Caitlyn Peetz on Twitter: 8am MCPS press conference for a “COVID-19 update”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

I would also like all that, but feel like 87% of what you're describing is due to the existence of a deadly pandemic and/or the poor response of the federal government, not MCPS decisions.

DP. Not really. The pandemic has gone pretty well considering the new Delta and Omicron variants. We've found ourselves in a situation where, at no fault of our own, the only path forward for COVID is to accept that we're all going to get it and take appropriate measures to reduce the likelihood of severe illness (mostly through vaccination/boosters). Nothing the local, state or federal government could have done would have changed that reality-- remember, Delta and Omicron didn't originate in the US.

Besides their obvious primary goal of educating students, MCPS should be trying to minimize the harmful effects of the pandemic on kids. The best way they could do that would be to keep schools open.

The real issue is people like you minimizing Covid. A child just died in a neighboring county. That child never should have died. There is no safe way to keep schools fully in person.

Children die of the flu every year. We don't shut down for the flu. Children die in car accidents. We don't shut down roads until new magical safety devices are invented that prevent all vehicular deaths.

Schools are plenty safe for students. And they're safe for teachers that actually go out and get their vaccinations and boosters.

Further, the logical mistake you're making is that your looking at the overall risk of COVID when what you should be doing is looking at how opening/closing schools changes that risk. It doesn't matter what we do with schools- COVID will remain in widespread circulation in the world, and we'll all be exposed. Probably in the very near future. For that reason, the *marginal* increase in COVID risk by keeping schools open is extremely low. But we know there is real harm to education, and development, as well as students' mental health.

We are not in a pandemic of the flu. We are not in a pandemic of car accidents.

Super, super sorry you’re so inconvenienced.

It’s so strange that you think your example a child dying of Covid is somehow more tragic and significant than children dying of the flu. I really don’t get that. Unless you’re not really motivated by the Covid risk to kids.

By any chance are you the medically frail poster that is too scared to get her booster shot?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard a rumor that they would announce test to return, but logistically see no way for them to actually do this, unless they lucky to virtual until they get enough tests.

There's no way they could do in person this week if that's true. We'd be lucky if they could do it next week.

And in the meantime the school nurses would strike. There's no reasonable way to implement test-to-return without completely screwing over the nurses. You'd have thousands of students showing up on the first day of class without a test. Either you'd test them on site, or you'd have to screen them and hold them for an hour or two until staff could contact parents and get them to pick them up. To make matters worse, the kids that fail the screening would need to be isolated in some way. It would be a nightmare, and the nurses would bear the brunt of it regardless of whatever path MCPS would try to take.

You mean the health techs, right? There are not nurses in every school every day, there are health techs. And it would be ridiculous for kids to come to school, get tested, and then possibly have to isolate and go back home. The testing program would be carried out in a different manner.

The DCPS plan seems like the only thing that could plausibly work. They distribute at-home tests and try to get as many parents as possible to submit some form of evidence of using those tests.

The issue, as was quickly asked in DCPS, is what are you doing to do with the students that inevitably show up without a test being submitted. DCPS initially implied they'd send them home, then backtracked and said they'd test them at school. Neither of those seem practical. I suspect they'll end up letting them in and come around and test as many as they can (which will likely be a very small percentage of the students that return without testing).

No at home tests. Parents will cheat.

Ok. I think test-to-return is silly, too. It’s not like we’re going to eradicate Covid with one round of testing a small portion of the local community.

And obviously PCR tests are even worse than antigen tests. Besides the fact that they’re more likely to pick up a previous infection than a current infection, we don’t have nearly the PCR testing capacity here to test 180,000 students and staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

What did you think having kids was going to be? An endless round of birthday parties? Raising kids takes some effort.

If you want to do those things you need to be part of the solution.

And given that nearly 2 years of restrictions, and 1 year of availability of vaccines that remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, hasn't allowed us to get back to normal, the only plausible option left is letting Omicron burn through the community as fast as possible.

If we let covid run rampant (not that we seem to have a choice at this point) it will be over in 3 weeks. I say let it burn.

