COVID - recent numbers - fall

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Threads like this in late July are so predictable. People calling for school closures and doom are an extremist minority who are detached from reality. It’s like a cult at this point.

Unfortunately there are ALOT of parents and public health official as like this in Montgomery County. Too many. And they have very loud voices. Our kids suffered for two years because of these ‘doom and gloom’ parents/public health officials.

I would hope that we know to ignore them by now, but I am not certain and could see schools having issues with closures due to quarantines, etc.

There’s no regional company on this any more. None of the other school region message boards even have a Covid thread on their first page. Fortunately, we now have a Superintendent that couldn’t care less what the hypochondriacs and shutins think.

MCPS doesn’t really care what the rest of Maryland does though. Our Covid regulations an shutdowns were probably the most aggressive in Maryland.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the point of this post! Schools were in person last year and will be in a month.

You are pretty terrible and judge mental to talk about your neighbors child here. Vaccines are not stopping transmission. With no masking and no precautions and the newer variant highly contagious it’s going to be another bumpy year. So, saying you are vaccinated is meaningless in terms of spread.

If you want families to return, what are you going to do to make it safe. Not everyone is ok getting Covid nor getting it multiple times.

MCPS can't even run summer school buses or staff summer school programs. The writing is on the wall for how August is going to go.

One reason we are staying another year in Virtual. We want the stability and not to have to worry about this stuff.

Not quite child abuse, but certainly crappy parenting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the point of this post! Schools were in person last year and will be in a month.

You are pretty terrible and judge mental to talk about your neighbors child here. Vaccines are not stopping transmission. With no masking and no precautions and the newer variant highly contagious it’s going to be another bumpy year. So, saying you are vaccinated is meaningless in terms of spread.

If you want families to return, what are you going to do to make it safe. Not everyone is ok getting Covid nor getting it multiple times.

MCPS can't even run summer school buses or staff summer school programs. The writing is on the wall for how August is going to go.

One reason we are staying another year in Virtual. We want the stability and not to have to worry about this stuff.

Not quite child abuse, but certainly crappy parenting.

Posts like this show just how out of touch MoCo parents are with the rest of the world. So many elementary kids have been virtual for YEARS pre-pandemic for various reasons. Most other places are much more progressive than MoCo. Just because other students learn in ways that you don't agree with, doesnt make these parents bad. It's a really pathetic take and having such a closed mind sounds horrific.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the point of this post! Schools were in person last year and will be in a month.

You are pretty terrible and judge mental to talk about your neighbors child here. Vaccines are not stopping transmission. With no masking and no precautions and the newer variant highly contagious it’s going to be another bumpy year. So, saying you are vaccinated is meaningless in terms of spread.

If you want families to return, what are you going to do to make it safe. Not everyone is ok getting Covid nor getting it multiple times.

MCPS can't even run summer school buses or staff summer school programs. The writing is on the wall for how August is going to go.

One reason we are staying another year in Virtual. We want the stability and not to have to worry about this stuff.

Not quite child abuse, but certainly crappy parenting.

Clearly it’s not either one and we put our kids first. You should try it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: There should be zero expectations that any child gets vaccinated in order to reopen schools. That would be completely unethical.

DC is requiring it for all students over 12.

Is DC also requiring boosters for students over age 12?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hello. I'm the one who predicted in 2020 that covid wasn't over, in 2021 that covid wasn't over, the winter spike last year, and earlier this year that covid mutations would be a concern.

Now here we are, facing BA.275, BA.4 and BA.5.

Here is my prediction for this year.

My guess is that a combination of mask fatigue and the non-masking parents will influence their children, who will peer-pressure other children to not wear their masks at school. Since current vaccines are relatively ineffective against the new variants, and MCPS refuses to enable a more dynamic hybrid response, I would expect multiple and complete school shutdowns to occur when the cold weather hits (no later than January / February) due to teacher illnesses.

There is the possibility it could occur earlier (as early as October) since MC is already at a HIGH covid level (if you weren't aware), depending on the weather. Cold and/or rainy days would work in favor of the virus, as it normally happens when kids catch colds.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/montgomery-county-reaches-high-covid-community-level/3116781/

MCPS could choose to mitigate, parents could choose to encourage masking, but both groups seem too entrenched in their positions to reason with. My guess is the sense of entitlement is too high without a counterbalance.

