For the "Close School" Crowd, help me with interpret these numbers...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we not forget this statistic? Zero kids age 0-18 have died of Covid in Montgomery County.

Schools open, schools closed, vaccine, no vaccine, Delta, Omicron. Doesn’t matter. Zero deaths for that age group.

https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/covid19/data/case-counts.html#deaths-age

You need a new talking point. A 10 year old just died of covid.

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/stephen-wagner-10-years-old-dies-from-covid-19/38658242#

You'll just make excuses when a child dies here.

This talking point is still valid.

No, it’s not as kids are dying.

More kids die from the flu. How do you feel about that?

Then maybe we should keep the masking precautions and regularly test for flu.

You are welcome to wear a mask for ever and ever if you want. Your kid can wear her N95 for the rest of her school career! Nobody is going to forbid that.

You are also welcome to rest your kid weekly for the flu. Knock yourself out. Your pediatrician will happily accept your copayments.

The rest of us are comfortable with the risks of both the flu and Covid with respect to our kids. And we understand that keeping them out of school buildings is more harmful than beneficial. Do what works for you and let the rest of our kids go to school in person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we not forget this statistic? Zero kids age 0-18 have died of Covid in Montgomery County.

Schools open, schools closed, vaccine, no vaccine, Delta, Omicron. Doesn’t matter. Zero deaths for that age group.

https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/covid19/data/case-counts.html#deaths-age

You need a new talking point. A 10 year old just died of covid.

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/stephen-wagner-10-years-old-dies-from-covid-19/38658242#

You'll just make excuses when a child dies here.

This talking point is still valid.

No, it’s not as kids are dying.

More kids die from the flu. How do you feel about that?

Then maybe we should keep the masking precautions and regularly test for flu.

You are welcome to wear a mask for ever and ever if you want. Your kid can wear her N95 for the rest of her school career! Nobody is going to forbid that.

You are also welcome to rest your kid weekly for the flu. Knock yourself out. Your pediatrician will happily accept your copayments.

The rest of us are comfortable with the risks of both the flu and Covid with respect to our kids. And we understand that keeping them out of school buildings is more harmful than beneficial. Do what works for you and let the rest of our kids go to school in person.

What kid of parents are you if you don't keep your sick kid home to rest and/or take them to the doctor when they are sick? You are why covid/flu/colds spread in schools and then have to nerve to complain.

We will be wearing masks for a very long time to protect ourselves against people like you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Less testing means less positives. Parents may not be reporting the positives. I doubt it dropped that quickly.

Here comes the pandemic forever crowd (right on cue).

This one is great. While the rest of the world is seeing Omicrom surge and drop in an almost identical way…no way it could be true in MoCo. Only happening because parents aren’t reporting cases. Great stuff.

You really think that there is a drop that quickly? Be real. It's highly contagious. It will drop in a month or so, but not this quickly. I know several parents not reporting positives. They should show the absentee rate, number of sick kids sent home and positives.

We will have the pandemic forever because the entitled people like you cannot take it seriously and be part of the solution.

You are way off, and I'm someone who is very conservative with COVID and hasn't sent her kid back to school since winter break. It's a little soon to tell, but DC's numbers are probably showing a steep dropoff in the past 5 days. The whole cycle seems to have peaked more quickly and dropped off (knock wood) more quickly than even NYC or London-- and those places didn't stay at a high plateau for 6 weeks, which is what you are suggesting for us. Highly unlikely.

(My guess is that we are just more-vaccinated-enough than those two cities that Omicron is burning through a little faster.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I disagree with you.

Hospitals went into surge mode in late December. Some needed to cancel elective surgeries, some had to make patients wait long hours to transfer from the ER to the ICU, and ambulances took longer to turn over patients because hospitals were too busy to register patients. This is NOT negligible impact! It obviously affected patient suffering and outcome.

Community transmission of Covid-19 - schools included - was the obvious driver for the surge of patients in hospital.