That’s absolutely my position as well. It wasn’t until the low case rates over the summer were still not enough to get people to chill out. I’ve been very pleased by how contagious omicron is. I think with a lot of work you could from Delta for a long time. But I don’t think there’s any hiding from Omicron. I was skeptical when news about the new variant came out, but the spike we’re seeing is really incredible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

What did you think having kids was going to be? An endless round of birthday parties? Raising kids takes some effort.

If you want to do those things you need to be part of the solution.

And given that nearly 2 years of restrictions, and 1 year of availability of vaccines that remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, hasn't allowed us to get back to normal, the only plausible option left is letting Omicron burn through the community as fast as possible.

If we let covid run rampant (not that we seem to have a choice at this point) it will be over in 3 weeks. I say let it burn.

That’s absolutely my position as well. It wasn’t until the low case rates over the summer were still not enough to get people to chill out. I’ve been very pleased by how contagious omicron is. I think with a lot of work you could from Delta for a long time. But I don’t think there’s any hiding from Omicron. I was skeptical when news about the new variant came out, but the spike we’re seeing is really incredible.

what? letting it burn is exactly how you get new variants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

What did you think having kids was going to be? An endless round of birthday parties? Raising kids takes some effort.

If you want to do those things you need to be part of the solution.

And given that nearly 2 years of restrictions, and 1 year of availability of vaccines that remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, hasn't allowed us to get back to normal, the only plausible option left is letting Omicron burn through the community as fast as possible.

If we let covid run rampant (not that we seem to have a choice at this point) it will be over in 3 weeks. I say let it burn.

Which hospital do you work at where they have endorsed your brilliant idea to flood their halls with patients, cancel all elective and emergency procedures, overwhelm staff so that even people with treatable conditions die and doctors and nurses quit?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

What did you think having kids was going to be? An endless round of birthday parties? Raising kids takes some effort.

If you want to do those things you need to be part of the solution.

And given that nearly 2 years of restrictions, and 1 year of availability of vaccines that remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, hasn't allowed us to get back to normal, the only plausible option left is letting Omicron burn through the community as fast as possible.

If we let covid run rampant (not that we seem to have a choice at this point) it will be over in 3 weeks. I say let it burn.

That’s absolutely my position as well. It wasn’t until the low case rates over the summer were still not enough to get people to chill out. I’ve been very pleased by how contagious omicron is. I think with a lot of work you could from Delta for a long time. But I don’t think there’s any hiding from Omicron. I was skeptical when news about the new variant came out, but the spike we’re seeing is really incredible.

what? letting it burn is exactly how you get new variants.

There are 7.8 billion people in the world, about half of whom are unvaccinated. Many who are vaccinated were vaccinated with poor vaccines. Even for people that are vaccinated, efficacy against infection isn’t great.

Simply put, letting it burn through Maryland, or even the whole US, doesn’t change the variant situation meaningfully. And part of that if because there’s no stopping everyone from getting it— all we can do is slow it down a little bit. But luckily our vaccines remain effective at preventing serious illness with all of the variants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

What did you think having kids was going to be? An endless round of birthday parties? Raising kids takes some effort.

If you want to do those things you need to be part of the solution.

And given that nearly 2 years of restrictions, and 1 year of availability of vaccines that remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, hasn't allowed us to get back to normal, the only plausible option left is letting Omicron burn through the community as fast as possible.

If we let covid run rampant (not that we seem to have a choice at this point) it will be over in 3 weeks. I say let it burn.

Which hospital do you work at where they have endorsed your brilliant idea to flood their halls with patients, cancel all elective and emergency procedures, overwhelm staff so that even people with treatable conditions die and doctors and nurses quit?

You’re going to drive more healthcare workers out by lengthening the pandemic and the associated restrictions than you would by making a few weeks particularly bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

What did you think having kids was going to be? An endless round of birthday parties? Raising kids takes some effort.

If you want to do those things you need to be part of the solution.