My fear, and I hope I'm wrong on this, is that the counterbalance could come in the form of a large-scale negative outcome. My guess is that the Administration is already aware of this, and why the new vaccines are being rushed and ordered to be available by October or November or even sooner, according to these articles:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/07/26/1113615330/reformulated-covid-vaccine-boosters-may-be-available-earlier-than-expected

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/22/booster-shots-coronavirus-under-50/

But, if the unmasked parents want to stay unmasked, there's not much you can do about it (but neither will they).

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2330568-long-covid-symptoms-may-include-hair-loss-and-ejaculation-difficulties/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-26/more-than-100-000-british-workers-are-off-sick-with-long-covid

In terms of variants, the good news is that the more proteins that appear, the fewer rabbits should be left in the hat. The bad news is that the math is still stacked against this being the very, very last covid strain that evades immunity.

Best case scenario - the new vaccines are out by September so that the majority of kids are immunized by the end of November. No new variants that evade prior infection or vaccine immunity.

Worst case scenario - I hope I'm wrong.

Again, this is just one opinion. We'll see.

The point isn't whether covid exists - it's whether schools should be closed or mask mandates in place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Threads like this in late July are so predictable. People calling for school closures and doom are an extremist minority who are detached from reality. It’s like a cult at this point.

Unfortunately there are ALOT of parents and public health official as like this in Montgomery County. Too many. And they have very loud voices. Our kids suffered for two years because of these ‘doom and gloom’ parents/public health officials.

I would hope that we know to ignore them by now, but I am not certain and could see schools having issues with closures due to quarantines, etc.

I remember this time last year starting to feel absolute panic/dread that the "DELTA!!!" folks were going to get schools shut down again. Thankfully it turned out my fears were wrong: schools fully reopened and the impact of covid was fairly minimal. There was a regular trickle of cases at our elementary school, popping up in December, then back down again. My kid had only one quarantine due to close contact pre-vaccine, and that luckily coincided with Thanksgiving break, so he didn't miss much school. That missed day actually was very disruptive to him, so I was sure to get him vaxxed so he wouldn't have to quarantine. Masks came off in March and my kiddo went mask-free for most of the rest of the year. He was one of the early adopters but by the end of the year masked kids were a small minority. Teachers and support staff got covid but generally were just gone for a week and then back. As far as I know, no classrooms had to be closed.

Don't get me wrong - it was a HARD year, but the difficulty was due to recovering from schools being closed, not the impact of covid. Covid policies did make things harder though -- the unvaxxed kids were sent to quarantine (ALL black kids, BTW - so racist) so sometimes the teachers tried to simulcast. My kid had a super hard time readjusting socially/behaviorally, and I do think part of that was masks.

Anyway upshot to me is: schools are not going to close again, period.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. I have been masking for the last four weeks since I have an overseas cruise coming up. I got Covid this weekend. Not sure how as I have not been eating at restaurants or hanging out indoors with friends. Classic ba4/5 flu-like symptoms.

I thought we would be through Covid, but I think the new variant will burn through the schools in early fall.

This is my first Covid infection even though I didn’t reliably wear masks most of the spring in the school.

Nice, now you have super immunity for your cruise and for the fall! Seriously, you should be happy. Sounds like perfect timing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Threads like this in late July are so predictable. People calling for school closures and doom are an extremist minority who are detached from reality. It’s like a cult at this point.

Unfortunately there are ALOT of parents and public health official as like this in Montgomery County. Too many. And they have very loud voices. Our kids suffered for two years because of these ‘doom and gloom’ parents/public health officials.

I would hope that we know to ignore them by now, but I am not certain and could see schools having issues with closures due to quarantines, etc.

There’s no regional company on this any more. None of the other school region message boards even have a Covid thread on their first page. Fortunately, we now have a Superintendent that couldn’t care less what the hypochondriacs and shutins think.

