Covid and your kids

[claresdad]

Just to contribute....6 year old's kindergarten FINALLY opens two days a week of in-person instruction (1.5 hrs each day), the week after Easter. Last Thursday one of the kids in her on-campus pod tests positive so now she not only misses 4 of the last 8 available in person sessions, but she's quarantined at home...again. Third time it's happened. Thankfully she tested negative and everyone in her family life around her is now vaccinated. Little socialization and almost no "relationship" with her teacher is a real problem for an extrovert like her. Side note...district tells me their stats show only a 6% transference rate among district schools (elementary).

She did manage to keep her kindergarten zoom commitments and get in some turns for a week.

[bodywhomper]

Good times getting the little one skiing! What is a transference rate?

[Core Shot]

During the 2018-19 flu season, the CDC reported approximately 480 flu deaths among children ages 0-17, about 30% of whom had a lab-confirmed case of influenza.

Comparably, 90 American youth have died from coronavirus complications from the beginning of the pandemic through mid-August, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

[altasnob]

What Core Shot posted has been my understanding as well. My 3 year old has been in part-time in person preschool since September. They are supposed to wear mask, and the teachers do their best to keep the kids complying with the rules. But masks on a 3 year old preschool class seems ineffective because proper fit and compliance is futile (they eat snacks together each day). So far, only had to quarantine once due to another student with a positive COVID test. My kid tested negative but anyone who has had to try to shove a COVID nasal test up a 3 year old's nose knows not to put too much weight on that test.

I don't want my kid to get COVID but prior to the vaccine, my biggest concern with my kid being in preschool was giving COVID to the parents and others. Now that adults are fully vaccinated (or soon will be) I think it is even less of a risky endeavor.

[The SnowShow]

Our school in Denver has been open full time since the beginning of the school year. We’ve had cases come up here and there and when they do, that class/cohort of 18 quarantined each time. The cases have almost exclusively been on the outside, ie nannies or parents and there’s been no spread within the school or cohorts. There were a few instances where a few kids showed symptoms but nothing spread to the other kids. Seems like following the CDC measures strictly works.

[claresdad]

Unfortunately, our latest occurrence included parental resistance when pod teaching assistants said their kid looked “off”. Of course he ends up puking and they finally relented and then it’s off to the races....
I’m not judging. It’s just how it happened this time.

[claresdad]

They told me that is the rate of transfer so far to other kids within a pod.

[bodywhomper]

As variants spread that have less efficacy to the current vaxes, we should be re-evaluating the risks of our children getting infected and spreading to others that are at higher risk. With children, I find it tricky to understand who is at “high risk.” It’s vaguely defined and, often, we don’t know if a child meets that risk profile. It’s certainly known that some children are high risk.

My understanding is that the rate of transfer or the rate of infection in schools, day cares, and preschools is not known in any setting or location that I’m aware of because of the lack of thorough contact tracing and a lack of surveillance testing.

The only large study that I’m aware of among children was the UC Berkeley study that occurred in India in the summer that found that children can spread the disease as easily as adults, but children typically do not get as sick (with the version(s) of the virus circulating at that time).

Where I live, especially in the fall, if a kid showed up with “symptoms” at school, they were sent home and requested to provide t provide a doctor’s note that the children do not have covid. Many/most of those children were back at school the next day because their pediatrician would not test and just write a note. There was no clear and concise guidance for pediatricians about how to proceed and they were following their own thoughts about the disease. Contact tracing was also poorly conducted in many areas, with tracing occurring too early to the actual contact with no follow-up. During the late fall/early winter “wave,” contact tracing, at least in my community, was limited to the elderly homes because of lack of resources.

The recent safe/not safe episode of “In the Bubble” discusses this topic and would be worthy a listening to understand some experts opinions: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...=1000517710799

[Hopeless Sinner]

My kid is 22 yo and has missed her last few months of undergrad, the graduation ceremony, spent the next year finishing grad school at night, and missed her grad school graduation ceremony. During the day she has also been teaching 5th grade remotely from her aunts house, our house, her apartment where she lives alone, and now from school. Other than the 6 weeks she was with us it was a pretty lonely period. When she left us to return to her empty apartment all 3 of us were crushed. She isn't high risk but quit virtually all activities with other people. And of course she endured the general horror of c19 like the rest of us.

The school has returned to in person for the other 2 classes of 5th graders, but she was chosen to be the remote teacher for the kids that wanted to remain remote. This meant getting mostly a new group of kids and starting from scratch with them. At school she now has some limited daily, in person, interaction w kids and other adults. She did finally get the J&J which provided a lift for a week or 2.


Teaching at an inner city charter school remotely where some of her students were left to care for their siblings since the parent(s) were not wfh was daunting. Additional services weren't available to these kids(mostly native Spanish speakers), some never attended class, and most didn't do as well as they should have so my kid took all these shortcomings that every kid endured to heart. We travelled to spend a week with her during spring break which was fun, but the sadness was still there. My hope is enough people will get vaxxed so all our lives can resume in whatever altered reality becomes the new norm. She is a tough, independent adult but it sure is tough to watch.

[BC.]

^^^QFT...wish you and and your family the best....Tell her to always keep all her options open.....keep applying for jobs in the locations she wants to eventually end up in...use this charter school job as a resume builder/good experience/stepping stone to a better job....there will be a big turnover in the teaching profession very soon....

I’ve got 2 daughters that are experiencing the same as you describe above......it will make them stronger human beings in the long run....but it is damn tough to watch now.....

[Hopeless Sinner]

^^^QFT...wish you and and your family the best....Tell her to always keep all her options open.....keep applying for jobs in the locations she wants to eventually end up in...use this charter school job as a resume builder/good experience/stepping stone to a better job....there will be a big turnover in the teaching profession very soon....

