Students Walk Out Over COVID-19 Safety Issues
January 15, 2022 7:51 AM   Subscribe

Students are demanding to be protected from COVID-19 at schools. As schools return from winter break, the omicron COVID-19 variant continues to cause outbreaks among students, teachers, and staff at school. The staffing shortages have become so severe that some districts are asking parents to come in as substitutes and to fill in various roles at schools. In various cities, teachers unions and districts are fighting with over remote schooling and COVID safety. Amid the tumult, students are also fighting to be heard, and to guarantee their own safety in schools.

Oakland high schoolers are prepared to boycott school next week over COVID-19 safety issues, and are demanding high-quality masks, weekly testing, and outdoor equipment so they can eat safely during the pandemic.

Several hundred Chicago Public School students walked out on Friday to call for better COVID-19 protections, and to protest mayor Lori Lightfoot's handling of the situation.

Hundreds of NYC teenagers walked out to protest COVID-19 safety issues, and to demand a return to remote schooling until it is safer.

Hundreds of Boston students walked out Friday to protest the lack of a remote schooling option.
posted by toastyk (147 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite
 
Speaking as a teacher and teacher educator, the prospect of having parents come in as subs is horrifying. I have seen first hand how awful plain old ordinary subs can be, and they at least generally have some experience. Teaching is the kind of job where crying every day for the first year is expected when you've had training and practicum.

I get that our children are being horrifically disadvantaged by COVID. I get that parents are terrified they will slip educationally. I get that as a society, we expect schools to do so much they absolutely can't do - despite all our aspirations, they really can't counteract poverty, remediate disadvantage, make up for abuse, train future workers, or make good citizens, no matter how much we wish they would.

But putting untrained people in as babysitters is a recipe for abuse of everyone involved.

I'm glad the kids are fighting this. I had to recognize my utter inability to cope myself (spouse has stage 4 cancer, I'm old, my grandchild is too young to vaccinate, university was intent on going in-person, as an adjunct I was paid in pennies), and I retired last year. I spent my entire career trying to oppose systemic dysfunction, and the first year of COVID was it for me.
posted by Peach at 8:05 AM on January 15, 2022 [85 favorites]


"Babysitter" is exactly what those districts are asking for. Makes one wonder how they regard actual teachers? It just boggles the mind, if they're asking parents to look after classes, why are they even bothering at that point?
posted by 2N2222 at 8:17 AM on January 15, 2022 [21 favorites]


One of the things we don't talk about that plainly until we get into situations like this is, yes, schools also serve as day care for working parents.
posted by Galvanic at 8:21 AM on January 15, 2022 [45 favorites]


Some Seattle Public School students walked out yesterday and rallied at the administration's headquarters. Apparently now that they've asked, admin has decided to order n95 masks and will do testing at 5 schools (out of a hundred or so). It's progress, but snail's slow.
posted by blueberry monster at 8:23 AM on January 15, 2022 [9 favorites]


Guess how many people in NYC who reacted to the NYC kids walking out of Brooklyn Tech (a magnet school) was that "they just wanted to play hookey, fuck 'em".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:26 AM on January 15, 2022 [13 favorites]


I'm a student at an arts university in the UK. We're back in semi-in person learning with the university pushing for us to be in the studios as much as possible throughout the spring/summer. These last two years of attempting to complete an art degree entirely online has been, frankly, a complete farce (and terrible for everyone's mental health), so it's good to be able to actually use the facilities we're paying for and feel a bit like a real person again.

That said, the university supposedly has a mask mandate and when I was in class last week every single one of my tutors, at some point, pulled down or took off their mask in order to talk to students, sometimes while we were sitting close together in a crowded room. FML.
posted by fight or flight at 8:28 AM on January 15, 2022 [10 favorites]


fight or flight, incidentally, I have watched SO MANY PEOPLE pull their masks down to speak -- and to my horror, I did it myself the other day in a moment of fugue, when I couldn't understand what was going on. No, it didn't make sense. Yes, I know better, and have been assiduous in masking with N95s in all indoor situations and some outdoor ones. Yes, I was astounded at myself. Human beings are not logical and the more layers of protection we have in place, the better. Thank heavens (a) I'm negative as of my test yesterday (b) the person I spoke to was also masked. I spent the rest of the day wincing.
posted by Peach at 8:47 AM on January 15, 2022 [20 favorites]


With omicron, I have resigned that we are going to get it. We don't go out in public. 85% of our groceries are delivery. We've cut almost all activities. But the school is a clear vector and it is an inevitable. My daughter's teacher was out for most of this past week. They got it from somewhere, and it seems as though we've missed it. But, sooner or later we won't be that lucky. 26% of active covid cases in my town are school age children (5-19). I'd actually argue that number, but that's because the declaration of 'inactive' seems to not even last 5 days if you just add up the dalies for the past 5 days. We are FINALLY putting a mask mandate in place.

With that said, there is no way to protect my family from their exposure to omicron. So I am resigned to get it. The NYT has posted some solid articles about it requiring less frequent ICU admissions and the clear reality that those that are are far far far more likely to be the unvaccinated.

And here's where I think I've gone slightly nuts. With that, I'm now in the vein of give the death cult what they want*. No mask mandates. Every kid can be vaccinated almost all 12+ kids can be boosted. The vaccine prevents death and serious illness. The only ones really dying are the covidiots. If they want it, let them have it. BUT (and here's the doozy) deprioritize all non-vaccinated patients for admission and ICU assignments and maximize out of pocket insurance expense for the unvaccinated. Allow contact tracing and allow civil suits if the unvaccinated kill a vaccinated person. Make Covid punitive to the unvaccinated. Make them feel the full financial weight of their inaction.

But yeah, I also say that from the position of having seen both sets of grand parents over the holidays and knowing that they are still safe - and knowing that I can no longer be the route of infection for either of them. There are a ton of problematic things about my feelings on this - but I'm with that doctor that had to street his cancer patient for a covidiot. I am angry and I don't care anymore if they (the covidiots) die.
posted by Nanukthedog at 8:48 AM on January 15, 2022 [8 favorites]


Reminder that not all unvaccinated are that way by choice, including immune comprmised cancer patients, children under 5 in the US (and older in other places), and people who haven't gotten vaccinated because of fear of deportation or loss of job.
posted by Peach at 8:58 AM on January 15, 2022 [48 favorites]


One of the things we don't talk about that plainly until we get into situations like this is, yes, schools also serve as day care for working parents.

Although I don’t get the sense that it was your intent in this specific statement, I’m brought back to fights that have happened over the last two years about this specific fact.

Schools ARE a way that society provides for children to be cared for during the day, during which parents are freed up to do other things. Some of these parents may also be teachers. Or doctors or nurses. And the complete anger I’ve seen over suggesting that closing schools is a burden for working parents is exhausting.

I’m exhausted that there are no better options. Still.
posted by kellygrape at 9:05 AM on January 15, 2022 [7 favorites]


Reminder that not all unvaccinated are that way by choice, including immune comprmised cancer patients, children under 5 in the US (and older in other places), and people who haven't gotten vaccinated because of fear of deportation or loss of job.

And some people who are fully vaccinated have health issues where it just isn’t enough to stave off the worst of the disease.
posted by Jess the Mess at 9:09 AM on January 15, 2022 [32 favorites]


Dumbass bourgeois liberal governments helping the kids to learn to organize and fight. That’s a contradiction I can get behind.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 9:12 AM on January 15, 2022 [3 favorites]


Please remember that parents have been taking care of their children and toddlers full time for two years now without access to any of their usual support systems, including grandparents or other older relatives. There's been no time for self care; it's been all about taking care of others. It's so frustrating to see parents being painted as lazy or self-centered. We're just so spent.
posted by phooky at 9:12 AM on January 15, 2022 [25 favorites]


And emphasizing, again, that “all children” cannot yet be vaccinated and that those of us with children under 5 have been utterly abandoned by the state and, largely, every other institution in American life. The FDA has yet to say why they just caused a delay in Moderna’s EUA application for the vaccine for children, and the CDC is basically practicing eugenics at this point. Even in my blue county in a blue state, parents are complaining about masking in schools. Why is it so hard to ask for the tiniest consideration for those still at risk?
posted by Il etait une fois at 9:28 AM on January 15, 2022 [21 favorites]


Speaking as a teacher and teacher educator, the prospect of having parents come in as subs is horrifying. I have seen first hand how awful plain old ordinary subs can be, and they at least generally have some experience. Teaching is the kind of job where crying every day for the first year is expected when you've had training and practicum.

Holy crap--I steered away from K12 instruction on large part because I could see the abusive dynamics, but that's worse than I thought.

what gets me about this conflict re: schools is that the entire conflict is unnecessary except that we have collectively decided to accept the idea that MAXIMAL PRODUCTION IS NECESSARY even through a global disaster. Yeah, homeschooling (especially homeschooling very young children) and working full time is more work and effort then anyone could hope to sustain. That being said, the obvious fucking solution is to offer to pay parents to allow them to stay home with their kids without having to also work full time. If we were willing to redistribute resources to support the things we are asking people to do for collective health and safety, they could be done with a lot less fear and stress. But that would cut into profits, maybe make working people think they're entitled to reasonable treatment, and we all know who that notion terrifies.

I'm just very, very frustrated with people right now.
posted by sciatrix at 9:59 AM on January 15, 2022 [50 favorites]


It's rough being a school employee right now. I'm nursing swollen, aching knees right now because we had a custodian gone all this past week and I had to pick up part of his route on top of mine. Fast-walking on those hard terrazzo floors is taking its toll. I've had to let part of my route slide. The kids are eating both breakfast and lunch in their classrooms (keeping them in their bubbles) and imagine what the classroom floors look like after a week of that with no mopping. Early Friday morning, my disabled husband started having tummy troubles. There are no sub custodians available at this point, so when it was time for me to go to work, I gave him some Immodium, put a diaper on him, and hoped for the best.

Yesterday, both gym teachers were out, so the classroom teachers supervised their students while they had free play time, with access to all the fun stuff in the equipment room. The kids were having a great time, but the classroom teachers lost that time that they used for breaks and prep.

One teacher is out on maternity leave and no sub could be found for her. (It's a Spanish immersion school, and, of course, requires teachers fluent in both English and Spanish.) Her class has been split and stuffed into two other classes. So there are children crammed cheek-by-jowl, eating lunch together.

The students are stressed. Faculty are stressed. The school nurse is about to lose her mind. And this is in a top-tier public elementary school in a top-tier school district. I can't imagine what it's like in districts that have less money.
posted by LindsayIrene at 10:18 AM on January 15, 2022 [26 favorites]


I'm really frustrated and angry with people in general, too, but would like to see less recrimination and anger toward individual, regular people (e.g., the unvaccinated, especially the term 'covidiots'--otherizing human beings for any reason never ends well), because--at least in the U.S.--we are being asked to use individual responsibility to accomplish things that simply cannot be accomplished by individual responsibility. The U.S. does not take care of its residents, and does not seem to care to. There are individual exceptions, of course, but this pandemic has proven to me that when push comes to shove, our governments at all levels are not and will not be there to help or to save us. So when I see some asshole in the grocery store with no mask (like this morning, for instance), I remind myself that my anger is better directed toward those responsible for the systems and structures that are supposed to be robust enough to accommodate individual assholery, but are massively under-supported, or not functioning, or not present to begin with.

The more that we blame and direct our anger at one another, the more these basic, structural problems will persist. Our government(s) failed, and continue to fail us in this pandemic, and now all the other more foundational ways that it fails us are much more obvious: why are schools collapsing now? pandemic stress is the acute cause, but the chronic causes are much more mundane and have been known for generations; why is the health care system breaking? pandemic stress is the acute cause, but chronic causes are long-standing; etc.

I'm trying to learn from what our young people are doing right now, they're angry about what's happening in their schools and are speaking up and protesting, but they are also organizing and getting involved (the stuff I see on sub-reddits lately is amazing, and I'm sure that's the tip of the iceberg bc I don't tiktok or insta or whatever else). They recognize that systems are failing them, and many are responding to those challenges very directly, and avoiding individual recrimination toward one another.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:24 AM on January 15, 2022 [32 favorites]


Oy, I am dreading N95s becoming mandatory in the teaching environment. I understand that a cloth mask is not as good as a medical-grade one, but some compromise seems necessary. If it's your job to talk a lot, you need a mask that is easy enough to talk through. I finally got one that is comfortable and stays on my face.

If it is THAT dangerous for me to be at work (to the point where I'm being reckless by wearing less than an N95), I'd much rather be online. For what I do (lecture-heavy college class) online is fine for most students, and for some it is better.
posted by anhedonic at 10:26 AM on January 15, 2022 [10 favorites]


Where I work we have a mask mandate in school. The state spent lot of money last year to improve the ventilation system, they also spent a lot of money to give each kid a laptop, though the rollout on that policy took months.

We have mandatory temperature checks for everyone who enters the building and mandatory quarantine for anyone who has symptoms until they test negative for COVID. We were virtual for the first two weeks after the break bc the case rate (as revealed by all this testing) was deemed to be too high.

I know a lot of this comes down to money, but mask mandates are free, temperature checking equipment doesn't cost much, and testing is reimbursed by the federal government. In the face of this shitshow, requiring masks in school, and requiring students and staff with symptoms to quarantine until they test negative is now, even more obviously, just taking reasonable precautions to prevent something like this from happening.

School districts and state govt had a year to get this right, and this is the result of not taking even the precautions that wouldn't cost very much.
posted by subdee at 10:26 AM on January 15, 2022 [12 favorites]


If it's your job to talk a lot, you need a mask that is easy enough to talk through.