Schools should have had a planned, stress-free pivot to virtual for some weeks of January, to avoid the absentee chaos we recently went through (bus drivers, teachers, students, admin, etc).
Now we are reduced to closing a few schools who are overwhelmed with cases. OK.



Also, from a research scientist in microbiology:

SARS-Cov-2 IS NOT ENDEMIC.

It will likely become endemic. Not just yet.



Also, for the next variant:

Do not assume each variant behaves the same way.

The next variant that displaces Omicron will have to be either more transmissible (hard to imagine) or more virulent, or both.

Do not assume we are ready for it, after the chaos Omicron generated and continues to generate across the world.


The best you can do is:

1. Get your boosters in a timely manner.
2. Wear N95 or equivalent masks indoors during surges.
3. Adapt your lifestyle for maximum socialization and travel when cases are low. If you missed out on Christmas, have Christmas in July, for God's sake. The birth of Jesus wasn't actually on Dec 25th anyway. Book last-minute trips (I booked a trip to France on a few days' notice). Plan your wedding in a month instead of in a year, it will still be the best day of your life.

All of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


Doesn't this tell us a few things:

1. MoCo has reached the endemic phase of Covid. Cases are disassociated with outcomes.
2. The goal from day 1 was to limit strain on the hospitals. While parts of the country (low vaccinated) may be strained...we are clearly not.
3. MoCo schools did the right thing by staying open. It added no stress to the healthcare system. While certain schools closed for staffing issues (probably makes sense), the overall system did the right thing and we have a blueprint for next winter (and the winter after etc.)

Tell me these numbers don't tell that overall story...we all talk about science and data, here it is.

1. That's not what endemic means

and the rest of your points are political judgments that cannot be fully addressed with data.

+1,000

[Anonymous]

The person with the two long fact-based replies is spot-on.

PARTICULARLY with the following:

2. At no point throughout the Omi wave did hospitals go into "moderate" territory (let alone critical). With case numbers dropping so dramatically it won't happen now, rates will be consistent.

First of all, this is simply not true.

Here's the CHATS alert system. It updates in real time and there's no way for me to share a screenshot, but as of Jan 20, I see Shady Grove, White Oak, Montgomery General and Holy Cross on red alert:

https://www.miemssalert.com/chats/Default.aspx?hdRegion=5

Second of all, to reiterate PP-- hospitalizations lag infections, by 1-3 weeks. (And deaths lag hospitalizations.)

We (hopefully) are just coming off of our high plateau that lasted about 2.5 weeks*.

I expect hospitalizations to continue to climb for at least 2 more weeks. It's not over.

That's the mind-bending thing about Omicron. It moves SO FAST, that even before people are hospitalized and dying in high numbers, people who had mild or no infections are totally over it and planning their Spring Breaks.

They say, "See! It's almost over and not that many people died, our hospitals are fine" and... that's not how it works. I mean, I'd be thrilled to be wrong, but you can look at hospitalization and death data yourself. It's trending upward, not down, and it will continue to do so for a bit.

NYT says cases are down 43% from 2 weeks ago (we also currently have 5-10x the cases we had 5-6 weeks ago).

NYT also says deaths are up 57% from 2 weeks ago.

Again, I hope it doesn't end up as bad as it could. But it's simply not over.

*I'm actually paying more attention to DC, since I live so close, but it's about the same.

[Anonymous]

To add to that, I'm sure you now understand what's wrong with this statement:

3. MoCo schools did the right thing by staying open. It added no stress to the healthcare system.

We will never be able to prove this (about MCPS schools specifically), and we DEFINITELY can't prove it yet, because... hospitalizations and deaths lag infections.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The person with the two long fact-based replies is spot-on.

PARTICULARLY with the following:

2. At no point throughout the Omi wave did hospitals go into "moderate" territory (let alone critical). With case numbers dropping so dramatically it won't happen now, rates will be consistent.

First of all, this is simply not true.

