Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)

teachercd said:
Seeing it with students, I think covid-fatigue is setting in, fast.  
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I think that fatigue is understandable.  This whole thing has to be hard on kids - particularly ~K-6 or so that are just trying to figure out how to learn, and then we have to layer  socially distant/masked school or zoom school on them.  I could see older kids having a little more patience, but after 2 months of this directly following on the end of a turbulent spring semester, they are probably really frustrated.

I'm not sure what the answer is. 

Distance education just doesn't seem viable as the primary educational paradigm.  Using it to cover the occasional snow day, etc. is probably ok, but I would think the vast majority of K-12 students will struggle with distance learning.  Having them do in person with all the COVID restrictions probably also saps any enthusiasm. 

While some children have died due to COVID, that part is a much lower risk for them, however we are starting to see data that shows they are quite able to catch it at high rates, and spread it to their parents/grandparents/etc just as effectively as adults transfer it.

For schools it is difficult to win - if they say come to school and relax the rules and a kid dies/suffers debilitating effects, the school district get sued, probably successfully. 

It is just a tough situation all around.  I don't envy those of you having to try and teach younger kids in that environment.  I do some part time teaching for a community college, and there the expectations are a little different - students aren't required to be in college.  So saying (nicely) "suck it up and put in the effort" is more supported by the college administration.

 
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From this site: https://www.covidexitstrategy.org/

 
Rochelobe said:
 I don't envy those of you having to try and teach younger kids in that environment.  I do some part time teaching for a community college, and there the expectations are a little different - students aren't required to be in college.  So saying (nicely) "suck it up and put in the effort" is more supported by the college administration.
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I'm just getting sick of having to instruct students on how to properly wear a mask in the classroom.  If the fat middle aged guy can wear one all class period, the 18-22 college athlete sure as hell can sit there and wear one.

 
Husker NoNo said:
I'm just getting sick of having to instruct students on how to properly wear a mask in the classroom.  If the fat middle aged guy can wear one all class period, the 18-22 college athlete sure as hell can sit there and wear one.
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Every single class period, I have to ask at least 3 times to have my students put their masks over their noses. 

 
knapplc said:
Great company we're in.
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To wit--South Korea had their first reported case the same time period we did, and they did a significantly better job of quarantining the infected, wearing masks, social distancing, and taking care of those impacted with food and benefits packages, including food staples delivered on a weekly basis to the homes of those quarantining. 

Cdog923 said:
Every single class period, I have to ask at least 3 times to have my students put their masks over their noses. 
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Unfortunately down here in Texass, we're seeing teachers not enforcing masks or social distancing unless administration is there watching, because some of these teachers are of the ignorant political belief that this has been overblown and that COVID isn't a big deal. And considering you have administrations that are fudging infected and quarantined numbers to make things look better than they are, coupled with county leaders no longer running COVID dashboards or tracking data for their counties (like Collin County, the largest county in Texas)...things are getting *really* bad in the schools down here. 

Hell, even the Superintendent of one school system tweeted out a selfie with a kid in the background clearly not wearing a damn mask right, and didn't think anything of it.  :facepalm:

 
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I'm curious if anybody else recently had to take a COVID test and what their experience was like in regards to getting results (in Omaha or Nebraska, specifically). I had been hearing stories of people having to wait several days (sometimes five or more) to receive results but mine were sent fairly quickly.

I went and took one Wednesday morning (through Test Nebraska) after I started experiencing several symptoms associated with COVID - fever, cough, sinus issues, headaches, etc. No loss of taste/smell and trouble breathing. Decided to take a test just out of caution. Went in Wednesday morning, was notified by Thursday morning that the lab had received my test, and then received my results email at 11:42 p.m. Thursday night. Results ended up being negative.

 


I'm not trying to argue against masks.  

But if I'm making a correct assumption about how the question is being asked - do they now someone with symptoms right now - the results would be skewed by the higher infections already running through some states such that a lot of people have already had it compared to other states that are just now really picking up (kind of for the first time).

 
Mavric said:
I'm not trying to argue against masks.  

But if I'm making a correct assumption about how the question is being asked - do they now someone with symptoms right now - the results would be skewed by the higher infections already running through some states such that a lot of people have already had it compared to other states that are just now really picking up (kind of for the first time).
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I don't think what you're saying is correct since the point of the question is to gather symptoms and mask wearing right now. The statistics and polling are being conducted by a team at Carnegie Mellon, and one of the researchers mentions that there's the possibility of bias. You can also go right to their covidcast website, which allows you to look at the collected data in a ton of different ways: https://covidcast.cmu.edu/

From the article linked in the tweet:

So the CovidCast team partnered with Facebook, which is used by 70 percent of U.S. adults and has the ability to survey tens of thousands of them every day at relatively low cost. While the resulting state-level samples aren’t perfect representations of the general population, the researchers weight the responses using Census Bureau demographic data to ensure they’re a good approximation.

“If Facebook’s users are different from the U.S. population generally in a way that the survey weighting process doesn’t account for, then our estimates could be biased,” cautioned Alex Reinhart, a Carnegie Mellon professor of statistics and data science who works on CovidCast and wrote a book on statistical methods. “But if that bias doesn’t change much over time, then we can still use the survey to detect trends and changes.”

He also cautioned that the old saw of “correlation doesn’t equal causation” applies here as well.

“There could be other explanations for the correlation,” he said. “For example, states that had worse outbreaks earlier in the pandemic both have higher mask usage now and more immunity.”
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Mavric said:
I'm not trying to argue against masks.  

But if I'm making a correct assumption about how the question is being asked - do they now someone with symptoms right now - the results would be skewed by the higher infections already running through some states such that a lot of people have already had it compared to other states that are just now really picking up (kind of for the first time).
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I think that's a fair point. It's also a bit of an interesting/strange metric to measure... 'knowing someone with COVID symptoms.' I wouldn't necessarily say it's irrelevant, but there are probably 15-20 different people who know I had COVID-like symptoms this past week and almost all of them (including me) are avid mask users in public.

 
I have to say that I'm a little frustrated over the whole testing thing.  

Right now, if you have any procedure done in a hospital, you have to be tested and be negative before they will allow you in to do it.  But, I have two frustrating examples:

a)  Good Friend a week ago actually had to pull over while driving and call someone to come pick him up.  He was light headed, dizzy, fatigued...etc.  They took him to the hospital and tested his heart and everything else.  They still aren't quite sure what happened and dismissed him the next day.  He's had low energy ever since and he had another spell a couple days later.  He said he wanted to be tested in the hospital, but they didn't...and still haven't.

b) Good friend has been sick for a couple months.  Shortness of breath.  Low apatite to the point he's lost a lot of weight.  Saw several doctors trying to figure it out.  So bad he couldn't work.  They thought it was something and gave him meds and he started to get worse.  A few days ago, he was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia.  They still haven't tested him to se if he has COVID.

Situations like this just don't make sense to me.  It's a simple test and these guys were in the hospital.  Just do it to rule it out.

 
RedDenver said:
“If Facebook’s users are different from the U.S. population generally in a way that the survey weighting process doesn’t account for, then our estimates could be biased,”
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According to some around here, Facebook users can't possibly have a logical opinion, and will only provide answers like "MAGA-Duh"  :dunno

 
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