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Some canadian provinces are still closing down schools at the moment.
by auxym 5y ago
Some canadian provinces are still closing down schools at the moment.
- chmod600 5y agoWhy? Sincere question. Is there science to back it up or is it just fear of making a wrong decision?
- Spooky23 5y agoThey have vaccine shortages. The issue is the teachers, not the kids.
- chmod600 5y agoAre schools a major source of transmission for teachers and staff?
- Spooky23 5y agoYes. Workplaces with lots of contact always are. In Nov-Feb, I was losing 40-60 employees a week to infection or quarantine. Mostly people in essential IT support positions My sons school was open most of the year, but shutdown for a month due to teacher quarantines.
- sam_4675 5y agoSchools are different than a business setting. Young children have less chance of getting it and less of spreading it. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/pediatric-hcp.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/pediatric-hcp....
- Spooky23 5y agoThe population of humans in schools includes many adults.
- raydev 5y agoYou just contradicted the website you linked, I'm confused. > Hospitalization rates in children are significantly lower than hospitalization rates in adults with COVID-19, suggesting that children may have less severe illness from COVID-19 compared to adults. Less severe response to it, not "less chance of getting it." And then just two lines later: > Recent evidence suggests that compared to adults, children likely have similar viral loads in their nasopharynx,7 similar secondary infections rates, and can spread the virus to others I don't know how you arrived at your opinion here.
- auxym 5y agoSincerely, I don't know. Almost all of the at risk population here has had at least a first shot. But the situation in Ontario has been pretty bad the past few weeks. But I don't follow the science closely enough. I hope they're making the right call, because it's really hard on the kids. I'm just glad my own little guy is not of school age yet, and in fact is young enough to be mostly oblivious to the whole thing.
- raydev 5y agoConveniently skipping over the occupied ICUs. How do you not know that our medical system was overwhelmed or that the rise in cases only reversed after we shut down schools both times in the last 4 months?
- ceejayoz 5y agoSurely that wasn’t the only tightened restriction or change in behavior during the case surge, though? There are a lot of confounding variables in these analyses. It’s going to take years to tease them apart, and we may never truly know for certain in some cases.
- raydev 5y agoPerhaps, but do you lock everything down mid-spike when you know the current rate will lead to extreme triage measures within two weeks, or do you wait two weeks to act and start rejecting patients as they continue to flood in?
- ceejayoz 5y ago"the rise in cases only reversed after we shut down schools both times" implies a causal relationship, though, while ignoring the other mitigations that went into effect. The point is not "is it wise to take precautions"; that's obvious. The point is we don't necessarily have great data on which precautions work better than others because they're largely all being put into effect at the same time.
- raydev 5y agoI don’t know why no one is saying this, but Ontario’s ICU numbers skyrocketed to 900 at the peak just a few weeks ago. We’re only down to 700 occupied beds now and normal medical procedures are still paused because of the enormous ICU load. It wasn’t until we closed schools that the trend reversed. People are so quick to blame fear without actually looking at the data
- chmod600 5y agoIs the data conclusive? I try to look at the data, but it seems like a mixed bag when it comes to school closures.
- raydev 5y agoI don't know if we can conclusively say what specific action needs to be taken other than halt contact. We were on an extremely bad path, and I don't know what else could have been done since we had little vaccine supply at that time.
- bitcurious 5y ago> It wasn’t until we closed schools that the trend reversed. The other way to think about it is that it wasn’t until things got bad that people got cautious. Kind of how people take homeopathic drugs when they are sickest.
- raydev 5y agoYeah because it appears to have helped reverse cases both in January and this month.
- hervature 5y agoYou mean cases started to drop after everyone stopped traveling for Christmas and vaccines started to hit meaningful numbers?
- raydev 5y agoWho knows. The alternative was not closing schools while cases were increasing exponentially. Is that a theory we should be testing when we've already paused elective medical procedures due to the wave of COVID patients?
- chmod600 5y agoI said "in hindsight", meaning that we don't fault the decisions at the time. I think now is when we begin (without blame) to start evaluating what worked and what didn't. Unfortunately, some of the things done were disruptive, and if they were also ineffective, that will lead to blame. But our mission should be honesty first, and have faith that reasonable people can accept that the best decisions were taken with the information available at the time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nradov 5y agoDid it actually help, or was that just coincidental?
- raydev 5y agoThe alternative was not closing schools while cases and incoming patients were increasing exponentially. Is that a theory we should be testing when we've already paused elective medical procedures due to the already high numbers of people in the hospital?