The N Paulding HS, GA COVID Experi(ment)ence
A high school in Georgia came under fire last week for a picture of crowded hallways with maybe a handful of kids wearing masks. One student was suspended for recirculating that picture on social media. That suspension has just been reversed, for reasons, I’m sure.
The news this morning is that 6 students and 3 staff members have tested positive for COVID. Keep in mind the testing window for a positive result is about at least 5 days, which makes it less likely that these 9 individuals contracted the virus from going to school. But they were each at school for at least some part of the week potentially spreading it within the school/community.
The COVID numbers in Michigan are much less than what GA is seeing right now but it is discouraging to see this happen and what it portends for in person schooling. My wife and I are still weighing our options as we have a high risk kid at home who has been to the ER several times and admitted before for common respiratory viruses.
Spoiler alert, a lot more than 9 people at that school have Covid.
what options are you weighing other than online learning from home?
Home schooling
remote Public school curriculum
remote private education curriculum
pods
August 9th, 2020 at 11:15 AM ^
Hope all goes as well as possible.
My oldest daughter elected to defer her freshman year at Northeastern (more because of the diminished educational experience than because of health concerns). She’s watching/tutoring two kids (5 and 7) who are going the online/public school root. If you go with remote public option, that might be something to consider.
August 9th, 2020 at 10:03 AM ^
We’ve started a “pod” with two other families. We all have two kids with similar ages (5&3, 5&3, 5&2.5) with the older child starting kindergarten. We’re all doing our district’s virtual program, and are passing the kids house to house. So, 1 or 2 days a week, we’ve got six kids at our house, and the rest of the week we can go to work.
All three families take this virus seriously and take good measures to avoid exposure, so while we are increasing our risk of exposure with this experiment, it’s hopefully minimal. Now, our kids will get to socialize, and we’ll get to work.
Pray for us!
August 9th, 2020 at 10:31 AM ^
Good luck, and as someone who has a close relationship with the public school system, thank you for using your district's virtual program. There is a lot of concern right now that the pandemic will cause affluent families (I don't mean to assume your SES status) to turn away from public education.
August 9th, 2020 at 12:35 PM ^
Watch out for Cousin Balki’s youngest. He’s a handful!
This is a great setup if all the parents can hack it. My kids are each one year older than yours and when we had full lockdown March through May* they did great for the first two weeks, and then it wad a gradual erosion of patience and attention with each passing week. Having peers would have made all the difference.
*We live in Switzerland so it was a rather strict situation throughout.
Imgine that!!! leave it up to good ole American ingenuity and NOT politicians to solve the problems...Good Luck!!
Yes, this is a creative solution for those parents who can afford it. However, you are kidding yourself if you think this is a realistic option for the majority of American families.
August 9th, 2020 at 10:36 AM ^
All options are at home:
a) same private school as last year but they just rolled out their plan on Friday and cost for 3 is about $10k/yr. they were OK with the transition to at home in March, but understandably their program was not made for online. They seemed reluctant to do an online option until last week.
b) another local private school with seemingly better online plan that they’ve been implementing since March. About the same price.
both a and b have in person and online options which we believe is best case scenario for several reasons. Frees up needed space in classrooms and keeps kids in virtual classroom a part of the school.
c) a program made for online teaching. At much lower cost. Kids will have to socialize with friends from previous schools.
Hope you guys enjoy your weekend figuring out your home school options, learning pods, 10,000-dollar private schools, private or public remote learning, private teachers/tutors and various other school options. I am going to step away, so I don’t drown in the privilege and cook a nice meal for my wife’s birthday. She is under a lot of stress as her and her colleagues plan how to run a all day child care program in our public school so teachers with kids can teach the distance and on-line programs and single parents and others with no place to send their kids during the day can still get them some kind of education.
Let me know if you find a better deal on that 10K private school.