I find the n95s better for talking than cloth masks! The n95s are held away from my face, unlike your average cloth mask, which makes a huge difference.
posted by eviemath at 10:43 AM on January 15, 2022 [22 favorites]


If it is THAT dangerous for me to be at work (to the point where I'm being reckless by wearing less than an N95), I'd much rather be online. For what I do (lecture-heavy college class) online is fine for most students, and for some it is better.

This is totally right. Anywhere that's dangerous enough that 80% protection is significantly different from 30% protection shouldn't be asking people to be there in the first place. Unfortunately, the "resigned" attitude (the Democratic version of let-'er-rip) is now ubiquitous and takes the form of forcing everyone into the classroom, so we are being forced to wear N95 even though, again, anywhere dangerous enough that it makes a difference should not be in person in the first place.

While Republicans seek to actively kill us all, an economic-growth perspective plus a belief that the government can do nothing more means that even Democrats are now passively on the same page as Republicans were a year ago. And it's just as misinformed now as they were then: the only reason the current models project 20-50% infection with Omicron is because they assume that there will be no shutdowns, no major increase in masking or social distancing, no surge in boosters. But if those had been the same assumptions a year ago, the models would have predicted 50% infection for Alpha or Delta. The real difference is that we have given up on NPIs, not that Omicron is categorically different in transmissibility or virulence from previous variants.
posted by chortly at 10:58 AM on January 15, 2022 [9 favorites]


anhedonic and eviemath I find the N95 mask to be much better, too. The way the structure keeps it away from my mouth makes it easier to breathe (no fabric being sucked against my mouth) and speak clearly. As an added precaution, my daughter and I wear a cloth mask over the N95, and we've added goggles.
posted by Scout405 at 11:01 AM on January 15, 2022 [4 favorites]


I am with LooseFilter. I think in the US there is too much criticism of individuals, when the fault is systemic. The kids are being amazing by organizing, but it is incredibly tragic that it takes them protesting and going on strike to get the adults to listen to what everybody has been clamoring for - actual steps to safety.

In CA, remote learning as an option is hobbled because of the threat of school defunding - Hayward Unified went virtual for a week under threat of losing $2.5 m a day. Elsewhere, it's just not allowed at all, and half the parents do not want it to happen under any circumstances.

It's just infuriating that COVID is handled so much better in so many other places in the world, and it's also completely demoralizing to participate in this system where the side you voted in is completely condescending about the bases' concerns, and has to be bullied into even putting a modicum of effort at protection.
posted by toastyk at 11:13 AM on January 15, 2022 [7 favorites]


So, maybe this should be its own post, but since folks here are sort of discussing how we got here, and what decisions were made by people in power along the timeline of COVID...

I found this to be really nicely distilled and informative [Medium, longish read, Justin Feldman] about decisions that were made, and when, and sometimes why, and how this has led us to be in exactly this moment.
posted by hippybear at 11:19 AM on January 15, 2022 [8 favorites]


It’s so frustrating when schools choose in-person because of funding formulas of all things. You’d think those could be modified in a national health emergency! But it’s California so that would probably take a constitutional amendment or ballot initiative.
posted by sjswitzer at 11:49 AM on January 15, 2022 [5 favorites]


My kids, a junior in high school, recently put together a list of three demands they want to send the school - KN95 or better provided by the school (much cheaper than the security guard most schools have, just by comparison), staged exits from the cafeteria (rather than one mob leaving at once), and repositioning security cameras to check for mask compliance at intersections (where student density is highest).
It was a surprisingly well thought out, science based list that I had not helped with at all.
Gen Z knows what's what. The sad thing is, I am pretty sure my kid won't get anything they're asking for.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 12:20 PM on January 15, 2022 [21 favorites]


My under-5 kid was in school for ONE DAY and the whole family got covid. This was a preschool. The city provided rapid testing for all the public schools and that seems to have helped there, but preschools got nothing. And so here we are, my family is finally COVID OUT after 2 years of this shit.

I'm finding it frustrating and there's a lot of work I'm doing to stay calm when it's so easy to think about how things could have gone differently. We could have kept our kid out of school for the first week and dodged it. The parents who brought their kid in while likely suspecting something was up but ignoring it because they just HOPED it was something different could have kept their kid home. The public institutions we rely on could have provided better support to test kids before letting them back in.

The school is already close to closing because of the pandemic, and the community is going to lose a great resource in this amazing school. But that's the price of doing the right thing and shutting down when cases come in.

I'm so tired. I've been weathering this storm way better than most, it seems, but I think I might be finding where my emotional limits are.
posted by keep_evolving at 12:37 PM on January 15, 2022 [10 favorites]


I found this to be really nicely distilled and informative [Medium, longish read, Justin Feldman] about decisions that were made, and when, and sometimes why, and how this has led us to be in exactly this moment.

I found that interesting, thank you for linking it.
posted by Dip Flash at 12:54 PM on January 15, 2022 [1 favorite]


I performed onstage singing in a N95 for the first time last night and it went great for talking/singing. KN95's may fold into my mouth a little more (or maybe that's just a me thing).

Frankly, if we should all be in N95's every time we leave the house, which as far as I can tell is probably the case, then we need to be doing that. Especially if being in one all day long lets us go live mostly-normal lives in public (other than eating).
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:03 PM on January 15, 2022 [3 favorites]


I have a high-risk middle schooler, and we've kept her home from school the last two weeks, at her pulmonologist's advice. This right now is my personal pandemic nadir, so far. That's not so bad as pandemic nadirs go, but it still sucks.

What I hear from other parents in our district is that the absence rate varies wildly from class to class, 20% to 50% or more. That kids are freaked out about omicron.

Every day, more schools are going remote -- one school announced that it would be in session and then reversed that call 90 minutes later, right when the school day was supposed to start.

Our district didn't have a choice to go remote. WA's governor has mandated that schools do everything they can to stay in session.

Normally I love our governor, but on this I think he's insane. Schools are just going remote after a bunch of kids and staff get COVID, rather than instead of.
posted by gurple at 1:10 PM on January 15, 2022 [22 favorites]


performed onstage singing in a N95 for the first time last night and it went great for talking/singing
I lead Sunday morning services at my synagogue (though I took a break when omicron hit... I'll go back in late February), and I wear an N95 while I sing. And like you, this is full performance singing, with all that entails in terms of breath. Much better than a KN95 because it doesn't collapse, like you said. I think the only two issues are a little muffled output and the occasional lack of breath. Service lasts about 40 minutes.
It's doable. So is a physical workout (I teach kids Aikido in an N95).
Possibly not for those with breathing issues though. I get a bit winded at times when doing Aikido in an N95, and I don't have asthma. One tool to fight omicron is with increased mask requirements. We need to be doing that not just as adults, but in schools. If that means supplying the masks, then we can do that.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 1:36 PM on January 15, 2022 [5 favorites]


My Georgetown seminar is online through January. Which works so far, as the students are in a program focused on learning, design, and technology, and are also brilliant. And we've been doing this off and on for the past two years.

But this is unusual for higher ed. According to our data only about 3% of American colleges and universities moved classes online this month. Maybe that many more did face to face learning, but delayed classes days or weeks. Otherwise postsecondary education is mostly in person.
posted by doctornemo at 1:50 PM on January 15, 2022 [1 favorite]


Otherwise postsecondary education is mostly in person.

There was this headline the other day: University of Louisville threatens to discipline faculty who don't teach classes in person
posted by Dip Flash at 3:11 PM on January 15, 2022 [5 favorites]


My alma mater, which I occasionally do some contract work for, went in three days from “back to in person starting in January” to “virtual for first week of January and adding more and more types of courses until we are totally in person by the end of January, honest.”

I wonder if employers will look askance in decades to come at the CVs of people in school now. Will a ‘23 degree be viewed as less than a ‘19.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:13 PM on January 15, 2022


“I have seen first hand how awful plain old ordinary subs can be”


This is too harsh. A freshman substitute English teacher probably helped save my teenagers life by giving a kid in a brutally dark place a reason to get up, to slog to school, to sit and watch a video screen day after day for hour after hour. I know you said “can be”. But there’s no “can be amazing teachers as well” So, too harsh. I say this not wanting to offend you or insult you as a professional educator.

As a society we have treated the schools - one of the very few broadly engaged with parts of our culture- so atrociously. A challenge that is so vital that there is no future without schools where the adults involved generally truly love the kids. The admin, support, maintenance, nursing, coaching staff (well maybe not ALL coaches ; ) and especially teachers are in school basically to do maybe the most important job in our society

And how do we fucking treat those people and their collective effort to do that most crucial calling? awfully? atrociously? Abhorrently? (Sorry for the alliteration). But for sure like hot garbage. To be a better person I’m trying to do my best not to hate anything or anyone - but the way we collectively act toward Schools and their people is challenging that effort…. Mightily.

Even though I’m pessimistic about it, we have got to do better, or this educational system that - despite the flaws, works so well for so many of the people making up its intended purpose (children) - that it will collapse into something worse for society. Maybe a whole lot worse.

Shit is bleak. I’m amazed how bleaker. Bleaker than the depths of the apocalyptic seeming US-USSR conflict. How is that possible. But daaaaaamn it seems it (at least to me). That being said I don’t know anyone who deserves that bleakness. We’ve GOT to do better.
posted by WatTylerJr at 3:14 PM on January 15, 2022 [6 favorites]


This was relevant to a recent previous thread, but it took me too long to find the link again so I'm posting it in the currently active relevant thread here instead:

Comparison of Self-harm or Overdose Among Adolescents and Young Adults Before vs During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ontario
posted by eviemath at 4:03 PM on January 15, 2022 [3 favorites]


I saw a tweet from the Chicago student group. It said, "we stand with ourselves, our own safety, our own health. we keep us safe, we keep us loved."

I honor them for it. It also made me so incredibly sad. "we stand with ourselves" - 'because who else is standing with us' hangs in the air unsaid.
posted by Emmy Rae at 5:44 PM on January 15, 2022 [21 favorites]


“ Schools ARE a way that society provides for children to be cared for during the day, during which parents are freed up to do other things. Some of these parents may also be teachers. Or doctors or nurses. And the complete anger I’ve seen over suggesting that closing schools is a burden for working parents is exhausting.”

That was pretty much my point. Shutting schools down is failed policy for all sorts of reasons, including that.
posted by Galvanic at 5:57 PM on January 15, 2022 [3 favorites]


One incredibly low hanging fruit it's appalling we haven't addressed in the US: many teachers and staff don't have enough protected sick leave to cover their required quarantine if they get COVID. And this means some teachers are not testing themselves, or their own children, because a positive test would mean unpaid days they can't afford to take.
posted by nakedmolerats at 6:21 PM on January 15, 2022 [9 favorites]




On a related note, this professor is soooooooooo outta fucks with regards to being forced to teach in person.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:38 PM on January 15, 2022 [8 favorites]


That being said, the obvious fucking solution is to offer to pay parents to allow them to stay home with their kids without having to also work full time.

I was lucky enough to be able to afford to home school my kids last year and we survived it, but it was terrible for their mental health (and mine). I am willing/resigned to go to remote schooling for a few weeks again but if someone handed me a $20,000 check to homeschool my kids for the rest of the year I’d say ‘fuck no’ (and probably burst into tears at the thought).

I know it might be necessary but it was really bad for them and it’s not something I’d call a solution. Only a stopgap.
posted by bq at 7:25 PM on January 15, 2022 [10 favorites]


If the kids want to march for ventilation, cohorting, masks, better eating arrangements and so on, I am with them. I believe we can keep our schools open (relatively) safely if we take the right precautions. And I'm baffled why we weren't ready for all this. But if the kids are marching for "remote learning", I'm out.

What you describe does sound incredible stressful, for you and your students! But my impression is that requests for remote learning are specifically about an immediate but temporary response to the clusterfuck going on right now, generally accompanied by a request that the type of measures you discuss be put into place so that students can safely attend classes in person. Installing new ventilation systems (or even half-assing DIY Corsi-Rosenthal boxes), organizing students into new cohorts and setting up new eating situations, procuring masks and tests - all those take time, and in schools right now, the right precautions are broadly not being taken, so attending school "(relatively) safely" in the interim is not actually an option. (Should we have already been working on them? By the emergence of Delta at the very latest! But broadly, that didn't happen, even in states with saner policies.) Some quotes regarding specific demands:

Boston: "Specifically, students are calling on officials to provide the option for schools to shift to remote learning for two weeks, along with proper personal protective equipment and testing for every BPS school."
Oakland: "Their demands? Enough KN95 masks for every student, twice-a-week PCR and rapid testing, and outdoor equipment like tables and umbrellas at every school so students can stay safe and dry during meal times. "
NYC: “No one is requesting a complete turn to remote learning, just an option so that kids can stay safe and still maintain their education.”

So no, it doesn't sound like it's generally true that the "kids are marching for 'remote learning'", it sounds like they're marching for the "(relatively) safe" schools you describe, with remote learning as a temporary option until schools can be made safe(r) and/or the Omicron wave subsides a little. (And I'll admit that that it's a very temporary solution I'm hoping my university will use if the numbers are too high once the undergrads return in a week or two - Zoom classes are not a great substitute for real classes even at the university level, but Covid-19 spreading to the extent that the university is having difficulty functioning because so many people out is also not great, and may well be more disruptive in the aggregate.)
posted by ASF Tod und Schwerkraft at 8:07 PM on January 15, 2022 [24 favorites]


It seems strange to me that more schools aren't offering mixed programming as a way to cope with COVID in addition to daily or every other day testing for all individuals in the school.
Like if students could sign up for dual online/in person coursework-- one week on, one week off, so that half the student body is present in school at any given time, decreasing transmission as well as increasing social distancing?
If people in the schools were Covid screened in batches, like 1/4 in the morning, 1/4 midmorning, 1/4 early afternoon, 1/4 mid-afternoon before leaving? I don't know, it seems like regular testing would be beneficial.
And adding counselors for students struggling with mental health concerns or struggling with grief or learning issues?
Ofc free kn95 masks make sense.
And maybe teachers should stand behind plexiglass or something to reduce transmission between themselves and students?
There are many ways to cope with this, it seems. I agree with the fact that our government (USA) has failed everyone, basically. Seems so challenging to be a parent, especially a working one.
posted by erattacorrige at 10:06 PM on January 15, 2022 [1 favorite]


We reopened schools in DC when Omicron was still cresting, and it’s been fine, and now rates are going down. My kid has one teacher teaching remotely, we are all fully vaxxed, and the kids are learning.

