Only 31 deaths of children under age 15 involving COVID-19. Common flu-related child deaths from 37 to 187 during regular flu season. Should Governors

[LeafByNiggle]

It’s non-political straight talk. Occurred on March 20.

An interview in March, even if it is of a public health official, does not stand up to the quickly-evolving knowledge base on this virus. Don’t fall for it just because it comports with your ideology.

Gloves and masks are largely non-sense.

Gloves, maybe. Masks definitely not. That is misinformation.

Trying to stop the flu is like trying to stop the wind and the only way to stop it is thru a vaccine. This coronavirus is the same.

Even if we can’t stop it, we can slow it down a lot, so that when a vaccine arrives, more people will be left alive and healthy to take advantage of it.

Make sure you protect the most vulnerable.

You do that by reducing community spread in general.

This will continue to be around for months, and how long are we prepared to cancel everything?

Strawman argument, because the officials are not cancelling everything.

The death rate is…

…a moving target when infections are rising as rapidly as they are now. Deaths lag cases by at least 2 weeks. And many of those who do survive still end up with permanent organ damage.

Data is very weak this virus is transmitted on surfaces and hand sanitizer is not likely effective for this virus.

It is not the most common form of transmission, but it is theoretically possible, and not very expensive to mitigate - like washing your hands.

The masks are not going to protect you, because they allow air to come in on the sides and they are not effective at all.

They are not meant primarily to protect the wearer from getting infected. They are meant to prevent the wearer from spreading infection. Except for medical grade N95 masks that do protect both ways. But please, don’t go out and order a box of medical grade N95 masks because front line medical workers are still having shortages.

Masks are only partially effective if you are sick and they may contain some of the virus if you cough out.

That’s much better than not wearing one at all.

 

[JoeFreedom]

Ah, so here we are again. The man who is on the show is heavily respected and his pedigree is a mile long. Simply because HIS science doesn’t agree with YOUR agenda, he’s a crackpot.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The man who is on the show is heavily respected and his pedigree is a mile long.

Not quite as long as the combined pedigrees of the experts at the NIH and the CDC.

 

[Elizabeth3]

It’s not going to change class sizes at all. My school district has about 10,000 students. Of those, only 300 have opted for the at-home online plan.

I was speaking about my school district and it does make a difference for us. We have roughly 1500 kids from K-12. I was not talking about every school district across the board.

It is my fervent prayer that you are able to laugh in my face this time next year over all my unnecessary worry. That the one or two studies whose communities do not mirror the US at all were correct and no one gets sick and dies. Please, dear Lord!

I wouldn’t laugh in anyone’s face for any reason. I also hope no one gets sick and dies. We do know that this virus is easier on the young. It’s not 100% but we are never going to have that guarantee with any virus. Dr. Birx did say the other day that it was recommended that allowances be made for teachers who were older or immunocompromised. I agree with her in that children and teachers with certain conditions should probably remain online to be protected.

I head to the grocery store every week to ten days. That’s it.

I go to mass every week or two, in a church building designed for a thousand but only allowing 200. I wear a mask, and I sit 6 or 10 or 20 feet from the nearest other person.

I have not been to family gatherings, or gatherings with friends, or restaurants.

I’m not sure what your personal public interactions have to do with the point I was making which was that teachers can pick up the virus in other places besides the classroom. I have several relatives that are teachers who are not limiting their social schedule to the extent you are. I provide child care in my home for a school social worker. She is always out and about with her kids.

 

[Elizabeth3]

As for what makes me “so special”… I’m not asking to be treated “special.” When countries around the world closed down to save lives I worked from home – 12 - 15 hour days sometimes. And we reached out to students via our online grading/communication/lesson platform. And we reached out to them by phone call, emails, Dojo, and in person (from a safe distance and with masks).

And let me make something perfectly clear – working at a grocery store, or in an office building, or at a home improvement store is NOT the same as being cooped up in a classroom with 20 to 30 students for 7 hours a day. The level of exposure is exponentially higher than passing someone in the aisle at a store.

You seem to be taking my points about teachers in general very personally. I never said teachers or you personally were asking to be treated as special. I was responding to the person who was arguing that if teachers go to work, then they are at risk of getting the virus. My point was that they aren’t more special than every other person who goes out to work every day and risks exposure. IIRC, lockdowns weren’t done to save lives, they were done to flatten the curve so the hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed all at once and so the PPE and ventilator supply chain could get moving to meet anticipated need.

I think levels of exposure vary for different jobs. Someone working in a store is exposed to a high volume of different people every day which increases their chances of picking something up from someone. It could be argued that being with a smaller, core group in the same room limits your exposure chances to just that group rather than the wider exposure to the public. No one is saying there is no risk but again, we are never going to be able to get our risk down to 0.

Keeping kids in small groups? Really?

And just where are the extra teachers coming from to teach the extra groups that will need to be made? And where are these extra groups going to hold classes when every available room in the building was already being used before the pandemic? If you haven’t already asked your local middle school, it might be time to make a phone call to find out.

What I mean by small groups is not splitting a normal classroom into smaller groups so much as each homeroom stays in the same room all day and the kids don’t intermingle with the larger population of kids by switching classes.

 

[EXdrinker]

I asked nothing of you except that you remember that you are not forced to do that job and are doing it of your own free will. That you read so much more into my few simple statements is frankly a bit scary. Is critical reading or thinking not taught any longer?

 

[Peaceable]

I hear you on this, and I’m so heartbroken to see teachers vilified during this pandemic for their legitimate concerns about their safety.

Nobody asked for this, least of all teachers. Being on the front line has risks, nobody should be telling teachers what they should and should not be willing to risk, especially when their lives and safety are at stake.

 

[pnewton]

Gloves, maybe. Masks definitely not. That is misinformation.

Gloves and masks are such separate issues. I did a double-take when I saw them in the same sentence. Yes, we have learned a lot in five months.

Now the youngest are beginning day-care, and perhaps some will foolhardily be sent to school.

Perhaps the word fool in all forms should not be used on a Catholic site, considering what Jesus said about that word. Sending kids to school is a risk. Not sending kids to school is also a risk. More to the point, how kids go to school will change the equation of risks.

On a practical note, I have decided to allow my son to start back in person, and I am not a fool. I will rely on my knowledge and prudence to make what I know is the most sound decision. I have respect for those that choose otherwise.

 

[Peeps]

Again, that is part of the teacher’s supervisory job. Children can learn to play in small groups rather than all together. Or play time outside can be eliminated and the school day (and year) shortened so that the children do not go bonkers.

I can agree with you about shortening the school day, but it’s already very short in most public schools, around 6 hours. But I agree that if P.E. is eliminated, and sadly, the arts, and the concentration is simply on reading, writing, and arithmetic/math, the school day could be shortened to just few hours. It’s a terrible shame to eliminate arts and P.E., as there are always a group of students who thrive in these classes and end up in careers in the arts or sports (e.g., my daughter).

HOWEVER…you must know that many working parents rely on “school” as “daycare” for their children. Many of my co-workers have their children in a “before school” child-care program that starts at 6:00 a.m., and then the children are in school until 2:30 p.m., and then they go to an “after school” program that lasts until the parent is able to pick their children up.

In the hospital where I work, there is an on-site child-care center that begins with tiny babies (often only 6 weeks old), and runs through kindergarten–in fact, their kindergarten program is quite good. This child-care program has been up and running since the very beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., and not one child has come down with COVID-19, and not one hospital employee, including the child-care workers and kindergarten teachers, have come down with COVID-19.

Other child-care centers in our city are open, as essential hospital workers have to have a place for their children to go during working hours, and again, NO cases of COVID-19 have occurred in these centers, or among the parents, many of whom are exposed daily to COVID-19 patients (although they are wearing extensive PPE per policy).

I’m not sure what is the “right thing” to do, meltzerboy2, but facts are that online school simply doesn’t work for many parents, and not at all for working parents. It causes great stress between parents and their children, and exhausts the parents, who then become more at-risk for COVID-19 and other illnesses. And not everyone has a loving grandparent who is capable of taking on the job of helping a child stay on task with online learning while parents are at work.

I would rather see school cancelled entirely for the duration of the pandemic, and children allowed to “catch up” after the COVID-19 is no longer a public danger, than see parents and children struggling to fulfil “requirements” of school during the crisis. Those families who can continue educating their children can do so, but other parents can simply do their jobs while children are home with relatives and sitters having fun during this unprecedented world-wide disaster. They WILL catch up!! Children have a lot of resilience.

 

[KyPerson]

My grandchildren are looking forward to going back to school. I work at a university which is going to open with lots of safeguards. I have been working in a closed office this summer but I really want to see the students again. I miss them and my grandchildren miss their friends and teachers. On-line learning just isn’t the same and we are social creatures by nature.

 

[meltzerboy2]

I think that, at least in areas where the virus is hitting hard, it might be a good idea to close schools altogether and focus instead on achieving some sort of plateau in the number of hospitalizations and deaths. We are really at war with this virus, and just like a war with a foreign adversary, we cannot expect to have business as usual. The virus seems to be on the move, so to speak, and places in the Midwest are seeing an uptick in cases now, so in these regions, perhaps preventive care will stem the tide. The whole thing, as you point out, is a mess for children and their parents as well as the economy. The social unrest in the country is yet another complication. As an aside, I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind wanting to be President at a time like this. Then again, given the two candidates who are running for (re)election, what am I thinking?

 

[Erikaspirit16]

I don’t want to get sucked into this, but I have read the entire thread, and two important points have been ignored:

1. Everyone (on both sides) seems to be assuming “schools” means all schools everywhere. If you look at some state maps that show the Covid cases by county, you can see that there are some counties with only a handful (literally) of cases; even a few with no cases. Why not let them open schools with a few basic hygiene suggestions? NY City is not the same as some county in the Adirondacks. Conversely, opening a school in some current hot spot like Phoenix or Miami seems like the height of folly. And of course most counties would be somewhere in between. CDC or the state health dept. should set a reasonably high bar (a list of conditions that have to be met) for re-opening schools, and when a county is able to meet those conditions, it opens up.

And, since there is evidence that children 10 and under have a smaller chance of both getting the virus and spreading the virus, why not open schools for them, even in areas with a higher infection rate? And for those in grade 6 and up (usually middle school, separate from grades 1-5) have a different set of rules (staggered attendance, study from home, etc.)

Also, during the 1918-20 pandemic and a later TB pandemic, classes were held outside. There are photos of students with coats on at their desks sitting outside. This probably wouldn’t fly today, but in some places (California, Arizona…) it might.

1. Summer camps. There have been a lot of stories about them opening and then shutting down. I’ll use a story from Fox since it probably has more credibility here: Coronavirus forces summer camps across America to close | Fox Business
   A religious camp in Missouri closed after having 82 cases. Another camp in Texas closed after 76 cases. The thing that struck me (it’s not in the Fox report) is that the camp in Missouri really took extraordinary precautions. I don’t think anyone could fault them. And yet they weren’t able to stop the spread. And yes, I understand that a summer camp where the kids are staying there is not the same as a school where they go home to eat and sleep. And it’s not clear to me what ages the campers were. But it’s a close enough comparison that it deserves some consideration.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

Finally, a comment about the studies supporting re-opening of schools. There has been no controlled experiment, and of course that’s probably impossible since it involves children as guinea pigs. The closest I’ve seen is the Sweden vs. Finland study that showed you had the same % of children getting the virus whether the schools were open or not. But that study was not peer reviewed. And it ignores some questions: We now know that perhaps as many as 40% of people can have the virus and spread it and yet have no symptoms. All of the children weren’t tested. What % ACTUALLY were infected? We don’t know. Did the infected children spread the disease to adults? We don’t know. Did the Swedes, who kept schools open, have some measures in place to stop the virus? They know, but I don’t.

The other stories are exactly that, stories. Sure, some kid in France was infected and came in contact with a lot of other kids and didn’t infect any of them. But there are all sorts of factors involved, and we know nothing about them. Was it just a case of blind luck? (If you flip coins for long enough, eventually you will gets heads 10 times in row.) I think the bottom line of all this is that “We don’t know.”

