from MCPS
-All kinds of predictable disruptions-- e.g., SOME kids clustered in the cafeteria doing make-work asynchronously, SOME kids stranded at bus stops, etc.
-A ton of schools going virtual ANYWAY because they will unless MCPS just decided to completely throw up their hands (which I always made exception for)
-At least a decent proportion of schools going virtual regardless because of lack of staffing
-Most likely more spread, or faster spread in the community and among kids-- who remain less-vaccinated than adults, but fine, I'll put that at the bottom

The thing is-- it's exactly because COVID was going to surge and then ebb in ~4 weeks anyway that we should have gone to virtual for 2-4 weeks. I've never claimed otherwise.

If very few schools really do go virtual because MCPS is saying, eff it, let it ride... people will come out of the other side in February, and whatever the consequences-- because you can't prove a counterfactual-- will say "See, it wasn't so bad, or it would have been this bad even if we had proactively gone virtual, or at least it wasn't that bad in my school, and at least we didn't all have to go virtual!" ("Oh, and also if we had gone virtual, I know without a shadow of a doubt that would have meant 5 months of virtual-- look what we saved you from!")

It's just a version of what's happened throughout COVID. "Why did we close down anything/mask/do anything at all? COVID wasn't so bad. No one I knew died except like one 90-year-old. We should have just kept living our lives because it's the fault of half-assed mitigation efforts that I didn't really follow that everyone is so stressed out now, not the fault of a pandemic that's close to having killed a million Americans. Signed, a Callous and Privileged Person"

I'm not saying you are that person. I'm saying what will happen if this is allowed to ride out without shifting most schools to virtual for a couple of weeks is likely to be a VERSION OF what has already happened.

People who are affected more by mitigation than COVID will blame mitigation (which does have some real negative consequences!) for all of their ills, and believe that it didn't or wouldn't help in terms of COVID, which is "unstoppable," and hey, we survived, so it was all a big farce and nanny nanny boo boo. Meanwhile, death and disability, past and future, are so much statistical noise.


*Very little of our personal opinions could have influenced this much, one way or another.

Ok, let's say the whole county switches to virtual for two weeks. Two weeks go by and we still haven't peaked, or we have, but cases are still really high. Do you honestly think that the MCEA wouldn't push to delay the return? Just look at what's going on in Chicago. MCEA's bargaining position is MUCH stronger if the whole county is virtual v. rolling closures as needed to deal with staff shortages. The next few weeks are doing to be chaotic and not as much learning will take place. For many, DL=not much learning, so that's not really a good solution IMO.

Okay, as the PP you replied to, this is my first response to THIS response.

And yeah, I concede this is at least more true now, assuming MCPS really doesn't stay close to the metrics they set before break. The part about the bargaining position is true, I mean. Clearly y'all were fine taking your chances on possible virtual vs certain virtual and it may have "paid off?" Except like I said in another comment-- I don't believe MCEA would have used their bargaining position to demand months and months of virtual. And now we'll never know? Maybe?

You have a valid point, but because I have a different belief set, what I'm hearing is, "This thing that was unlikely to happen is now even more unlikely to happen."

I do agree with that. (I know you don't.)

The larger issue here is that is not the only variable, as I see you agree, at least in part.

This is a fine tradeoff if you think the "not much learning" in this chaotic environment is the same as superior to the "not much learning" that would happen in virtual. And if you are also not considering the other negative effects of not going virtual in January.

To me, this tradeoff is:

"A thing that was unlikely to happen is now even more unlikely to happen, and that improvement to an unsubstantiated hypothetical scenario was worth the sh!tshow that is happening now. Because this sh!tshow is equivalent to or better than the same amount of virtual learning, in this particular moment."

You can see where, if this is my view, I am throwing up my hands.

I am the PP you are quoting (who quoted you). I do think a pivot to virtual would extend beyond two weeks, but I will concede that I don't think it would be nearly the same battle getting back in the building as it was last year. But parents (especially those who are no longer working at home) lost trust last year and are nervous. I can also understand why some parents think we should be virtual. I would posit though, that a switch to virtual would not stop the spread as much as people might hope because many (if not most) kids would still be hanging out with their friends.