Excuse me if my wife and I have decided to channel our resources into a $3.3K per child tuition. She drives a 14 year old car and we don’t have a summer home or take vacations beyond the 1 in state for 4-5 days a year.
as for my sons public school experience, he had a classmate tell him on the bus that she was going to bring a knife and stab him with it. This happened 2 years ago and he didn’t know what to do. He was freaked out that week and through the weekend and wouldn’t go to school on a Monday. My wife finally got out of him what had happened and we went to the school about it. The police liaison did get a statement from that child and she did admit to making the threat. So what did our school do about it? They moved her to the other classroom. Nothing else, she still rode the same bus, didn’t miss a day of school. Sucks that my kid had a shitty experience there. The school made excuses for the mother and daughter. So I’m not sorry if I have little faith in our local public school. And the school district promoted that principal.
So I will skip some meals out per year, not buy tickets to sporting events, have my wife cut our hair. And do whatever else we have to for the kids. Shall I apologize for using my GI Bill and Army college fund to avoid college loan debt?
Wow, ndscott, you're a dick.
August 9th, 2020 at 10:53 PM ^
Even if he could afford to send all of his kids to a $30k/year private school and take multiple vacations, I see no reason to disparage him. If he has achieved wealth that is great. Perhaps it did come from privilege, or perhaps it came from years of sacrifice and hard work that you are either unwilling or untalented enough to do. Growing up, a child of teachers, I thought it was cool that a neighbor drove a Lotus and I wanted to study and work and risk to achieve similar levels of success. Success should not be scorned... Unless he achieved wealth by being a politician, in which case he is a bad person
August 9th, 2020 at 11:32 PM ^
I am not trying to disparage wealth. I am disparaging the growing group of Americans that seem to be arguing that going to remote learning for the next year is acceptable. The focus is all on the risk of opening school with very little discussion about the cost of not opening. Many of the people arguing most strongly for long term closures appear to have the means to avoid many of these cost. There is not nearly enough discussion about the damage a school closure of over a year will do to our kids and public education overall. Accepting over a year of closed schools would be an unprecedented failure of our society. Yes , I’m angry about this and lashing out as a result.
If our current approach is going to lead to multi month school closures how can we justify leaving things like restaurants and retail stores open? Why are those calling for schools to be shut not demanding a complete shutdown and quarantine until such time that virus transmission is at a level that allows schools to open?
So much for the “child humans cannot spread this virus” theory. This will happen at every since school in America
August 9th, 2020 at 10:20 AM ^
Not saying you are right or wrong. However, you cannot extrapolate from this article that those kids infected actually infected anyone else. Based on incubation of 3-14 days (usually a week or so), your conclusion cannot be reached. In a couple of weeks, it may be... or not.
Also, it would seem prudent to separate high school age, middle school age, and lower school age children from your comment. Certainly a senior in high school has a somewhat different physiology than a 4th grader. Does that make a difference with virus susceptibility and ability to act as a vector? It seems to — based on data from Europe.
College students will pass it around like crazy on campus. There is no doubt of that. However, they will pass it around like crazy at home too with friends. At least on campus they are away from parents or grandparents.
August 9th, 2020 at 11:53 AM ^
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that children of ages 6 and up can contract and spread the virus. At what rate is still in question. But it doesn't take too much extrapolation to see that if these children spend most of their day in reasonably close contact, even if the rate of spread is not as great as with older humans, shear exposure over time will promote spread at an unacceptably high rate.
One case in point: at a summer overnight camp over 50% of the children ages 6-10 contracted Covid.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/health/coronavirus-children-camp.html
The problem with your statement is you can’t battle a pandemic using hindsight. That is what got us to where we are now. On the the other hand, there is again more that enough evidence to use foresight and logic to avoid these situations in advance.
August 9th, 2020 at 11:09 PM ^
You absolutely have to use hindsight to fight a pandemic.
NYC intubated too many patients and sent nursing home residents back to their facilities in the hopes that they could quarantine within the facilities, ending in more death and carnage.
Learning what works and doesn’t work is part of of how evolve. Double blind prospective randomized trials are the gold standard when properly developed (of course people place biases into the development of trials all of the time), but retrospective trials are viable too.
