The data show generally that school spread is equivalent to community spread. No worse. No better. If you’d take your kid to eat in a restaurant or a movie you’d probably be willing to send them to school. The risk is the same. It’s not lower in school. It’s comparable to being out in the community. Indoors. Many families don’t do indoor activities in the community because the risk is too high for them. School will have the same risks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone actually go read the studies the news articles are based on? They are terrible. The Norway study is based on 13 kids. All these studies are all of very poor quality. It makes me insane that we can’t pull it together to do even one decent quality study on something as important as kids in person schooling.

Those 13 were just ones who tested positive from the initial sample. Then hundreds of contacts- kids and adults-were tested from there.

If the question is do kids transmit to other people, then the 13 contact traces is the relevant number. From the 13 index cases, they identified 3 primary cases that presumably were infected from the index case. Interestingly, two of the index cases didn’t test positive in their first saliva sample, which definitely raises concerns about false negatives. The tests were self-administered saliva tests, for which the authors didn’t have data on the specificity or sensitivity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You won't be able to eliminate all risk. If you are worried don't send them. Many schools have opened in the US and have not seen outbreaks. They may have some cases, but it didn't spread to the whole class.

Can someone post the link to the data from systems that have opened successfully? Every one I see either hides their data, like Florida, or has had to repeatedly close schools because cases increase within them.

Birx now admits that the CDC data during the Trump administration was incorrect, and it appears that there was something unusually with Cuomo’s nursing home data in NY. (I picked both political sides to keep this from turning into that.)

I don’t think we will know the truth until we collect data from a large system and get honest data. So far, too many are more vested in being right than in getting it right.

Miami-Dade is bigger than any district in northern Virginia: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/us/miami-dade-schools-open-coronavirus-wellness/index.html

Exactly. They are basically ignoring the rising numbers in the region and not releasing numbers from the schools. We would know more if they released the school data. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article248293885.html

There is research - and I think the answer is not as clear cut as either “side” would have you believe. And the new strains could be a game changer as much as the vaccine, unfortunately.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/01/07/953961009/where-is-it-safe-to-reopen-schools-new-research-offers-answers

“First, for communities where hospitalization rates were already relatively low, "when [schools] opened in-person or hybrid mode, we did not see increases in hospitalizations post-re-opening." This applies to communities with fewer than 36 to 44 hospitalizations per 100,000 people.

In some cases, school reopenings did appear to make matters worse. In other cases, the opposite was true. In the end, for these harder-hit communities, the researchers say their results were inconclusive.

The study also comes with a few important caveats. The data analysis was conducted before a new, more contagious strain of the coronavirus had been documented in the U.S.”

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our local private has had one single case of spread between two students the entire year. 6 positive cases total (3 occurred outside of school during holiday breaks when kids had no exposure to their classmates). 1 case of a teacher who acquired it outside of school. Kids are tested weekly. I would say that is “low” risk.

Yeah, let’s take a quick look at conditions in your average private school vs your average public school... do you think maybe there might be a slight difference there? Air quality? Cleanliness? Rule following? Crowdedness? Uh huh.

The OP asked about conflicting data with kids. The truth is that schools can be a low risk for transmitting Covid if ALL recommended safety precautions are taken. When schools pick and choose what precautions to take, you get spread. Of course it’s easier for a private to implement the safety precautions. Public schools have a harder task but it’s not impossible. There are models to follow. It will involve more resources and planning. Public schools want to return to their former operating model but with masks. That won’t work. Time to get creative. The CDC gave pretty good guidance on how to get kids in school for SOME in-person learning but the counties keep saying it’s too hard.

Anonymous wrote:Our local private has had one single case of spread between two students the entire year. 6 positive cases total (3 occurred outside of school during holiday breaks when kids had no exposure to their classmates). 1 case of a teacher who acquired it outside of school. Kids are tested weekly. I would say that is “low” risk.

Yeah, let’s take a quick look at conditions in your average private school vs your average public school... do you think maybe there might be a slight difference there? Air quality? Cleanliness? Rule following? Crowdedness? Uh huh.

