4.4 percent of MCPS staff report having COVID

[Anonymous]

The number is absolutely an undercount, considering most people can't even find a test in the last few days, and considering the exponential rise of infection.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m actually shocked it’s not higher, given the prevalence of asymptomatic cases.

I have no issue with this and would send my kids to school without a second thought as I figured there’d be a higher number of asymptomatic cases in the general public.

Just give it a week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Once all staff take the required rapid test I assume the numbers will go up.

The best of my knowledge it was not required.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The number is absolutely an undercount, considering most people can't even find a test in the last few days, and considering the exponential rise of infection.

Of course it is undercounted. Given the high number of asymptomatic infections, we've typically assumed total infections are 2x or 3x higher than the cases from tests. We might be higher than that this time.

All that does is further emphasize that we don't need to worry about something that everyone is getting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My ES has three staff with Covid. That’s a normal illness rate for flu season - we often have had 2-3 staff out sick at the same time. We don’t need to close for staff shortages at this time.

Other schools might, but system wide closures make no sense.

Cool, is there also no flu this year? So just 2-3 total staff out, since COVID is the only illness that exists now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m actually shocked it’s not higher, given the prevalence of asymptomatic cases.

I have no issue with this and would send my kids to school without a second thought as I figured there’d be a higher number of asymptomatic cases in the general public.

Just give it a week.

Then the 4.4 percent will be ready to tag back in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My ES has three staff with Covid. That’s a normal illness rate for flu season - we often have had 2-3 staff out sick at the same time. We don’t need to close for staff shortages at this time.

Other schools might, but system wide closures make no sense.

Cool, is there also no flu this year? So just 2-3 total staff out, since COVID is the only illness that exists now?

I don’t know anyone sick with flu - do you? It’s possible, but doesn’t seem prevalent.

[Anonymous]

Remember that staff are also out for non-Covid reasons. At my school, a few staff finished their quarantine during break and are ready to return to the building. However, we still have several staff out this week. Some tested positive for the flu, another has strep throat, etc. We received many emails yesterday from admin with the plan for this week, how schedules and coverages are completely different (lunch/recess at different times), how teachers will need to cover recess one day this week, etc. Admin will be covering all lunches this week. It’s a mess to figure out coverages when a large number of staff are out. When Covid once again impacts our staff, more changes will need to happen. Thankfully, our admin are fabulous and great problem solvers. They come up with a plan and pivot constantly to amend the plan as needed.

[Anonymous]

Can we post facts, like OP is doing, as well as thoughtful rebuttals, without calling each other names????

As soon as you post an insult and impugn another poster's motives, you lose credibility and appear as an "Open at all costs" or "Close at all costs" troll. Neither of which any reasonable person wants.

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once all staff take the required rapid test I assume the numbers will go up.

The best of my knowledge it was not required.

At my school, all staff and students are being given two rapid tests to take home and test ourselves with. There is a lot of pressure to take that test and report any positive results to the school immediately. We are not supposed to use the tests with anyone else in the family.

[Anonymous]

Related question - are the teachers going to return back to teaching at day 6 (per cdc guidelines of 5 days isolation, 5 days fully masked) or are they returning at day 11?

I'm assuming cdc made this call because most of the transmission happens in the first 5 days and they know basic society cannot function anymore on 10 or 14 days quarantine. Has MCPS recalibrated? I haven't been seeing any information put out on this from the school system.

[Anonymous]

For goodness sake.

I should have made quitting DCUM my New Year's resolution. Maybe there's still time.

That number includes some who tested positive at the beginning of winter break and who are now out of the quarantine stage and able to return to work.

Source? Proof?

I can tell you that from Dec 24 to Jan 2, parents at my ES got 6 notifications for different staff members that had COVID. The MCPS pdf that circulated yesterday said we had 2 staff cases.

Regardless, MCPS is still doing a 10-day quarantine, correct? If so, 10 days from Dec 24 is exactly Jan 3, but any later than Dec 24, the person may still be in quarantine.