If parents want to stay in person, they need to make some sacrifices to make sure that happens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Update: Jimmy D'Andrea, chief of staff for MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight, said the district didn't commit to daily updates of color-coded school data on COVID-19 cases. Actually, McKnight did promise the updates, a video shows.

https://twitter.com/BethesdaBeat/status/1479524997257437184

The colors don’t mean anything any more. They could color everything purple for all I care.

Well the point is that they lied. Or do you not care about that either?

They didn’t lie. They had every intention of going down this path until the State Board of education squashed it after they put the first 11 schools virtual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Update: Jimmy D'Andrea, chief of staff for MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight, said the district didn't commit to daily updates of color-coded school data on COVID-19 cases. Actually, McKnight did promise the updates, a video shows.

https://twitter.com/BethesdaBeat/status/1479524997257437184

The colors don’t mean anything any more. They could color everything purple for all I care.

Well the point is that they lied. Or do you not care about that either?

They didn’t lie. They had every intention of going down this path until the State Board of education squashed it after they put the first 11 schools virtual.

You realize that you sound like Baghdad Bob right?

Trying to keep spinning this is just making it worse.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Y'know, I really want my kid in in-person school. She's vaccinated, we're boosted, the whole family is going to get COVID eventually, and I'm not too worried about us. What I DON'T want is to watch the slow but accelerating collapse of our educational infrastructure for reasons that were completely predictable and obvious, and it feels like that's what's happening.

Because of an "unexpected" (seriously?) lack of bus drivers, you've got kids who live too far to walk whose shift worker parents couldn't scramble to find a carpool last minute getting - not in-person learning, not virtual learning - nothing. MCPS dropped the ball and now those kids are getting nothing. You've got other kids who live with young, unvaccinated siblings or frail, elderly grandparents who are being forced to risk their family's well-being for the privilege of sitting in a cafeteria all day doing asynchronous busy-work.

Meanwhile staffing shortages continue to grow, so we're barreling toward closures and virtual anyway, but in the most chaotic and disruptive way possible. (The new quarantine guidelines might help, won't be it fun to see if that can outrun the exponential spread of Omicron before it flames out? I can't wait!)

I would have taken 2-weeks of virtual to slow the spread over this (although we all know half of y'all would have gone to the Bahamas and ruined it for us anyway). I would have taken DCPS' test-to-stay program over this - in fact I'd still take it! Instead we got a terrible "case-by-case assessment" of schools once they reach 5% that backfired spectacularly because it didn't account for the exponential spread of the virus that we all knew was happening.

And now we get, "Oh...don't worry...we're doing something else...we won't tell you exactly what, just that it's definitely not what we were doing yesterday, BOY do we have terrible ideas sometimes, lol! Also no, we won't release positivity data anymore, because then you'd know how bad our idea was." I mean...Jesus. I get wanting in-person. I want in-person. But HOW can anyone think this is an acceptable way to run things?

The "exponential" spread part is over. It's been leveling out in MoCo and regionally. It'll likely grow (and recede), but it's already ripped through a lot of the public over December. You're not going to get multiple days of "doubling" (or more) on an extended basis.

DP. Fingers crossed that you are right. But this also means that we could’ve switched to DL for two weeks and don’t start the paranoid shit about not ever coming back.

How is the worst over when Hogan just said that the worst is yet to come

Do you have a data to back this up? I've seen several posts like tbis, nkne with data, and based on current pisitives, it doesn't look like we're done with peak yet.

We’re not at or done with peak, but the ‘exponential’ growth is no longer exponential.

Again, Data please or this is hearsay. I'm under the impressikn that the exponential growth that you are talking about slowed down because holiday travel is over and there are less people needing PCR, there are also more people using rapid tests now or even people who can't get tested because there aren't any rapid tests available, with the weather these past few days, I don't think people with symptoms would want to line up outside for PCR. All of these are anecdotal, the only reason why I think this is still spreading is because I know more people in my circle now that were infected, which I've never experienced before.

