Covid-19

[Xville]

The kids need to go back. Its not a coincidence that most educators are liberal.

Which is also not a coincidence as to why our education keeps falling further and further behind other first world nations.

[xu82]

What do you guys propose then if you don't want to send your kids back to school? or for those who can't stay home with their kids and have no childcare options? Because not sending kids to school will hurt kids in ways besides just being exposed to a virus with a .02 mortality rate. Kids are suffering in their learning/education, their physical health, and their mental health.

Most of the science shows that kids are unlikely to pass this to each other or to adults. Something like 30 kids at most have died from this in all of the United States.

Europe has opened schools. We cannot just lock down and hope this all passes us by. It's impossible.

Sometimes it’s not just what you say, but more how you say it. He sounded very cavalier about the whole thing. Acknowledge that it’s just not that simple. Location and infection rate will do much to to dictate what is appropriate, but the kids need to get back as soon as is reasonably possible....hopefully sooner than later.

[paulxu]

It's definitely a challenge, and perhaps one with no "good" solutions. Online learning, staggered classes, lots of distancing, alternative days and other things to look at. But the reason that the EU is going back to school, and why we have such a challenge, is all in this one chart; and they've got 100 million more people than we do. If we were at 4000 cases a day, instead of 66,000, perhaps we could open schools safely.

[XU_Lou]

Little Andy Beshear is 100% LYING though his teeth. In his presser today he showed a chart of states that currently have above 15% positivity rates - states that he has placed on a travel advisory. The one state on that graph that I'm familiar with is Florida. He stated that their positivity rate is 18.72%:

https://twitter.com/WKYTNick/status/...255621/photo/1

Where did he get that figure? Obviously not from the state itself. Why? FLA's positivity rate was 18.15% in the official stats today (up from 14.26% yesterday):

See page 2: https://floridadisaster.org/globalas...s_20200720.pdf

Not only is he not using official state data, but far more importantly, he's obviously using all test results. In other words, the 18.15% reflects people who have tested positive on multiple occasions. The reason I've been looking at FLA's data is because they also report "Percent positivity for new cases" ("This percent is the number of people who test PCR- or antigen-positive for the first time divided by all the people tested that day, excluding people who have previously tested positive"). That number was 14.74% today, versus 11.83% yesterday. This is an extremely important distinction - this is the metric that ALL sources should use. Obviously KY isn't, which leads me to believe that it's very likely that most states don't use this metric, and that national statistics reflect multiple positive tests for individuals.

Additionally, we the public, as well as the state of KY, should ask whether the state of FLA has corrected their numbers after we found out last week that testing labs in that state were not reporting their negative tests - thus making the percent of positive tests look higher:

https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/fo...vid-19-results

[XU '11]

It's definitely a challenge, and perhaps one with no "good" solutions. Online learning, staggered classes, lots of distancing, alternative days and other things to look at. But the reason that the EU is going back to school, and why we have such a challenge, is all in this one chart; and they've got 100 million more people than we do. If we were at 4000 cases a day, instead of 66,000, perhaps we could open schools safely.

What’s odd is that deaths in the US is only about double Europe’s total (maybe a little more) while our case count is 15x theirs. There is some sort of major disconnect there.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...opment-europe/

[paulxu]

What’s odd is that deaths in the US is only about double Europe’s total (maybe a little more) while our case count is 15x theirs. There is some sort of major disconnect there.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...opment-europe/

Really good point. But their death numbers seem to go down along the curve of their positive case reporting.
I'm praying that ours doesn't go up dramatically in the next two weeks to follow our curve.

[Muskie in dayton]

Sure. Here is the original article from what I saw.

Here is a fact checking article on that article which really doesn’t do a great job of fact checking, they could have gone much further but it’s a decent start.

There have been other articles people have linked from “Global Research” which are basically conspiracy theorists and anti-science. A google search of their website should return a nice yield in why that website is not valid.

