All schools should offer an all-virtual option

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

The flaw with this plan is that testing is an opt-in and as detailed in the travel threads, lots of parents will refuse to opt in so they can travel without having to quarantine etc. There’s no way to make medical testing for kids mandatory, and I’ve harped on this before, there’s the religious exemption loophole so even when vaccines are available for all age groups, there will be parents who opt out.

You have really poor reading comprehension if you think that is anyone’s argument for opting out of surveillance testing. The two (travel quarantines and surveillance testing) have nothing to do with each other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

Mandatory vaccines, yes, absolutely, but because that is not feasible by September, bringing it up in every discussion is a bit of an unproductive derailment. What we need are solutions for September - December 2021.

Alas, the fewest kids possible quarantined, with delta's R0, is nothing less than a whole (unvaccinated) classroom. I don't think someone can twist the science to pretend otherwise, with what we know about how contagious delta is.

Rapid testing everyday YES YES YES! At this point, though, we don't even have "10% of a cohort tested each week," which is what the asymptomatic testing program had derived to in theory, but which we never even got, because families didn't opt in. So good luck convincing anyone of daily rapid testing.

How is that a derailment to bring up mandatory vax? As soon as it starts the better. I think you’re going to be shocked to see the large number of staff that get covid.

(1) the mayor won’t do it
(2) it won’t help much because we have 30 unvaccinated kids in a classroom

I’m all for it, but it doesn’t solve problem #2.

Ok well how to we get the mayor to do it other than public pressure. Here we are.

Of course it will help - a huge percentage, still over half, of covid cases in school are staff and teachers. staff especially may create a huge issue because they come into contact with so many people — eg the security guard. Mandatory vax is THE most effective covid safety measure and it needs to be discussed.

+1

Plus I hate the number 2 argument because it means if someone is around ANYONE that's unvaccinated, it means you should just not care about anyone being vaccinated.

It helps, a bit, but I agree there still are 30 unvaccinated humans in one room, plus a vaccinated one. it's a total derailment, and a systematic one at that. It is the most effective covid safety measure, if it can be applied to everyone in the room. We are talking about those who cannot. I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating teachers when we're talking about keeping unvaccinable children safe.

That's.....deranged. Of course it's important for teachers to be vaccinated to help keep unvaccinated children safe.

someone clearly does not want mandatory vaccination to be on the table at all - apparently not until there is a pediatric vaccine. at that point will become a bargaining chip.

Oh, I want it, I want it real bad. But I get the impression that someone keeps bringing it up in every discussion of virtual learning because hey really don't want virtual learning.

I don’t want virtual learning, correct. Therefore I think we should do everything in our power to avoid the need for it - which includes vaccination (to avoid quarantine) and to increase safety so parents don’t feel like they need virtual. The strongest argument for virtual IMO is that quarantines will be disruptive, so mandatory vax reduces that greatly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

Mandatory vaccines, yes, absolutely, but because that is not feasible by September, bringing it up in every discussion is a bit of an unproductive derailment. What we need are solutions for September - December 2021.

Alas, the fewest kids possible quarantined, with delta's R0, is nothing less than a whole (unvaccinated) classroom. I don't think someone can twist the science to pretend otherwise, with what we know about how contagious delta is.

Rapid testing everyday YES YES YES! At this point, though, we don't even have "10% of a cohort tested each week," which is what the asymptomatic testing program had derived to in theory, but which we never even got, because families didn't opt in. So good luck convincing anyone of daily rapid testing.

How is that a derailment to bring up mandatory vax? As soon as it starts the better. I think you’re going to be shocked to see the large number of staff that get covid.

(1) the mayor won’t do it
(2) it won’t help much because we have 30 unvaccinated kids in a classroom

I’m all for it, but it doesn’t solve problem #2.

Ok well how to we get the mayor to do it other than public pressure. Here we are.

Of course it will help - a huge percentage, still over half, of covid cases in school are staff and teachers. staff especially may create a huge issue because they come into contact with so many people — eg the security guard. Mandatory vax is THE most effective covid safety measure and it needs to be discussed.

