Anonymous wrote:This dashboard doesn't actually give useful information. All this data collection, decisions being informed by the data, and they cannot even take the few hours to properly summarize the data. So annoying.

I wonder why they don't want us to see the data. All this talk about the data but no one can reveiw it.

This dashboard doesn't actually give useful information. All this data collection, decisions being informed by the data, and they cannot even take the few hours to properly summarize the data. So annoying.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With tests going home yesterday, I'll be shocked if we aren't "shocked" by today's daily case report.

My prediction is that the higher poverty/higher ESOL schools will see a larger jump than wealthier schools, because wealthier parents tested earlier, more frequently. But certainly double-digit single-day numbers for the vast majority. And I wouldn't be shocked by a triple-digit number for a high school or two. I guess we'll see.

I doubt it because at home tests often give false negatives, especially when you are not showing symptoms

I looked this up when the iHealth tests came home yesterday. In FDA testing, iHealth picked up 94% of positives, so has a 6% false negative rate. It's not perfect but it's also not really "often." I'm with PP - we're going to see a huge spike this week assuming folks are actually using the at-home test and reporting results.

Thanks-- I'm the PP you're "with."

I actually do think that the actual false neg rate will be substantially higher, from what we're learning about omicron and viral loads and so on. But even if it's 25 or 50%, I assume we'll still see big spikes, especially in schools where parents didn't test as much on their own, prior to yesterday.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With tests going home yesterday, I'll be shocked if we aren't "shocked" by today's daily case report.

My prediction is that the higher poverty/higher ESOL schools will see a larger jump than wealthier schools, because wealthier parents tested earlier, more frequently. But certainly double-digit single-day numbers for the vast majority. And I wouldn't be shocked by a triple-digit number for a high school or two. I guess we'll see.

I doubt it because at home tests often give false negatives, especially when you are not showing symptoms

Yes? Of course they show false negatives.

But there will still be a fair number of positives.

I can't imagine that all of the kids with COVID will test negative. And I assume there are a lot of kids with COVID. If you test 300 (out of 600) kids and 30 (10%) actually have COVID, but only 1/3 of those come up positive, that's still 10 kids in one day. If you test 400 and 60 (15%) have COVID and only 1/3 test positive, that's 20. These are not far-out numbers.

One could imagine a HS or two with 2500 students, 1600 test yesterday, 240 (15%) actually have COVID and 40%+ of those come up positive-- that's 100. Maybe only for a school or two, but it's not a crazy stretch. Or a particularly hard-hit HS where 1200 test but 20% have COVID. Same thing.

But I guess we will see.

I assume the better-off schools already caught a lot of their cases before yesterday, but of course, new cases are added all the time as we're in such a state of extreme spread.

We'll find out today's numbers soon.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With tests going home yesterday, I'll be shocked if we aren't "shocked" by today's daily case report.

My prediction is that the higher poverty/higher ESOL schools will see a larger jump than wealthier schools, because wealthier parents tested earlier, more frequently. But certainly double-digit single-day numbers for the vast majority. And I wouldn't be shocked by a triple-digit number for a high school or two. I guess we'll see.

I doubt it because at home tests often give false negatives, especially when you are not showing symptoms

I looked this up when the iHealth tests came home yesterday. In FDA testing, iHealth picked up 94% of positives, so has a 6% false negative rate. It's not perfect but it's also not really "often." I'm with PP - we're going to see a huge spike this week assuming folks are actually using the at-home test and reporting results.

Anonymous wrote:With tests going home yesterday, I'll be shocked if we aren't "shocked" by today's daily case report.

My prediction is that the higher poverty/higher ESOL schools will see a larger jump than wealthier schools, because wealthier parents tested earlier, more frequently. But certainly double-digit single-day numbers for the vast majority. And I wouldn't be shocked by a triple-digit number for a high school or two. I guess we'll see.

I doubt it because at home tests often give false negatives, especially when you are not showing symptoms

With tests going home yesterday, I'll be shocked if we aren't "shocked" by today's daily case report.

My prediction is that the higher poverty/higher ESOL schools will see a larger jump than wealthier schools, because wealthier parents tested earlier, more frequently. But certainly double-digit single-day numbers for the vast majority. And I wouldn't be shocked by a triple-digit number for a high school or two. I guess we'll see.

Anonymous wrote:I do wish MCPS would go back to the percentage reporting. Knowing what % of the school is out would be very useful for risk awareness.

Honestly, the median case right now is about 10% reporting a new positive in the past week, which means, even if those kids are all absent, the actual number currently positives in the school is equal to (or probably some multiple of) that.

All modeling suggests that testing only catches about 10% of cases in the general population-- though of course it would be much higher in schools because of greater incentives for and communication around reporting, and especially in schools who send tests home.

If your school sent tests home yesterday or earlier, perhaps we could wildly guess that the average school as of this afternoon will have numbers accurate to 1) about half of students and almost all staff, but 2) not quite, because omicron can take longer to be detected on rapid tests, and rapid tests aren't as accurate.

So, I have no idea.