Of course it is still spreading. That doesn’t mean it’s spreading exponentially, whereby cases are doubling (or more) every day or two.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Update: Jimmy D'Andrea, chief of staff for MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight, said the district didn't commit to daily updates of color-coded school data on COVID-19 cases. Actually, McKnight did promise the updates, a video shows.

https://twitter.com/BethesdaBeat/status/1479524997257437184

The colors don’t mean anything any more. They could color everything purple for all I care.

Well the point is that they lied. Or do you not care about that either?

They didn’t lie. They had every intention of going down this path until the State Board of education squashed it after they put the first 11 schools virtual.

No, they lied when they said they didn’t promise it. Read the story.

[Anonymous]

A switch to virtual may not stop the spread, but not switching to virtual is going to cause a lot of disruptions, like we saw with the school bus drivers. There is no winning option here, and I don’t know which is the least bad. I just wish the board would stop writing the kind of emails that we have to analyze in dcurbanmom to figure out what they mean. Just play it straight. Right now, I’m concerned that there is political pressure playing a role, and that concerns me.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Y'know, I really want my kid in in-person school. She's vaccinated, we're boosted, the whole family is going to get COVID eventually, and I'm not too worried about us. What I DON'T want is to watch the slow but accelerating collapse of our educational infrastructure for reasons that were completely predictable and obvious, and it feels like that's what's happening.

Because of an "unexpected" (seriously?) lack of bus drivers, you've got kids who live too far to walk whose shift worker parents couldn't scramble to find a carpool last minute getting - not in-person learning, not virtual learning - nothing. MCPS dropped the ball and now those kids are getting nothing. You've got other kids who live with young, unvaccinated siblings or frail, elderly grandparents who are being forced to risk their family's well-being for the privilege of sitting in a cafeteria all day doing asynchronous busy-work.

Meanwhile staffing shortages continue to grow, so we're barreling toward closures and virtual anyway, but in the most chaotic and disruptive way possible. (The new quarantine guidelines might help, won't be it fun to see if that can outrun the exponential spread of Omicron before it flames out? I can't wait!)

I would have taken 2-weeks of virtual to slow the spread over this (although we all know half of y'all would have gone to the Bahamas and ruined it for us anyway). I would have taken DCPS' test-to-stay program over this - in fact I'd still take it! Instead we got a terrible "case-by-case assessment" of schools once they reach 5% that backfired spectacularly because it didn't account for the exponential spread of the virus that we all knew was happening.

And now we get, "Oh...don't worry...we're doing something else...we won't tell you exactly what, just that it's definitely not what we were doing yesterday, BOY do we have terrible ideas sometimes, lol! Also no, we won't release positivity data anymore, because then you'd know how bad our idea was." I mean...Jesus. I get wanting in-person. I want in-person. But HOW can anyone think this is an acceptable way to run things?

The "exponential" spread part is over. It's been leveling out in MoCo and regionally. It'll likely grow (and recede), but it's already ripped through a lot of the public over December. You're not going to get multiple days of "doubling" (or more) on an extended basis.

DP. Fingers crossed that you are right. But this also means that we could’ve switched to DL for two weeks and don’t start the paranoid shit about not ever coming back.

How is the worst over when Hogan just said that the worst is yet to come

Do you have a data to back this up? I've seen several posts like tbis, nkne with data, and based on current pisitives, it doesn't look like we're done with peak yet.

We’re not at or done with peak, but the ‘exponential’ growth is no longer exponential.

Again, Data please or this is hearsay. I'm under the impressikn that the exponential growth that you are talking about slowed down because holiday travel is over and there are less people needing PCR, there are also more people using rapid tests now or even people who can't get tested because there aren't any rapid tests available, with the weather these past few days, I don't think people with symptoms would want to line up outside for PCR. All of these are anecdotal, the only reason why I think this is still spreading is because I know more people in my circle now that were infected, which I've never experienced before.

Of course it is still spreading. That doesn’t mean it’s spreading exponentially, whereby cases are doubling (or more) every day or two.

