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The single biggest issue I'm seeing in the original post is 40% of teachers being out. All the talk of being corralled into study hall is the fallout from this

by soneil 5y ago

The single biggest issue I'm seeing in the original post is 40% of teachers being out. All the talk of being corralled into study hall is the fallout from this 40% figure. With this, it really does't matter if zero children 5-18 have died of covid - the school still can't operate correctly with half of its staff missing. Solving "sending children to school" without solving "having teachers available" results in zero education, only free childcare. If that's the goal, sure, shove them all in study hall. If we actually plan to educate them, we need to figure out how to insulate the educators from the children. Between vaccinations and the nature of the current variant, the mortality rate is essentially a non-issue. That's fantastic news. But it doesn't change that during a surge of cases, on-site schooling isn't really fit for purpose. "Probably won't die" isn't the only relevant metric.

parkingrift 5y ago
>The single biggest issue I'm seeing in the original post is 40% of teachers being out. All the talk of being corralled into study hall is the fallout from this 40% figure. The reason teachers are out is because of the absurd quarantine rules. If you are fully vaccinated, but not boosted, you are required to quarantine for 5-10 days if you were exposed to someone with "confirmed or suspected COVID-19." At present the rate of boosters across the adult population is around 20%. Can you imagine how often a teacher is exposed to someone with a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19? I'm not trashing on teachers specifically here. It's human nature. TLDR... 40% of the teachers aren't out sick with COVID-19. The quarantine rules are taking a problem and turning it into a catastrophe. It honestly seems as if our quarantine rules in NYC are based on best available data from April 2020.
- soneil 5y ago
  That's a tough nut to solve, because by time you find out if quarantine was necessary or not, it's too late. So do we err towards spreading less, or err towards teaching more. It seems difficult to have both. (Well, we could - replace whiteboards with screens, have the students onsite but the teachers remote. Not sure this is entirely practical?)
  - native_samples 5y ago
    It's endemic dude. It doesn't matter if teachers quarantine or not. Social distancing, lockdowns and quarantines have achieved nothing at any point in any of this and Omicron isn't severe enough to justify it anyway. Consider: Sweden is beating the European average for COVID deaths big time and they were always the least into intense countermeasures: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&uniformYAxis=0&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=SWE~Europe https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
    - soneil 5y ago
      Sweden really does just turn into a "choose your own data" adventure. They have double their neighbours' excess deaths - you really can use them to demonstrate any point you like by picking which data tells the story you want to tell.
      - native_samples 5y ago
        No, you cannot, even though people constantly try. You really need to use all the data for countries that are reasonably western/developed (to avoid Africa with a much younger population and less testing biasing everything). It's all available and there are no valid excuses not to. As I never tire of pointing out, Swedish people aren't aliens and nobody claimed they were before they inconveniently proved the countermeasures weren't warranted. If you use all the data (from developed countries), Sweden ends up way ahead, which is conclusive proof of many things.
        yorwba 5y ago
        Does it also conclusively prove that their countermeasures are warranted? https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-tightens-covid-restrictions-cases-mount-2021-12-21/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-tightens-covid-r...
  - 5y ago
trembonator 5y ago

by soneil 5y ago

parkingrift 5y ago

>The single biggest issue I'm seeing in the original post is 40% of teachers being out. All the talk of being corralled into study hall is the fallout from this 40% figure. The reason teachers are out is because of the absurd quarantine rules. If you are fully vaccinated, but not boosted, you are required to quarantine for 5-10 days if you were exposed to someone with "confirmed or suspected COVID-19." At present the rate of boosters across the adult population is around 20%. Can you imagine how often a teacher is exposed to someone with a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19? I'm not trashing on teachers specifically here. It's human nature. TLDR... 40% of the teachers aren't out sick with COVID-19. The quarantine rules are taking a problem and turning it into a catastrophe. It honestly seems as if our quarantine rules in NYC are based on best available data from April 2020.

soneil 5y ago
That's a tough nut to solve, because by time you find out if quarantine was necessary or not, it's too late. So do we err towards spreading less, or err towards teaching more. It seems difficult to have both. (Well, we could - replace whiteboards with screens, have the students onsite but the teachers remote. Not sure this is entirely practical?)
- native_samples 5y ago
  It's endemic dude. It doesn't matter if teachers quarantine or not. Social distancing, lockdowns and quarantines have achieved nothing at any point in any of this and Omicron isn't severe enough to justify it anyway. Consider: Sweden is beating the European average for COVID deaths big time and they were always the least into intense countermeasures: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&uniformYAxis=0&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=SWE~Europe https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
  - soneil 5y ago
    Sweden really does just turn into a "choose your own data" adventure. They have double their neighbours' excess deaths - you really can use them to demonstrate any point you like by picking which data tells the story you want to tell.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      No, you cannot, even though people constantly try. You really need to use all the data for countries that are reasonably western/developed (to avoid Africa with a much younger population and less testing biasing everything). It's all available and there are no valid excuses not to. As I never tire of pointing out, Swedish people aren't aliens and nobody claimed they were before they inconveniently proved the countermeasures weren't warranted. If you use all the data (from developed countries), Sweden ends up way ahead, which is conclusive proof of many things.
      - yorwba 5y ago
        Does it also conclusively prove that their countermeasures are warranted? https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-tightens-covid-restrictions-cases-mount-2021-12-21/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-tightens-covid-r...
- 5y ago

trembonator 5y ago