+1

Plus I hate the number 2 argument because it means if someone is around ANYONE that's unvaccinated, it means you should just not care about anyone being vaccinated.

It helps, a bit, but I agree there still are 30 unvaccinated humans in one room, plus a vaccinated one. it's a total derailment, and a systematic one at that. It is the most effective covid safety measure, if it can be applied to everyone in the room. We are talking about those who cannot. I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating teachers when we're talking about keeping unvaccinable children safe.

That's.....deranged. Of course it's important for teachers to be vaccinated to help keep unvaccinated children safe.

Let me rephrase, I wrote quickly because I was frustrated.
I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating adults when we're talking about testing, quarantine, and virtual learning for students. This thread is about a virtual option.

This thread has gone everyone and discussed everything. It's no longer about the initial topic, and hasn't been for a while. You are trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination and that's troubling.

You're being paranoid again.

You're the one threatening to report posts about teacher vaccination. You've admitted to trying to suppress info. It's weird to call ME paranoid when I'm just pointing out something that you actually said you are doing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

Mandatory vaccines, yes, absolutely, but because that is not feasible by September, bringing it up in every discussion is a bit of an unproductive derailment. What we need are solutions for September - December 2021.

Alas, the fewest kids possible quarantined, with delta's R0, is nothing less than a whole (unvaccinated) classroom. I don't think someone can twist the science to pretend otherwise, with what we know about how contagious delta is.

Rapid testing everyday YES YES YES! At this point, though, we don't even have "10% of a cohort tested each week," which is what the asymptomatic testing program had derived to in theory, but which we never even got, because families didn't opt in. So good luck convincing anyone of daily rapid testing.

How is that a derailment to bring up mandatory vax? As soon as it starts the better. I think you’re going to be shocked to see the large number of staff that get covid.

(1) the mayor won’t do it
(2) it won’t help much because we have 30 unvaccinated kids in a classroom

I’m all for it, but it doesn’t solve problem #2.

Ok well how to we get the mayor to do it other than public pressure. Here we are.

Of course it will help - a huge percentage, still over half, of covid cases in school are staff and teachers. staff especially may create a huge issue because they come into contact with so many people — eg the security guard. Mandatory vax is THE most effective covid safety measure and it needs to be discussed.

+1

Plus I hate the number 2 argument because it means if someone is around ANYONE that's unvaccinated, it means you should just not care about anyone being vaccinated.

It helps, a bit, but I agree there still are 30 unvaccinated humans in one room, plus a vaccinated one. it's a total derailment, and a systematic one at that. It is the most effective covid safety measure, if it can be applied to everyone in the room. We are talking about those who cannot. I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating teachers when we're talking about keeping unvaccinable children safe.

That's.....deranged. Of course it's important for teachers to be vaccinated to help keep unvaccinated children safe.

Let me rephrase, I wrote quickly because I was frustrated.
I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating adults when we're talking about testing, quarantine, and virtual learning for students. This thread is about a virtual option.

This thread has gone everyone and discussed everything. It's no longer about the initial topic, and hasn't been for a while. You are trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination and that's troubling.

You're being paranoid again.

PP literally said they want to delete posts about mandatory vaccination- despite those posts being totally on topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

The flaw with this plan is that testing is an opt-in and as detailed in the travel threads, lots of parents will refuse to opt in so they can travel without having to quarantine etc. There’s no way to make medical testing for kids mandatory, and I’ve harped on this before, there’s the religious exemption loophole so even when vaccines are available for all age groups, there will be parents who opt out.

That’s parents not wanting to opt in to surveillance testing, bc they want their kid in school (and surveillance testing comes with a ton of issues, the basic one being high degree of false positives). This is different, as the daily testing after exposure is targeted and woul allow kids to be in person. I guess opting out of that would mean you have to stay home.

You got that backwards. There are false negatives. Not false positives.

No, in a symptomatic surveillance testing even with a high degree of test accuracy you get a high percentage of false positives when rates are low.

Where are rates low?

