And APS likely had a low participation rate because of poor communication, not people “moving on”. 🙄

DP but…

False positives are rare
APS said the other pooled people don’t have to quarantine


Fully agree though that APS communication sucks.

Anonymous wrote:ANTI TEST: Covid is less lethal to kids than the flu!
PRO TEST: Actually covid has killed more kids than the flu ever has in the last year, and compared to some years 10x as many so...
ANTI TEST: Car accidents though! You can't make me test!
PRO TEST: Just try it, you'll like it.
ANTI TEST: You can't make me. What if my kid misses school for a week even though he's doesn't have it?
PRO TEST: Okay but what if your kid is asymptomatic and but for testing would spread covid to other kids and households?
ANTITEST: They should be vaxxed. That's their problem. This has to end! You can't prove testing is worthwhile! Show me some studies saying it's worth it.
PRO TEST: Shows recent study proving testing saves money by catching cases early and saving on healthcare costs for people who would otherwise get infected absent early detection through testing.
ANTI TEST: NOT THAT STUDY. A study I like, which shows testing from last month! And which doesn't show any positive effects because I don't want to see them!
PRO TEST: This is clearly really going well.
ANTI TEST: Yeah you guys are totally unreasonable.

Sigh. You ignore the reasonable responses about how a study with results from Jan. 2021 all across the country and across grade levels up to college without any discussion of other mitigating preventative factors may not be an apples to apples comparison to APS with mask mandate and vaccination available for those 12+. You’re just insisting that *this study* must only be interpreted the ONE way that YOU insist or else parents are selfish for doing their own critical thinking. You ignore complaints about how APS has poorly communicated how this program works, how the algorithm works, or any acknowledgment that false positives exist that could lead to multiple children in a pool plus their siblings being excluded from school unnecessarily. You also ignore the fact that education loss after 18+ months of virtual learning is a legitimate hardship that needs to be weighed against any potential benefit of catching an asymptomatic infection of a masked child (don’t we all still believe that masks work a significant amount of the time?). Also you ignore the fact that even with Delta spread not one child in Arlington County has died this entire pandemic. So you’re proposing actual harm to children through continued learning loss for a tiny statistical risk of of COVID.

Plus it’s INCREDIBLY privileged to tell people to just try it and deal with the week or so inconvenience of having your kid potentially excluded from school due to a false positive or being in a pool with a positive person when there are parents who need their leave for when their child is actually sick and will not get paid if they do not go to work. Can you imagine risking your paycheck to APS’s vague algorithm?

Stop acting like COVID is the be all, end all of harms to children and families during this pandemic. 80% of us have moved on.

Please provide a source stating that when schools are in session, most transmission of covid to children happens from adult to child rather than from child to child.

Because there are certainly studies that show that children -- even very young asymptomatic children -- can easily transmit covid an in fact are usually the ones who bring it home and infect their families, over and above older teenagers. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210817/youngest-kids-more-likely-spread-covid-to-family

You guys seem really mad.

I can see that you guys are saying that there is a cost benefit analysis to what the early testing can do, and I'm not going to add my kids into the testing group when getting a negative result might adversely affect them over other kids who aren't getting tested. Why should my kid be disadvantaged and unnecessarily miss school in such a small pool of kids when we don't really know if it will help anyone?

I mean, you're not crazy. I can understand your position. I just think it's very me-first and selfish in the same way that people who refuse to wear masks in grocery stores are being selfish. You know that accepting this inconvenience to yourself could hurt someone in the community, but your own need to stay on top is primary, so you won't do it.

Instead, you require curious levels of PROOF for an idea that is at it's core very rational -- early testing in schools can detect covid cases that otherwise wouldn't be caught, and thus quarantining those cases can stop kids from spreading covid to others in the school. Nah, you guys need stats from vaccinated people, and just kids in K-8, and a study that excludes the university kids, and a study that captures the same masking rates we have here in Arlington. We will be good and virtuous, you promise, if you just provide us exactly the precise study data we need at precisely the moment we need it. Whereas I thought people were just supposed to be good and virtuous and protective of their fellow community on principle, but I must have missed some meetings I guess.