August 9th, 2020 at 11:00 AM ^
I really wonder how much our current knowledge of infection rates is biased by the fact that kids have been at home since March, are not essential workers, and have as a population probably been far more insulated from exposure and spread than adults. I guess we'll find out soon.
August 9th, 2020 at 11:06 AM ^
Exactly. Everything we know is predicated upon 60 million young people largely staying away from each other.
Nobody knows what happens once that spigot is opened.
August 9th, 2020 at 12:34 PM ^
I know for a fact that many of our kids are closer together on their own than when they come to the facilities for football practice/workouts. They post pictures of themselves in the car together or in each other's basements, right next to each other playing video games.
And then they come to football sitting jam-packed together in pickup trucks.
And when they get out of their cars/trucks, we make them spread out and not touch each other.
Now, this doesn't account for the kids with no friends who just sit at home and read books/watch Netflix (like me!), but a lot of kids are going to regulate their health better when school employees force them to.
We have other data points. A number of European countries reopened their schools in the spring, and Sweden never closed its primary schools. Evidence seems to suggest that with masks and/or enforced distancing, schools can be open without becoming major vectors of infection.
Based on those photos, though, the Georgia school appears to have reopened without following any guidelines, which may be another proposition entirely.
Actually, we know a good deal. We know in California there have been 39,463 detected cases in kids 5 to 17 years old. We also know there has been 1 death in this group. This gives a death rate of 0.00253%. We know that the latest CDC estimate indicates that the actual number of cases is between 6 and 24 times the number of detected cases. If we use the 6x number (realizing that the group most likely to have a high number of undetected cases would be 5 to 17 year olds due to the high rate a asymptomatic cases) we would get an IFR for that age group of 0.00042%.
We could look at the current CDC death data from February 1 to August 5th and see that there have been a total of 45 Coivd Deaths and 363 Flu deaths among kids 14 and under. We could also note that 7.3% of the confirmed Covid cases are in California are in the 5 to 17 year old age group. If we apply that to the 5.1 million confirmed cases in the US to date that would mean there are around 377,000 confirmed cased in the 5 to 17 age group. If we are conservative and use the 6x number for real cases that means there have had around 2.2 million cases in this age group. If we bump that up to 12x we get 4.5 million cases. That would mean between 4% and 8% of 5 to 17 year olds have already been infected. This has resulted in 20 deaths among 5 to 14 year olds and maybe another 68 deaths among 15 to 17 year olds (CDC data only shows total deaths for 15 to 24 which is 225)
All of this means we have a rather good idea that the risk to kids is low. I realize there is a risk of kids spreading it to others but this idea that "we just don't know anything!" is bullshit.
You just chucked the kitchen sink [1] at a straw man. Most people would buy the idea that risk to kids is low. People are concerned about the kids spreading it to parents, grandparents, etc.
[1] Impressive compilation. Maybe source it next time.
Don't forget about the staff. I know long-time teachers who have no confidence in their school district's ability to handle this and have decided to retire.
I viewed the straw man as the idea that we have no idea what will happen when we open schools. I went after the whole spread to others tuning in another thread looking at the still very low death rates among those under 65. If you limited in school staff to those under 55 you are dealing with a population with an IFR below 0.3 percent. Take precautions to limit the spread short of full school closure, provide online only options for kids exposed to more vulnerable populations, wait until your local positivity rate is south of 4 or 5 percent and you should be able to open school safely with low risk to both students and staff.
i am very concerned that we are moving towards having no school in most of the country for the rest of the year when the current situation does not call for that in many areas. I think we are severely underestimating the damage this approach will have.on our kids, particularly the more vulnerable ones, and public education in general.
Regarding the sourcing your right, I should. That was a combination of laziness and some passive aggressiveness. It took google, a spread sheet and 15 minutes to figure out. You all are a bunch of smart people with U of M degrees after all. You could find the data yourself. ;)
How can we know when 90% haven’t yet opened? You can’t extrapolate from nothingness.