 

[TC3033]

I asked nothing of you except that you remember that you are not forced to do that job and are doing it of your own free will.

And like I said up thread, they’re also not enlisting 11B in the US Army either, but they do have contracts and I’m yet to see one that includes accepting such potential health risks.

 

[tuffsmurf]

As a Swedish person I can tell you that the measures to prevent spreading the virus at schools was minimal. No masks or anything.

I support keeping the schools open, but I think the parents should have the right to keep their child at home if they think that is what is best. Here, they weren’t given that option and some parents apparently got reported to child protection services because they kept them at home.

 

[1cthlctrth]

The good thing is that the Los Angeles teachers union might have found a preventative measure for the spread of COVID-19:

JustTheNews.com, which was founded by journalist John Solomon, was first to report on the LAUSD linking – in part – the reopening to police defunding. The report also pointed out that the union said charter schools “drain resources from district schools.”

Teachers unions have long been criticized by Republicans as an extension of the Democrat Party. Republicans will likely use the paper to support that claim.

The union’s paper did not offer a dollar amount to cut from the police. The Los Angeles City Council already cut the LAPD budget by $150 million and said the money will be earmarked for disadvantaged communities. The union did not immediately respond to an after-hours email from Fox News.

LA teachers union wants more money by defunding the police, calls for medicare for all | Fox News

So, if the teachers union’s demands to reduce funding for the police and charter schools are met, their concern for COVID-19 spread will apparently suddenly be reduced.

It’s good when the children aren’t used as pawns.

 

[Mister_Friscus]

Personally I’m getting a little tired of the cavalier and sometimes even hostile attitudes I’m seeing towards teachers’ lives.

As a former educator, I’m tired of seeing teachers be so fragile. Why do we as a society think nothing of sending so many Doctors, nurses, therapists, etc. into the fray? Why are they fine to be supposed guinea pigs but teachers aren’t? Why are teachers so special?

From the look of things, there’s not a crazy amount of death to Docs, nurses, etc, so it’s in the same ballpark to think there probably wouldn’t be some crazy teacher death spike. I think teachers are playing possum here to avoid having to step up and help society, not to mention to continue to work from home.

It’s interesting how school is supposedly so important to certain political ideologies until an orange president comes along… then it’s totally expendable. It’s also about Trump. I think if Trump shut down schools, most liberal professors would fight to keep them open and accuse him of being anti-education and some totalitarian. Since Trump wants schools open, they’ll fight to keep them closed here. Trump has been cast as a such an evil that agreeing with him, on anything is some sort of support of his supposedly evilness. It’s very odd to watch play out.

 

[1CatholicGirl]

Yes, ma’am! Absolutely!!

Thank you for this post! I’m in the same boat…right there with you. Prayers for you and for all of us!

I send you a virtual, socially distanced hug! Teachers are undervalued, underpaid, and now they expect us to willingly and joyfully risk death, too.

 

[1CatholicGirl]

What if one of the children who dies is your child?

Would this change your mind?

 

[1CatholicGirl]

Wow! Teachers step up and help society every single day! Schools, in the last number of years, have been expected to be all things to all people. We feed the kids breakfast and lunch, and in many cases we give them dinner and food to take home for weekends. We are expected to teach them social skills, manners, academics, and any number of things that they are not getting at home. I’ve been physically assaulted (and have a permanent, life altering injury because of it), verbally abused, and lied about. And I get up and go back to the trenches the next day because kids’ lives matter.

We are required to have the same amount of education as a doctor (with continuous classes throughout our careers), yet do not receive anywhere even close to the same compensation. In fact, my salary is significantly less than doctors or nurses. Yet, they knew they’d be working amongst communicable and even deadly diseases (and I am not minimizing their contribution- I’ve shed many a tear for them during the pandemic). We figured we would deal with lice and every day illnesses, but not deadly diseases that we could take home to our families.

Finally, Mister Friscus, being a former educator, not fragile, and in favor of contributing to society, when can we expect you to be back in the classroom for your stint of teaching during covid? We are in desperate need of teachers!