This argument is not going to end between these 2 camps so let's put it up for a vote. Oh yeah, the people have already spoken overwhelmingly with 80%+ choosing not do it.

I just hope the losers will accept their loss. Maybe they're going to mount an insurrection because they think the vote is stolen.

Anonymous wrote:ANTI TEST: Covid is less lethal to kids than the flu!
PRO TEST: Actually covid has killed more kids than the flu ever has in the last year, and compared to some years 10x as many so...
ANTI TEST: Car accidents though! You can't make me test!
PRO TEST: Just try it, you'll like it.
ANTI TEST: You can't make me. What if my kid misses school for a week even though he's doesn't have it?
PRO TEST: Okay but what if your kid is asymptomatic and but for testing would spread covid to other kids and households?
ANTITEST: They should be vaxxed. That's their problem. This has to end! You can't prove testing is worthwhile! Show me some studies saying it's worth it.
PRO TEST: Shows recent study proving testing saves money by catching cases early and saving on healthcare costs for people who would otherwise get infected absent early detection through testing.
ANTI TEST: NOT THAT STUDY. A study I like, which shows testing from last month! And which doesn't show any positive effects because I don't want to see them!
PRO TEST: This is clearly really going well.
ANTI TEST: Yeah you guys are totally unreasonable.

Still beating that drum that COVID more dangerous to healthy kids than the flu. Pathetic.

Most spreading of kids, especially young kids, happens from adult to child. So of course the fact it took place in a pre-vax environment. Our county has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country.

And you're the same type of person who would discount any study showing the less than flu level risk to healthy kids with COVID with "delta changes everything" (which it doesn't - it's just more contagious).

COVID is not going away ever, so no, I'm not signing up for this stuff. More than 80%+ of families didn't sign up either. Maybe you should go preach your gospel (because COVID mitigation is your religion) to the parents at the sports parks on the weekend, none of whom I talked to this past weekend signed up their kids.

ANTI TEST: Covid is less lethal to kids than the flu!
PRO TEST: Actually covid has killed more kids than the flu ever has in the last year, and compared to some years 10x as many so...
ANTI TEST: Car accidents though! You can't make me test!
PRO TEST: Just try it, you'll like it.
ANTI TEST: You can't make me. What if my kid misses school for a week even though he's doesn't have it?
PRO TEST: Okay but what if your kid is asymptomatic and but for testing would spread covid to other kids and households?
ANTITEST: They should be vaxxed. That's their problem. This has to end! You can't prove testing is worthwhile! Show me some studies saying it's worth it.
PRO TEST: Shows recent study proving testing saves money by catching cases early and saving on healthcare costs for people who would otherwise get infected absent early detection through testing.
ANTI TEST: NOT THAT STUDY. A study I like, which shows testing from last month! And which doesn't show any positive effects because I don't want to see them!
PRO TEST: This is clearly really going well.
ANTI TEST: Yeah you guys are totally unreasonable.

Anonymous wrote:This is amazing, the same people who called last year's virtual schooling "garbage, non-existent education" now say they would totally sign up for APS's asymptomatic testing if virtual schooling were available while their kids were in quarantine!

So APS virtual schooling last year sucked, unless its unavailability can make me try to seem more reasonable, in which case it is a good thing.

I'm getting whiplash from your quickly changing positions.

I mean, you asked for evidence and I gave it to you, but you have nothing to say about it. You just go back to how hard this would be on your family to have kids home from school for any length of time.

And PP upthread is MAD because this study which was just published 14 days ago is not using recent enough data, because it studies kids from mid-2020 through January 2021!!! Nevermind that it takes several months to compile your data, analyze and write up the results, and get the study accepted for publication. This PP will only be convinced when someone gets results from the last several months, writes up the results and gets them published, and then travels back in time to show us those results in real time. Talk about moving the goalposts!! (PS -- the fact that this study uses earlier data just shows, if anything, that the results NOW with the more virulent Delta virus would spread even faster given its higher transmissiblility than last year's virus, but okay. I wouldn't expect a different result from you guys anyway.) (BTW APS's testing also includes high school kids which you seem to object to in this study for some reason -- if high school kids have higher levels of potential exposure, seems like that's a good reason to test them at APS, and the study tested lower grades as well just as APS is doing but I guess you need to object to something so...)

