DCPS close contact mask policy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got an email about this on Tuesday saying this masks for the whole class for 10 days policy went into effect on Monday.

FINALLY!!!
Seeing students and teachers still unmasked, and untested, after spending days unmasked with an unmasked positive was outrageous.

Why? Everybody will get Covid eventually. They should tell the parents, and then those who are worried can send their kids in a high-quality mask. If they want to be extra careful, they can ask everybody to test on day five. But we can’t continue masking all kids for every Covid case in a class. Covid isn’t going away, and we’d be masking kids forever. Or what do you think the endgame is?

Eventually? At the point, it's in number of times they will get it, and interval between infections. It isn't one and done. It's as many as your behavior gets you, and then it's a quite large risk of many of a quite long list of quite serious long-term ailments.

Wearing a mask for a couple of weeks after a case in the classroom absolutely beats organ failure or chronic fatigue.

Quite a large risk? Where is your evidence for that? And where is your evidence that multiple infections exacerbate the risk of long term ailments?

If you can't be bothered to pay attention to the research and are willing to take no precautions and just risk that your kid gets multiple infections, go for it. I'd like to protect mine, especially in a way that means she's still in the classroom for school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a sincere question.

With case numbers rising in the schools what is the solution besides masks and testing?

If the answer is "there's no solution because kids don't get as sick as adults" then what about the others in the community? And what about long Covid in kids?

1. the high-quality studies don't show that masking prevents transmissions in schools, and the transmission in schools was already low regardless. Your kids are still welcome to wear masks, as is anyone in the community.
2. "others in the community" aren't solely exposed to covid via schoolchildren who got it from school. Again, schools aren't a big source of transmission; the studies showed that community rates weren't appreciably different when schools were closed versus open. If anything, schools reflect the community, and cases are transmitted to kids by the "others in the community." "Others in the community" are also out there doing a ton of stuff, including working.
3. the studies that have control groups show that kids who had covid had the same rates of "long covid" as kids who didn't have covid. I think there are people who get long-term issues from covid, but it seems that major issues are exceedingly rare. At the very least there needs to be a better definition of 'long covid' for us to have any grasp at all of prevalence or severity.
4. There seem to be a lot studies that suggest that vaccination significantly reduces chances of long covid, and kids over 5 can get the vaccine. To the extent that long covid seems to be highest in people who had severe symptoms, and to the extent that kids don't get severe symptoms generally, they seem pretty well protected even if unvaccinated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got an email about this on Tuesday saying this masks for the whole class for 10 days policy went into effect on Monday.

FINALLY!!!
Seeing students and teachers still unmasked, and untested, after spending days unmasked with an unmasked positive was outrageous.

Why? Everybody will get Covid eventually. They should tell the parents, and then those who are worried can send their kids in a high-quality mask. If they want to be extra careful, they can ask everybody to test on day five. But we can’t continue masking all kids for every Covid case in a class. Covid isn’t going away, and we’d be masking kids forever. Or what do you think the endgame is?

Eventually? At the point, it's in number of times they will get it, and interval between infections. It isn't one and done. It's as many as your behavior gets you, and then it's a quite large risk of many of a quite long list of quite serious long-term ailments.

Wearing a mask for a couple of weeks after a case in the classroom absolutely beats organ failure or chronic fatigue.

Quite a large risk? Where is your evidence for that? And where is your evidence that multiple infections exacerbate the risk of long term ailments?

If you can't be bothered to pay attention to the research and are willing to take no precautions and just risk that your kid gets multiple infections, go for it. I'd like to protect mine, especially in a way that means she's still in the classroom for school.

DP. So, you don't have any evidence?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got an email about this on Tuesday saying this masks for the whole class for 10 days policy went into effect on Monday.

FINALLY!!!
Seeing students and teachers still unmasked, and untested, after spending days unmasked with an unmasked positive was outrageous.