And given that nearly 2 years of restrictions, and 1 year of availability of vaccines that remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, hasn't allowed us to get back to normal, the only plausible option left is letting Omicron burn through the community as fast as possible.

If we let covid run rampant (not that we seem to have a choice at this point) it will be over in 3 weeks. I say let it burn.

Which hospital do you work at where they have endorsed your brilliant idea to flood their halls with patients, cancel all elective and emergency procedures, overwhelm staff so that even people with treatable conditions die and doctors and nurses quit?

You’re going to drive more healthcare workers out by lengthening the pandemic and the associated restrictions than you would by making a few weeks particularly bad.

How are people this ill informed. I truly don't get it. I wish I could bet you large amounts of money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

What did you think having kids was going to be? An endless round of birthday parties? Raising kids takes some effort.

If you want to do those things you need to be part of the solution.

And given that nearly 2 years of restrictions, and 1 year of availability of vaccines that remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, hasn't allowed us to get back to normal, the only plausible option left is letting Omicron burn through the community as fast as possible.

If we let covid run rampant (not that we seem to have a choice at this point) it will be over in 3 weeks. I say let it burn.

That’s absolutely my position as well. It wasn’t until the low case rates over the summer were still not enough to get people to chill out. I’ve been very pleased by how contagious omicron is. I think with a lot of work you could from Delta for a long time. But I don’t think there’s any hiding from Omicron. I was skeptical when news about the new variant came out, but the spike we’re seeing is really incredible.

what? letting it burn is exactly how you get new variants.

There are 7.8 billion people in the world, about half of whom are unvaccinated. Many who are vaccinated were vaccinated with poor vaccines. Even for people that are vaccinated, efficacy against infection isn’t great.

Simply put, letting it burn through Maryland, or even the whole US, doesn’t change the variant situation meaningfully. And part of that if because there’s no stopping everyone from getting it— all we can do is slow it down a little bit. But luckily our vaccines remain effective at preventing serious illness with all of the variants.

The more chances coronavirus has to make copies of itself in us - the host - the more opportunities there are for mutations to occur.
That's why keeping infections down is important. Vaccines help by cutting transmission as well as protecting against serious Covid illness.
Experts say it is possible that the new highly altered variant B.1.1.529 may have originated in a patient whose immune system was unable to get rid of a Covid infection quickly, giving the virus more time to morph.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

What did you think having kids was going to be? An endless round of birthday parties? Raising kids takes some effort.

If you want to do those things you need to be part of the solution.

And given that nearly 2 years of restrictions, and 1 year of availability of vaccines that remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, hasn't allowed us to get back to normal, the only plausible option left is letting Omicron burn through the community as fast as possible.

If we let covid run rampant (not that we seem to have a choice at this point) it will be over in 3 weeks. I say let it burn.

Which hospital do you work at where they have endorsed your brilliant idea to flood their halls with patients, cancel all elective and emergency procedures, overwhelm staff so that even people with treatable conditions die and doctors and nurses quit?

You’re going to drive more healthcare workers out by lengthening the pandemic and the associated restrictions than you would by making a few weeks particularly bad.

How are people this ill informed. I truly don't get it. I wish I could bet you large amounts of money.

You really don’t think that’s true? I’m guessing you don’t know a lot of healthcare workers then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

What did you think having kids was going to be? An endless round of birthday parties? Raising kids takes some effort.

If you want to do those things you need to be part of the solution.

And given that nearly 2 years of restrictions, and 1 year of availability of vaccines that remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, hasn't allowed us to get back to normal, the only plausible option left is letting Omicron burn through the community as fast as possible.

If we let covid run rampant (not that we seem to have a choice at this point) it will be over in 3 weeks. I say let it burn.

That’s absolutely my position as well. It wasn’t until the low case rates over the summer were still not enough to get people to chill out. I’ve been very pleased by how contagious omicron is. I think with a lot of work you could from Delta for a long time. But I don’t think there’s any hiding from Omicron. I was skeptical when news about the new variant came out, but the spike we’re seeing is really incredible.

what? letting it burn is exactly how you get new variants.