It’s like you’re not even listening to what the actual problem is. The problem isn’t COVID itself… it’s that with sickness comes a staffing crisis. You cannot have open school buildings without anyone to run the schools. Or you do and you herd 100s of kids into auditoriums in the name of “education” bc many morons here think an open building automatically equals education. It doesn’t. If you actually cared about the education aspect, you’d realize this. Otherwise what you’re really saying is you’re just concerned with free babysitting and using “education” as the guise.

Except ... we went through that insane Omicron peak without shutting schools down. I'm in DC and there were a few cases of grades/classrooms shutting down, reports of kids being herded together while teachers were out, but vast majority were fine. It's patently absurd to claim that we should go virtual in order to avoid kids having to be in the auditorium for a few days. Competely upside-down reasoning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Threads like this in late July are so predictable. People calling for school closures and doom are an extremist minority who are detached from reality. It’s like a cult at this point.

Unfortunately there are ALOT of parents and public health official as like this in Montgomery County. Too many. And they have very loud voices. Our kids suffered for two years because of these ‘doom and gloom’ parents/public health officials.

I would hope that we know to ignore them by now, but I am not certain and could see schools having issues with closures due to quarantines, etc.

I remember this time last year starting to feel absolute panic/dread that the "DELTA!!!" folks were going to get schools shut down again. Thankfully it turned out my fears were wrong: schools fully reopened and the impact of covid was fairly minimal. There was a regular trickle of cases at our elementary school, popping up in December, then back down again. My kid had only one quarantine due to close contact pre-vaccine, and that luckily coincided with Thanksgiving break, so he didn't miss much school. That missed day actually was very disruptive to him, so I was sure to get him vaxxed so he wouldn't have to quarantine. Masks came off in March and my kiddo went mask-free for most of the rest of the year. He was one of the early adopters but by the end of the year masked kids were a small minority. Teachers and support staff got covid but generally were just gone for a week and then back. As far as I know, no classrooms had to be closed.

Don't get me wrong - it was a HARD year, but the difficulty was due to recovering from schools being closed, not the impact of covid. Covid policies did make things harder though -- the unvaxxed kids were sent to quarantine (ALL black kids, BTW - so racist) so sometimes the teachers tried to simulcast. My kid had a super hard time readjusting socially/behaviorally, and I do think part of that was masks.

Anyway upshot to me is: schools are not going to close again, period.

This is SO true.

The issues last year arose from schools being previously closed for longer than they should have. The issues came from really bad quarantine policies (like vaccinated kids having shorter quarantines, etc).

I hope our county leaders and the BOE have learned from last year and will make better decisions going forward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: There should be zero expectations that any child gets vaccinated in order to reopen schools. That would be completely unethical.

DC is requiring it for all students over 12.

Can someone post a link to this requirement?

What about kids who have already had Covid? I hope there are exceptions since some teens have had Covid multiple times - similar to getting multiple doses of a vaccine.

If this is true, I could see MCPS following suit. MCPS sometimes follows what DC does. Montgomery County wanted to pass the vaccine mandate after DC had passed it last year to eat in restaurants, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Threads like this in late July are so predictable. People calling for school closures and doom are an extremist minority who are detached from reality. It’s like a cult at this point.

Unfortunately there are ALOT of parents and public health official as like this in Montgomery County. Too many. And they have very loud voices. Our kids suffered for two years because of these ‘doom and gloom’ parents/public health officials.

I would hope that we know to ignore them by now, but I am not certain and could see schools having issues with closures due to quarantines, etc.

There’s no regional company on this any more. None of the other school region message boards even have a Covid thread on their first page. Fortunately, we now have a Superintendent that couldn’t care less what the hypochondriacs and shutins think.

It’s like you’re not even listening to what the actual problem is. The problem isn’t COVID itself… it’s that with sickness comes a staffing crisis. You cannot have open school buildings without anyone to run the schools. Or you do and you herd 100s of kids into auditoriums in the name of “education” bc many morons here think an open building automatically equals education. It doesn’t. If you actually cared about the education aspect, you’d realize this. Otherwise what you’re really saying is you’re just concerned with free babysitting and using “education” as the guise.

Like last winter? The handful of schools that lost the color coding lottery for a couple weeks? Or a couple anecdotes about auditoriums for a couple days? Covid is even a bigger non-story now. Nothing is shutting down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Threads like this in late July are so predictable. People calling for school closures and doom are an extremist minority who are detached from reality. It’s like a cult at this point.

