Reply to Covid Update from Central Office

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Covid Update from Central Office"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Let me crystallize this - the current policy position that is unspoken, but how we are clearly operating if you can read between the lines or just see what is in front of you is that we all get it. [B]The wave will be "over" when it has interacted with nearly all of us, skipping or maybe asymptomatically touching some recent vax'd people. [/b]

You can choose *maybe* when you get it, but not if you get it. Closing schools just may change the when, not the if. So my position is that schools should not close if the only movement closure does is shift the "when" to a different point.

Those who are pushing school closures at this point really only have a few defensible positions:

1. Hospital capacity - local health dept can insist on school and other closures if needed. Should not be BOE driven and school should not be only thing closed.
2. School staffing - too many teachers, busses, etc out to function. (Sidenote- how much COVID leave exists and how much is that driving the total days out per positive test)

Anything else, really shouldn't drive schools to be closed. Too many kids out? That stinks, but we are in a pandemic, increased absences due to illness are to be expected. Dangerous environment? I hate to say it, but refer to the if / when analysis I posited above. The dangerous environment theory was better suited for waves that wouldn't hit everyone as there was a chance of missing the wave. Waiting for meds, sub 5 vaccines, etc? We would need a clear public health assessment of the goals, the benchmarks and what closure of school would achieve to get engagement to close for these things. I don't think there is the will or capability for this at this stage, and if there were, it should not be led by schools closing before other businesses.

[/quote]

This is not inevitable, it is a result of decisions like, say, forcing kids into schools at a time of high spread.  If they are home until things calm down, they will be much less likely to catch covid.  If you're in a school of 1000 where probably 20 people are contagious with not-yet-known covid, you're much more likely to catch it than if you go back a few weeks later and only 2 or 3 people are contagious.[/quote]

"When things calm down" is when the wave passes and it runs out of hosts to infect. I'm not a COVID denier, and I wasn't saying this re: any of the other variants, but with Omicron and with our current national response, I don't see a lot of other REALISTIC options. I see options, I just don't find them particularly realistic. [/quote]

Unless you have evidence that Omicron reinfects people again quickly after infection, there's no reason to expect this.  Why would Omicron magically have to infect 100% of the population before it settles down?  It will infect a large share of people who *have* to interact with lots of other people and don't have adequate masks/ventilation/etc to protect themselves, but once it gets through those people, everyone else's chance of catching it will fall significantly.  Why not let kids be in the second group rather than the first?[/quote]

Do you know it doesn’t?   [/quote]

You don’t prove a negative. That’s not how it works. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics