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Would love to see the data you have showing that private schools that stayed open, or public schools that fought to stay open, contributed significantly to addi

Would love to see the data you have showing that private schools that stayed open, or public schools that fought to stay open, contributed significantly to additional deaths, such that “millions more dead” would even be a fair comparison to the impact of schools choosing to go virtual instead.

makeitdouble 4y ago
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8266060/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8266060/ > Early evidence indicated that schools were low risk and children were unlikely to be very infectious, but it is becoming clear that children and youth can acquire and transmit COVID-19 in school settings and that transmission clusters and outbreaks can be large.
- mattcwilson 4y ago
  Thanks! A little confused though, the protocols run here all assume the classroom stays in-person and just goes into different isolation measures. Most of the protocols (besides the baseline, do-nothing protocol) have some effect, but aren’t perfect. > None of the mitigation protocols we modeled, initiated by a positive test in a symptomatic individual, are able to prevent large transmission clusters unless the transmission rate is low (in which case large clusters do not occur in any case). Among the measures we modeled, only rapid universal monitoring (for example by regular, onsite, pooled testing) accomplished this prevention. But as it says there, prevention can be achieved by emphasizing frequent on-site testing (which is super consistent with what we know about avoiding spread events generally). > Without closing schools down entirely, if we want to prevent large clusters from occurring altogether, this leaves approaches to detect potential index cases before they show symptoms. Pooled testing, wastewater monitoring and airflow monitoring have all been proposed with this aim [42, 43]. We simulated introduced cases and resulting transmission under the baseline of no regular testing (with the same baseline as above, symptomatic individuals going home) and compared this to weekly or every three day testing or environmental monitoring covering all individuals in the class. The results for the total cluster size are shown in Fig 6. Regular pooled or otherwise universal testing dramatically reduces the sizes of even the most unfortunate clusters (infectious index, higher-risk room), for example from a median of 12 to a median size of 3 if the index is asymptomatic. But even with regular pooled or otherwise universal testing, testing in a matter of hours (e.g. onsite) has a substantially greater impact than testing at a centralized laboratory (if that takes 2 days including shipping time). This doesn’t seem like a strong argument in favor of virtual school?
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    As I understand, the base premise of the research here is that remote schooling is the proven no-risk solution, and their goal is to evaluate other strategies that could somewhat keep contamination at manageable levels for in-person classrooms. It is in particular useful for cases where virtual schools are just not an option (on the top of my head, toddlers and lower age kids for instance. If their parents can't teach them for whatever reasons, in-person teaching will be critical to their development, and they can't wait 3 years that the dust settles) Now this study might have a lot more different political stuff going on, but I generally think the situation with kids is complicated and there is no one single solution to the learning problem. We'd need to adjust to a lot of cases.
    - mattcwilson 4y ago
      “Remote schooling is the proven no-risk solution” - where are you getting that? The abstract you cited is talking about the harms of remote learning. The paper concludes that an effective testing regimen can, in fact, contain spread. This is the lesson we should take from this whole experience. This is the heart of why Japan and South Korea did so comparatively well during the pandemic: test, trace, and isolate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7688188/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7688188/ https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-020-01791-8 https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...
croon 4y ago
You're arguing for data examining something that has happened, while all decisions regarding a new virus act on data only available prior. Acting from an assumption that an infectious disease spreads more if children from every family gather daily in crowded classrooms doesn't seem like an unreasonable one. I would also love more data on this, preferably before the next pandemic.
- fsdfdsfdsaafds 4y ago
  The irony being that many kids then spent a lot of time with their grandparents, so that their parents could continue to hold down their jobs while schools were closed.
- wellpast 4y ago
  This is a worrisome line of reasoning -- that you can't act to protect children until you have 'all the data' about this or that narrow threat vector.
  - croon 4y ago
    It's a worrisome dilemma, in which you are forced to reason. There is no win scenario, only varying degrees of unknown loss states.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      And this highlights that you are not free to make that decision and reason for yourself- the government mandated what they thought is best.
    - wellpast 4y ago
      Fair. The concern, however, is when the state forces everyone to reason one particular way. The other concern is that arguing from a who has 'all the data' position is seriously fraught ... but the state and its mandates get underwritten when enough people embrace this fraught & simplistic mentality.
    - mattcwilson 4y ago

makeitdouble 4y ago

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8266060/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8266060/ > Early evidence indicated that schools were low risk and children were unlikely to be very infectious, but it is becoming clear that children and youth can acquire and transmit COVID-19 in school settings and that transmission clusters and outbreaks can be large.