I get that studies are always going to be delayed based on data collection time. But I think the fact this data is from before vaccination and doesn’t differentiate between a kindergartener’s risk of infection vs. an 18 year old HS student and doesn’t distinguish between school environments (unmasked vs. masked, outdoor lunching, ventilation improvements, etc.) just doesn’t make it comparable to what parents here in Arlington are facing. These are reasonable critiques of this study even if you want to deny it.

Anonymous wrote:This is amazing, the same people who called last year's virtual schooling "garbage, non-existent education" now say they would totally sign up for APS's asymptomatic testing if virtual schooling were available while their kids were in quarantine!

So APS virtual schooling last year sucked, unless its unavailability can make me try to seem more reasonable, in which case it is a good thing.

I'm getting whiplash from your quickly changing positions.

I mean, you asked for evidence and I gave it to you, but you have nothing to say about it. You just go back to how hard this would be on your family to have kids home from school for any length of time.

And PP upthread is MAD because this study which was just published 14 days ago is not using recent enough data, because it studies kids from mid-2020 through January 2021!!! Nevermind that it takes several months to compile your data, analyze and write up the results, and get the study accepted for publication. This PP will only be convinced when someone gets results from the last several months, writes up the results and gets them published, and then travels back in time to show us those results in real time. Talk about moving the goalposts!! (PS -- the fact that this study uses earlier data just shows, if anything, that the results NOW with the more virulent Delta virus would spread even faster given its higher transmissiblility than last year's virus, but okay. I wouldn't expect a different result from you guys anyway.) (BTW APS's testing also includes high school kids which you seem to object to in this study for some reason -- if high school kids have higher levels of potential exposure, seems like that's a good reason to test them at APS, and the study tested lower grades as well just as APS is doing but I guess you need to object to something so...)

I am the person who posted a question about the study. That is the only post I have made on this thread. I'm not sure why asking a question makes me in any way MAD.

I'm not sure what you're imagining, but I'm an elementary parent who is on the fence about testing and trying to understand the relative benefits. You posted a study which you said supported testing. I asked a question about it. Just to be super clear, I haven't written anything objecting to any part of the study or the APS testing program.

I get that this is an emotional topic, and I probably shouldn't expect high quality guidance from an anonymous message board, but....big yikes on this over the top response.

Anonymous wrote:This is amazing, the same people who called last year's virtual schooling "garbage, non-existent education" now say they would totally sign up for APS's asymptomatic testing if virtual schooling were available while their kids were in quarantine!

So APS virtual schooling last year sucked, unless its unavailability can make me try to seem more reasonable, in which case it is a good thing.

I'm getting whiplash from your quickly changing positions.

I mean, you asked for evidence and I gave it to you, but you have nothing to say about it. You just go back to how hard this would be on your family to have kids home from school for any length of time.

And PP upthread is MAD because this study which was just published 14 days ago is not using recent enough data, because it studies kids from mid-2020 through January 2021!!! Nevermind that it takes several months to compile your data, analyze and write up the results, and get the study accepted for publication. This PP will only be convinced when someone gets results from the last several months, writes up the results and gets them published, and then travels back in time to show us those results in real time. Talk about moving the goalposts!! (PS -- the fact that this study uses earlier data just shows, if anything, that the results NOW with the more virulent Delta virus would spread even faster given its higher transmissiblility than last year's virus, but okay. I wouldn't expect a different result from you guys anyway.) (BTW APS's testing also includes high school kids which you seem to object to in this study for some reason -- if high school kids have higher levels of potential exposure, seems like that's a good reason to test them at APS, and the study tested lower grades as well just as APS is doing but I guess you need to object to something so...)

I'm PP above and I concede you all make a good point about this study being conducted before vaccinations were widely available. I don't think that would affect the data much for the K-5 grades but it should probably affect it for the older kids -- most importantly it should make any infections to vaccinated kids less lethal. Again, though, I can't really fault the timeline of the study for not being more recent when it takes time to compile data and publish a study. Moreover, none of you are mentioning the Delta effect either -- because it's decidedly inconvenient for you -- which makes the virus MORE transmissible than the old virus even in vaccinated people. If anything the 2.4 infection rate estimation is probably a severe undercounting when you are talking about Delta.

Anonymous wrote:This is amazing, the same people who called last year's virtual schooling "garbage, non-existent education" now say they would totally sign up for APS's asymptomatic testing if virtual schooling were available while their kids were in quarantine!

So APS virtual schooling last year sucked, unless its unavailability can make me try to seem more reasonable, in which case it is a good thing.

I'm getting whiplash from your quickly changing positions.

I mean, you asked for evidence and I gave it to you, but you have nothing to say about it. You just go back to how hard this would be on your family to have kids home from school for any length of time.

And PP upthread is MAD because this study which was just published 14 days ago is not using recent enough data, because it studies kids from mid-2020 through January 2021!!! Nevermind that it takes several months to compile your data, analyze and write up the results, and get the study accepted for publication. This PP will only be convinced when someone gets results from the last several months, writes up the results and gets them published, and then travels back in time to show us those results in real time. Talk about moving the goalposts!! (PS -- the fact that this study uses earlier data just shows, if anything, that the results NOW with the more virulent Delta virus would spread even faster given its higher transmissiblility than last year's virus, but okay. I wouldn't expect a different result from you guys anyway.) (BTW APS's testing also includes high school kids which you seem to object to in this study for some reason -- if high school kids have higher levels of potential exposure, seems like that's a good reason to test them at APS, and the study tested lower grades as well just as APS is doing but I guess you need to object to something so...)

Well, yes, the garbage education is better that NO education which let's face it that's what asynchronous is. Busywork. And I still won't sign up for testing even if it involved virtual classes.

This is amazing, the same people who called last year's virtual schooling "garbage, non-existent education" now say they would totally sign up for APS's asymptomatic testing if virtual schooling were available while their kids were in quarantine!

So APS virtual schooling last year sucked, unless its unavailability can make me try to seem more reasonable, in which case it is a good thing.

I'm getting whiplash from your quickly changing positions.

I mean, you asked for evidence and I gave it to you, but you have nothing to say about it. You just go back to how hard this would be on your family to have kids home from school for any length of time.

And PP upthread is MAD because this study which was just published 14 days ago is not using recent enough data, because it studies kids from mid-2020 through January 2021!!! Nevermind that it takes several months to compile your data, analyze and write up the results, and get the study accepted for publication. This PP will only be convinced when someone gets results from the last several months, writes up the results and gets them published, and then travels back in time to show us those results in real time. Talk about moving the goalposts!! (PS -- the fact that this study uses earlier data just shows, if anything, that the results NOW with the more virulent Delta virus would spread even faster given its higher transmissiblility than last year's virus, but okay. I wouldn't expect a different result from you guys anyway.) (BTW APS's testing also includes high school kids which you seem to object to in this study for some reason -- if high school kids have higher levels of potential exposure, seems like that's a good reason to test them at APS, and the study tested lower grades as well just as APS is doing but I guess you need to object to something so...)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Vaccines for < 12 available before year's end, it seems. That's when it ends, folks.

Not unless it covers 0-5 years. Everyone said it would end when adults (most high risk) would be vaccinated. More kids are getting COVID but appears to still be same risk (extremely low) of serious cases. This won’t end until literally everyone eligible for the vaccine.

