All schools should offer an all-virtual option

[Anonymous]

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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.

Uuuuh, yes, talking about not wanting virtual learning is 100% relevant in a thread specifically about whether there should be virtual learning. Do you only go into threads to agree with the title?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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

Oh, great, yes, let's link to your personal blog of editorials and reassuring out-of-date BS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

Oh, great, yes, let's link to your personal blog of editorials and reassuring out-of-date BS.

Oh, and I love the irony of that thread having become the biggest echo chamber of "yeah, I don't think I'll vaccinate my kids when the covid vaccine is available for them."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

Oh, great, yes, let's link to your personal blog of editorials and reassuring out-of-date BS.

Oh, and I love the irony of that thread having become the biggest echo chamber of "yeah, I don't think I'll vaccinate my kids when the covid vaccine is available for them."

Maybe go talk in that thread about that thread, if you are very concerned about derailing threads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

Oh, great, yes, let's link to your personal blog of editorials and reassuring out-of-date BS.

Perhaps try to talk in that thread of what you find problematic about the articles in that thread.

[Anonymous]

jinx!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

Oh, great, yes, let's link to your personal blog of editorials and reassuring out-of-date BS.

Out of date? Clearly you are just rejecting things out of hand. This was published less than one week ago. I am sure you didn't read it.

You have a habit of rejecting reality and substituting your own.

[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.

That’s encouraging, but it seems most experts think that the DMV is pretty early in our delta cycle. I would be surprised if that didn’t significantly increase. Just my opinion though.

[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.

That’s encouraging, but it seems most experts think that the DMV is pretty early in our delta cycle. I would be surprised if that didn’t significantly increase. Just my opinion though.

Notably, the point about "low" is relative to the efficacy of surveillance testing in schools. "Low" in that article is certainly not what some people would refer to as "low". It's just "low" in the sense of the efficiency of finding true positives through surveillance testing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

Oh, great, yes, let's link to your personal blog of editorials and reassuring out-of-date BS.

Oh, and I love the irony of that thread having become the biggest echo chamber of "yeah, I don't think I'll vaccinate my kids when the covid vaccine is available for them."

I will vaccinate my kids the millisecond the vaccine is approved.

-OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no questions cases will continue to rise for a few weeks and likely some hospitalizations too.

But, that doesn't mean individual schools should be trying to run virtual programs.

So kids just get suspended for sitting next to the wrong person and have to pay the price of falling behind? I’m not sure if that’s right given the technology resources we have developed. It’s not an ideal situation but surely we can do better than that.

If this is your definition of suspended, you’re playing on a different field than the rest of us.

What’s the difference? Please explain.

+1

Any time a school will not allow a kid to come to school it is a suspension. In this case if a whole class has to quarantine because one kid tested positive even though other kids tested negative it’s the school not allowing them to attend. That is technically a suspension. They are not allowed to return to school for a set time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

Oh, great, yes, let's link to your personal blog of editorials and reassuring out-of-date BS.

Out of date? Clearly you are just rejecting things out of hand. This was published less than one week ago. I am sure you didn't read it.

You have a habit of rejecting reality and substituting your own.

There is zero chance that officials are going to let Delta run wild through schools with under 12 kids. There will be quarantines, so maybe we should prepare a virtual option to keep those children engaged while out? I have no idea why that is controversial. Even Mississippi is already doing it.

https://www.mississippifreepress.org/14272/as-outbreaks-force-schools-to-go-all-virtual-districts-reinstate-mask-mandates/

[Anonymous]

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.

I am the PP. I care a lot and I have signed all the teacher/staff vaccine petitions. It just isn’t going to help much.

[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.

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.

please take a look at the *actual research and data* - which shows that adults have a disproportionate role in bringing covid into schools. this not only increases the risk of transmission to kids (and other staff) but also increases the disruption caused by quarantines. the fact that you’re trying to suppress conversations about mandatory vaccination makes me wonder about your agenda. if you have some data showing that vaccination of adults in school isn’t important - let’s see it!

Actual research and data in classrooms? That sounds nice. You show me the actual research and data on delta transmission in classrooms with full systematic asymptomatic testing of students.
Adults are more likely to be symptomatic, and therefore more likely to be tested when there is no systematic asymptomatic testing program in place.

Exactly. What we know from European studies where they actually tested children in schools is that children are just as likely to transmit COVID.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

Oh, great, yes, let's link to your personal blog of editorials and reassuring out-of-date BS.

Out of date? Clearly you are just rejecting things out of hand. This was published less than one week ago. I am sure you didn't read it.

You have a habit of rejecting reality and substituting your own.

There is zero chance that officials are going to let Delta run wild through schools with under 12 kids. There will be quarantines, so maybe we should prepare a virtual option to keep those children engaged while out? I have no idea why that is controversial. Even Mississippi is already doing it.

https://www.mississippifreepress.org/14272/as-outbreaks-force-schools-to-go-all-virtual-districts-reinstate-mask-mandates/

Mississippi has much lower vaccination rates and thus more adults at risk.