Here's the CHATS alert system. It updates in real time and there's no way for me to share a screenshot, but as of Jan 20, I see Shady Grove, White Oak, Montgomery General and Holy Cross on red alert:

https://www.miemssalert.com/chats/Default.aspx?hdRegion=5

Second of all, to reiterate PP-- hospitalizations lag infections, by 1-3 weeks. (And deaths lag hospitalizations.)

We (hopefully) are just coming off of our high plateau that lasted about 2.5 weeks*.

I expect hospitalizations to continue to climb for at least 2 more weeks. It's not over.

That's the mind-bending thing about Omicron. It moves SO FAST, that even before people are hospitalized and dying in high numbers, people who had mild or no infections are totally over it and planning their Spring Breaks.

They say, "See! It's almost over and not that many people died, our hospitals are fine" and... that's not how it works. I mean, I'd be thrilled to be wrong, but you can look at hospitalization and death data yourself. It's trending upward, not down, and it will continue to do so for a bit.

NYT says cases are down 43% from 2 weeks ago (we also currently have 5-10x the cases we had 5-6 weeks ago).

NYT also says deaths are up 57% from 2 weeks ago.

Again, I hope it doesn't end up as bad as it could. But it's simply not over.

*I'm actually paying more attention to DC, since I live so close, but it's about the same.

Excuse me!

I'm sorry. I was looking at Maryland numbers, not MoCo.

MoCo cases are down 43%
MoCo hospitalizations are UP 87%

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/maryland-covid-cases.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The person with the two long fact-based replies is spot-on.

PARTICULARLY with the following:

2. At no point throughout the Omi wave did hospitals go into "moderate" territory (let alone critical). With case numbers dropping so dramatically it won't happen now, rates will be consistent.

First of all, this is simply not true.

Here's the CHATS alert system. It updates in real time and there's no way for me to share a screenshot, but as of Jan 20, I see Shady Grove, White Oak, Montgomery General and Holy Cross on red alert:

https://www.miemssalert.com/chats/Default.aspx?hdRegion=5

Second of all, to reiterate PP-- hospitalizations lag infections, by 1-3 weeks. (And deaths lag hospitalizations.)

We (hopefully) are just coming off of our high plateau that lasted about 2.5 weeks*.

I expect hospitalizations to continue to climb for at least 2 more weeks. It's not over.

That's the mind-bending thing about Omicron. It moves SO FAST, that even before people are hospitalized and dying in high numbers, people who had mild or no infections are totally over it and planning their Spring Breaks.

They say, "See! It's almost over and not that many people died, our hospitals are fine" and... that's not how it works. I mean, I'd be thrilled to be wrong, but you can look at hospitalization and death data yourself. It's trending upward, not down, and it will continue to do so for a bit.

NYT says cases are down 43% from 2 weeks ago (we also currently have 5-10x the cases we had 5-6 weeks ago).

NYT also says deaths are up 57% from 2 weeks ago.

Again, I hope it doesn't end up as bad as it could. But it's simply not over.

*I'm actually paying more attention to DC, since I live so close, but it's about the same.

Excuse me!

I'm sorry. I was looking at Maryland numbers, not MoCo.

MoCo cases are down 43%
MoCo hospitalizations are UP 87%

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/maryland-covid-cases.html

We've also been on school break for a long weekend and snow. We'll see what happens. Hopefully it is really going down but only time will tell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Less testing means less positives. Parents may not be reporting the positives. I doubt it dropped that quickly.

Here comes the pandemic forever crowd (right on cue).

This one is great. While the rest of the world is seeing Omicrom surge and drop in an almost identical way…no way it could be true in MoCo. Only happening because parents aren’t reporting cases. Great stuff.

You really think that there is a drop that quickly? Be real. It's highly contagious. It will drop in a month or so, but not this quickly. I know several parents not reporting positives. They should show the absentee rate, number of sick kids sent home and positives.

We will have the pandemic forever because the entitled people like you cannot take it seriously and be part of the solution.

