Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So parents have to find childcare solutions in two-week increments? How is that possibly going to work?

Ironic isn't it? Liberals who don't care about education, children, or working families. They have put the public health bueracracy and teachers unions on a pedestal and don't give a s**t about you or your kids.

-A Democrat

+1 - a registered Democrat but unhappy with how county Democrats have kept bars and restaurants open but schools once again are closing. Education for students in Montgomery County is in the toilet. Nothing has been done to repair the damage of 18 months of virtual learning and now MCPS is putting students back online. The majority of families affected are the working poor in underserved and at risk communities.

I'm also a registered Democrat with a different take. Children cannot protect themselves, and if their parents throw them to the wolves (or into situations where they'll contract or have contracted the covid virus, as the case may be) - I believe it's the failure of Adults and the elected officials to protect them.

The only children damaged by virtual learning are the parents that withheld technology from their children. Most of the children my ES/MS kids know are all tech-saavy and had virtually no issues studying remotely. I do agree that the majority of working poor are underserved and at risk, however, it is MCPS leadership and the board themselves that refused to enable hybrid options last year and this year.

I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy for fools. I seriously believe these crazy people on the board and in the Central Office have lost all common sense and should be fired or voted out of office. I'm sick of and disgusted by them, but it is what it is.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you look at the dashboard some of the schools going virtual have a similar number of cases to schools that are open.
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/coronavirus/dashboard/index.aspx

This is a joke. We are relying on imperfect data (parent self-report). Parents who are unable to secure home tests or get tested aren't able to report + cases. Many parents purposely will not report to avoid school quarantine. What a mess.

This is why we need mandatory weekly testing.

What did MCPS do with the money it got from the Biden administration to be used to keep schools open and safe?

My school had a huge back pile of masks and cleaning supplies that I suppose were purchased with federal funds. But we can't use that money to purchase tests and the tests that are given to us by the county cannot be used by teachers

Ask uncle Joe where your Tesser he was going to solve everything wasn’t he?

Was that English? Are you having a stroke?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So parents have to find childcare solutions in two-week increments? How is that possibly going to work?

Ironic isn't it? Liberals who don't care about education, children, or working families. They have put the public health bueracracy and teachers unions on a pedestal and don't give a s**t about you or your kids.

-A Democrat

+1 - a registered Democrat but unhappy with how county Democrats have kept bars and restaurants open but schools once again are closing. Education for students in Montgomery County is in the toilet. Nothing has been done to repair the damage of 18 months of virtual learning and now MCPS is putting students back online. The majority of families affected are the working poor in underserved and at risk communities.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is complete BS. Everyone will be red and in virtual until Spring. This is a way to be open and not be open at the same time. Congrats to everyone who pressed for virtual. This sucks big time. MCPS is a joke. Education has become a joke. Everyone knows that the green schools will be red in a matter of days.

Yep, the virtual crowd won. MCPS manufactured a system to backdoor into virtual.

I don't see it that way. If anything, it will discourage people from reporting so we will have lower estimates to keep schools open

I don't know what to think honestly. On the one hand, I am very angry and am tempted to view this as a backdoor way to close schools while they say they are keeping them open. On the other hand, I like to think MCPS has gotten the message that schools need to be open and will realize in a couple of weeks this system is flawed and figure a way to pivot out of it. Arbitrary metrics for closing make no sense as they do not take into account changing information and the fact that this variant is no worse for children than other variants.

This is where you are incorrect. There are more hospitalizations with omicron in pediatric populations. As a hospitalist, I do want things to be different, but that is what is happening on the ground.

Not true. You're experience "on the ground" does not reflect the data.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/health/omicron-kids-hospitalizations.html

Our data collection is a mess but I no longer deal with those who aren’t in the thick of it. Here are the data. And hospitals arevv Cho overwhelmed regardless. But please go on from your cushy couch angry that you have to dorms more time with your kid. https://healthdata.gov/Health/COVID-19-Community-Profile-Report/gqxm-d9w9

Anonymous wrote:Are they taking into account that cases reported on 12/23 would be returning tomorrow and counted back into the population again? Or are they just using a snapshot in time to make these decisions and that snapshot includes those cases reported on 12/23 and are no longer contagious?

Meant removing those cases from the numerator?

Are they taking into account that cases reported on 12/23 would be returning tomorrow and counted back into the population again? Or are they just using a snapshot in time to make these decisions and that snapshot includes those cases reported on 12/23 and are no longer contagious?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you look at the dashboard some of the schools going virtual have a similar number of cases to schools that are open.
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/coronavirus/dashboard/index.aspx

Yellow is really read due to those who did not report. Similarly, green is really yellow or could be red. So even if they all went to school tomorrow, we will find out that they are all red by next week. Dimwits at MCPS leadership just realizing this and will be shutting things down shortly. Get your laptops out, kiddos!