School is essential and I’m glad to see that DC seems to recognize this. My sense is schools will not close here again unless staffing is too low (understandable) or a large percentage of kids are quarantined at the same time.

As for masks - I admit I am pretty frustrated with the pandemic theater aspect of it all. It’s been clear for a lonnng time that cloth masks are basically useless, yet we’ve been requiring kids to wear them despite the costs (outside in the heat and humidity, in speech therapy, infant caregivers, etc). I personally have been wearing kn95s for a year since I figured if I had to, it should be something that actually works. So yeah, now I’m a bit tetchy about the new new pandemic goalpoast of kids in kn95s, especially outside.

At the end of the day, school is essential. I’m happy to see kids organizing, but I’d rather see it for vaccines (the only truly effective measure).
posted by haptic_avenger at 6:24 AM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


I’d rather see it for vaccines (the only truly effective measure).
I wish this were true - that vaccines were truly effective against omicron. Yes, we want the kids to be vaccinated. But most aren't boosted yet, and the five and under crowd are out of luck. And unboosted vaccines are only about 30+ % effective (yes, they also help stop serious illness, I know).

Masks, on the other hand, can be 90-95% effective. I think it makes a lot of sense for kids to fight being in those conditions without strong mask measures in place.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 7:08 AM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


“Masks, on the other hand, can be 90-95% effective.”

Link, please? At this point in the pandemic, I think it’s reasonable to focus on severe disease, which we know vaccination addresses, and let people choose to use kn95s for themselves. In DC where we have big pockets of unvaccinated people, I have a hard time worrying about breakthrough cases.
posted by haptic_avenger at 7:15 AM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


I don't think most people want to go back to remote schooling, as a permanent option. The conditions of schools also vary across districts, across the country, so what one group of students/teachers are fighting for in Chicago would not be the same as what they are fighting for in a different, more rural district.

Do you remember the year before covid, teachers across the nation went on strike for better healthcare coverage, better working conditions, and smaller classes? I had my child out of school for nearly a month. I don't think she's had a normal school year since before that year, and honestly, I don't know if she ever will now. I keep thinking about that, and how much worse it would be if the teachers hadn't won those battles. LAUSD had classes as large as mid-40s.

The biggest intervention, aside from making the vaccine a requirement, would have been to upgrade all the school buildings' ventilation, per the recommendations laid out in the US Dept of Education which do not "have the force and effect of law and are not meant to bind the public." A lot of the school buildings in the US are old, falling apart, and many cities just do not have the funds to upgrade their buildings.

The "Swiss cheese model of pandemic response" needs to be brought back. Omicron and Delta has basically proven that we cannot defeat COVID-19 by vaccination alone, especially when there is a substantial population refusing to take it.
posted by toastyk at 7:31 AM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]


“ The "Swiss cheese model of pandemic response" needs to be brought back. Omicron and Delta has basically proven that we cannot defeat COVID-19 by vaccination alone, especially when there is a substantial population refusing to take it.”

To the extent “Swiss Cheese” means preemptive closures of public accommodations (schools, restaurants), I disagree. Where we are now is that everyone can make their own individual choices for safety within the context of their own lives: vaccine, mask type, types and amount of social contact. Omicron is too contagious, and vaccines are too effective, to make the vaccinated bear the burden of the willingly unvaccinated. Our resources need to be directed towards urgent needs: hospitals, vaccination drives, therepeutics.
posted by haptic_avenger at 7:40 AM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


We opted to not send our kid (1st grade) back to school at all. (They definitely had close contact with Covid, twice in a row, how unusual that must be.) Our current very loose metric for "when will it be safe to allow our child back into the school?" is whenever we go one week without the principal sending another "someone got Covid" email.

Important side-note: The school walkout in NYC was in 13°F weather. A+ courage of those students' convictions.

So many of us are furious at Mayor Adams right now. I'm just... so fucking tired of all of this.
posted by nonethefewer at 8:15 AM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


It seems strange to me that more schools aren't offering mixed programming as a way to cope with COVID in addition to daily or every other day testing for all individuals in the school.
Like if students could sign up for dual online/in person coursework-- one week on, one week off, so that half the student body is present in school at any given time, decreasing transmission as well as increasing social distancing?


I think this would require schools to have double the number of staff, since there would be simultaneous online and in-person teaching, and one person can't realistically cover both (though I know they are being asked to in many places). Also, for a working parent, needing to have your kids at home every other week is still super difficult to make arrangements.

The right answer would have been to throw sufficient resources at schools early on (for staffing, facilities, testing, etc.) and then prioritize keeping them open, because a functioning school system is a necessary prerequisite for the rest of the economy to function. We didn't do that, so here we are, and at this point it is a choice between options that are all bad (albeit some are clearly worse).
posted by Dip Flash at 8:21 AM on January 16, 2022 [7 favorites]


Like if students could sign up for dual online/in person coursework-- one week on, one week off, so that half the student body is present in school at any given time, decreasing transmission as well as increasing social distancing?


Hybrid teaching is really bad -- it's impossible to pay attention to the online students as well as the in-person students. And the one week on/one week off model would be catastrophic for a lot of working parents.

Also -- the idea that *all* the schools in, eg, Chicago, could have their ventilation revamped in two weeks is not plausible, to say the least.

at this point it is a choice between options that are all bad

That's always been the choice.
posted by Galvanic at 8:29 AM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]


Where we are now is that everyone can make their own individual choices for safety within the context of their own lives: vaccine, mask type, types and amount of social contact.

Unless you are a parent who has to depend on some form of group childcare (daycare, public school, etc.) in order to work, in which case you are always in contact with 20+ families and their choices.

Or, you know, a teacher or anyone else who has to work outside the home.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:08 AM on January 16, 2022 [11 favorites]


At this point in the pandemic, I think it’s reasonable to focus on severe disease

Buddy. Long COVID exists. I know folks who are suffering from it. Some of our fellow Mefites are as well.
posted by eviemath at 9:17 AM on January 16, 2022 [20 favorites]


To the extent “Swiss Cheese” means preemptive closures of public accommodations (schools, restaurants), I disagree.

???

Try reading the link if, somehow two years into the pandemic, you are still unfamiliar with this term. Or heck, even the context of the rest of toastyk‘s comment.
posted by eviemath at 9:20 AM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


Everybody making different individual choices is currently putting everyone in danger and over-burdening hospitals. CA is currently allowing COVID+ asymptomatic nurses to come into work because hospitals are short-staffed. Is it a great idea for even a triple-vaccinated elderly person to be seeing their doctor right now? What do you think is currently happening, and why do you think students and staff are fed up and protesting?
posted by toastyk at 9:20 AM on January 16, 2022 [14 favorites]


Where we are now is that everyone can make their own individual choices for safety within the context of their own lives

Are you a conservative Supreme Court Justice or something? People do not have individual control over the ventilation systems at their workplaces or schools, to name just one example. This is a collective problem we are facing, not an individual problem. Leaving safety up to people individually only further hurts those is society with fewer resources.
posted by eviemath at 9:22 AM on January 16, 2022 [24 favorites]


Also, haptic_avenger, given the prevalence of misperceptions in your comments, I strongly urge you to follow your own advice/request and provide links for your claims.
posted by eviemath at 9:25 AM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


Unless you are a parent who has to depend on some form of group childcare (daycare, public school, etc.) in order to work, in which case you are always in contact with 20+ families and their choices.
Or a worker whose job requires direct contact with the public, in which case you're always in contact with the choices of any random person who walks through the door.

I'm staff in higher ed, and my job announced on Friday that we're going remote for a month. We're defying the state government to do it, and I don't think anyone made the choice because they care about what workers want. We've spent the past six months being forced to have extended face-to-face contact with people who are not required to be vaccinated or wear masks, and we were told that if we didn't like it, we could quit. And a lot of my co-workers looked at those options and decided to quit. So now we're really short-staffed, and we can't afford to have a bunch of people get sick at the same time. I feel like there's a lot of ideological stuff about the need for low-status workers to shut the fuck up and do our duty, and it's coming up against the reality that workers have fallible bodies and can't actually be compelled to work. (That will probably be "fixed," given our current slow descent into fascism, but at the moment forced labor is illegal, no matter how much some elite people wish it were otherwise.)
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:27 AM on January 16, 2022 [16 favorites]


On the actual post topic: I note that we have yet another instance of “essential” workers being some of the worst compensated, with particularly bad working conditions (noting that building maintenance, quality of ventilation systems, teacher pay, and class size all tend to be the worst in lower income school districts where according to all of the arguments the highest proportion of kids would be in the categories for which being in school is particularly essential).
posted by eviemath at 9:29 AM on January 16, 2022 [9 favorites]


“ Unless you are a parent who has to depend on some form of group childcare (daycare, public school, etc.) in order to work, in which case you are always in contact with 20+ families and their choices.

Or, you know, a teacher or anyone else who has to work outside the home.”

These are all the individual contexts I’m talking about. And I don’t mean to say that there should be no goverment support or actions about covid. What I mean is that “mitigations” that result in significant harm need to be balanced against individual ability to protect yourself if you so choose through vaccines (and n95s etc); and the cold hard fact that everyone is going to get covid.
posted by haptic_avenger at 11:46 AM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


the cold hard fact that everyone is going to get covid.
What is the source and how cold and hard is that fact? Is it even a fact? I keep seeing it slung around everywhere but it's backed by what? Is the theory that everyone will not wear masks right and thus get covid? Everyone will start going to the movies again and bars and thus we'll all get it? If I don't take those risks and do wear the dag mask right, am I actually bound to get it? Okay, bad example: I'm going to get it no question because I share a bed and bathroom with a teacher, and the schools around here are operating as you say they should with predictable results namely everybody's sick with covid and eventually, vaccine + boosted + KF94 notwithstanding, he's going to pick up a case just from hanging out all day long with a bunch of other people in a building built in the 1930s and patched together with duct tape ever since with the HVAC quality you'd expect. But are our parents, to use the instance I actually care about, going to get it? If we stay masked around each other and keep them cloistered?
posted by Don Pepino at 12:00 PM on January 16, 2022 [11 favorites]




I had a conversation this week with a parent of a college student I know via social media, who isn't in camp "public health is tyranny," but was irate that college instructors seemed to them currently to be acting very "precious" and whiny. Surely by this point we've all learned to use Zoom, and gotten our vaccines, so why did college instructors seem to be leaking even more anxiety and frustration now than at the start of the pandemic?

I don't think they are wrong that American college instructors are increasingly demoralized. Some of the reasons are the same ones facing primary and secondary school teachers. (At least we aren't expected to wipe our students' noses like kindergarten teachers--though on the other hand, we don't have a system of substitute teacher support, and are just expected to either continue working while ill, or cajole a colleague into covering us in addition to doing their own work.) But I do think that there is a little-acknowledged reason why many university instructors are currently tearing their hair.

When universities shut down in the Spring of 2020 and instruction moved online, instructors had to engage in an heroic effort to rebuild all their classes to function online. It was stressful and exhausting! But the huge lift involved was recognized and praised. That was back when the zeitgeist was that "we are all in this together" and should be showing gratitude for the sacrifices everyone was making in response to Covid.

(Remember when people were applauding healthcare workers? And now American hospitals have to put up signs begging conspiracy-believing patients and their families not to physically assault the staff. . .)

Well, in 2022 we are expected to continue to hold classes in person while pandemic spikes surge across the country. And as those waves of infection wash over communities, students contract Covid or are close contacts of people who test positive. They need to isolate, and we must plan to accommodate them. Also, we need to be prepared for the possibility that we will become ill or have a sick family member or be notified we are a close contact of someone with Covid, so that it is we, the instructor, who must isolate--while the course continues uninterrupted.

What this means is that at this point in the pandemic, instructors are basically being asked to teach each of their courses twice--both in-person and online. Universities are desperate to keep students on campus, students want "life to be normal" again, and some kinds of course instruction can't be well-replicated online (like teaching students to perform a blood draw, or how to sculpt in metal). But at the same time, students need to isolate when they test positive or are a close contact or their child's daycare shuts down for a week, and if they're not actually feeling ill, we must have a way for them to continue to keep up with their cousework remotely. And the best way to do that is to have a parallel track of the course going online, that students can step into and out of as needed. That's best both from the perspective of maximizing instructional quality for absent students, and pragmatically. The alternative is having 17 students at different stages of isolation at a given time trying to schedule 17 makeup exams and negotiate 17 different sets of makeup assignments. Or even worse, being expected to hold 17 individual Zoom meetings per day to catch each student up on the work they missed in person, which is not physically possible. There aren't enough hours in the day.

So: I as an instructor have to figure out a way to plan a class so that it works well in person, while also having a parallel online track that students can jump onto and out of at any time. And the thing is, the best way to teach a course in-person and the best way to teach a course online are very different! I now have courses I have prepped in-person, which I completely redesigned to teach online, but those two course plans have two completely different sets of assignments and schedules.

This means that I must redesign a given course all over again, so that it neither follows the in-person best instructional practices, nor the online ones, but tries to find an adequate compromise between them.