In schools, as the article offered supports (did you read it?). Even in delta-countries, rates in schools were low. Hell, even in DC the rates are lower *at a community level* than what's discussed in the article. That level in the article is 15/10,000 per week, which translates to 150/100,000 per week (to put it in terms that are comparable to what we have for DC stats). We are at 70/100,000 (PER WEEK; I took the most recent estimate of 10/day and multiplied by 7). So our community level is half what's discussed in the article, and likely our school level would be lower, as rates in schools have often found to be lower than community rates (they are at or lower than community rates).

Thanks for posting these facts to cut through the noise of delta hysteria.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

Mandatory vaccines, yes, absolutely, but because that is not feasible by September, bringing it up in every discussion is a bit of an unproductive derailment. What we need are solutions for September - December 2021.

Alas, the fewest kids possible quarantined, with delta's R0, is nothing less than a whole (unvaccinated) classroom. I don't think someone can twist the science to pretend otherwise, with what we know about how contagious delta is.

Rapid testing everyday YES YES YES! At this point, though, we don't even have "10% of a cohort tested each week," which is what the asymptomatic testing program had derived to in theory, but which we never even got, because families didn't opt in. So good luck convincing anyone of daily rapid testing.

How is that a derailment to bring up mandatory vax? As soon as it starts the better. I think you’re going to be shocked to see the large number of staff that get covid.

(1) the mayor won’t do it
(2) it won’t help much because we have 30 unvaccinated kids in a classroom

I’m all for it, but it doesn’t solve problem #2.

Ok well how to we get the mayor to do it other than public pressure. Here we are.

Of course it will help - a huge percentage, still over half, of covid cases in school are staff and teachers. staff especially may create a huge issue because they come into contact with so many people — eg the security guard. Mandatory vax is THE most effective covid safety measure and it needs to be discussed.

+1

Plus I hate the number 2 argument because it means if someone is around ANYONE that's unvaccinated, it means you should just not care about anyone being vaccinated.

It helps, a bit, but I agree there still are 30 unvaccinated humans in one room, plus a vaccinated one. it's a total derailment, and a systematic one at that. It is the most effective covid safety measure, if it can be applied to everyone in the room. We are talking about those who cannot. I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating teachers when we're talking about keeping unvaccinable children safe.

That's.....deranged. Of course it's important for teachers to be vaccinated to help keep unvaccinated children safe.

Let me rephrase, I wrote quickly because I was frustrated.
I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating adults when we're talking about testing, quarantine, and virtual learning for students. This thread is about a virtual option.

This thread has gone everyone and discussed everything. It's no longer about the initial topic, and hasn't been for a while. You are trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination and that's troubling.

You're being paranoid again.

You're the one threatening to report posts about teacher vaccination. You've admitted to trying to suppress info. It's weird to call ME paranoid when I'm just pointing out something that you actually said you are doing.

You admit that you're bringing up teacher vaccination in virtual learning threads because you don't want virtual learning. I am not trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination by asking that it not derail discussion of virtual learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

Mandatory vaccines, yes, absolutely, but because that is not feasible by September, bringing it up in every discussion is a bit of an unproductive derailment. What we need are solutions for September - December 2021.

Alas, the fewest kids possible quarantined, with delta's R0, is nothing less than a whole (unvaccinated) classroom. I don't think someone can twist the science to pretend otherwise, with what we know about how contagious delta is.

Rapid testing everyday YES YES YES! At this point, though, we don't even have "10% of a cohort tested each week," which is what the asymptomatic testing program had derived to in theory, but which we never even got, because families didn't opt in. So good luck convincing anyone of daily rapid testing.

How is that a derailment to bring up mandatory vax? As soon as it starts the better. I think you’re going to be shocked to see the large number of staff that get covid.

(1) the mayor won’t do it
(2) it won’t help much because we have 30 unvaccinated kids in a classroom

I’m all for it, but it doesn’t solve problem #2.

Ok well how to we get the mayor to do it other than public pressure. Here we are.

Of course it will help - a huge percentage, still over half, of covid cases in school are staff and teachers. staff especially may create a huge issue because they come into contact with so many people — eg the security guard. Mandatory vax is THE most effective covid safety measure and it needs to be discussed.