Why? Everybody will get Covid eventually. They should tell the parents, and then those who are worried can send their kids in a high-quality mask. If they want to be extra careful, they can ask everybody to test on day five. But we can’t continue masking all kids for every Covid case in a class. Covid isn’t going away, and we’d be masking kids forever. Or what do you think the endgame is?

Eventually? At the point, it's in number of times they will get it, and interval between infections. It isn't one and done. It's as many as your behavior gets you, and then it's a quite large risk of many of a quite long list of quite serious long-term ailments.

Wearing a mask for a couple of weeks after a case in the classroom absolutely beats organ failure or chronic fatigue.

Quite a large risk? Where is your evidence for that? And where is your evidence that multiple infections exacerbate the risk of long term ailments?

If you can't be bothered to pay attention to the research and are willing to take no precautions and just risk that your kid gets multiple infections, go for it. I'd like to protect mine, especially in a way that means she's still in the classroom for school.

DP. So, you don't have any evidence?

She doesn't. I have been paying attention to "the research". There is currently no indication that catching Covid multiple times increases your risk of complications, long-term or otherwise. There also isn't any evidence that there is "quite a large risk" of long-term ailments.

We used to take precautions, but stopped after omicron subsided. We haven't had Covid yet (to our knowledge), but I know we will eventually. The kids missing school or camp because of it is my biggest worry, but not a reason to limit their lives any further.

[Anonymous]

How about you have to wear a mask if you are coughing, and if you aren’t, then you don’t. They could make exceptions for documented chronic conditions. The masks are mostly effective at stopping transmission by coughing and sneezing anyway…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a sincere question.

With case numbers rising in the schools what is the solution besides masks and testing?

If the answer is "there's no solution because kids don't get as sick as adults" then what about the others in the community? And what about long Covid in kids?

1. the high-quality studies don't show that masking prevents transmissions in schools, and the transmission in schools was already low regardless. Your kids are still welcome to wear masks, as is anyone in the community.
2. "others in the community" aren't solely exposed to covid via schoolchildren who got it from school. Again, schools aren't a big source of transmission; the studies showed that community rates weren't appreciably different when schools were closed versus open. If anything, schools reflect the community, and cases are transmitted to kids by the "others in the community." "Others in the community" are also out there doing a ton of stuff, including working.
3. the studies that have control groups show that kids who had covid had the same rates of "long covid" as kids who didn't have covid. I think there are people who get long-term issues from covid, but it seems that major issues are exceedingly rare. At the very least there needs to be a better definition of 'long covid' for us to have any grasp at all of prevalence or severity.
4. There seem to be a lot studies that suggest that vaccination significantly reduces chances of long covid, and kids over 5 can get the vaccine. To the extent that long covid seems to be highest in people who had severe symptoms, and to the extent that kids don't get severe symptoms generally, they seem pretty well protected even if unvaccinated.

You are so disgustingly full of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got an email about this on Tuesday saying this masks for the whole class for 10 days policy went into effect on Monday.

FINALLY!!!
Seeing students and teachers still unmasked, and untested, after spending days unmasked with an unmasked positive was outrageous.

Why? Everybody will get Covid eventually. They should tell the parents, and then those who are worried can send their kids in a high-quality mask. If they want to be extra careful, they can ask everybody to test on day five. But we can’t continue masking all kids for every Covid case in a class. Covid isn’t going away, and we’d be masking kids forever. Or what do you think the endgame is?

Eventually? At the point, it's in number of times they will get it, and interval between infections. It isn't one and done. It's as many as your behavior gets you, and then it's a quite large risk of many of a quite long list of quite serious long-term ailments.

Wearing a mask for a couple of weeks after a case in the classroom absolutely beats organ failure or chronic fatigue.

Of course we will all get it multiple times! But you have no evidence that there is a point to trying to reduce the number of infections you get over your lifetime. As with most viruses, subsequent infections will be milder than the first one.