When my university moved back in-person last fall, the messaging was that things would start out difficult--everyone would have to get used to being back face-to-face, deal with masking, (hopefully) get vaccinated, and some people would still be getting sick with Covid--but that over the course of the semester, everything would improve. We'd get the pandemic under control, and finally life and school would be mostly normal again. So, instructors were told as the Fall 2021 semester approached, prepare to teach in-person again!

What actually happened was that things for a lot of instructors got harder and more exhausting, not easier, as the semester went on. And that's because so much accommodation was needed for absent students, and instructors hadn't been warned that was coming. A lot of instructors got really exhausted. Some got angry at students for having the expectation that they could just inform their instructor they wouldn't be able to come in for 10 days, rather than begging permission to do that, and demand a set of alternate assignments. But most instructors appreciated that students had that right of accommodation. They were just overwhelmed trying to meet all the students' needs. And then there was the ongoing large informal social work burden so many instructors kept trying to bear--especially supporting students dealing with mental health issues and getting them services.

So as we enter the Spring semester of 2022, the expectations are different. Now there is a message, if muddled and often mostly implicit, that we will be holding classes in-person, but expecting a lot of students and staff to be affected by the Omicron surge cresting just as the semester starts, and that we need to plan our courses and our lives to work with that. We must anticipate potential mass absenteeism. And the most typical solution is to have a course that operates both in-person and online.

This means we are all being asked yet again to redesign our courses. That's a lot of work! But that work is not getting acknowledged or appreciated as it was in 2020. Instead, we undertake it under the sour conditions of this stage in the pandemic. There are students and parents and legislators who will resist every effort to maximize public health and demand "normal classrooms." Meanwhile, students and parents have lost patience for slapdash accommodations when students can't attend in person. If they are paying tuition for a quality college education, they expect seamless quality instruction when students must isolate. And we want to provide that experience, but it is a lot of extra work!

So, like people in every sort of service occupation, we are dealing with irate "customers," personal infection risk, burnout, and lack of sufficient institutional support. (Teaching is considered a profession, not a service occupation, for basically social class reasons, but we have been treated more and more like other service workers in recent decades. Just call us a "service profession" if you like.)

Add to this dreary context the huge effort involved in redesigning all our in-person courses all over again, and then having to both teach them in person, and online, and you can see why so many college instructors would be feeling at their wits' end, or depressed.

I mean, most of us still find teaching to be a calling, and get great satisfaction out of seeing our students learn--don't get me wrong! But that emotional reward is not enough to sustain workers in the service professions, like nurses and teachers, when we keep on being called upon to give 150% or 200%. Especially when the respect and gratitude we receive goes down instead of up, and that extra work isn't even acknowledged.

Friends in the service professions, I for one see you and appreciate all you are trying to do. Hang in there!
posted by DrMew at 1:57 PM on January 16, 2022 [55 favorites]


Don Pepino: yeah, pretty much your entire list, right there.

I'm amazed I haven't gotten it so far halfway through January 2022. I have a KN95 or 95 and double mask on top of those if I'm around people at all and I'm trying to limit how much I take it off around other people to consume food or drink (I have not been perfect at this), but my time and turn will probably come up by the end of this month like everyone else. I'm negative as of Wednesday's last test, but. I was forced to take my mask off at the DMV for a minute or two a half hour after that (thanks, stupid RealID requirement) last week, for all I know that may be what does me in by next week. On Friday I walked by someone with Covid when we were both masked and I had on a N95 and surgical over it, and I also had to be around my unvaccinated (but 95'd) supervisor for a couple of hours this week. WHO KNOWS WHAT WILL GET ME ANY MORE.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:25 PM on January 16, 2022


Fauci: Omicron will infect ‘just about everybody [because we've made a series of policy decisions that will ensure it].'

And don't forget the best part of that interview:
"Those who have been vaccinated and vaccinated and boosted would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not having hospitalization and death," he added.
posted by chortly at 2:35 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


From WaPo:

“This notion of learning to live with it, to me, has always meant a surrendering, a giving up,” World Health Organization epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said.

Virologist Angela Rasmussen of the University of Saskatchewan likewise fears that people are relaxing sensible precautions prematurely: “I understand the temptation to say, ‘I give up, it’s too much.’ Two years is a lot. Everybody’s sick of it. I hate this. But it doesn’t mean actually the game is lost.”

...

Rasmussen... is among the experts who think people have misunderstood the concept of endemicity — which is the point at which a virus continues to circulate at low levels but is not generating epidemic-level outbreaks. She fears some people hear the “endemic virus” talk as a sign that resistance is futile.

“People think that means we just give up,” she said. “They think ‘endemic’ means that we’re all going to get covid eventually. I’m hearing people say, ‘Why not just get it over with now, and I’ll be bulletproof?’ None of this is what endemicity means.”

posted by Don Pepino at 2:56 PM on January 16, 2022 [10 favorites]


It would be nice of the first response of folks like Rasmussen wasn’t that people have misunderstood. How about they understood quite reasonably and don’t actually feel like shutting their entire lives down anymore? Nope, sorry, you had your shot, the vaccines are awesome, and now we’re starting to open up again?
posted by Galvanic at 4:04 PM on January 16, 2022 [6 favorites]




Galvanic, perhaps it is less discouraging and soul numbing for those of us who care about other people who are at higher risk from COVID (which is an awful lot of people) to think that people have misunderstood endemicity rather than that they simply don’t give a shit.
posted by eviemath at 5:33 PM on January 16, 2022 [7 favorites]


Nobody is saying “go get omicron” here. We’re saying that preemptive school closure isn’t justified because personal choices can largely take over now that the goal isn’t “do anything you can to avoid covid indefinitely.”
posted by haptic_avenger at 5:38 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


the goal isn’t “do anything you can to avoid covid indefinitely.”

No one is talking about having school online in perpetuity. FFS. You don’t seem to have noticed or understood that this is not what many folks in this thread are saying.

The goal is, as Fauci himself has explained, “don’t get COVID just yet”.

As Rasmussen attempted to clarify, COVID becoming endemic also absolutely does not mean that everyone will inevitably get it at some point.
posted by eviemath at 5:49 PM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


It perhaps is worth a review from last year at this point:

Vaccination is protection, not a force field

Vaccines work via, and are better thought of as, community protection, not just individual protection:
But a lot of the ideas we link to COVID-19 vaccines—including plenty I’ve used—don’t totally hit the mark. Too many focus on vaccines’ individual perks. And they end up skating over one of the greatest benefits of immunization: a boost in wellness at the community level, by cutting down on transmission and, by extension, illness for everyone else. For immunization to truly pack a punch, Amanda Simanek, a social epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, told me, “we all have to do it.”

Unfortunately, communal benefit is harder to define, harder to quantify, and harder to describe than individual protection, because “it’s not the way Americans are used to thinking about things,” Neil Lewis, a behavioral scientist and communications expert at Cornell, told me. That’s in part because communal risk isn’t characteristic of the health perils people in wealthy countries are accustomed to facing: heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer. Maybe that’s part of why we gravitate toward individual-focused comparisons. Slipping into a pandemic-compatible, population-based frame of mind is a big shift. In the age of COVID-19, “there’s been a lot of focus on the individual,” Lewis told me. That’s pretty at odds “with how infection works.”

Analogy aside, this is how a vaccine does its job: Each inoculation contains a harmless mimic of a pathogen that immune cells memorize. Vaccines “ready the immune system” so the body isn’t caught unaware when the real thing comes along, Jennifer Gommerman, an immunologist at the University of Toronto, told me. After vaccination, immune cells are faster and more efficient; they can vanquish viruses before serious illness sets in. That’s vaccination’s big objective. But vaccines also curb the number of infectious particles that exit the body to infect someone else. When this pattern gets repeated over and over, viruses start to run out of viable hosts—making it harder for them to spread, and reducing the burden of disease for everyone. Months of evidence show all of this is true of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Immunizations also work best when their limits aren’t being constantly tested.

Scott, who leads vaccine outreach efforts in her community, told me she’s been favoring a different analogy: casting the spread of infection as fire, and humans as the kindling that the flames need to persist. I’ve tried this one myself, and vaccines fit in nicely, too. They’re sprays of flame retardant that can waylay fire on the move, while also shielding vegetation from the worst of the burn. The more trees are protected, the sooner the fire has nowhere left to go.
posted by eviemath at 5:59 PM on January 16, 2022 [9 favorites]


Eviemath, perhaps it is less discouraging and soul-numbing for people who think sacrificing a generation of school children is not justified to be treated like adults choosing one of several awful options rather than idiots who don’t understand the issues.
posted by Galvanic at 6:12 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


I am willing/resigned to go to remote schooling for a few weeks again but if someone handed me a $20,000 check to homeschool my kids for the rest of the year I’d say ‘fuck no’ (and probably burst into tears at the thought).

Hm. Yeah. Me too. But I’d take the 20k. I run my own business and I did not have lower interest in my services during pandemic. I didn’t want to shut down and lose what I had built (who knew whether it would dry up in a month, six months, etc.) but it was INTENSE to run remote learning “school” with a podmate kid (whose mom was a kindergarten teacher and dad worked fed-ex). We worked it out that I’d be “on” for school up until lunch. Get the kiddos fed and then for the most part we’d be done with school and my husband would “take over” while I switched gears to do my work until dinner when it was time to be a wife and mom-mom instead of teacher-mom and have a break to recover so I can get up early to do it all over again the next day.

I can still spit nails over the fact that, other than going remote for work, my husband’s company made ZERO MENTION of kids at home or managing any of that.

I’d take the $20k.
posted by amanda at 7:54 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


Galvanic, I’m opposed to literally sacrificing children. Or adults. Fortunately there are many places where that could be prevented by improved ventilation, strong mask-wearing policies, spreading people out over more rooms with fewer people per room to enable better distancing, and cohorting (in schools and workplaces); although there do seem to be some hot spots where a short term pause on in-person schooling is the required preventative measure (what in my neck of the woods is called a “circuit breaker lockdown”). In those areas, accommodations for special needs children, ensuring child care for essential employees, direct financial supports to families, and community social work and mental health supports for children (and adults) experiencing abusive, unsafe households have all been shown to mitigate the potential down sides to school closures (or more general closures) while still reducing total contacts enough to bring rates of community spread down to levels where the other measures suffice to ensure safe schools (and workplaces). Note also that the study that I linked upthread found that children’s mental health in the population studied in Ontario was not negatively impacted by such temporary school closures. (Parents’ mental health was not part of the study, of course.)

The fact that many parts of the US are explicitly prohibiting schools from taking any public health measures whatsoever is, as has been argued vis-a-vis Bolsonaro in Brazil, potentially on the level of crimes against humanity. To the best of my knowledge that’s not under the control of any commenters on this thread, which of course leaves everyone with no good choices.

But telling people that they are now able to make individual choices that will suffice to protect themselves and their loved ones is factually incorrect. In addition, you have mischaracterized my and others’ comments. If you don’t want people to think you are misunderstanding them, or science, it helps to not explicitly demonstrate misunderstanding or make incorrect assumptions.
posted by eviemath at 8:01 PM on January 16, 2022 [11 favorites]


Bringing it back around to the original post topic, although most if not all of us here aren’t in the sort of positions of political power to enact the public health measures that would allow in-person schooling to be safe, we can pressure those decision makers to do so. Which is exactly what the various student walk-outs reported on are doing. These kids aren’t arguing on the internet about which shitty choice is worse, telling other people that there’s nothing to be done about the situation where the only options are shorty choices, or demonizing anyone who has different priorities in making evaluating the relative shiftiness of currently available choices. They are understanding the relevant science and taking action to make a not-shitty option happen. It’s pretty darn awesome!
posted by eviemath at 8:48 PM on January 16, 2022 [12 favorites]


A detail that one of my other links points out better than I could explain it, that I think is useful, is that Fauci (US context) predicts a high proportion, perhaps close to 100%, of people (in the US) getting COVID at some point (though hopefully not this month or this winter or this year) as a political reality/inevitability. Whereas “Virologist Angela Rasmussen of the University of Saskatchewan” and “ World Health Organization epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove” (from Don Pepino‘s link) sound different because they are talking about epidemiological reality/inevitability, from contexts in other countries that don’t have quite as bad the political issues around the pandemic as the US. I think that’s an important distinction because we can sometimes change political realities or contexts (as the students doing walk outs and other protests are attempting to do; though I can understand why some folks in the US may feel pretty exhausted and fatalistic about that). Not so much the epidemiological ones.
posted by eviemath at 10:04 PM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


The idea that moving schooling online is "sacrificing" children while at the same time arguing that putting them at greater risk of catching a disease with highly unknown long-term effects (that we're starting to see may be much worse than originally assumed, see: diabetes) isn't "sacrificing" them is fucking ludicrous.
posted by augustimagination at 11:32 PM on January 16, 2022 [10 favorites]




I wonder how things are going between students who want everything to go remote and those who are deeply involved in activities like band or football. CNN comments on recommendations from the CDC around risk of school activities.
posted by theorique at 5:07 AM on January 17, 2022


“The idea that moving schooling online is "sacrificing" children while at the same time arguing that putting them at greater risk of catching a disease with highly unknown long-term effects (that we're starting to see may be much worse than originally assumed, see: diabetes) isn't "sacrificing" them is fucking ludicrous.”

The fact that people are STILL arguing that closing schools is NBD is the ludicrous thing. Closed schools caused real damage to kids and families. Conversely, vaccination now mitigates covid to something like the flu for kids over 5 and their parents. There is zero way that parents like me are going to accept closed schools, because trust is destroyed by rhetoric that tries to, yes, gaslight us about the impact of school closures last year.

Proponents of new school safety measures, especially teachers unions, need to grapple with this destroyed trust by acknowledging the harms of school closures and assuring us that prolonged closure is no longer on the table. This can only be done with honesty, not dishonest exaggeration about the danger of covid to kids, or failure to acknowledge that vaccination is the #1 most important mitigation, or denying the harms of school closures.