You are way off, and I'm someone who is very conservative with COVID and hasn't sent her kid back to school since winter break. It's a little soon to tell, but DC's numbers are probably showing a steep dropoff in the past 5 days. The whole cycle seems to have peaked more quickly and dropped off (knock wood) more quickly than even NYC or London-- and those places didn't stay at a high plateau for 6 weeks, which is what you are suggesting for us. Highly unlikely.

(My guess is that we are just more-vaccinated-enough than those two cities that Omicron is burning through a little faster.)

You aren't conservative with covid. Stop pretending.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Less testing means less positives. Parents may not be reporting the positives. I doubt it dropped that quickly.

Here comes the pandemic forever crowd (right on cue).

This one is great. While the rest of the world is seeing Omicrom surge and drop in an almost identical way…no way it could be true in MoCo. Only happening because parents aren’t reporting cases. Great stuff.

You really think that there is a drop that quickly? Be real. It's highly contagious. It will drop in a month or so, but not this quickly. I know several parents not reporting positives. They should show the absentee rate, number of sick kids sent home and positives.

We will have the pandemic forever because the entitled people like you cannot take it seriously and be part of the solution.

You are way off, and I'm someone who is very conservative with COVID and hasn't sent her kid back to school since winter break. It's a little soon to tell, but DC's numbers are probably showing a steep dropoff in the past 5 days. The whole cycle seems to have peaked more quickly and dropped off (knock wood) more quickly than even NYC or London-- and those places didn't stay at a high plateau for 6 weeks, which is what you are suggesting for us. Highly unlikely.

(My guess is that we are just more-vaccinated-enough than those two cities that Omicron is burning through a little faster.)

You aren't conservative with covid. Stop pretending.

...what?

By "conservative with COVID," I mean that I do more than 95% of people I know in Takoma Park to avoid contracting and spreading COVID.

I haven't sent my kid back to school. The most I've done since Dec 19 has been walk around the neighborhood and RUN into UPS to drop off a package. I was pro-2-4-week virtual from the jump. Please.

I am listing the facts and the increasingly likely (I HOPE!) trajectory we SEEM to be on.

Does that make me pro-COVID somehow? You've lost the plot, have made everything COVID-related hopelessly black and white or are trolling.

Or else YOU are that singly, near-mythical, fatally pessimistic creature who really does love "sitting in their jammies all day obsessing about COVID in their basement." I've never met someone like you IRL, but then again, I guess that's by your design!

And assuming you also made the comment just above, 1 minute before the one I'm replying to... I do believe school being in session in-person contributes to COVID cases in the community overall-- but not this much. And so much that snow days two weeks ago were the contributing factors to a decline a few days ago? A steep decline of almost a week now? At the very most, the week with the bulk of snow days (Jan 3-7) would have led to a decline in numbers from about Jan 6-12. In fact, that's when we were at our highest rate in the entire pandemic.

Apparently being factual and very slightly optimistic about the possible future has completely killed my cred as someone who cares about limiting the spread of COVID. Darn.

[Anonymous]

The issue is, success is invisible. We don't celebrate each non-infection. Victory goes unremarked, and is usually accompanied by a lot of whining.

The snow days probably did a lot to stem the spread in Moco, being as they placed a lot of people at home when they were sick with the covid they caught over the holidays. All of the December socializing infected most of the careless in December and early January. Hopefully the drop is real.

I am still bothered by the human cost. All the people most of you never bothered to see

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we not forget this statistic? Zero kids age 0-18 have died of Covid in Montgomery County.

Schools open, schools closed, vaccine, no vaccine, Delta, Omicron. Doesn’t matter. Zero deaths for that age group.

https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/covid19/data/case-counts.html#deaths-age

You need a new talking point. A 10 year old just died of covid.

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/stephen-wagner-10-years-old-dies-from-covid-19/38658242#

You'll just make excuses when a child dies here.

This talking point is still valid.

No, it’s not as kids are dying.

More kids die from the flu. How do you feel about that?