And he we go with moving the goalposts. It's never going to end with some of you people.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also to emphasize a real life example from that article: “One private school in San Francisco with which we worked, and which gave us permission to share its experience — anonymously — has been open since October and has been testing all students and staff members monthly with saliva-based PCR tests; the school had performed more than 1,600 surveillance tests as of March 31. Only 10 came back positive, and eight were determined by clinical review and further testing to be false positives. Of the two true positive tests, one person had mild symptoms and another had a known exposure. In other words, the testing program did not identify any cases among teachers or students that would not have been picked up through ordinary symptom-based and contact-based screening.”

So show me where this surveillance testing has actually been proven effective in schools? Explain to me beyond the vagaries of that it “might prevent” spread why this is a good use of taxpayer funds, loss of learning time, etc?

Okay. How about this recent (8/1/2021) Lancet study on the cost savings achieved last year in at 93 K-12 schools and 18 universities throughout the country through a similar pooled surveillance program?

Surveillance testing was a factor in the early detection of asymptomatic infection and minimization of an outbreak risk. According to our data, a 0.3% positivity rate was observed after testing 253,406 samples. This amounts to 855 individuals identified early before a significant outbreak was observed. Although it would be difficult to estimate cost averted due to variability of positivity rate among asymptomatic populations, we estimated that these 855 individuals could potentially spread infection to 2.4 persons per day in a school setting [[22]]. In the absence of an early detection strategy (surveillance), this would lead to 2052 infected persons due to asymptomatic transmission. Out of these 2052 individuals, up to 25% (or 513 persons) may be symptomatic [[23]]. These persons would have required out-patient management at minimum, costing an average of $500–1000 for out-patient care, according to data released by Blue Cross Blue Shield [[24]]. Therefore, the costs averted for mild to moderate cases can be conservatively estimated to be between $256,500 and 513,000.

Furthermore, nearly 5% of symptomatic individuals (under 20 years old) have presented with severe to critical disease [[25],[26]], Thus nearly 26 individuals would have required hospitalization according to a FAIR Health Study, with the median cost of hospitalization ranging from a low of $34,662 for the 23–30 age group to a high of $45,683 for the 51–60 age group [[24]]. For those under 20 years of age, the average hospitalization cost was estimated at $68,261 and $77,323 for those over 60 years of age. Therefore, the cost averted for severe to critical cases was conservatively estimated to be $901,212 for our test population. These were the most conservative estimates of the cost averted by combining frequent surveillance testing (weekly) with prompt isolation/quarantine procedures in school and university setting. These estimates did not consider the worst-case scenario, where infection to older individuals within the school (teachers, principal) and outside of the school setting (parents, grandparents) would most likely have led to worse clinical outcome due to COVID-19.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00308-4/fulltext. The most conservative estimates to this study suggest that it ultimately prevented around 2052 additional people from becoming infected with Covid, and that this prevention saved well over $1million in medical costs, which may be a drastic underestimation as it does not consider potential effects from older individuals at the school or home (principals or grandparents) becoming infected and having worse clinical outcomes than those allowed for here. This cost analysis further makes no valuation of the monetary value of the continued health impairment caused caused by some Covid cases or the monetary value of the lives of any of the (again, conservatively estimated) 2,052 additional people who would have caught Covid from the 855 individuals identified early through this testing program. (But hey, to the anti-testers, that kind of preventable death is just what happens during an epidemic.)

The study appears to have been subsidized by a funding group so the cost of the testing itself is not given; however it is noted that it's the POOLING of the test results -- the thing that most parents who won't sign their kids up for it -- that makes the testing cheaper and cost effective to perform in bulk. In other words, the people who won't sign up their kids don't really want testing and will only sign up for it if it's the very expensive kind that will break the budget. Because again, they don't care about APS as a whole -- everything comes down to their own individual convenience. No surprise there.