That governor is a monster.
August 9th, 2020 at 10:14 AM ^
Yeah, it's one thing to not mandate masks, but another level of stupid to prevent municipalities like Atlanta or Savannah from implementing hygiene policies.
August 9th, 2020 at 10:18 AM ^
Hmmm... Let's see...
As GA Sect of State, purge ~500K from voter rolls and closes polling places in predominately black communities? Check.
As GA SoS, runs for Governor of GA while continuing to be the SoS - thus responsible for the fair election of his own candidacy? Check.
While running for GA Gov, as the GA SoS, closes polling stations months before the election? Check.
As Gov, refuses to believe Covid-19 is a real thing? Check.
As Gov, sues a city mayor to demand no masks be worn? Check.
As Gov, imposes a gag order to prevent a mayor from speaking out against a statewide ban against wearing masks? Check.
Yep. 'Monster' fits quite well...
August 9th, 2020 at 10:31 AM ^
Yet somehow the threat to freedom is the requirement to wear masks
August 9th, 2020 at 12:45 PM ^
I knew Georgia was messed up but I didn't know it was that bad.
Yep... Kemp's reign of racist terror started the day after John Roberts eviscerated the Voting Rights Act. You know, the John Roberts that the Trump Admin doesn't think is conservative enough and 'loyal to the cause'.
My wife and I are essential employees so our child will be attending school in PA. She starts kindergarten at the end of the month. Our district has three options for parents: in-person, virtual or a mixture. They have a good plan in place for the kids from my review.
August 9th, 2020 at 10:19 AM ^
I'm glad to hear you feel your district is approaching things appropriately. However, the efficacy of these in-person plans will be dependent upon parents with means keeping their children virtual.
August 9th, 2020 at 10:33 AM ^
My child has been attending daycare throughout the pandemic. Our district has a good plan in place considering the circumstances. We have no choice but to send her to school. But there are choices for parents on the fence. I do not judge one way or another how other families feel about it.
August 9th, 2020 at 10:00 AM ^
And not to be a downer in an already dour thread, but a 7-year-old child died in GA recently stemming from what appears to be a C19-induced seizure and drowning.
And there has been an uptick in children under 10 dying from the disease. It's still far less likely to kill younger people than older ones, but the false narrative that younger children were somehow immune to transmission needs to be extinguished before it causes even more damage.
August 9th, 2020 at 10:20 AM ^
The child died from a seizure. Based on available data, it seems probable that seizure was not caused by covd. I think you know that.
Just as you know that the risk of death from covd for children is less than seasonal flu.
The only question is potential long term effects, and the data on that is very early and inconclusive. Otherwise follow the science and recommendations from experts: CDC, American Association of Pediatrics, etc. Just about every industrialized nation is sending their children back to school, based on science.
August 9th, 2020 at 10:24 AM ^
Just about every other industrialized nation is doing far better at containing the virus than we are. I think you know that.
August 9th, 2020 at 10:57 AM ^
That’s not true. We are middling. We test more and have more cases detected. Our deaths per 100,000 are certainly rising but we are not at the top (yet?) and that is despite our government agencies actually wanting to up-sell our Covid deaths. We count a 20 year old with Covid who died in a motorcycle crash as a covid death. George Floyd was a Covid death... when clearly he wasn’t really. Furthermore, if you take NY and New Jersey out from our stats, the other 48 states are doing well with death per 100,000.
Sweden may have the best control now with nearing herd immunity but it was at the same expense of not adequately protecting their elderly (similar to NY)
August 9th, 2020 at 11:32 AM ^
George Floyd tested positive for covid, that is quite different than being a covid death.
As for the motorcycle death, under CDC guidance it should not have been reported (And is no longer being reported) and Florida hardly seems to be a state run by a governor wanting to up-sell covid numbers. Given the challenge the state has had counting things in the past, this seems more like incompetence than conspiracy to inflate the numbers.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-motorcyclist-covid-death/
if anything there is more evidence of undercount than over count in Florida
August 9th, 2020 at 11:37 AM ^
Sigh. This post is further proof: We are doomed.