Then maybe we should keep the masking precautions and regularly test for flu.

And close schools right? That’s who this thread is for - the “close schools” crowd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we not forget this statistic? Zero kids age 0-18 have died of Covid in Montgomery County.

Schools open, schools closed, vaccine, no vaccine, Delta, Omicron. Doesn’t matter. Zero deaths for that age group.

https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/covid19/data/case-counts.html#deaths-age

Look Covid denier, just because we've been lucky so far doesn't mean it will not happen. There was just a child who died in the next county over. Is that not good enough for you? For some of us its not about deaths, but health. You may be ok with getting sick but not all of us are ok with it. For you its no big deal but for us it is. You would't think twice of sending you sick kids to school and infecting us. We care, you don't. Its not as simple as saying no deaths.

You have GOT to be kidding me. Do you whine about going virtual during flu season too? Do you know how many kids die from the flu every year?
I’m sure you grieve intensely for every flu death but get it together. We don’t close schools for that, we’re not closing schools because some kid “might” die from Covid.
*cue the “you’re a monster” posters. Yes, my realism makes me a monster. I’m ok with that.

The flu has never made this many people sick or killed this many. Not comparable.

Flu had killed more kids than COVID has. That’s a fact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The person with the two long fact-based replies is spot-on.

PARTICULARLY with the following:

2. At no point throughout the Omi wave did hospitals go into "moderate" territory (let alone critical). With case numbers dropping so dramatically it won't happen now, rates will be consistent.

First of all, this is simply not true.

Here's the CHATS alert system. It updates in real time and there's no way for me to share a screenshot, but as of Jan 20, I see Shady Grove, White Oak, Montgomery General and Holy Cross on red alert:

https://www.miemssalert.com/chats/Default.aspx?hdRegion=5

Second of all, to reiterate PP-- hospitalizations lag infections, by 1-3 weeks. (And deaths lag hospitalizations.)

We (hopefully) are just coming off of our high plateau that lasted about 2.5 weeks*.

I expect hospitalizations to continue to climb for at least 2 more weeks. It's not over.

That's the mind-bending thing about Omicron. It moves SO FAST, that even before people are hospitalized and dying in high numbers, people who had mild or no infections are totally over it and planning their Spring Breaks.

They say, "See! It's almost over and not that many people died, our hospitals are fine" and... that's not how it works. I mean, I'd be thrilled to be wrong, but you can look at hospitalization and death data yourself. It's trending upward, not down, and it will continue to do so for a bit.

NYT says cases are down 43% from 2 weeks ago (we also currently have 5-10x the cases we had 5-6 weeks ago).

NYT also says deaths are up 57% from 2 weeks ago.

Again, I hope it doesn't end up as bad as it could. But it's simply not over.

*I'm actually paying more attention to DC, since I live so close, but it's about the same.

Excuse me!

I'm sorry. I was looking at Maryland numbers, not MoCo.

MoCo cases are down 43%
MoCo hospitalizations are UP 87%

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/maryland-covid-cases.html

We talk so much about the pandemic continuing because of non-maskers and non-vaccer's. In reality, it's going to last here because of people like this. We have a basic lack of math and risk assessment in MoCo. it's scary and disappointing (but not surprising).

When we talk about %'s, there are two important metrics:

1. The % increase (check, the PP got that one)
2. The raw #. I can tell you numbers are up 300%, but what if it's going from 1 person to 3? That's 300%, but my ability to do risk assessment tells me my actual risk hasn't increased much.

The numbers you report without context just have no value, but they scare people. The pandemic will not end in MoCo because idiots like you don't understand math.

Additionally, you are misinterpreting. In MoCo, hospitalizations are not skyrocketing. Not even close. We are at (and continue to be at) stable levels. The # of patients hospitalized WITH covid rises, but that reflects the spread of covid in the greater community. This metric also tells me my risk of hospitalization is very low...and will continue to be so.

But you do you, or maybe take some basic math and stats courses. Could really help all of us end the pandemic locally.