Which is probably where the children who tested positive got it in the first place....not vice versa, getting it at school and taking it home to their parents. But who knows for sure? This study didn't track that. This is all extrapolation from data involving almost 254K people from 93 schools and 18 universities. Do we have that many students being tested?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also to emphasize a real life example from that article: “One private school in San Francisco with which we worked, and which gave us permission to share its experience — anonymously — has been open since October and has been testing all students and staff members monthly with saliva-based PCR tests; the school had performed more than 1,600 surveillance tests as of March 31. Only 10 came back positive, and eight were determined by clinical review and further testing to be false positives. Of the two true positive tests, one person had mild symptoms and another had a known exposure. In other words, the testing program did not identify any cases among teachers or students that would not have been picked up through ordinary symptom-based and contact-based screening.”

So show me where this surveillance testing has actually been proven effective in schools? Explain to me beyond the vagaries of that it “might prevent” spread why this is a good use of taxpayer funds, loss of learning time, etc?

Okay. How about this recent (8/1/2021) Lancet study on the cost savings achieved last year in at 93 K-12 schools and 18 universities throughout the country through a similar pooled surveillance program?

Surveillance testing was a factor in the early detection of asymptomatic infection and minimization of an outbreak risk. According to our data, a 0.3% positivity rate was observed after testing 253,406 samples. This amounts to 855 individuals identified early before a significant outbreak was observed. Although it would be difficult to estimate cost averted due to variability of positivity rate among asymptomatic populations, we estimated that these 855 individuals could potentially spread infection to 2.4 persons per day in a school setting [[22]]. In the absence of an early detection strategy (surveillance), this would lead to 2052 infected persons due to asymptomatic transmission. Out of these 2052 individuals, up to 25% (or 513 persons) may be symptomatic [[23]]. These persons would have required out-patient management at minimum, costing an average of $500–1000 for out-patient care, according to data released by Blue Cross Blue Shield [[24]]. Therefore, the costs averted for mild to moderate cases can be conservatively estimated to be between $256,500 and 513,000.

Furthermore, nearly 5% of symptomatic individuals (under 20 years old) have presented with severe to critical disease [[25],[26]], Thus nearly 26 individuals would have required hospitalization according to a FAIR Health Study, with the median cost of hospitalization ranging from a low of $34,662 for the 23–30 age group to a high of $45,683 for the 51–60 age group [[24]]. For those under 20 years of age, the average hospitalization cost was estimated at $68,261 and $77,323 for those over 60 years of age. Therefore, the cost averted for severe to critical cases was conservatively estimated to be $901,212 for our test population. These were the most conservative estimates of the cost averted by combining frequent surveillance testing (weekly) with prompt isolation/quarantine procedures in school and university setting. These estimates did not consider the worst-case scenario, where infection to older individuals within the school (teachers, principal) and outside of the school setting (parents, grandparents) would most likely have led to worse clinical outcome due to COVID-19.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00308-4/fulltext. The most conservative estimates to this study suggest that it ultimately prevented around 2052 additional people from becoming infected with Covid, and that this prevention saved well over $1million in medical costs, which may be a drastic underestimation as it does not consider potential effects from older individuals at the school or home (principals or grandparents) becoming infected and having worse clinical outcomes than those allowed for here. This cost analysis further makes no valuation of the monetary value of the continued health impairment caused caused by some Covid cases or the monetary value of the lives of any of the (again, conservatively estimated) 2,052 additional people who would have caught Covid from the 855 individuals identified early through this testing program. (But hey, to the anti-testers, that kind of preventable death is just what happens during an epidemic.)

The study appears to have been subsidized by a funding group so the cost of the testing itself is not given; however it is noted that it's the POOLING of the test results -- the thing that most parents who won't sign their kids up for it -- that makes the testing cheaper and cost effective to perform in bulk. In other words, the people who won't sign up their kids don't really want testing and will only sign up for it if it's the very expensive kind that will break the budget. Because again, they don't care about APS as a whole -- everything comes down to their own individual convenience. No surprise there.

The linked study indicates that this pooled testing program was done over twenty weeks between August, 2020 and January 2021. Isn't that before the vast majority of these 2052 people who would have caught covid could have been vaccinated? You've characterized this as a recent study- I see that it was recently published, but I'm not quite understanding why these results are applicable to a testing program conducted in Arlington in school year 2021-22, particularly given the vaccination rates in this area.