Why should cases that were acquired during winter break count? Those kids can’t return immediately.

There is no need to quibble about those small details. Even if all the schools were green, by next week, they will be all red. Don't waste your energy triyng to find the beans that fell on the floor to count.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you look at the dashboard some of the schools going virtual have a similar number of cases to schools that are open.
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/coronavirus/dashboard/index.aspx

Yellow is really read due to those who did not report. Similarly, green is really yellow or could be red. So even if they all went to school tomorrow, we will find out that they are all red by next week. Dimwits at MCPS leadership just realizing this and will be shutting things down shortly. Get your laptops out, kiddos!

Why should cases that were acquired during winter break count? Those kids can’t return immediately.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you look at the dashboard some of the schools going virtual have a similar number of cases to schools that are open.
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/coronavirus/dashboard/index.aspx

Yellow is really read due to those who did not report. Similarly, green is really yellow or could be red. So even if they all went to school tomorrow, we will find out that they are all red by next week. Dimwits at MCPS leadership just realizing this and will be shutting things down shortly. Get your laptops out, kiddos!

read = red

Anonymous wrote:When you look at the dashboard some of the schools going virtual have a similar number of cases to schools that are open.
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/coronavirus/dashboard/index.aspx

Yellow is really read due to those who did not report. Similarly, green is really yellow or could be red. So even if they all went to school tomorrow, we will find out that they are all red by next week. Dimwits at MCPS leadership just realizing this and will be shutting things down shortly. Get your laptops out, kiddos!

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/Coronavirus/dashboaird/MCPS%20COVID-19%20Cases%20Winter%20Break%20Through%206%20am%20January%203%202022%20with%20Categories.pdf

Here’s the data. What I don’t understand is whether this is cumulative or are they removing cases as they move out of isolation so in a sense is this real time?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know there are a ton of doctors and scientists on this forum. Question - does anyone know the county level incidence over the last 14 days? And does it track these school wide metrics? Is the county reporting, say, 1% over the last 14 days but the schools are reporting close to 5%? or vice versa?

NY Times has county level data with 14 day trends.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

Back to the question if the school numbers are out of whack with the community spread.
Can an epidemiologist walk me through this? Daily new case rate according to nytimes above for Moco is 325 per 100,000.
14 days would be 4,550 cases per 100,000 - is that a correct way of looking at it (I realize the cases are going up so this is an overestimate)?
So that would mean 4.55% incidence?
Am I thinking about this correctly?

That community spread rate is of tests given, not the total MoCo population. MCPS is using positivity within the total population of a given school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know there are a ton of doctors and scientists on this forum. Question - does anyone know the county level incidence over the last 14 days? And does it track these school wide metrics? Is the county reporting, say, 1% over the last 14 days but the schools are reporting close to 5%? or vice versa?

NY Times has county level data with 14 day trends.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

Back to the question if the school numbers are out of whack with the community spread.
Can an epidemiologist walk me through this? Daily new case rate according to nytimes above for Moco is 325 per 100,000.
14 days would be 4,550 cases per 100,000 - is that a correct way of looking at it (I realize the cases are going up so this is an overestimate)?
So that would mean 4.55% incidence?
Am I thinking about this correctly?

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I missed this earlier in the thread - this percentage is reflective of a bunch of teachers and kids who may be back at school tomorrow (having completed their isolation over break). Or they will return in the next few days - having exposed absolutely no one in school.

I believe they said it is cases over the past 4 days. Which would make sense if the quarantine period for an asymptomatic positive is 5 days.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I missed this earlier in the thread - this percentage is reflective of a bunch of teachers and kids who may be back at school tomorrow (having completed their isolation over break). Or they will return in the next few days - having exposed absolutely no one in school.

One would HOPE it reflects the % of the school population that will be infectious as of the next school day. But at the very least as of the day it's released. Although it's true some cases will fall off, given the trajectory of omicron it's much more likely those cases will be replaced and added to as every day passes. At least in the next week or two.

I hope so but I’m skeptical about that. But even if kids are still finishing quarantine they should not be counted since they aren’t contributing to in school spread which is what the metric was originally supposed to be about.

Personally-- and I'm the PP you're responding to-- I think it must be true, or is very likely to be true. I say this because our school sent us notifications of 6 staff positives over break and MCPS initially reported 2 staff positives for us on 1/1. So I was assuming that 4 had aged out of the count.

I disagree with your last sentence because the schools have to compare a rate they measured in the past to one they can measure now, and this is all they have. It's a proxy for very localized rates in the community. I mean, I don't think it's great either, but I think it makes a little more sense than trying to accurately divine actual spread within schools.