Our local private has had one single case of spread between two students the entire year. 6 positive cases total (3 occurred outside of school during holiday breaks when kids had no exposure to their classmates). 1 case of a teacher who acquired it outside of school. Kids are tested weekly. I would say that is “low” risk.

I can only speak from my own experience last fall in my concurrent class.

One positive student infected one teacher and one student. So out of 4 masked kids and two masked teachers, we had 3 linked cases. Cohorts can’t overcome that. If there is a positive kid in the room, it spreads quickly, even with masks and well over 6 feet of distance. So when we open, it is highly likely that we will see lots of kids get sick. Will they be sick enough to need medical care? Hopefully not, but they can and will bring it home to their families like one of my students did. Mom, dad, grandma, and brother. All infected. I am grateful to be in the process or of being vaccinated, but I am worried for the kids, including my own who will also be back in school.

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone actually go read the studies the news articles are based on? They are terrible. The Norway study is based on 13 kids. All these studies are all of very poor quality. It makes me insane that we can’t pull it together to do even one decent quality study on something as important as kids in person schooling.

Those 13 were just ones who tested positive from the initial sample. Then hundreds of contacts- kids and adults-were tested from there.

Does anyone actually go read the studies the news articles are based on? They are terrible. The Norway study is based on 13 kids. All these studies are all of very poor quality. It makes me insane that we can’t pull it together to do even one decent quality study on something as important as kids in person schooling.

Nothing is ever 100% safe, there was always some sort of risk having kids leave the house each morning. Mine have come back with broken bones from playing at school. Or hand foot and mouth, or many other depressing phone calls I have gotten over the years from the teachers.

Covid might be new, but risk is always out there. My kid also found out she's severely allergic to almonds after eating one at extended day and we had to take her to urgent care and gave her epi shot. Some kids are going to have a worse reaction to virusus or food or whatever. However most data points to the fact that older and people with preexisting health issues ARE the most likely to have sever reaction to Covid, so take that data point for what it's worth. Take precautions where you can and live you life as you can as most people already do seeing how busy Costco is even on a weekday.

Anonymous wrote:Weird. I have a friend at Vanderbilt too and the ped floor is filled with ADULT Covid victims. Not kids.

And the ped staff are treating them because there is no one else. I wouldn’t assume there are many ped COVID patients. Only about 150 kids have died in the 400,000 deaths. That’s not the only marker to know, but it is rarely fatal in kids.

My sister is a pediatric ER doc in North Carolina. She has mostly been seeing adult Covid patients during her hours (and sporadically, the occasional kid coming in with a broken bone or gunshot wound).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You won't be able to eliminate all risk. If you are worried don't send them. Many schools have opened in the US and have not seen outbreaks. They may have some cases, but it didn't spread to the whole class.

Can someone post the link to the data from systems that have opened successfully? Every one I see either hides their data, like Florida, or has had to repeatedly close schools because cases increase within them.

Birx now admits that the CDC data during the Trump administration was incorrect, and it appears that there was something unusually with Cuomo’s nursing home data in NY. (I picked both political sides to keep this from turning into that.)

I don’t think we will know the truth until we collect data from a large system and get honest data. So far, too many are more vested in being right than in getting it right.

Miami-Dade is bigger than any district in northern Virginia: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/us/miami-dade-schools-open-coronavirus-wellness/index.html

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I noticed that too. This article was practically hidden in the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html

It was hidden because it’s old data. It was everywhere when it came out. Addressed here;
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/just-open-schools-already/617849/

Oh. Ha ha. Sorry! Thanks for the correction. I will read The Atlantic article.

Anonymous wrote:Weird. I have a friend at Vanderbilt too and the ped floor is filled with ADULT Covid victims. Not kids.

And the ped staff are treating them because there is no one else. I wouldn’t assume there are many ped COVID patients. Only about 150 kids have died in the 400,000 deaths. That’s not the only marker to know, but it is rarely fatal in kids.

Perhaps not weird. Perhaps just greatly exaggerated, misinterpreted, or fabricated.