But certainly it's safe to assume that if your kid went to school yesterday and today, then you can probably take the daily numbers (only) that they release in a couple of hours and multiply them by 2-4x, and that will be the risk of exposure your child has already encountered this week? 2x just because not all kids would have tested and uploaded and there are false negatives and user errors, and more than that because the rapids yesterday won't have caught anywhere near all the infectious people in one shot. Especially since we are (hopefully) near the peak, so cases are rising exponentially.

Anyway, that would be my guess. And I guess the denominator would have to include only kids who have actually been in school Mon/Tue, but that's too complicated to figure out now. Easier to make the multiple higher.

So if your school has 600 kids and today's numbers are 30, then probably 10-20% of the kids your child encountered at school this week actually had some degree of contagious COVID. That's a really wild guess, but I'd say maybe even a low one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spread is not occurring in schools. It’s occurring in the community as a whole, especially in non-school activities without masks. The numbers went up exponentially during a time school was not in session.

Do your children see other children outside of school? Do they wear masks when at a friends house? Have your family gone to a restaurant or traveled during winter break?

Unless we all are going to hunker down in every facet of our lives like we did at the beginning of the pandemic, then COVID will spread. Protect yourself and your loved ones and get vaccinated.

Outdoors and with masks, and we don't go into friends' houses, and no we did not go to a restaurant or travel during winter break. We don't want COVID.

It is remarkable how resistant people spouting this line seem to be to accepting that this is the case. They all seem to think it's going to be a gotcha of some kind to ask these questions.

You sound fun.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spread is not occurring in schools. It’s occurring in the community as a whole, especially in non-school activities without masks. The numbers went up exponentially during a time school was not in session.

Do your children see other children outside of school? Do they wear masks when at a friends house? Have your family gone to a restaurant or traveled during winter break?

Unless we all are going to hunker down in every facet of our lives like we did at the beginning of the pandemic, then COVID will spread. Protect yourself and your loved ones and get vaccinated.

Outdoors and with masks, and we don't go into friends' houses, and no we did not go to a restaurant or travel during winter break. We don't want COVID.

It is remarkable how resistant people spouting this line seem to be to accepting that this is the case. They all seem to think it's going to be a gotcha of some kind to ask these questions.

Wow are you clueless. I recall Summer 2020 my 14 year old daughter had her three friends over. First time over since March. Was in backyard, I picked up pizza. I have a pool. Kids were like told only backyard with masks

Two parents showed up like a crime scene. Pulled into my driveway, made kid put mask on, kid entered backyard. All good. Then slowly they ate, mask off, swam mask off. Of course one or two on to use bathroom.

Like 30 minutes later they are gone. Turns out was like 90 degrees out, all went to my finished AC basement to watch Netflix, snack hangout.

Then at pick up put on mask went into backyard into parents car from back gate.

So stupid. I guess it makes the other parents feel good

Anonymous wrote:Spread is not occurring in schools. It’s occurring in the community as a whole, especially in non-school activities without masks. The numbers went up exponentially during a time school was not in session.

Do your children see other children outside of school? Do they wear masks when at a friends house? Have your family gone to a restaurant or traveled during winter break?

Unless we all are going to hunker down in every facet of our lives like we did at the beginning of the pandemic, then COVID will spread. Protect yourself and your loved ones and get vaccinated.

Outdoors and with masks, and we don't go into friends' houses, and no we did not go to a restaurant or travel during winter break. We don't want COVID.

It is remarkable how resistant people spouting this line seem to be to accepting that this is the case. They all seem to think it's going to be a gotcha of some kind to ask these questions.

I do wish MCPS would go back to the percentage reporting. Knowing what % of the school is out would be very useful for risk awareness.

Anonymous wrote:So is this how it’s going to go? Every night we sit on pins and needles to see if there is school the next day? Who thought this would be a good idea?

The parents who demanded schools stay open no matter what.

Anonymous wrote:Jeff redirected this thread over here.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/15/1028138.page

My response to the last question ("I'm confused about the reporting. If a kid has covid and is out for 10 days, do they only show up once the first time they report? Or do they show up 10 times, one for each absence?") is that these are numbers reported THAT DAY between 4 pm the previous day and 4 pm the next.

But I say nothing with certainty because this is all so opaque.

Sorry, even my response was confusing!

I'm positing that:

The daily reports include only those positive cases first reported between 4 pm the previous day and 4 pm the next.

I do think some people are confused in part because these high numbers aren't computing to their brains. It's hard to quickly shift from "We had 6 cases this week in our small ES! OMG!" to "Yeah, our small ES reported 6 cases every day for the last week, that's not very high."

So some people still think 45 cases at Blair (population ~3000?) must be a cumulative number for 1-2 weeks, or that if there are 5, 10, 20 cases reported in a day at their school, those must include cases already reported.

NPR just had on an epidemiologist who estimated that 20-40% of Americans would get omicron in the next 3 weeks, so... this is the new normal.

Jeff redirected this thread over here.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/15/1028138.page

My response to the last question ("I'm confused about the reporting. If a kid has covid and is out for 10 days, do they only show up once the first time they report? Or do they show up 10 times, one for each absence?") is that these are numbers reported THAT DAY between 4 pm the previous day and 4 pm the next.

But I say nothing with certainty because this is all so opaque.