Just looking at this data point, it strikes me how these numbers mimic the community maps of COVID (by zip code) which might be indicative of lesser vacations and access to boosters. MCPS should work with DHHS to increase vaccinations and boosters for these communities.

...what? The data point that shows that most schools are very close to each other, especially with regard to raw numbers? Enough that the variation between 9 (Whitman) and 11 (Wheaton) could easily be explained by random chance? Even 7 (Churchill) vs 13 (Gaithersburg). It's almost double, but it's also only 6 people.

This is a really small sample size and very small actual numbers. At most, there is a small association. And maybe there is a correlation if some of these staff members got it from their student populations before break.

But you do realize that teachers and staff don't often live very near the schools they teach at anymore, right?

And these are staff numbers. These aren't a special population of poor, disadvantaged people who need more outreach and vaccine education because they live in poor, disadvantaged Silver Spring or w/e-- not on average.

In a school with 40 teachers that is less than 2 out. Very low. You're nuts.

So here's something interesting about viruses-- COVID in particular, and omicron very specifically. They-- get this-- replicate. They spread. Shocking, I know.

4% becomes 8% quite quickly, which becomes 16% pretty quickly, too, and then 32%. Without mitigation efforts, anyway. Then maybe things slow down a bit because of overlapping exposures and fewer hosts and so on. But it doesn't stop at 4% or even 8%.

When you start with a number that's already the number of typical absences during flu season-- and you're not counting additional people out with colds and flus-- and the disease is far more contagious-- that's not so good.

Barring some quirk, like another week of snow days, it's not going to stop at 4%.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, "Wait two weeks, that's what you said about X and Y and Z, I don't believe you..." Do you believe that it's never true that things will get worse in a week or two? Do you think we haven't already seen that happening with omicron, and rapidly?

The silver lining here, and a big reason that virtual should be appealing, is that it should blow through in just a few total weeks. But if we have kids in virtual during the worst of it, that will actually save lives and reduce disability among our population down the line. Sigh.

[Anonymous]

If you cannot make your point in a couple sentences it’s not a point worth making because no one will read it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Related question - are the teachers going to return back to teaching at day 6 (per cdc guidelines of 5 days isolation, 5 days fully masked) or are they returning at day 11?

I'm assuming cdc made this call because most of the transmission happens in the first 5 days and they know basic society cannot function anymore on 10 or 14 days quarantine. Has MCPS recalibrated? I haven't been seeing any information put out on this from the school system.

I was going to ask this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My ES has three staff with Covid. That’s a normal illness rate for flu season - we often have had 2-3 staff out sick at the same time. We don’t need to close for staff shortages at this time.

Other schools might, but system wide closures make no sense.

Cool, is there also no flu this year? So just 2-3 total staff out, since COVID is the only illness that exists now?

I don’t know anyone sick with flu - do you? It’s possible, but doesn’t seem prevalent.

Well, yes, I do, and with a cold. But I also know a few people who are sick with cold/flu symptoms and just assuming it's COVID, without a test. They wouldn't be counted among COVID cases, but they are not going in to work. And then there are other reasons for absences.

It may be true that with omicron so rampant, it's partially replacing other absences, but I highly doubt it's doing so fully. That defies common sense.

E.g. there might normally be 5 staff out of 100 out for whatever reason during cold and flu season, but now there might be 5 out for COVID and still 3 more out for other reasons. And then with the replicability of COVID, by the end of the week that might be 8-10 out for COVID (even with some people coming back after quarantine) and 3 out for other reasons, then next week 12-20 out for COVID and 3 out for other reasons, and so on.

I just don't understand why people can look at COVID numbers, specifically, and decide that if they're "not that high" now, they won't ever be, or won't be soon. It reminds me of when people were like, "Yeah, but there's only 500 people dead" or "Yeah, but there's only like a 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 1000 chance of getting COVID, so..." in ~March of 2020.

I mean, yeah, 5% of staff out in wintertime, if that's all of the staff that's out, and that's where it stops[i], sure, okay, we can deal with that.

But... why would we assume that? That's not a good assumption.