From September 23: Teachers at our local high school may go into work soon:
I am very disappointed to share that I learned this morning that there was a crowded indoor and outdoor student party Friday evening that involved alcohol and complete lack of safety precautions to protect against the spread of COVID. Police were called to the scene. An estimated number of 15 students ran into the woods. They collected names from 32 other individuals. 13 of those turned out to be made up names. That means at least 13 plus 15 (28) known to be on site are unaccounted for. If these students had been identified they could be requested to be isolated from school, monitored and tested.
The Sudbury Board of Health is stating that we must start school in remote learning for 14 days from the known incident. On the assumption that students involved are more likely juniors or seniors I asked if we could bring in just 9th and 10th graders. The answer is no, because we don’t know that no younger students were involved or that students involved were not siblings of younger students. … We plan to return to in-person hybrid on Tuesday, September 29th.
Email to parents today:
We were notified before noon today that one of our students tested positive for COVID. Per our protocol we trace all possible contacts up to two days prior to the onset of symptoms and let those people know as soon as possible. The contact tracing connected to L-S school related contacts has been completed. All so close contacts have been informed.
The student has a sibling who is a student and has shared rides with another student. The student who tested positive was also in close contact with another different student. The sibling and these other two students are all deemed close contacts and will need to be quarantined a minimum of 14 days. A close contact is someone who has been within 6 feet of the person who tested positive for more than 15 minutes.
The student also rode to school on a bus in the mornings. The bus driver and other riders confirm that assigned seating and mask protocols were not adhered to on this bus. A letter to remind riders of the importance of such protocols was sent to families at the start of this week. Because a rider has tested positive during the time protocols were not adhered to the entire bus of students is deemed to be close contacts and will need to be quarantined for 14 days.
All students who need to stay at home and quarantine have been notified. As in any case where an extended student absence is anticipated all teachers of that student will be notified through the house offices.
School is open… half the day for each child two days per week, except for those students who are now in forced quarantine.
Related:
- Scientists to avoid when “following science”: “Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed.”
Philip, are you seeing here what I’m seeing?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count
Let’s see if NYT writes about this.
It’s fascinating to look at different countries too.
SK: Thanks for that chart. I see that nearly 50,000 Americans are dying every week and therefore we need to vote for President Harris who will stop the carnage!
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=earliest..latest&country=~SWE®ion=World shows that a lot of people are dying weekly in Sweden as well, more evidence that #MasksWork and we need to #FollowScience.
“Note that deaths in recent weeks might be undercounted due to reporting lags.”
Philip, president Harris will designate all at-risk Americans as non-Americans and thus no Americans will die!
Seriously, though, it’s interesting to look at different countries – some have way sharper peaks and drops than US. I can only conclude that we were actually successful at flattening the curve. This is fact is also indicated by the structure of the first peak on US graph. I’m, for one, surprised.
SK: Yes, I too was surprised at how well the U.S. shutdowns worked in terms of temporarily suppressing infections. (see https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/07/10/coronaplague-test-data-show-that-florida-successfully-flattened-the-curve/ for example)
But, on the other hand, just as the Swedish MD/PhDs said, the virus did find its way to these subpopulations as soon as they came out of shutdown. If the goal was to drag out the whole coronaplague experience by six extra months, I guess we can declare victory!
We also have a bit of the moving target: initially it was all about flattening the curve, now that the curve has been successfully flattened, let us forget about this goal and invent something new. Media attention is on the number of new cases, breeding paranoia. But why? I, for one, attribute it to attempt at destabilization by leftist media to influence upcoming elections.
Less than 6′ and more than 15 minutes. Well isn’t that interesting. Please tell us more about your exposure time science and can we just walk around with a 15 minute shot clock instead of masks?
Ah, the fallacy of comparing to an average. The reality hidden by the average is that some (quite normal) years are much worse than others. If one looks at the spread rather than simple average, 2020 isn’t exceptional at all, mortality-wise.