I could go on but there are some posts in this forum that sum up nicely why it’s garbage fake news.

I don't know what the "Global Research" you refer to is, and I haven't heard of Off-Guardian where the article came from either. But if they're garbage like CNN from the other side, I'll take you word.

How about these accounts of false positives?
http://www.int-soc-clin-geriat.com/i...SARS-CoV-2.pdf
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...onavirus-tests (check the preprint linked in here as well).

The problem with the PCR "nearly all tests tested at 100% specificity" you cite in a separate post, is that these are done clinically, where the tests are administered, handled, run and reported flawlessly. What really happens in the real world is entirely different.

I know enough about analytical testing to know what is going on now is not ideal. Multiple tests from dozens of manufacturers, all rushed to the market without properly developed standard operating procedures for testing, quality control measures for both sample collection and sample analysis, and sloppy data management.

My point is that we are putting a lot of stake in the accuracy of these tests, much more than they deserve. We need to be careful.

[Muskie in dayton]

What do you guys propose then if you don't want to send your kids back to school? or for those who can't stay home with their kids and have no childcare options? Because not sending kids to school will hurt kids in ways besides just being exposed to a virus with a .02 mortality rate. Kids are suffering in their learning/education, their physical health, and their mental health.

Most of the science shows that kids are unlikely to pass this to each other or to adults. Something like 30 kids at most have died from this in all of the United States.

Europe has opened schools. We cannot just lock down and hope this all passes us by. It's impossible.

Spot on 100%.
https://www.uvm.edu/uvmnews/news/kid...cs-top-journal
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...t-nordic-study
They have a greater chance of dying from the flu.

Keeping kids home is absolutely stupid... and the kids will end up intellectually and socially stupid for it.
http://www.truthinourtime.com/forum/...d.php?t=115470
https://alphanewsmn.com/school-closi...days-students/

[boozehound]

What do you guys propose then if you don't want to send your kids back to school? or for those who can't stay home with their kids and have no childcare options? Because not sending kids to school will hurt kids in ways besides just being exposed to a virus with a .02 mortality rate. Kids are suffering in their learning/education, their physical health, and their mental health.

Most of the science shows that kids are unlikely to pass this to each other or to adults. Something like 30 kids at most have died from this in all of the United States.

Europe has opened schools. We cannot just lock down and hope this all passes us by. It's impossible.

The science on kids transmitting is not fully baked from what I understand. I have a co-worker (in Florida - shocker) who caught COVID from her 10 year old, for example.

I do think that we generally do need to get kids back in school, or at least give parents the option. It places a disproportionate burden on lower income families, as well as dual income families from almost any income strata.

I'm not super enthusiastic about sending my kids back to school, but I probably will as long as NJ stays under control as it is right now. My wife doesn't work so could relatively easily keep them home, but my kids all love school and I would hate to deprive them of the socialization. We looked into hiring a teacher to administer home schooling (ideally with several other families from my neighborhood) but it doesn't seem like it would provide for the same level of socialization as going to school.

Which is also not a coincidence as to why our education keeps falling further and further behind other first world nations.

I know. We should start with science.

It's definitely a challenge, and perhaps one with no "good" solutions. Online learning, staggered classes, lots of distancing, alternative days and other things to look at. But the reason that the EU is going back to school, and why we have such a challenge, is all in this one chart; and they've got 100 million more people than we do. If we were at 4000 cases a day, instead of 66,000, perhaps we could open schools safely.

This chart says a lot, in my opinion. With Europe's relative population density they should be faring much worse than the US. The most significant difference I can find is that Europeans are universally wearing masks and have been for some time. It's almost like they have figured something out that we haven't.

[paulxu]

So far it seems like kids are pretty resilient to the virus.
That of course is not the problem. If you put them in close quarters with non family, they are more likely to get it.
They will probably be OK. Not so much their parents/grandparents.
Tough sledding ahead.

Edit: promising news from UK on a potential vaccine with good early trial results.