+1

Plus I hate the number 2 argument because it means if someone is around ANYONE that's unvaccinated, it means you should just not care about anyone being vaccinated.

It helps, a bit, but I agree there still are 30 unvaccinated humans in one room, plus a vaccinated one. it's a total derailment, and a systematic one at that. It is the most effective covid safety measure, if it can be applied to everyone in the room. We are talking about those who cannot. I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating teachers when we're talking about keeping unvaccinable children safe.

That's.....deranged. Of course it's important for teachers to be vaccinated to help keep unvaccinated children safe.

Let me rephrase, I wrote quickly because I was frustrated.
I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating adults when we're talking about testing, quarantine, and virtual learning for students. This thread is about a virtual option.

This thread has gone everyone and discussed everything. It's no longer about the initial topic, and hasn't been for a while. You are trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination and that's troubling.

You're being paranoid again.

PP literally said they want to delete posts about mandatory vaccination- despite those posts being totally on topic.

They are not 'totally on topic.' One in 31 people in the room is vaccinable. You live in fantasy-land if you think that the only contagious person in a room is the vaccinable one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

Mandatory vaccines, yes, absolutely, but because that is not feasible by September, bringing it up in every discussion is a bit of an unproductive derailment. What we need are solutions for September - December 2021.

Alas, the fewest kids possible quarantined, with delta's R0, is nothing less than a whole (unvaccinated) classroom. I don't think someone can twist the science to pretend otherwise, with what we know about how contagious delta is.

Rapid testing everyday YES YES YES! At this point, though, we don't even have "10% of a cohort tested each week," which is what the asymptomatic testing program had derived to in theory, but which we never even got, because families didn't opt in. So good luck convincing anyone of daily rapid testing.

How is that a derailment to bring up mandatory vax? As soon as it starts the better. I think you’re going to be shocked to see the large number of staff that get covid.

(1) the mayor won’t do it
(2) it won’t help much because we have 30 unvaccinated kids in a classroom

I’m all for it, but it doesn’t solve problem #2.

Ok well how to we get the mayor to do it other than public pressure. Here we are.

Of course it will help - a huge percentage, still over half, of covid cases in school are staff and teachers. staff especially may create a huge issue because they come into contact with so many people — eg the security guard. Mandatory vax is THE most effective covid safety measure and it needs to be discussed.

+1

Plus I hate the number 2 argument because it means if someone is around ANYONE that's unvaccinated, it means you should just not care about anyone being vaccinated.

It helps, a bit, but I agree there still are 30 unvaccinated humans in one room, plus a vaccinated one. it's a total derailment, and a systematic one at that. It is the most effective covid safety measure, if it can be applied to everyone in the room. We are talking about those who cannot. I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating teachers when we're talking about keeping unvaccinable children safe.

That's.....deranged. Of course it's important for teachers to be vaccinated to help keep unvaccinated children safe.

Let me rephrase, I wrote quickly because I was frustrated.
I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating adults when we're talking about testing, quarantine, and virtual learning for students. This thread is about a virtual option.

This thread has gone everyone and discussed everything. It's no longer about the initial topic, and hasn't been for a while. You are trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination and that's troubling.

You're being paranoid again.

You're the one threatening to report posts about teacher vaccination. You've admitted to trying to suppress info. It's weird to call ME paranoid when I'm just pointing out something that you actually said you are doing.

You admit that you're bringing up teacher vaccination in virtual learning threads because you don't want virtual learning. I am not trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination by asking that it not derail discussion of virtual learning.

Please read the entirety of this thread and tell me where the "rail" is and when it started to be de-ed. It was a long, long time ago. No you are creating something ("stay on thread!") so you can say someone (who isn't actually me) is violating it, so you can suppress relevant discussion).

[Anonymous]

I'm going to start reporting these comments of "it doesn't matter if the teacher gets vaccinated" as anti-vax.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

Mandatory vaccines, yes, absolutely, but because that is not feasible by September, bringing it up in every discussion is a bit of an unproductive derailment. What we need are solutions for September - December 2021.