August 9th, 2020 at 11:52 AM ^
Despite having one of the healthiest nations, a country larger than California, population about the same as MI and the largest metro area only about 2million, Sweden is 8th worst in COVID deaths per 100,000 people. @56.59/100,000
is herd immunity proven to happen with COVID? How with diminishing antibodies?
If hers immunity doesn’t happen with Covid, then a vaccine won’t work either. If the virus is ever-present, and a vaccine gives temporary immunity, then we won’t be able to do anything ever. I know very few people under age 50 who will take the vaccine if available. I certainly will not... and I think antivac’ers for our long standing tried and true vaccines are nuts. I certainly will not give an untested to minimally tested vaccine to my children when their risk is so small from the disease.
So if herd immunity isn’t a thing (but Sweden suggests it is and even dithering NY suggests it is), and many people won’t take the vaccine, where does that leave society?
August 9th, 2020 at 12:12 PM ^
Literally almost everything you say here is incorrect. FFS
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases
August 9th, 2020 at 10:45 AM ^
But he said preliminary investigation suggests COVID-19 gave the boy a fever, which triggered a seizure that happened to occur while he was bathing.
So yeah..."available data" from the coroner points to C19 causing a seizure that led to him drowning in the tub. Yes, those Febrile seizures can be caused by a variety of infections and viruses; this one was caused by C19. If someone dies in a car accident that came about because he had a heart attack behind the wheel, claiming it was the accident that killed him is pretty disingenuous. And the 6-year-old who died in Tennessee passed away in her sleep after developing a fever due to C19 (and before you rush to "she had co-morbidity because of hydrocephalus, autism, and epilepsy", none of those have been found to increase the likelihood of infection or serious complications).
I like to think you recognize that sending children back to school without a viable treatment option for C19 is extremely dangerous; the flu that you cite as a greater danger to children has a vaccine that, on average, protects about 60% of the population from contracting the disease, and even then thousands of children die. Exposing kids to C19 without any realistic treatment options would likely lead to even higher death rates.
The AAP and the CDC and "the science" you speak of caution every one of their general "let kids go back to school" recommendations with the understanding that proper safety protocols must be in place and infection rates down. That's not the case in the US; we're not like every other industrialized nation on either of those fronts. So yes, as the parent of two small children who desperately want to see their friends and start learning again, I'd love for schools to open back up. But I also know that while that may be possible in MA (where I live and people generally take C19 seriously), that's simply not the case everywhere. And the dangers to the staff and students from a rushed, half-assed reopening loom large.
I'm not going to get into some longer debate about what is an acceptable number of deaths amongst young children to justify opening back up schools so that people can watch college football.
August 9th, 2020 at 11:27 AM ^
The seizure was caused by covid. What do you think this disease does, just sit in cells and play tiddlywinks? It’s been shown to cause both neurological and vascular issues—heart problems, other organ issues. It’s amazing how dumb some people are just so they can feel like their view is right and that they don’t have to be afraid. The articles all state that the child had no underlying conditions—but even if the child did, those conditions would be activated by the virus weakening their body.
Same with old folks and obese folks, etc.—yeah, people die from all of these things, but are more people proportionally dying thanks to covid? So far, the answer seems to be fuck yes. The US is more than 200k deaths above normal by this time of year, all deaths factored in. Old folks and obese folks survive other illnesses all of the time—so your assertion that this seizure wasn’t covid-induced is scientifically reprehensible.
August 9th, 2020 at 12:23 PM ^
I see the negs that posts like Bodogblog's get, and that makes me think that we're doomed. Everything he said was correct and appropriately qualified by the uncertainty surrounding this novel situation.
Meanwhile, on the other side, we have people who are convinced that they could never be wrong, that science is certain beyond a doubt, and that this is a simple situation with obvious rights and wrongs.