Once you take school closure off the table, you’ll be able to rebuild a broad coalition to support teachers. I don’t know anyone against increasing teacher pay, increasing planning time, improving school facilities, paid covid leave, reducing class size, addressing the burden of testing. I know lots and lots of previous union supporters who will no longer support the unions because we don’t trust them to keep schools open.
posted by haptic_avenger at 6:18 AM on January 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


failure to acknowledge that vaccination is the #1 most important mitigation
Where are you seeing that failure, apart from Bolsonaroesque irredeemable redstate governors who will not anytime soon be promoting/mandating vaccination? Given that everybody sane is acknowledging vaccination is key and given that too many in power--y'know, like the supreme court, for instance--are not acknowledging same and that therefore we can rely on a sizeable pool of unvaccinated vectors running around the landscape, what's your mitigation plan?

For immunization to truly pack a punch... “we all have to do it.”
And because we are not all doing it, we need to--judiciously, of course!--do everything else possible. Fix our mandatory congregation nexuses--our crap schoolhouses and workplaces--so that the air where we're forced to be among our fellows is not a rich hot stew of virus would be nice, but that is not a now solution, and this is a now problem. Until we can get around to good solutions, we need to employ least-bad solutions. So when schools begin to be shortstaffed because they're hotbeds of viral transmission, rather than haul in a bunch of parents to take shifts--and get sick themselves and make the problem worse and cause the hospitals and doc-in-a-boxes to begin to crash, hello, check out r/nursing, this is beginning to happen now--we must consider shutting down schools when they get swamped. Schools can't magically stay open without functioning adults to run those schools.
posted by Don Pepino at 6:39 AM on January 17, 2022 [3 favorites]


haptic_avenger, flagged your post for COVID misinformation.

See (for the third f’n time) my link upthread about an actual scientific study documenting actual effects of school closures on actual kids.

See the other links various people have posted upthread about the risks that remain even for fully vaccinated youths and adults (there are adults in schools too, you may be shocked to learn! Like my mother, who is over 65), due to the current high prevalence of COVID in communities during this current wave of the pandemic.

And stop mischaracterizing your fellow Mefites comments. Saying that something is not as bad as death is hardly saying that it is no big deal or has no consequences, as the rest of us have clearly acknowledged.
posted by eviemath at 6:47 AM on January 17, 2022 [9 favorites]


You’re shifting the goalposts, Don Pepino. If our school has severe staff shortages and can’t operate, I accept that it may have to close some classrooms temporarily. The concern is preemptive closures, or closures that are prolonged once staff have recovered.

As for vaccination - pretty much any time a lot of political capital is expended on anything but vaccination, I really question the bona fides of the proponent. It’s just not rational to fixate on HVAC and make no mention of vaccination. It makes me believe that covid is being used as a bargaining chip and that “safety” is not the actual concern.
posted by haptic_avenger at 6:49 AM on January 17, 2022


“haptic_avenger, flagged your post for COVID misinformation”

for what, saying covid is like the flu for vaccinated kids?
posted by haptic_avenger at 6:53 AM on January 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


“ Flu and COVID-19 can both cause serious illness and hospitalization in children. CDC found that COVID-19-associated hospitalization rates among children has been similar to flu-associated hospitalization rates during three recent flu seasons prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

CDC
posted by haptic_avenger at 6:57 AM on January 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


No, not for saying covid is like the flu for vaccinated kids but for saying school closures will cause more children to self-harm. It's understandable because it really seems like it would, but it turns out to be not so in the aggregate.

Results In this study, 1 690 733 adolescents and young adults (823 904 [51.3%] female participants) were included with a median (IQR) age of 17.7 (14.1-21.4) years at start of follow-up. After 4 110 903 person-years of follow-up, 6224 adolescents and young adults experienced the primary outcome of self-harm or overdose during the pandemic (39.7 per 10 000 person-years) vs 12 970 (51.0 per 10 000 person-years) prepandemic, with an HR of 0.78 (95% CI, 0.75-0.80). The risk of self-harm, overdose, or death was also lower during than before the pandemic (HR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.76-0.81), but not all-cause mortality (HR, 0.95; 95% CI, 0.86-1.05).

Conclusions and Relevance Among adolescents and young adults, the initial 15-month period of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a relative decline in hospital care for self-harm or overdose.

posted by Don Pepino at 7:09 AM on January 17, 2022 [5 favorites]


Ok...the #1 reason I made this post in the first place is because the KIDS themselves are telling us that they feel like their own health and education are being sacrificed in the name of keeping schools open. The petition for OUSD has now reached over 1200 student signatures.

Here's an account of what happened in a New York school earlier last week that went viral:

I'd like to preface this by stating that remote learning was absolutely detrimental to the mental health of myself, my friends, and my peers at school. Despite this, the present conditions within schools necessitates a temporary return to remote learning; if not because of public health, then because of learning loss.

A story of my day:

- I arrived at school and promptly went to Study Hall. I knew that some of my teachers would be absent because they had announced it on Google Classroom earlier in the day. At our school there is a board in front of the auditorium with the list of teachers and seating sections for students within study hall: today there were 14 absent teachers 1st period. There are 11 seatable sections within the auditorium ... THREE CLASSES sat on the stage. Study hall has become a super spreader event -- I'll get to this in a moment.


Does that sound like conditions are good for the schools to stay open in NYC?

Today, instead of spending my day figuring out something fun to do with my kids, I get to take them to get COVID-tested at the school site because my daughter was exposed earlier last week and my son was sneezing all day yesterday. And if they're positive, I get to skip taking them to their grandparents, or visiting their immuno-compromised aunt.

When a student gets sick, they are not they only ones they worry about. They worry about bringing it home to their families, and if they're poorer, they are more likely to live in multi-generational households, where vaccinations may not be the best at protecting their elders. They may not be able to isolate or quarantine because there isn't enough room in their households. They might be forced to go to work sick with COVID anyway. Poorer people are also more likely to be unvaccinated, due to a bunch of stuff, but also because they literally DO NOT have time off to recover from the side effects, which knocked me out completely for about 24 hours. May be longer for some people. COVID sick pay has been rescinded or expired in most industries. Misinformation is running rampant, leading to a lot of people refusing to get it because of worries about myocarditis.

Vaccinations for kids have also ONLY been available for a very short time, and because it is under EUA, a lot of parents think that it may not be necessary right now for their kids to get it, and the schools themselves CANNOT mandate the COVID-19 vaccine right now, and honestly, given the most recent OSHA ruling by the US Supreme Court, I doubt they will be able to mandate it after it moves out of EUA. They can offer it, but that is not enough incentive for most people.
posted by toastyk at 7:15 AM on January 17, 2022 [15 favorites]


Slate interview with the kid whose post went viral:

I think the most important thing is that when people look at the issue of closing schools, they’re really only looking at the health side of it. It’s a black-and-white discussion—people are either saying “you’re risking students’ health” or “it’s just idiotic to close schools.” It seems that there’s little nuance. But just with the sheer volume of cases, it makes it impossible for there to be actual learning conditions at school.

I don’t mean to be lighthearted. I think it’s serious, but I can’t help it because I think there’s just a certain sense of absurdity. I know a student who had six study hall free periods yesterday, and they only had three classes. And in their classes, 50 percent of the students were out. And so for them, it’s just, why did they come to school? Why are they risking health, risking the fact of potentially getting COVID when they could choose to be just not going to school or schools couldn’t be open?
posted by toastyk at 7:20 AM on January 17, 2022 [9 favorites]


In addition, you have mischaracterized my and others’ comments

No, I've disagreed with them, which is entirely different. Nevertheless, this discussion is becoming pointless and repetitive, so I'll leave it here -- oh, but one more point -- that study you keep invoking looked only at people 14-24 years old, so it's hardly strong evidence for the vast majority of children (not to mention that the experience of children in Canada may be fundamentally different than the experience of people in the US).
posted by Galvanic at 7:24 AM on January 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


If our school has severe staff shortages and can’t operate, I accept that it may have to close some classrooms temporarily.

But what does that mean, really? Are you imagining that those students would have online classes at home? Because that's not what happens. What happens is those students either get crammed into already crowded classrooms or go to the gym or the cafeteria for a "study hall" where they don't get any instruction at all. And maybe that "study hall" is monitored by a parent who has zero training in education so they can't really even be much help if a student has a question about the math assignment or the English prompt. And what if one or more students in that already-crowded classroom start showing Covid symptoms?

If a school has severe staff shortages and can't operate, the entire school needs to close until the time when it can operate safely and smartly. This is what the kids are asking for, and it's not unreasonable. It sucks, yes. It's hard for everyone, yes. But the alternatives are just as bad, if not worse.
posted by cooker girl at 7:25 AM on January 17, 2022 [11 favorites]


“ No, not for saying covid is like the flu for vaccinated kids but for saying school closures will cause more children to self-harm.”

I don’t believe I ever said that - if something I wrote indicated that, it’s not what I meant. My personal experience is that closure was very damaging for my child’s mental health. And of course there’s reams of data on educational impact on kids now, falling heavily on the poorest kids.
posted by haptic_avenger at 7:27 AM on January 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


“the entire school needs to close until the time when it can operate safely and smartly”

This is exactly what I’m trying to say. Parents like me don’t trust vague standards like “safely and smartly” anymore because last time, that resulted in over a year of closed schools. You have to grapple with that political fact.

Anyway, I can report that everything is fine in our elementary school. Even the most covid-cautious parents are keeping their kids in school - the vaccination of 5+ made a huge psychological difference, and nobody wants to go back to 2020-2021. Even those lucky families who had kids who “thrived” in their pods or whatever, seem to be commited to normalcy.

Per my DS, kids don’t even talk about covid much at all. My sense is that no teachers want to go remote unless too many teachers are out sick.
posted by haptic_avenger at 7:34 AM on January 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


Per my DS, kids don’t even talk about covid much at all.

At his school.

That's not been my experience or the experience of my friends with kids in school, or my teacher friends. The kids in my life absolutely talk about Covid among themselves and with their teachers and parents/caregivers.
posted by cooker girl at 7:42 AM on January 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


I don’t believe I ever said that.
Yikes, no, you absolutely didn't, and I'm sorry for mischaracterizing what you said.

You said closing schools causes real damage to kids and families, which of course is true. It's also true that keeping them open causes real damage to kids and families. That's because keeping schools open spreads the virus. Although you're right that kids are highly unlikely to get dangerously sick themselves in the short term, they can spread the virus, and many of them live with their more vulnerable family members. In fact, the students walking out are mentioning those vulnerable family members.

It's harmful to have to isolate at home, lose valuable academic time, miss milestones, fall behind and so on, but arguably in some cases it will be possible to recover and "make up" for that harm.

In no case will it be possible to make up for the harm done to a child who brings home a virus that causes life-destroying illness or death in the child's immediate family. Is anybody arguing that watching a close family member get very sick and maybe even die isn't at least as harmful as missing weeks or months of school? CDC says one in four deaths from COVID-19 orphans a child. That has got to cause significant harm, particularly if the child knows that they picked up the virus sitting in a crowded auditorium scrolling on their phone all day because the "political fact" was there was no community support for closing their dangerous school.

That is why the students are walking out to force school districts to do the right thing. And they're not wrong that closing schools is the right thing to do in this situation. We cannot shove the omicron horse back in the barn by inventing a time machine so we can vaccinate everybody before the evolution of this supercatchy, hospital-crashing variant. We cannot immediately retrofit buildings with virus-nuking HVAC. We can't (I dunno why, actually--seems reasonable to me, but apparently it's a "new pandemic goalpost" thus a nogo?) get kids into KN95s or KF94s with no dicknosing. We can close schools when, or preferably before, they become superspreader sectors.
posted by Don Pepino at 8:46 AM on January 17, 2022 [12 favorites]


Although more research is needed, COVID may well have more serious sequelae than the flu in children.
posted by eviemath at 8:54 AM on January 17, 2022 [4 favorites]


Anyway, I can report that everything is fine in our elementary school. Even the most covid-cautious parents are keeping their kids in school - the vaccination of 5+ made a huge psychological difference, and nobody wants to go back to 2020-2021. Even those lucky families who had kids who “thrived” in their pods or whatever, seem to be commited to normalcy.

I wondered where you are in your curve, because here in Toronto I could have written that Dec 5, and by Christmas it was clear that everyone is getting sick and our ICUs are filling beyond capacity fast. We have 10 kids in PICU with 28 spaces total. So I did a search and found Omicron surge drives hospitalizations to record-breaking levels in D.C. region.

"Children’s National Hospital has had 20-25 kids hospitalized for COVID-19 at any given time during the pandemic; now they have 48, Robert DeBiasi, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, tells Axios.

In D.C., just 11% of kids between ages 5 and 12 are fully vaccinated while approximately 50% of kids between 12 and 17 are fully vaccinated. Children under the age of 5 are not yet eligible for vaccines." (source)

So...I don't really get your argument that "everything is fine." Those people are going to be developing complications and issues at whatever the rate will be; those parents are sick and losing income and their homes. If you work a job without sick pay and you and your kids all get Covid your choices get stark really quickly even if you "just" have it for 5 days.

I know vaccinated people who have had Covid. Most are fine. A couple are suffering long-term effects including elevated blood pressure and lack of taste/smell. Who knows about diabetes.

The thing is, I don't disagree with you that schools should be prioritized and open. However, I also think there should have been (here anyway) a provincial response that got creative and used the science.

Not just masks and filters (my board used its reserve fund, so we have those) but flipped classroom models where material is presented at home and students come in for the important interactive parts, possibly with enough warning we could have flipped the entire school year in order to be able to do classes with windows open and outside (although heat is also an issue, but probably less than cold, in Toronto.) We could have prioritized the ages and subjects where classroom learning is more hands on and essential, and created real virtual education.