mattcwilson 4y ago
Thanks! A little confused though, the protocols run here all assume the classroom stays in-person and just goes into different isolation measures. Most of the protocols (besides the baseline, do-nothing protocol) have some effect, but aren’t perfect. > None of the mitigation protocols we modeled, initiated by a positive test in a symptomatic individual, are able to prevent large transmission clusters unless the transmission rate is low (in which case large clusters do not occur in any case). Among the measures we modeled, only rapid universal monitoring (for example by regular, onsite, pooled testing) accomplished this prevention. But as it says there, prevention can be achieved by emphasizing frequent on-site testing (which is super consistent with what we know about avoiding spread events generally). > Without closing schools down entirely, if we want to prevent large clusters from occurring altogether, this leaves approaches to detect potential index cases before they show symptoms. Pooled testing, wastewater monitoring and airflow monitoring have all been proposed with this aim [42, 43]. We simulated introduced cases and resulting transmission under the baseline of no regular testing (with the same baseline as above, symptomatic individuals going home) and compared this to weekly or every three day testing or environmental monitoring covering all individuals in the class. The results for the total cluster size are shown in Fig 6. Regular pooled or otherwise universal testing dramatically reduces the sizes of even the most unfortunate clusters (infectious index, higher-risk room), for example from a median of 12 to a median size of 3 if the index is asymptomatic. But even with regular pooled or otherwise universal testing, testing in a matter of hours (e.g. onsite) has a substantially greater impact than testing at a centralized laboratory (if that takes 2 days including shipping time). This doesn’t seem like a strong argument in favor of virtual school?
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  As I understand, the base premise of the research here is that remote schooling is the proven no-risk solution, and their goal is to evaluate other strategies that could somewhat keep contamination at manageable levels for in-person classrooms. It is in particular useful for cases where virtual schools are just not an option (on the top of my head, toddlers and lower age kids for instance. If their parents can't teach them for whatever reasons, in-person teaching will be critical to their development, and they can't wait 3 years that the dust settles) Now this study might have a lot more different political stuff going on, but I generally think the situation with kids is complicated and there is no one single solution to the learning problem. We'd need to adjust to a lot of cases.
  - mattcwilson 4y ago
    “Remote schooling is the proven no-risk solution” - where are you getting that? The abstract you cited is talking about the harms of remote learning. The paper concludes that an effective testing regimen can, in fact, contain spread. This is the lesson we should take from this whole experience. This is the heart of why Japan and South Korea did so comparatively well during the pandemic: test, trace, and isolate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7688188/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7688188/ https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-020-01791-8 https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

croon 4y ago

You're arguing for data examining something that has happened, while all decisions regarding a new virus act on data only available prior. Acting from an assumption that an infectious disease spreads more if children from every family gather daily in crowded classrooms doesn't seem like an unreasonable one. I would also love more data on this, preferably before the next pandemic.

fsdfdsfdsaafds 4y ago
The irony being that many kids then spent a lot of time with their grandparents, so that their parents could continue to hold down their jobs while schools were closed.
wellpast 4y ago
This is a worrisome line of reasoning -- that you can't act to protect children until you have 'all the data' about this or that narrow threat vector.
- croon 4y ago
  It's a worrisome dilemma, in which you are forced to reason. There is no win scenario, only varying degrees of unknown loss states.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    And this highlights that you are not free to make that decision and reason for yourself- the government mandated what they thought is best.
  - wellpast 4y ago
    Fair. The concern, however, is when the state forces everyone to reason one particular way. The other concern is that arguing from a who has 'all the data' position is seriously fraught ... but the state and its mandates get underwritten when enough people embrace this fraught & simplistic mentality.
  - mattcwilson 4y ago