Here’s a video from a specialist in evidence-based medical decision-making discussing this point:

https://youtu.be/dqCtWN2cTeg

Huh? There is absolutely no consensus on the notion that subsequent infections with covid would be milder than the first one.
A youtube video? From the board that demands RCTs to support masking indoors? Really?

Yes, a YouTube video from the guy who regularly demands RCTs on everything. Do you think his use of this medium devalues his credentials in regulatory science and evidence-based medicine? He is a professor at UCSF who has been working on evaluating medical evidence for many years.

I HEART Vinay! He is so smart and sensible and a true evidence-based thinker/opiner on health policy. If only he could get a job in the administration to sort all the wackadoodle policies out.

Love him too! He has spent his career thinking about evidence for medical interventions and risk-benefit analysis. Prior to the pandemic, his focus were cancer treatments, and now he has been taking the same critical look at interventions against Covid. If anyone knows how to evaluate clinical trials and medical evidence, it's him. He has been brave to speak up, especially coming from the progressive side of the political spectrum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a sincere question.

With case numbers rising in the schools what is the solution besides masks and testing?

If the answer is "there's no solution because kids don't get as sick as adults" then what about the others in the community? And what about long Covid in kids?

1. the high-quality studies don't show that masking prevents transmissions in schools, and the transmission in schools was already low regardless. Your kids are still welcome to wear masks, as is anyone in the community.
2. "others in the community" aren't solely exposed to covid via schoolchildren who got it from school. Again, schools aren't a big source of transmission; the studies showed that community rates weren't appreciably different when schools were closed versus open. If anything, schools reflect the community, and cases are transmitted to kids by the "others in the community." "Others in the community" are also out there doing a ton of stuff, including working.
3. the studies that have control groups show that kids who had covid had the same rates of "long covid" as kids who didn't have covid. I think there are people who get long-term issues from covid, but it seems that major issues are exceedingly rare. At the very least there needs to be a better definition of 'long covid' for us to have any grasp at all of prevalence or severity.
4. There seem to be a lot studies that suggest that vaccination significantly reduces chances of long covid, and kids over 5 can get the vaccine. To the extent that long covid seems to be highest in people who had severe symptoms, and to the extent that kids don't get severe symptoms generally, they seem pretty well protected even if unvaccinated.

You are so disgustingly full of it.

NP. No, everything the PP says is true. Or do you have evidence to the contrary?

[Anonymous]

Time to treat covid like the common cold. Most of the kids I know who have had covid were asymptomatic OR only had symptoms for 1 day. Send them back to school using the common cold rule- symptom free for more than 24 hours? GO back to school. Wear a mask for one week. But no more missing school.

[Anonymous]

I think a better way to use the same number of rapid tests would be to stop testing asymptomatic kids at all and to rapid every kid who comes through the door with symptoms. This is what the NFL did for it's players/coaches/staff (and obviously they have decent incentives re: wanting to keep things rolling w/o causing unnecessary disruption) after their first wave of data showed (1) that there was next to no spread from truly asymptomatic people and (2) that there was quite a bit of spread from people who tested negative w/ early symptoms and then later tested positive... The goal is to catch the 2nd group the day they turn positive (which you will do if you rapid every day) and ignoring the 1st group does limited damage (and minimizes false positives which are a much higher percentage of asymptomatic test results because the prevalence of COVID in the population is so much lower).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Time to treat covid like the common cold. Most of the kids I know who have had covid were asymptomatic OR only had symptoms for 1 day. Send them back to school using the common cold rule- symptom free for more than 24 hours? GO back to school. Wear a mask for one week. But no more missing school.

+1

[Anonymous]

I think the kids are a lot less bothered by masking than their adults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the kids are a lot less bothered by masking than their adults.

We know this has been your theory all along. Whatever makes you feel better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the kids are a lot less bothered by masking than their adults.

My kid cares more than me and was asking every day to take it off. Your kid might be different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the kids are a lot less bothered by masking than their adults.

False. My kids were upset when I told them they had to wear masks again.