Unfortunately there are ALOT of parents and public health official as like this in Montgomery County. Too many. And they have very loud voices. Our kids suffered for two years because of these ‘doom and gloom’ parents/public health officials.

I would hope that we know to ignore them by now, but I am not certain and could see schools having issues with closures due to quarantines, etc.

There’s no regional company on this any more. None of the other school region message boards even have a Covid thread on their first page. Fortunately, we now have a Superintendent that couldn’t care less what the hypochondriacs and shutins think.

It’s like you’re not even listening to what the actual problem is. The problem isn’t COVID itself… it’s that with sickness comes a staffing crisis. You cannot have open school buildings without anyone to run the schools. Or you do and you herd 100s of kids into auditoriums in the name of “education” bc many morons here think an open building automatically equals education. It doesn’t. If you actually cared about the education aspect, you’d realize this. Otherwise what you’re really saying is you’re just concerned with free babysitting and using “education” as the guise.

Except ... we went through that insane Omicron peak without shutting schools down. I'm in DC and there were a few cases of grades/classrooms shutting down, reports of kids being herded together while teachers were out, but vast majority were fine. It's patently absurd to claim that we should go virtual in order to avoid kids having to be in the auditorium for a few days. Competely upside-down reasoning.

What happened in DC is not what happened in MCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Threads like this in late July are so predictable. People calling for school closures and doom are an extremist minority who are detached from reality. It’s like a cult at this point.

Unfortunately there are ALOT of parents and public health official as like this in Montgomery County. Too many. And they have very loud voices. Our kids suffered for two years because of these ‘doom and gloom’ parents/public health officials.

I would hope that we know to ignore them by now, but I am not certain and could see schools having issues with closures due to quarantines, etc.

There’s no regional company on this any more. None of the other school region message boards even have a Covid thread on their first page. Fortunately, we now have a Superintendent that couldn’t care less what the hypochondriacs and shutins think.

It’s like you’re not even listening to what the actual problem is. The problem isn’t COVID itself… it’s that with sickness comes a staffing crisis. You cannot have open school buildings without anyone to run the schools. Or you do and you herd 100s of kids into auditoriums in the name of “education” bc many morons here think an open building automatically equals education. It doesn’t. If you actually cared about the education aspect, you’d realize this. Otherwise what you’re really saying is you’re just concerned with free babysitting and using “education” as the guise.

Except ... we went through that insane Omicron peak without shutting schools down. I'm in DC and there were a few cases of grades/classrooms shutting down, reports of kids being herded together while teachers were out, but vast majority were fine. It's patently absurd to claim that we should go virtual in order to avoid kids having to be in the auditorium for a few days. Competely upside-down reasoning.

You think kids were learning those days and you think its a good idea to keep large groups of kids together during a surge??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Threads like this in late July are so predictable. People calling for school closures and doom are an extremist minority who are detached from reality. It’s like a cult at this point.

Unfortunately there are ALOT of parents and public health official as like this in Montgomery County. Too many. And they have very loud voices. Our kids suffered for two years because of these ‘doom and gloom’ parents/public health officials.

I would hope that we know to ignore them by now, but I am not certain and could see schools having issues with closures due to quarantines, etc.

There’s no regional company on this any more. None of the other school region message boards even have a Covid thread on their first page. Fortunately, we now have a Superintendent that couldn’t care less what the hypochondriacs and shutins think.

It’s like you’re not even listening to what the actual problem is. The problem isn’t COVID itself… it’s that with sickness comes a staffing crisis. You cannot have open school buildings without anyone to run the schools. Or you do and you herd 100s of kids into auditoriums in the name of “education” bc many morons here think an open building automatically equals education. It doesn’t. If you actually cared about the education aspect, you’d realize this. Otherwise what you’re really saying is you’re just concerned with free babysitting and using “education” as the guise.

When will we move away from testing for COVID? At this point (some would argue this point was a long time ago) it is a cold. Why are we testing and keeping staff out of anywhere for 5+ days? Fever free for 24 hours? Get back to school