Related to this, does anybody know why MoCo is no longer updating positivity data on their dashboard? The last date seems to be early Dec before the data breach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does this mean they keep using the red, yellow, green chart?

They should stop using it, because it's meaningless--the state didn't actually tell them to use 5% to begin conversations about shifting to virtual.

That was a lot of work making that color coded chart all for nothing. Wah wah!

[Anonymous]

They need to close already. It is OBVIOUS that a few more weeks of this will kill off more people in hospitals, not just the adult unvaccinated we love to hate, but the elderly (there's a thread today by someone who just her mother to Covid), the fragile, even young children. And it's not just Covid patients: all of you who are injured in accidents or who have acute health problems that need hospital care will have such lousy case that hospitals requested and received lawsuit protection from Hogan. Chemo patients whose lives depend on timely treatment are not receiving care right now. Important surgeries have been canceled.

Do you want to extend this suffering and death even more by refusing to close schools? When we KNOW that Omicron arrives and recedes rapidly and we would only need to close schools for a few weeks?

It's unconscionable.

[Anonymous]

Do these rapid tests detect omicron?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

They need to close already. It is OBVIOUS that a few more weeks of this will kill off more people in hospitals, not just the adult unvaccinated we love to hate, but the elderly (there's a thread today by someone who just her mother to Covid), the fragile, even young children. And it's not just Covid patients: all of you who are injured in accidents or who have acute health problems that need hospital care will have such lousy case that hospitals requested and received lawsuit protection from Hogan. Chemo patients whose lives depend on timely treatment are not receiving care right now. Important surgeries have been canceled.

Do you want to extend this suffering and death even more by refusing to close schools? When we KNOW that Omicron arrives and recedes rapidly and we would only need to close schools for a few weeks?

It's unconscionable.

Nope, not closing. If state/county government wanted to, they could close a lot of things. They’re not, so schools certainly shouldn’t either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

They need to close already. It is OBVIOUS that a few more weeks of this will kill off more people in hospitals, not just the adult unvaccinated we love to hate, but the elderly (there's a thread today by someone who just her mother to Covid), the fragile, even young children. And it's not just Covid patients: all of you who are injured in accidents or who have acute health problems that need hospital care will have such lousy case that hospitals requested and received lawsuit protection from Hogan. Chemo patients whose lives depend on timely treatment are not receiving care right now. Important surgeries have been canceled.

Do you want to extend this suffering and death even more by refusing to close schools? When we KNOW that Omicron arrives and recedes rapidly and we would only need to close schools for a few weeks?

It's unconscionable.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

They need to close already. It is OBVIOUS that a few more weeks of this will kill off more people in hospitals, not just the adult unvaccinated we love to hate, but the elderly (there's a thread today by someone who just her mother to Covid), the fragile, even young children. And it's not just Covid patients: all of you who are injured in accidents or who have acute health problems that need hospital care will have such lousy case that hospitals requested and received lawsuit protection from Hogan. Chemo patients whose lives depend on timely treatment are not receiving care right now. Important surgeries have been canceled.

Do you want to extend this suffering and death even more by refusing to close schools? When we KNOW that Omicron arrives and recedes rapidly and we would only need to close schools for a few weeks?

It's unconscionable.

You should try reading every once in awhile--closing schools doesn't stop the spread of COVID. It won't slow down the spread while everything else stays open, not to mention when kids are out of school, they're either placed in alternative care situations or mixing with other kids anyway, so just stop with your hysteria
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/06/omicron-is-not-reason-keep-schools-closed/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Update: Jimmy D'Andrea, chief of staff for MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight, said the district didn't commit to daily updates of color-coded school data on COVID-19 cases. Actually, McKnight did promise the updates, a video shows.

https://twitter.com/BethesdaBeat/status/1479524997257437184

The colors don’t mean anything any more. They could color everything purple for all I care.

Well the point is that they lied. Or do you not care about that either?

They didn’t lie. They had every intention of going down this path until the State Board of education squashed it after they put the first 11 schools virtual.

The State Board of Education took no such action. McKnight changed her mind. All up to her.