Instead, somewhat understandably but also not, we have been "optimistic" that things are going to return to "normal" shortly. And the thing is...I share that feeling. But I think back to May/June 2020 and I wonder if we had declared a national emergency and gotten the best minds on creating the best ways to present curriculum, and funded small, cohorted classrooms how many lives - how much stress and uncertainty - and what kind of learning we could have provided for students. Because prioritizing education at this time is not about fighting for status quo.

We have to create major on-ramps for kids, extra therapies for kids who have missed speech windows, etc. etc. It is the human infrastructure equivalent of having to rebuild collapsed bridges and highways after a natural disaster.

I find your position that this is now on the individual is really untenable.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:58 AM on January 17, 2022 [13 favorites]


The intro calculus students I’ve been teaching at the university level for the past two years have had disruptions in their high school classes. We’re including more review and dealing with it. Comparing that to kids’ family members dying seems rather extreme and disproportionate to me.

Of course, my one specific experience is no more representative than your own specific experience that you seem to be imposing on this discussion, based on your most recent comment, haptic_avenger. I’m much more inclined to listen to the kids involved in the protests reported on regarding their own specific experiences and what is best for their schools.
posted by eviemath at 8:59 AM on January 17, 2022 [9 favorites]


Omicron is less severe in children. The diabetes study does not account for vaccination. Even some increase in diabetes wouldn’t justify school closures if you performed a real cost-benefit analysis.

Get your kids vaccinated, y’all.
posted by haptic_avenger at 9:04 AM on January 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


That the diabetes study doesn’t account for vaccination is one of the reasons why more research is needed. Also that a single study is never sufficient to establish something of that nature, unless it’s one heck of a large and well-designed study. (Eg. we can conclude pretty conclusively that the COVID vaccines are quite safe by this point in global vaccination efforts.) But, as I also linked upthread, vaccines are not a force field and the prevalence of omicron is such that plenty of two-dose vaccinated people have been getting sick; and as my earlier link on long COVID indicated, that means that people can still experience post-COVID complications in all other cases. Also, many kids simply haven’t had the opportunity yet to get fully vaccinated - that it’s theoretically available has never meant that it is practically available, often due to the same class-based issues that prevent many people in the US from receiving or accessing other health care in general.
posted by eviemath at 9:16 AM on January 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


tamarisk, that's a downright insulting comparison to make, given what the kids are actually walking out for. Hint: It's not so that they can have hot cheetos in the classroom.
posted by sagc at 9:16 AM on January 17, 2022 [9 favorites]


I mean, on the one hand I taught 13th grade for many years, so this: classrooms becoming down-market Hype Houses fogged with Juul hits, echoing with THC gummy-induced giggling, and littered with mounds of hot Cheetos packaging
strongly resonates as truth.

But also, so?

The majority of Greta Thunberg's peers and those of the Parkland kids are indifferent and apathetic juul hitters and hot cheetos 'n' takis fans, too. Cool to point that out, I guess? If that cohort were the ones walking out in protest I suppose we'd be hearing from them, but we're not. Usually the indifferent and apathetic tend not to seize the national spotlight for their activism.

Can confirm this as well: neither students nor staff talk much about COVID at school -- including (and often especially) those of us who've experienced considerable losses thereto. Everybody's tired of it, and there's not a lot to say beyond reminders about masks, etc. I, too, have a whole pile of bored over-its in my workplace. And? Does that mean if there's an outbreak there and everybody keeps on shuffling on in like a zombie herd I'm supposed to stifle the urge to alert them to the danger they're tired of hearing about?
posted by Don Pepino at 9:31 AM on January 17, 2022 [6 favorites]


oh, but one more point -- that study you keep invoking looked only at people 14-24 years old, so it's hardly strong evidence for the vast majority of children (not to mention that the experience of children in Canada may be fundamentally different than the experience of people in the US).

Sure. And yet it’s the only data actually available so far (that I’ve seen, or that has been linked to in this thread) on school closures and kids’ mental health, so one can hardly make evidence-based claims that the opposite is true.
posted by eviemath at 9:51 AM on January 17, 2022


Here’s what one of the best children’s hospitals in the world has to say(CHOP in Philly):

With evidence that COVID-19 is becoming a milder infection in most children, and at a time when all adults and youth in K-12 settings have been offered vaccination, our PolicyLab experts and CHOP clinical leadership have reached a consensus that preserving as much in-person schooling as possible outweighs the risks of infection to children and school staff at this stage of the pandemic.
posted by haptic_avenger at 10:46 AM on January 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


haptic_avenger, you'll note that CHOP wants everybody to wear a mask to come to school.

Continue indoor masking requirements within buildings and at school activities, regardless of vaccination status. Await reductions in case incidence and hospitalizations before introducing mask-optional approaches.
posted by Don Pepino at 2:03 PM on January 17, 2022 [3 favorites]


What made you think I’m against masking? I want a mask off-ramp (as CHOP says, awaiting case reductions.) Masking toddlers, requiring respirators, and masking outdoors seems excessive to me.
posted by haptic_avenger at 2:19 PM on January 17, 2022


The diabetes study is a pretty poor study that has been widely criticized, so if you are using that to bolster arguments that COVID (especially post-vaccination) causes serious long-term effects in children I must assume that you are looking for the absolute worst-case reading of things and not critically evaluating information. Ironically, the lack of activity due to lockdowns that has happened during the COVID pandemic has been likely just as bad if not worse for children when it comes to risk of diabetes.

Children in public schools can now all be protected from the worst of COVID which, for the overwhelming majority of them was never very bad, thanks to the miracle that is vaccinations. Their families can also be protected, and the idea that keeping them home somehow protects their families widely seems very specific to a family that can keep their kids isolated, indoors, and away from others for the duration. This may be the case for some families, but for many families the reality of shutdowns is elderly relatives watching kids who are still going out, seeing their friends, and bringing home COVID anyway.

Teachers are also now protected, and those who are still nervous should be given access to N95 masks which provide excellent protection to the wearer. There are serious downsides to remote schooling, kids are simply not learning as much and it's hard to get that time back. I won't claim to know what to do in the staff shortage conditions of the omicron surge, although it's already rapidly fading here in NYC and I suspect it will not be much of an issue past this week. But it's just infuriating to read metafilter on these topics because so many have decided that the worst case must be the true case, and are willing to spread their own form of misinformation in support of that most negative reading of things. This is a tough situation that we are all going through, but the cost/benefit calculus is meaningfully changed and closing school should be a last-case option.
posted by ch1x0r at 2:32 PM on January 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


What made you think I’m against masking?

This: "I’m a bit tetchy about the new new pandemic goalpoast of kids in kn95s"

But why on earth? As you point out, the cloth ones don't work well; why not get the kids something that actually could protect them? Here's another shoutout for Aaron Collins while I'm at it. He's posting videos again--promising shorterform stuff that should make it a lot easier to figure out what to get for which kid.

Concur that masking outdoors is overkill.
We're talking kids in school, right, not toddlers?
AFAIK nobody's talked about requiring respirators, just upgrading the requirement from medical mask/cloth mask to something better fitting that might actually protect the wearer as well as other people in the room. Schools should be flooded with them in all sizes.
posted by Don Pepino at 2:38 PM on January 17, 2022 [3 favorites]


I believe what Dr. Fauci said has been misinterpreted--he didn't say everyone would come down with Covid. He said this.
""Those who have been vaccinated and vaccinated and boosted would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not having hospitalization and death," he added.
posted by etaoin at 3:18 PM on January 17, 2022 [3 favorites]


ch1x0r, what part of my including a link to a critique of the study made you think that needed such a long *splain?


I’m glad for the few of you who can’t seem to wrap your heads around other people having different local circumstances that your particular regions are hunky dory right now. Don’t know where you all are, but if your descriptions of your local situations are accurate (let’s assume so for the sake of argument, at least), it sounds like I and other commenters here that you’re arguing against would even agree that your local schools can be opened safely. And really, unless your local schools are any of the ones covered by the fpp links, no one has at all been arguing otherwise, so this whole “everyone wants my particular schools to be closed indefinitely!” shtick is quite disingenuous.

So that’s obnoxious. But even more so, this whole thing the cluster of you are doing of portraying mitigation of COVID risk as an individual rather than collective responsibility, and imputing immoral superiority to those who do what you view as the appropriate individual risk mitigation strategies (no less though also apparently no more) is what several of us are arguing against. That this, and not calling for school closures regardless and indefinitely, is my/our point is what the couple of you either can’t seem to grasp or are deliberately misunderstanding. (And no, when I say X and you say that I said Y, where Y =/= X, that’s a misunderstanding (either unintentional or deliberate), not a disagreement. I’d link to the definitions of misunderstanding and disagreement to support my analysis there, as haptic_avenger requested for anything that doesn’t support their own preconceptions, but y’all’s track record for actually following the requested links (let alone reading my entire comments rather than selectively just the parts you dislike) seems to be low, so I don’t see that the harm to benefit ratio of putting in that extra bit of effort is favourable.)

To recap, the arguments the couple of you seem to be overlooking are:

1. How effective any of our individual vaccination and masking status is depends on the viral load we are exposed to, which depends on caseloads in our local communities as well as the physical and social environmental conditions on paces where we are required to be, such as work or school (or work at school, in the case of those who teach). And those factors are beyond our individual control.

1(a) You haven’t addressed 1 because you don’t think it’s relevant? Provide citations as to why I shouldn’t worry for my parents’ health and safety should they be exposed to COVID, despite their vaccination status. I’ve done the hospitalization calculations for my local region, with my local prevalence of COVID. Where my parents live is riskier. What makes you so convinced my calculations are wrong? (Background: I have a PhD in mathematics.)

2. There are individuals who are at higher risk of severe illness should they become infected, even despite taking all reasonable individual risk mitigation steps (boosted and masked with good quality, well-fitting mask). Some of those people (eg. my mother) work in schools, or live in households with children who attend schools and/or with other people who work in schools (eg. my father). This is not a lack of personal responsibility on their part, or a moral failing. It’s an externality beyond their control.

2(a) Having such a person in our lives who we care about is also not a moral failing nor irrationality on our part. (Relatedly, that thing where if someone has different experiences and priorities than you, you conclude that they must be illogical or wrong, because you assume that your experiences and perspective are universal was shoddy reasoning when Plato did it, and you’re no Plato.)

3. I’m not not-wanting-my-parents-to-get-sick-and-die at you.
posted by eviemath at 3:40 PM on January 17, 2022 [10 favorites]


You sound legitimately terrified for your parents. I'm sorry that they are stuck in this shitty situation, and that you are worried about what will happen to them. If it helps, the breakthrough data shows even for those over 60 significant protection from hospitalization for the fully vaccinated. The UKHSA data backs this up for the boosted elderly. I realize that you already know this and it hasn't put you at enough ease, but these reductions are extremely meaningful and important, and they do change the equation of what we should do in response to surges.

I do not think that it is helpful to anyone to bring in poorly done scare research on the long-term impacts of pre-vaccination COVID on children, particularly when you KNOW that research is of questionable value. People have enough fear about this without trying to scare them into agreeing with you.

At some point, we have to move past asking for collective sacrifices, if for no other reason than these sacrifices are only as good as people's conformance to them, and we are rapidly reaching the point where people are going to stop agreeing to conform. I believe that we're overdue to move past the point of demanding children provide collective sacrifices for the rest of us, with what we know about vaccination, spread in school, and omicron in particular.
posted by ch1x0r at 4:24 PM on January 17, 2022


I believe that we're overdue to move past the point of demanding children provide collective sacrifices for the rest of us
At least on that we agree. Children should not have pack into their school auditoria and huff each other's air all day so that their schools and communities can pretend they're getting an education.
posted by Don Pepino at 4:36 PM on January 17, 2022 [9 favorites]


At some point, we have to move past asking for collective sacrifices

Sacrifices? Sure. But at no point do we have to move past asking for collective solutions to collective problems. Like better ventilation for all public buildings, better funding for schools, better sick leave benefits for all workers including teachers, better overall financial supports for everyone including especially families, better mental health care everything, better access to physical health care for the majority of Americans (in general, not just during COVID), etc.

I’m not terrified for my parents, but I am concerned. I’m not scared but furious at the suggestions that we should treat an ongoing pandemic as an individual problem, and leave risk mitigation up to individuals rather than demanding that our institutions play a role. That attitude has done far more harm over the years to many more disadvantaged kids than a week or two of no school does to most kids (there are, of course, exceptions).
posted by eviemath at 4:42 PM on January 17, 2022 [9 favorites]


At least on that we agree. Children should not have pack into their school auditoria and huff each other's air all day so that their schools and communities can pretend they're getting an education.

Yes, instead they should hang out at home playing video games, or watching their younger siblings, or working second jobs (all things that happened a lot during school closures), or maybe just getting the pretty low-value of video school, so that the terrified among us can pretend that we're keeping them safe while neglecting our role as adults who should make long-term decisions for underage people. We can both play at this gotcha game.

I’m not scared but furious at the suggestions that we should treat an ongoing pandemic as an individual problem, and leave risk mitigation up to individuals rather than demanding that our institutions play a role.

Our institutions have already played a role. Vaccines were developed, rolled out, available to all for no cost. In many places, masks are required indoors (including many of the places listed in the OP: NYC, Chicago, Boston). Should we have done better at that? Probably, but to claim that we have not put institutional solutions in place here is incorrect. Some places have done better with them, some places have done worse. But the nonsense that vaccination is an individual action akin to shutting yourself at home and not leaving is just kinda wrong. A lot of collective work went into making those available, and they are by FAR the best mitigation we could've invested in.

Furthermore, schools have been provided funding to improve ventilation and COVID safety. Has every school district used this or done the right thing for it? Probably not, but many have worked on this problem and made improvements.