Alas, the fewest kids possible quarantined, with delta's R0, is nothing less than a whole (unvaccinated) classroom. I don't think someone can twist the science to pretend otherwise, with what we know about how contagious delta is.

Rapid testing everyday YES YES YES! At this point, though, we don't even have "10% of a cohort tested each week," which is what the asymptomatic testing program had derived to in theory, but which we never even got, because families didn't opt in. So good luck convincing anyone of daily rapid testing.

How is that a derailment to bring up mandatory vax? As soon as it starts the better. I think you’re going to be shocked to see the large number of staff that get covid.

(1) the mayor won’t do it
(2) it won’t help much because we have 30 unvaccinated kids in a classroom

I’m all for it, but it doesn’t solve problem #2.

Ok well how to we get the mayor to do it other than public pressure. Here we are.

Of course it will help - a huge percentage, still over half, of covid cases in school are staff and teachers. staff especially may create a huge issue because they come into contact with so many people — eg the security guard. Mandatory vax is THE most effective covid safety measure and it needs to be discussed.

+1

Plus I hate the number 2 argument because it means if someone is around ANYONE that's unvaccinated, it means you should just not care about anyone being vaccinated.

It helps, a bit, but I agree there still are 30 unvaccinated humans in one room, plus a vaccinated one. it's a total derailment, and a systematic one at that. It is the most effective covid safety measure, if it can be applied to everyone in the room. We are talking about those who cannot. I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating teachers when we're talking about keeping unvaccinable children safe.

That's.....deranged. Of course it's important for teachers to be vaccinated to help keep unvaccinated children safe.

Let me rephrase, I wrote quickly because I was frustrated.
I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating adults when we're talking about testing, quarantine, and virtual learning for students. This thread is about a virtual option.

This thread has gone everyone and discussed everything. It's no longer about the initial topic, and hasn't been for a while. You are trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination and that's troubling.

You're being paranoid again.

You're the one threatening to report posts about teacher vaccination. You've admitted to trying to suppress info. It's weird to call ME paranoid when I'm just pointing out something that you actually said you are doing.

You admit that you're bringing up teacher vaccination in virtual learning threads because you don't want virtual learning. I am not trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination by asking that it not derail discussion of virtual learning.

NP. Are you really this dense? Lack of teacher vaccination can directly lead to the need for virtual learning, because a whole classroom may need to be quarantined. It’s absolutely pertinent to this discussion about whether there is a need for a virtual backup.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

The flaw with this plan is that testing is an opt-in and as detailed in the travel threads, lots of parents will refuse to opt in so they can travel without having to quarantine etc. There’s no way to make medical testing for kids mandatory, and I’ve harped on this before, there’s the religious exemption loophole so even when vaccines are available for all age groups, there will be parents who opt out.

That’s parents not wanting to opt in to surveillance testing, bc they want their kid in school (and surveillance testing comes with a ton of issues, the basic one being high degree of false positives). This is different, as the daily testing after exposure is targeted and woul allow kids to be in person. I guess opting out of that would mean you have to stay home.

You got that backwards. There are false negatives. Not false positives.

No, in a symptomatic surveillance testing even with a high degree of test accuracy you get a high percentage of false positives when rates are low.

Where are rates low?

In schools, as the article offered supports (did you read it?). Even in delta-countries, rates in schools were low. Hell, even in DC the rates are lower *at a community level* than what's discussed in the article. That level in the article is 15/10,000 per week, which translates to 150/100,000 per week (to put it in terms that are comparable to what we have for DC stats). We are at 70/100,000 (PER WEEK; I took the most recent estimate of 10/day and multiplied by 7). So our community level is half what's discussed in the article, and likely our school level would be lower, as rates in schools have often found to be lower than community rates (they are at or lower than community rates).

Thanks for posting these facts to cut through the noise of delta hysteria.

"cut through delta hysteria" is a hilarious statement when every single public official is sounding the alarm, every single national daily data dump is trending steeply up, and new covid measures are announced everywhere.
Keep telling parents on DCUM they're being hysterical. Or maybe they're paying attention to the actual environment rather than just militantly advocate for pretending this is no big deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

Mandatory vaccines, yes, absolutely, but because that is not feasible by September, bringing it up in every discussion is a bit of an unproductive derailment. What we need are solutions for September - December 2021.