There are 7.8 billion people in the world, about half of whom are unvaccinated. Many who are vaccinated were vaccinated with poor vaccines. Even for people that are vaccinated, efficacy against infection isn’t great.

Simply put, letting it burn through Maryland, or even the whole US, doesn’t change the variant situation meaningfully. And part of that if because there’s no stopping everyone from getting it— all we can do is slow it down a little bit. But luckily our vaccines remain effective at preventing serious illness with all of the variants.

The more chances coronavirus has to make copies of itself in us - the host - the more opportunities there are for mutations to occur.
That's why keeping infections down is important. Vaccines help by cutting transmission as well as protecting against serious Covid illness.
Experts say it is possible that the new highly altered variant B.1.1.529 may have originated in a patient whose immune system was unable to get rid of a Covid infection quickly, giving the virus more time to morph.

Again, there are 7.8 billion people in the world. And we have vaccines that can't provide durable protection against infection.

[Anonymous]

Ah, I see we've stayed nicely on topic.

-OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ah, I see we've stayed nicely on topic.

-OP

Next time post in off-topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys I can’t take it anymore. I just want the kids to go to school, to do my job as well as I used to, have some occasional play dates and birthday parties to break up the month. Anyone else hate this feeling of being consumed by thoughts of what MCPS is going to do next to screw your life over again. This feeling takes me back to summer 2020 (remember when they ditched hybrid?) and august 2021 when people were freaking out about delta buy thank god MCPs stuck to its plan. Sigh. I’m so tired. When will it end.

What did you think having kids was going to be? An endless round of birthday parties? Raising kids takes some effort.

If you want to do those things you need to be part of the solution.

And given that nearly 2 years of restrictions, and 1 year of availability of vaccines that remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, hasn't allowed us to get back to normal, the only plausible option left is letting Omicron burn through the community as fast as possible.

If we let covid run rampant (not that we seem to have a choice at this point) it will be over in 3 weeks. I say let it burn.

That’s absolutely my position as well. It wasn’t until the low case rates over the summer were still not enough to get people to chill out. I’ve been very pleased by how contagious omicron is. I think with a lot of work you could from Delta for a long time. But I don’t think there’s any hiding from Omicron. I was skeptical when news about the new variant came out, but the spike we’re seeing is really incredible.

what? letting it burn is exactly how you get new variants.

There are 7.8 billion people in the world, about half of whom are unvaccinated. Many who are vaccinated were vaccinated with poor vaccines. Even for people that are vaccinated, efficacy against infection isn’t great.

Simply put, letting it burn through Maryland, or even the whole US, doesn’t change the variant situation meaningfully. And part of that if because there’s no stopping everyone from getting it— all we can do is slow it down a little bit. But luckily our vaccines remain effective at preventing serious illness with all of the variants.

The more chances coronavirus has to make copies of itself in us - the host - the more opportunities there are for mutations to occur.
That's why keeping infections down is important. Vaccines help by cutting transmission as well as protecting against serious Covid illness.
Experts say it is possible that the new highly altered variant B.1.1.529 may have originated in a patient whose immune system was unable to get rid of a Covid infection quickly, giving the virus more time to morph.

Again, there are 7.8 billion people in the world. And we have vaccines that can't provide durable protection against infection.

Again, try your hand at scientific research. Meanwhile, as some countries lift restrictions to control viral spread, opportunities increase for SARS-CoV-2 to make significant evolutionary leaps.

Scientists are searching for ways to predict the virus’s next moves, looking to other pathogens for clues. They are tracking the effects of the mutations in the variants that have arisen so far, while watching out for new ones. They expect SARS-CoV-2 eventually to evolve more predictably and become like other respiratory viruses — but when this shift will occur, and which infection it might resemble is not clear—there is no way you can predict the outcome no matter how many times you state the number of people in the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They already said 1,000,000 times that they aren’t pivoting the entire district. Maybe she’ll announce some high school closures or something. Damn this weather. So stressful. Wish we had just ripped the bandaid off and gone back Monday and gotten it over with.

What a wreckless idiot.