That attitude has done far more harm over the years to many more disadvantaged kids than a week or two of no school does to most kids (there are, of course, exceptions).

Has it now, really? Are we talking about, you know, the whole world all the time American thing, or are you addressing the very specific topic at hand? Because it is very, very clear that a lot of the burden of school closures has been felt by disadvantaged kids. I don't write that off as a simple issue but to pretend that school closures specifically haven't played an overly detrimental role specifically for disadvantaged kids is surprising to see.
posted by ch1x0r at 5:01 PM on January 17, 2022


Two weeks of learning loss (with sufficient qualifiers about substitute support services for kids who normally get that through school) is not sufficient reason to put kids in harm's way with a deadly pandemic going around. American school systems have summer vacation. That's three months of learning loss built in right there, which is also a major source of achievement gaps across race and class. And the main reason we have only 9 months of American schooling are mainly B.S. We did it because we built our public school system when we were still an agrarian society & we still needed kids to help out with the summer harvest. We just never bothered to change the practice, because year-round schooling would interfere with family summer vacations. If two weeks of learning loss is really that bad, then take away two weeks from summer vacation. If you're not willing to contemplate, I don't think you're serious about the concerns about learning loss.
posted by jonp72 at 5:02 PM on January 17, 2022 [7 favorites]


But the nonsense that vaccination is an individual action

Well, this we agree on, at least. Though I get the impression that haptic_avenger and Galvanic don’t see it that way, given that they seemed to be arguing against my characterization of vaccination as community protection previously.
posted by eviemath at 5:42 PM on January 17, 2022


Are we talking about, you know, the whole world all the time American thing

Yes, as in, one of the dominant trends in especially American politics though also somewhat neoliberalism globally over the past several decades.
posted by eviemath at 5:44 PM on January 17, 2022


I do think that, to riff off of jonp72‘s comment, we need to move toward an economic system that is more flexible rather than requiring such rigid deadlines as we currently have for the vast majority of life activities. ‘Course, standardization, treating everyone as a cog, including expecting all kids to learn at the same pace or just fail, and so on is far cheaper within the context of capitalism where costs of reproductive labor are primarily treated as an externality. People understand that that’s not an effective way to teach most kids, so there’s also increasing pressure on teachers to do individual education plans for students. Meanwhile class sizes are going up and overall resource support is going down. In short, all of the issues in Dr. Mew’s excellent comment have in some form been problems at various educational levels since well before the pandemic. But the idea that our daily activities should not be influenced by other life factors, from weather or epidemiology affecting whole communities to major life events affecting only a few individuals such as births or deaths or celebrations, and that we should structure our systems and institutions to set obstacles and create extra problems should such factors impose on an artificially defined rigid schedule, seems just overall problematic.
posted by eviemath at 5:56 PM on January 17, 2022 [4 favorites]


I’m not scared but furious at the suggestions that we should treat an ongoing pandemic as an individual problem, and leave risk mitigation up to individuals rather than demanding that our institutions play a role.\

It's not this black & white. The point is, we can no longer demand extreme costs from certain groups (children, working mothers) in return for uncertain returns. Institutions play a role, but that does not mean they get to dole out costs however they want. For schools, we're balancing reducing covid risk vs. the need for kids to go to school in person. When individual choice now takes the primary role in reducing covid risk, it's reasonable to prioritize in-person school and let individuals make the choice. The main insitutional role is done already: institutions produced vaccines and therepeutics. This isn't to say that there aren't additional safety improvements to make, but just that they cannot be at the expense of school.

Two weeks of learning loss (with sufficient qualifiers about substitute support services for kids who normally get that through school) is not sufficient reason to put kids in harm's way with a deadly pandemic going around.

There's no reason to think that it would be "just" two weeks. Where's the metric there? All I see is vague standards of "it's not safe." I have zero reason to believe that two weeks won't turn into two months.

Though I get the impression that haptic_avenger and Galvanic don’t see it that way, given that they seemed to be arguing against my characterization of vaccination as community protection previously.

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. Obviously vaccination has a community impact, but the choice to vaccinate is individual. The individual parent and teacher now has the power to individually protect themselves and their children from covid. In light of that, there's no good argument for closing schools to protect people who chose not to protect themselves.
posted by haptic_avenger at 7:27 AM on January 18, 2022


And here we all are again fighting over the scraps capitalism has given us.

COVID ripped the lid off of EVERY systemic injustice in the U.S. and put a big flashlight on it all and our response has basically been "but won't someone think of the shareholders!"

Lifelong teacher/educator here. I have taught in every kind of school and classroom from K-masters, and what we have done to school staff and children is downright unconscionable. It is not a parent's fault that they need school for daycare. It's the system we created and we can't fault people for then relying on that same system -- but that is problem.

The principals in the system where I work now in NYC do nothing all day but adjust for COVID -- still, 2 years later. Nothing they do in any day has anything to do with teaching and learning and everything to do with keeping the system from collapsing under them. We haven't had a week since September that didn't have multiple resignations, which is further stressing the system. I am genuinely impressed with my school and its efforts to maintain safety protocols -- we really are doing it well -- and still almost every teacher/staff member where I work has gotten Omicron.
posted by archimago at 7:52 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


Obviously vaccination has a community impact, but the choice to vaccinate is individual.
It's not, though. In order to enroll in K-12 public education in my state, students are required to have a whole ton of vaccinations: measles, rubella, diphtheria, pertussis, polio, hepatitis B, varicella, meningococcal... seriously, kids are required to be vaccinated against diseases that I've never heard of. As a society, we've decided that the choice to vaccinate against COVID will be individual. It doesn't have to be that way. If we really prioritized keeping schools open, it wouldn't be that way.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:56 AM on January 18, 2022 [10 favorites]


As a society, we've decided that the choice to vaccinate against COVID will be individual. It doesn't have to be that way. If we really prioritized keeping schools open, it wouldn't be that way.

Vaccinations protect the individual. Eventually covid vax will be required for school, but not for quite a while, and kids need to go to school in the interim. Yes it would be better if we had higher vaccination rates, but my vax, my child's vax, has turned covid into a risk akin to the flu. And of course, I sent my child to daycare and school for years with the flu, RSV, and everything else in the air. That's how we've prioritized keeping schools open. People who prioritize avoiding covid risk get vaccinated or get their kids vaccinated.

The real societal problem with low vaccination rates is to the hospitals. There, I support a LOT more resource allocation, and I also support vaccine mandates for that reason.
posted by haptic_avenger at 8:56 AM on January 18, 2022


It is not a parent's fault that they need school for daycare.

I need school to educate my child and give him developmentally appropriate independence, not for "daycare." All the money in the world wouldn't change that.
posted by haptic_avenger at 8:59 AM on January 18, 2022


I need school to....

There appears to be an irreconcilable gap in framing here: you view schools and schooling as a "me" need, while others in the thread are articulating "us" needs. Until we can discuss collective kinds of solutions, that account for the needs of all stakeholders, this conversation will continue to go nowhere.

You also keep talking about risk, that a vaccinated person has low risk of serious illness, long-term complications or death, but completely disregard stakes: while it may be low risk that I might catch symptomatic COVID by showing up to work in-person, and even lower risk that serious illness, etc., may result, what's at stake is my whole life. You need school to educate your child and to help them develop, but I need my job to not kill me.

While there may be low odds that my job will, in fact, kill me at this time, why can you not understand that I don't want to show up to work at all if there is any chance that doing so will kill me? The stakes here are my whole life, and the lives of my family and friends, so I don't care what the odds are--it's simply not a dice roll I'm willing to make, for any odds; the stakes are too high.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:58 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


I don't want to show up to work at all if there is any chance that doing so will kill me?

I'm sorry, but this is irrational. And there is always risk in life. In 2018 the flu at school could have killed you; or a car accident on the way to school. Demanding zero covid risk in all workplaces would grind society to a halt.

As for my "framing" of individual v collective (and your implicit shaming of me as selfish) -- I believe that school is better for ALL kids. That ought to be an uncontroversial statement. The "collective" solution is already here: public-private partnerships have created vaccines (and soon, therepeutics) that turn covid into the same kind of risk as other communicable diseases. And we have the incredible fortune that covid is less risky for kids, inherently. There's literally nothing rational here that would justify the extreme harms of closing schools - which was never justified in my opinion, but certainly not justified now.

Anyone who wants can keep trying to improve school conditions, like better leave policies, better ventilation, whatever. But it's simply unjustifiable to put preemptively closing schools on the table at this point. People who insist on doing that seem to be looking more for the maximum leverage for other goals, than to actually increase safety.
posted by haptic_avenger at 10:21 AM on January 18, 2022


I'm sorry, but this is irrational. And there is always risk in life. In 2018 the flu could have killed you on the way to school; or a car accident. Demanding zero covid risk in all workplaces would grind society to a halt.

Call it irrational all you want, but I'm not sure "buck up and take varying levels of life-long impairment on the chin" is a stance that's going to do much for staff retention.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:29 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


My impression of the issue requiring covid vaccination is the "emergency use only" status. A good number of places say they can't require it as long as it's under that status.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:39 AM on January 18, 2022


There's literally nothing rational here that would justify the extreme harms of closing schools.

If you truly only needed schools to educate your child and not all of the other benefits you are getting from a school (ahem, day care) then you would not lose your hair over a few weeks of remote or even closed school. If you think a few weeks of remote or lost school is extreme harm then you would advocate for full year school because as a career teacher I can promise you that what kids lose over the summer is far worse than what you are talking about.

I'm a HUGE proponent of public schooling . . . but extreme harm? To what, the economy? A millionaire's bottom line?
posted by archimago at 10:41 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


And there is always risk in life.

Yeah, there absolutely is. It does depend on where you are, but right now in my community, hospitals are so over-stressed that non-emergency surgeries are cancelled - cancer surgeries, gall bladder surgeries, eye surgeries.

My kids have needed:
- emergency surgery - my son had an appendix burst and a belly full of infection
- quick surgery - my son had cataracts and speed preserved his depth perception
- and not to harp on it, but my first child, my daughter, died as a result of brain damage because I did not get a c-section at the right point (or indeed at all.)

So in my community right now, besides the risk of transmission, there's the risk of overwhelming transmission. As I said, I still agree with you that schools should be open. But I can't argue against people fighting for schools to be open with additional resources to fight an ongoing pandemic. That's why I don't believe in "normal" yet.

And if schools can't provide that, they will be closed in various ways anyway. Teachers will be away. Substitutes won't be trained. Classes will be combined. IEP meetings won't happen. Enrichment programs won't happen. Library periods will be cancelled. All of this may well be okay but we can't pretend that just saying "schools are open" is actually addressing the situation. My understanding is that this post was about trying to match response to conditions.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:56 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


And I'm not saying those considerations are more important than staff well-being, I'm just pointing out that if one's only concern is educational quality, that isn't guaranteed either.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:59 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


Anyone who wants can keep trying to improve school conditions, like better leave policies, better ventilation, whatever. But it's simply unjustifiable to put preemptively closing schools on the table at this point.

While many want the former, it's not materially possible in many, many places; thus the next, unfortunate option is the latter. How can you not see that reality? Better leave policies, better ventilation, and whatever, will take time and millions and millions of dollars in new funding, none of which has so far been pursued during the pandemic...so, what to do now, until these longer-term structural fixes can be realized?

Right now, underpaid school staff are working in shitty facilities in dangerous conditions, and no amount of hypothetical ideal will fix that. Teachers don't have better leave policies right now, we don't have safer facilities right now, we don't have hazard pay right now; so stop asking us to assume all the risk with enormous stakes right now. And school is better for most kids, of course I believe that, it's why I'm a teacher; but you're not entitled to my work because of your kid's needs, it's just my job. And if my job is threatening my life, I have a right to not show up.

And again: risk vs. stakes. Please understand the difference and stop blithely overlooking the enormous stakes of any COVID infection.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:15 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]


Vaccinations protect the individual.

I know most people will argue about this on normative or ethical grounds & I share their views. However, this doesn't even make sense from a pragmatic point of view. Evolution and natural section does not care about your feelings. If you don't have enough people vaccinated, you give the virus so much more chances to mutate and evolve until even the vaccinated people aren't protected. In other words, I did make an individual choice to vaccinate myself three times, but those choices can be easily negated by a breakthrough infection that wouldn't have developed if there weren't so many unvaccinated "hosts" for mutations of the virus.
posted by jonp72 at 11:24 AM on January 18, 2022 [9 favorites]


Wow. Did not expect to encounter the "it's just the flu, if you're so scared then stay home" trope here on Metafilter.
posted by Preserver at 11:37 AM on January 18, 2022 [7 favorites]


FYI for Americans: the website to order four free tests is up and accepting orders at https://www.covidtests.gov/.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:38 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Wow. Did not expect to encounter the "it's just the flu, if you're so scared then stay home" trope here on Metafilter.

I guess you'll be shocked to see that the CDC says covid is basically the same as flu for kids under 12 (and this was even pre-vax):

Flu and COVID-19 can both cause serious illness and hospitalization in children. CDC found that COVID-19-associated hospitalization rates among children has been similar to flu-associated hospitalization rates during three recent flu seasons prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you truly only needed schools to educate your child and not all of the other benefits you are getting from a school (ahem, day care) then you would not lose your hair over a few weeks of remote or even closed school.

"A few weeks" has considerable educational impact. And, like I've said before, the issue is that I have no reason to believe it would be "a few weeks," given that nobody is giving any clear criteria for when they feel it would be safe again. And yes, I also need school for "daycare" -- as do many people -- but my point is more that there are additional reasons for school, for all kids.

So in my community right now, besides the risk of transmission, there's the risk of overwhelming transmission.

And I'm here from the forefront of Omicron (DC) to tell you that rates and hospitalizations are falling quickly after our peak, even with school being in session for almost two weeks now. I don't see any evidence of school making this worse.