Alas, the fewest kids possible quarantined, with delta's R0, is nothing less than a whole (unvaccinated) classroom. I don't think someone can twist the science to pretend otherwise, with what we know about how contagious delta is.

Rapid testing everyday YES YES YES! At this point, though, we don't even have "10% of a cohort tested each week," which is what the asymptomatic testing program had derived to in theory, but which we never even got, because families didn't opt in. So good luck convincing anyone of daily rapid testing.

How is that a derailment to bring up mandatory vax? As soon as it starts the better. I think you’re going to be shocked to see the large number of staff that get covid.

(1) the mayor won’t do it
(2) it won’t help much because we have 30 unvaccinated kids in a classroom

I’m all for it, but it doesn’t solve problem #2.

Ok well how to we get the mayor to do it other than public pressure. Here we are.

Of course it will help - a huge percentage, still over half, of covid cases in school are staff and teachers. staff especially may create a huge issue because they come into contact with so many people — eg the security guard. Mandatory vax is THE most effective covid safety measure and it needs to be discussed.

+1

Plus I hate the number 2 argument because it means if someone is around ANYONE that's unvaccinated, it means you should just not care about anyone being vaccinated.

It helps, a bit, but I agree there still are 30 unvaccinated humans in one room, plus a vaccinated one. it's a total derailment, and a systematic one at that. It is the most effective covid safety measure, if it can be applied to everyone in the room. We are talking about those who cannot. I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating teachers when we're talking about keeping unvaccinable children safe.

That's.....deranged. Of course it's important for teachers to be vaccinated to help keep unvaccinated children safe.

Let me rephrase, I wrote quickly because I was frustrated.
I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating adults when we're talking about testing, quarantine, and virtual learning for students. This thread is about a virtual option.

This thread has gone everyone and discussed everything. It's no longer about the initial topic, and hasn't been for a while. You are trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination and that's troubling.

You're being paranoid again.

PP literally said they want to delete posts about mandatory vaccination- despite those posts being totally on topic.

They are not 'totally on topic.' One in 31 people in the room is vaccinable. You live in fantasy-land if you think that the only contagious person in a room is the vaccinable one.

DP. That’s not what the PP thinks, and you are missing the point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

Mandatory vaccines, yes, absolutely, but because that is not feasible by September, bringing it up in every discussion is a bit of an unproductive derailment. What we need are solutions for September - December 2021.

Alas, the fewest kids possible quarantined, with delta's R0, is nothing less than a whole (unvaccinated) classroom. I don't think someone can twist the science to pretend otherwise, with what we know about how contagious delta is.

Rapid testing everyday YES YES YES! At this point, though, we don't even have "10% of a cohort tested each week," which is what the asymptomatic testing program had derived to in theory, but which we never even got, because families didn't opt in. So good luck convincing anyone of daily rapid testing.

How is that a derailment to bring up mandatory vax? As soon as it starts the better. I think you’re going to be shocked to see the large number of staff that get covid.

(1) the mayor won’t do it
(2) it won’t help much because we have 30 unvaccinated kids in a classroom

I’m all for it, but it doesn’t solve problem #2.

Ok well how to we get the mayor to do it other than public pressure. Here we are.

Of course it will help - a huge percentage, still over half, of covid cases in school are staff and teachers. staff especially may create a huge issue because they come into contact with so many people — eg the security guard. Mandatory vax is THE most effective covid safety measure and it needs to be discussed.

+1

Plus I hate the number 2 argument because it means if someone is around ANYONE that's unvaccinated, it means you should just not care about anyone being vaccinated.

It helps, a bit, but I agree there still are 30 unvaccinated humans in one room, plus a vaccinated one. it's a total derailment, and a systematic one at that. It is the most effective covid safety measure, if it can be applied to everyone in the room. We are talking about those who cannot. I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating teachers when we're talking about keeping unvaccinable children safe.

That's.....deranged. Of course it's important for teachers to be vaccinated to help keep unvaccinated children safe.