...so, what to do now, until these longer-term structural fixes can be realized?

Well, you certainly don't try to shut down schools in the name of "safety" and scare parents into thinking their kids will die if they go to school as a way to get leverage for those structural fixes. We can talk about strikes over better working conditions - which is a totally separate question from closing schools because it's "unsafe."

I did make an individual choice to vaccinate myself three times, but those choices can be easily negated by a breakthrough infection that wouldn't have developed if there weren't so many unvaccinated "hosts" for mutations of the virus.

We're talking about the specific context of school safety, right now. Right now, everyone has the individual ability to make school safe: get themselves and their kids vaccinated. For other reasons, I agree, everyone should get vaccinated for additional reasons.
posted by haptic_avenger at 1:44 PM on January 18, 2022


Honestly I hope you're right, especially as my kids are going back in-person tomorrow (and my after school program opens.) But I don't think there's evidence for it.

What I see in the bend in the Omicron curve is that schools closed, it took two weeks for everyone to get their chains of transmission under control (i.e. kids leaving school with covid infected their families, everyone kept getting sick but the kids weren't all in congregate settings, then it calmed down).

Everyone always talks about two weeks as if you start with 100s of cases on day 1, but you don't if you have properly kept your kids home. it's 1, then 2, and then 4, and then maybe a weekend so 4 kids don't infect 8, 2 get kept home Monday because they didn't pass it on in the 48 hrs before they became symptomatic, so you only have 2 transmitters in school Monday, and then 4 Friday, and then another weekend, and then later 8 and at 16 suddenly things are starting to show up.

I'm not saying schools have to close but I think when people are saying the curve is over and will keep going that way as if there was no big event like say, schools being closed for the holidays they are pushing an agenda, not sharing a fact. Well, and a hope. We all hope that curve continues that way.

Here in Ontario the testing got choked and then the testing guidance changed, so we can't compare cases to cases, we have to wait for hospitalizations which is a big lag.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:47 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Anecdotally, I honestly don't think you can know. I work with kids, 100 in after school and about 450 in a sport.

I get emails when parents keep their kids home all the time and my unscientific read is that a lot of kids have been kept home for Covid symptoms but not tested - because people don't run out for a Covid test for every runny nose or headache or even upset tummy. (I'm not talking about reactive people like me who probably might, I'm talking about my generic parents.) They are totally prosocial enough to keep the kids home. But they only test if the adults get sick. Therefore, fewer kids are sick, especially if they were positive -> transmitted -> got tested after they recovered. With Omicron's shorter infectious cycle that may not be true, but it may also be why more kids have been showing up.

This doesn't Mean Anything, it's all speculation.

But it leads me personally to believe that when you add up kids having asymptomatic cases + the lack of regular testing of K-8 kids + the reluctance of parents to stick things up their kids' noses + the fact that a lot of kids just have runny noses and maybe you test the first time but the second you don't because it wasn't Covid the last time...etc. etc., it's really only at the point that the adults are coming down with it that it shows up anywhere. And that's a lag. And so I think we just don't know yet.

I would be completely happy to be wrong. At my workplace our biggest sick wave was in the middle of Xmas and it was a bit hard to tell what was going on, other than the funeral where 10/10 participants tested positive eventually.

I do think teachers, if they can not get sneezed on (I got sneezed on!) can manage risk to themselves for a good long while, probably right through the school year, but only with support from their board and parents.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:10 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Poking in to add the following:

Inside the Student-Led COVID Walkouts: The student-led protests are more than a call for masks and tests. Students repeatedly emphasized that they are organizing out of exhaustion and frustration. “This isn’t fun for anyone,” says Saba, the student from New York, pointing out all of the hard work it takes to organize a walkout while still going to class and doing homework assignments. “We’re just tired of being ignored.”

Some districts are not backing down from remote/hybrid learning: And perhaps the biggest wildcard is a surge in interest in remote schooling from a small but significant subset of families. Tired of the constant microaggressions and racial discrimination that sapped their children’s spirit in traditional school, some parents of color report feeling empowered by remote learning, which has given them new visibility into classroom instruction, curricular materials, and how the adults in public schools are behaving.

“They’re not likely to give that up,” said Annette Anderson, an assistant education professor at Johns Hopkins University, where she also serves as the deputy director of the Center for Safe & Healthy Schools.


Multiple school districts in Kansas shut down temporarily due to COVID-19 and staffing shortages.

Harris Poll: Lower-income respondents were more likely to choose health and safety over remote learning than higher-income respondents. Only 37% of GOP respondents chose health and safety, compared with 57% of independents and 70% of Democrats.

I think if school districts were able to plan better, and tack on an extra week or two to winter break, during the omicron surge, we may have been able to avoid the clusterfucks that awaiting students and staff when they returned. Maybe stood up and publicized some vaccination clinics, find some money to upgrade ventilation, etc. But a lot of places didn't do that. So here we are. A lot of kids missed out on the actual education they were supposed to get in the first few weeks back from break, and they got an education in another direction.
posted by toastyk at 5:05 PM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]


Apparently the “COVID = flu in children” thing is something that Jordan Peterson and ilk are currently pushing.

From A Reply to Jordan Peterson’s Pandemic Demands (which makes several other very good points as well):
You claim that COVID is comparable to the flu in children. It is not. A recent Canadian study found that “kids who are ill enough to be hospitalized and have COVID are more likely to have a severe outcome than kids who are ill enough to be hospitalized due to other similar types of illnesses” such as influenza.
(This aligns with the link I posted earlier that said that although the study that found higher diabetes risk in kids who had COVID needed more investigation, there were good reasons to think that, just as in adults, long COVID symptoms of some variety would also be more prevalent than for other viral illnesses in kids. That was from a month or so ago; the more recent link in the quoted section above gives additional, new confirmation.)
posted by eviemath at 6:16 PM on January 18, 2022 [7 favorites]


Institutions play a role, but that does not mean they get to dole out costs however they want.

Uh, what. When institutions make individuals pay the costs for things, that is individualising the costs/risks/etc. A collective solution means something that we all (through institutions or other organizations) do, where the institution or organization does the work and takes on the costs and risks.

As for my "framing" of individual v collective (and your implicit shaming of me as selfish) -- I believe that school is better for ALL kids.

Ok, now you’re either just trolling, or you have never actually listened to the stories of anyone who has been seriously bullied at school, either here in Metafilter or in your offline life. Which, from your comments, would not be at all surprising. (And if other people merely noting your behavior makes you feel ashamed, you can take the individual risk mitigation step of changing your behavior to something that you’re not ashamed of. For further reading, see eg. There is a variation on ‘Not All Men.’ It is called ‘I Feel Bad When You Say That.’ )

There's literally nothing rational here that would justify the extreme harms of closing schools - which was never justified in my opinion, but certainly not justified now.

Ah, and now the cards are on the table and the ideological position you are voluminously constructing post hoc justifications for is in the open.

It’s not that your particular concerns aren’t valid. Many of the other parents in this thread also share similar concerns. But you’ve provided no data or empirical studies to support your claims of severe or extreme harms from even a one- or two-week delay in the return from winter break, or that same period of online learning instead of in person school. You have not engaged with most of the arguments or concerns that other posters have brought up, and when you have provided citations for your position, they’ve mostly been out of context or not fully understood. Your grasp of expected value calculations (the actual math behind LooseFilter’s discussion of stakes versus probability/odds) is lacking. And your assertion that pandemic response should occur after so many people get infected that schools or workplaces are forced to close due to insufficient staffing rather than entail judicious planning ahead for predictable contingencies betrays quite a lack of understanding of both epidemiology (in particular, latency periods) and exponential (or, more accurately in the longer term, logistic) growth models. And your no school closures under any circumstances position is very obviously foolishly extreme when one looks outside the pandemic context to consider circumstances such as when school buildings lack heat during cold weather, lack running water, have legionnaire’s in the ventilation/hvac system, or have an immediate risk such as an active shooter or a fire. This all adds up to dispute your repeated claims to rationality in this discussion.
posted by eviemath at 6:57 PM on January 18, 2022 [9 favorites]


where the institution or organization does the work and takes on the costs and risks.

I'm not really understanding you. The primary and most effective way to avoid risk of covid is to get vacccinated. Every single person (over 5) can do this right now.

Ok, now you’re either just trolling, or you have never actually listened to the stories of anyone who has been seriously bullied at school,

Just because some kids have problems with school doesn't mean school isn't overall important for kids. (Including the ones who have been bullied or have special needs or are neurodivergent.) The answer to "school could be better" is not "get rid of school." I feel like people like you somehow think saying "schools are vital to many societal purposes and should only close as a last resort" think that means we're saying that schools don't have any problems.

Ah, and now the cards are on the table and the ideological position you are voluminously constructing post hoc justifications for is in the open ... you have not engaged with most of the arguments or concerns that other posters have brought up .. [etc etc]

Not sure what to tell you. I haven't been hiding anything. And I've posted many great sources, from the CDC to one of the best children's hospital in the world to Yale Medical School. EVDERYONE who is seriously involved in the overall wellness of kids admits that school closures for covid were harmful and schools should be closed as a very last resort (as in, literally not enough staff to keep the school open). Teachers on this thread have explained to you that "oh just close for two weeks, NBD" actually IS a big deal. I can attest that it's a big deal for my kid. And as I have also explained, I just plain don't trust that it will be "only" two weeks because there's no criteria for opening or closing. Schools in DC stayed open and now Omicron is plunging.

And now for my grand finale to recap all the evidence:

Pandemic-related school closures are deepening educational inequality in the United States by severely impairing the academic progress of children from low-income neighborhoods . - Yale

School closures carry high social and economic costs for people across communities. Their impact however is particularly severe for the most vulnerable and marginalized boys and girls and their families. The resulting disruptions exacerbate already existing disparities within the education system but also in other aspects of their lives. - UNESCO

Taken together, the data here suggest that there were considerable declines in test scores overall
during the 2020-21 school year, and these declines were larger in school districts with less in-person
instruction. There are consequences for inequality in outcomes in these results. Students in districts
with larger populations of Black and Hispanic students, for example, were less likely to have access
to in-person learning. In addition, in ELA in particular, the consequences of distanced learning
were larger in districts with these demographics. - NBER Working Paper


We need to recognize that we are now at a different stage in this pandemic and a goal of eliminating all exposure risk is not plausible. However, the combination of vaccine availability for all K-12 students and staff, milder illness associated with omicron variant, and a continued commitment to masking policies while in periods of high transmission has made the risk of severe disease from in-school exposure arguably much lower than the risk that many will encounter in their homes or through other community activities. That omicron spread so efficiently while children and teachers were out of school during the holiday break is proof central of this point. - Children's Hospital of Philadelphia PolicyLab

and finally,

Flu and COVID-19 can both cause serious illness and hospitalization in children. CDC found that COVID-19-associated hospitalization rates among children has been similar to flu-associated hospitalization rates during three recent flu seasons prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. - CDC
posted by haptic_avenger at 7:26 PM on January 18, 2022


Mod note: Haptic_avenger, you have commented far more than almost every other person in this thread, and you should dial it way back now. It's okay for other people to have information, opinions, and ideas that are different than yours, and for them to speak as well. You've absolutely fully represented your point of view here, which is fine. Repeating the same stuff ad infinitum, or trying to talk over everyone else with a flood of comments really isn't.
posted by taz (staff) at 3:03 AM on January 19, 2022 [4 favorites]


First use of "sacrificing children" was in support of keeping schools open so that children won't have to lose learning.

Eviemath, perhaps it is less discouraging and soul-numbing for people who think sacrificing a generation of school children is not justified to be treated like adults choosing one of several awful options rather than idiots who don’t understand the issues.
posted by Galvanic at 6:12 PM on January 16 [3 favorites +] [!]


All subsequent uses seem to have been quoting that first one. I don't think anybody has argued straight up that people who want to keep schools open want to sacrifice children.
posted by Don Pepino at 6:19 AM on January 19, 2022 [4 favorites]


I just quoted the first usage. It was not eviemath who first used. Agree that it's a bummer that particular bit of electrifying hyperbole and others (hot cheetos 'n' takis...) got introduced to the thread, but it's also entirely understandable and forgivable, given the stakes. People on both sides are motivated by love and concern for kids. Nobody is a moron, a child-sacrificing monster, or a sniveling coward. We just want, two years + into this bullshit, to preserve the semblance of a decent childhood for the sprouts.
posted by Don Pepino at 6:41 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


This: "...classrooms becoming down-market Hype Houses fogged with Juul hits, echoing with THC gummy-induced giggling, and littered with mounds of hot Cheetos packaging" did not set me off. I thought it was awesome, laughed at it, and went back and re-read it a few times. I still think the childsacrifice stuff people were flinging around in the thread was deliberate exaggeration and that nobody on either side literally meant to accuse anybody of literal child sacrifice, so "hyperbole" was accurate, but your excellent Cheetos and Juul smoke image was an entirely different and better kind of hyperbole. I'm sorry for lumping your cool thing in with the humorless human sacrifice stuff and also for first stealing it and riffing on it because I liked it and then trying to turn around and use it against you. Rhetorical dirty pool and dishonest and not cool of me.
posted by Don Pepino at 4:32 PM on January 19, 2022


Apparently Seattle Public Schools is willing to pay for tests, but not staff to do anything with them. They want teachers to do that too, in their infinite free time. The pilot program at five schools also looks like it's getting pushed further out. (Not starting for two months, if I'm reading that right.) So that's a new low.

The district is also providing masks to staff but not students, I don't know why. I also don't know why, with students walking out all over the country for safety in their classrooms, Biden is sending masks to pharmacies and not to schools. Both would be great. But at least to the schools that he pushed so hard to be open.
posted by blueberry monster at 9:00 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


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