Let me rephrase, I wrote quickly because I was frustrated.
I will start reporting the posts who bring up vaccinating adults when we're talking about testing, quarantine, and virtual learning for students. This thread is about a virtual option.

This thread has gone everyone and discussed everything. It's no longer about the initial topic, and hasn't been for a while. You are trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination and that's troubling.

You're being paranoid again.

You're the one threatening to report posts about teacher vaccination. You've admitted to trying to suppress info. It's weird to call ME paranoid when I'm just pointing out something that you actually said you are doing.

You admit that you're bringing up teacher vaccination in virtual learning threads because you don't want virtual learning. I am not trying to suppress discussion of teacher vaccination by asking that it not derail discussion of virtual learning.

This is a post about virtual learning. One main argument for virtual learning is that we need it during quarantine so may as well set it up now; and also that some parents may just prefer virtual from the get-go to avoid the disruption. Other parents want virtual to reduce covid risk

If you read my posts, I argued for two measures to address these underlying reasons for virtual:

1) a policy of rapid daily testing instead of quarantine (similar to UK)
2) mandatory teacher/staff vaccination because adults account for 50%+ of cases. All adults being vaccinated reduces cases (and therefore quarantine disruptions requiring virtual) by a very significant amount. Additionally, vaccinated teachers/staff don’t have to quarantine, which also reduces disruption and therefore need for virtual

These arguments are plainly connected to the discussion of the virtual option. You may disagree with them, but it’s simply bad faith to claim they are trolling/derailing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right. We need to be able to do both at once. If schools aren’t able to pivot to virtual, either for entire classrooms or individual students who need to quarantine (because they are positive, they live with someone who is positive, etc), our choice is allowing these kids to continue to being covid to their classmates or for them to experience guaranteed learning loss. Especially with all we invested in DL last year, we shouldn’t be facing this choice.

It very much seems that there would be plenty of “demand” for virtual classrooms next year, both from parents uncomfortable sending their unvaxed kids during delta, and kids who should be isolating.

The answer is NOT to demand virtual, but to demand mandatory vaccination of staff/teachers, and to use rational quarantine policies that exclude the fewest kids possible- for example by rapid testing every day instead of sending them home.

The flaw with this plan is that testing is an opt-in and as detailed in the travel threads, lots of parents will refuse to opt in so they can travel without having to quarantine etc. There’s no way to make medical testing for kids mandatory, and I’ve harped on this before, there’s the religious exemption loophole so even when vaccines are available for all age groups, there will be parents who opt out.

That’s parents not wanting to opt in to surveillance testing, bc they want their kid in school (and surveillance testing comes with a ton of issues, the basic one being high degree of false positives). This is different, as the daily testing after exposure is targeted and woul allow kids to be in person. I guess opting out of that would mean you have to stay home.

You got that backwards. There are false negatives. Not false positives.

No, in a symptomatic surveillance testing even with a high degree of test accuracy you get a high percentage of false positives when rates are low.

Where are rates low?

In schools, as the article offered supports (did you read it?). Even in delta-countries, rates in schools were low. Hell, even in DC the rates are lower *at a community level* than what's discussed in the article. That level in the article is 15/10,000 per week, which translates to 150/100,000 per week (to put it in terms that are comparable to what we have for DC stats). We are at 70/100,000 (PER WEEK; I took the most recent estimate of 10/day and multiplied by 7). So our community level is half what's discussed in the article, and likely our school level would be lower, as rates in schools have often found to be lower than community rates (they are at or lower than community rates).

Thanks for posting these facts to cut through the noise of delta hysteria.

"cut through delta hysteria" is a hilarious statement when every single public official is sounding the alarm, every single national daily data dump is trending steeply up, and new covid measures are announced everywhere.
Keep telling parents on DCUM they're being hysterical. Or maybe they're paying attention to the actual environment rather than just militantly advocate for pretending this is no big deal.

They are rightfully sounding the alarm because they want everyone to get vaccinated, not because they think we need to keep kids out of school.

[Anonymous]

Actual articles about delta in kids, that might help cut through the delta hysteria:

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/30/990789.page#20539023