I’ve got 2 daughters that are experiencing the same as you describe above......it will them stronger human beings in the long run....but it is damn tough to watch now.....

Thank you.

We listened to her teach remotely from her bedroom since we've been confined to the basement while we remodel. It really is incredible how hard she works trying to maintain discipline, and interest in +- 22 classrooms simultaneously on a 15" screen.

[wooley12]

Speaking from some experience in the tough teaching biz, be a hero to your struggling new teacher kids and surprise them with one of these cards and a starfish pin.

[bodywhomper]

My local HS district current protocol is that if a student tests positive and had recently gone to school, all students and staff that were in close contract (like the same classrooms) Students we've identified as having close contact are notified and placed in isolation for 10 days (there’s no protocol for testing) and locations on campus where the individual had contact are cleaned and “sanitized.”

This happened on Friday at my kid’s HS. Each of the classrooms has a new large portable HEPA filter and mandates mask wearing and distancing. I’m pretty sure none of the windows can open.

[Hopeless Sinner]

Speaking from some experience in the tough teaching biz, be a hero to your struggling new teacher kids and surprise them with one of these cards and a starfish pin.

Very thoughtful, thank you.

[jerlane]

During the 2018-19 flu season, the CDC reported approximately 480 flu deaths among children ages 0-17, about 30% of whom had a lab-confirmed case of influenza.

Comparably, 90 American youth have died from coronavirus complications from the beginning of the pandemic through mid-August, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Are you really quoting numbers from August? You realize the was over seven months ago, right? Current CDC numbers show over 400 kids dead from COVID. That’s not a huge number, but still tragic.

Part of the problem is that we can’t look at numbers from last year. It is a different situation now with the variants.


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[Core Shot]

Are you really quoting numbers from August? You realize the was over seven months ago, right? Current CDC numbers show over 400 kids dead from COVID. That’s not a huge number, but still tragic.

Part of the problem is that we can’t look at numbers from last year. It is a different situation now with the variants.


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That was all I could find with my lazy google.

Great. You got a 400 number for the whole year.

The quote you quoted from me was 480 per year. Pre covid.

So covid kid deaths are less. They still suck. But fuck. Think

[bern43]

10 year old gets pool tested at school every two weeks. Seems like a decent system. They've been back full time since the beginning of April.

My 3 year old is in preschool in town. They require masks because of the regulations they're subject to, and because it makes sense since 3 years can't socially distance. They take trips into town on a regular basis. Apparently people have been yelling at the teachers/kids about wearing masks. It got bad enough that they had to get the police involved and they're not taking the kids into town. People are terrible.

[mfcf13]

That was all I could find with my lazy google.

Great. You got a 400 number for the whole year.

The quote you quoted from me was 480 per year. Pre covid.

So covid kid deaths are less. They still suck. But fuck. Think

Perhaps it is you who needs to think.

It is very good news (admidst a sea of bad news) that Covid only rarely causes severe illness in children. You are focused on that.

However, children spread Covid. And there has been 3.78 million reported positive cases in children this year. Given that children are more likely to be asymptomatic (and that many pediatricians were not sending kids to get tested) that number is actually likely to be even higher.

https://services.aap.org/en/pages/20...l-data-report/


So Grandma, Uncle and any other idiot who foregoes vaccines so they can impress Marjorie, Matt and Don Jr. won't likely find themselves driving a child to the hospital. But they might very well find themselves being driven to the local hospital, after contracting the Rona from the little ones. It's called community spread and Americans seem too dumb to figure it out.

[bodywhomper]

“Your local epidemiologist” just posted an update about kids: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.subs...EJzE9ywaC3QY1M

Besides the shitty quality of available data, her main takeaways: in the US, the children are a higher % of total new infections, as of the last week or two (like 4% increase), and a chunk of kids suffer from long covid regardless of the severity of their symptoms when infected.

[dtown]

Talking to a buddy tonight who is a dean in a local high school. I asked in a normal year, the # of kids who have a D or F, answer was 5-10%. How about this year? 45-50% have at least one D or F and the bar has been lowered significantly. 10-15% would fail the year entirely (previously 2-3%). The district plans to pass everyone on as they don’t have the space or the resources to have essentially 4 1/2 classes vs 4 classes in the HS. This was fairly surprising to me, he mentioned the district may lower the standards long term because of the impact covid has had on learning.

Any mags school administrators? Experiencing the same thing?


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[stealurface831]

Talking to a buddy tonight who is a dean in a local high school. I asked in a normal year, the # of kids who have a D or F, answer was 5-10%. How about this year? 45-50% have at least one D or F and the bar has been lowered significantly. 10-15% would fail the year entirely (previously 2-3%). The district plans to pass everyone on as they don’t have the space or the resources to have essentially 4 1/2 classes vs 4 classes in the HS. This was fairly surprising to me, he mentioned the district may lower the standards long term because of the impact covid has had on learning.

Any mags school administrators? Experiencing the same thing?

my grades and most of my friends' grades have absolutely tanked for sure.

[bodywhomper]

Depression, anxiety, insomnia, screen/dopamine addiction

I heard a report today on npr that la unified school district has only 7% of HS students showing up to in-person classes.

[MontuckyFried]

Talking to a buddy tonight who is a dean in a local high school. I asked in a normal year, the # of kids who have a D or F, answer was 5-10%. How about this year? 45-50% have at least one D or F and the bar has been lowered significantly. 10-15% would fail the year entirely (previously 2-3%). The district plans to pass everyone on as they don’t have the space or the resources to have essentially 4 1/2 classes vs 4 classes in the HS. This was fairly surprising to me, he mentioned the district may lower the standards long term because of the impact covid has had on learning.

Any mags school administrators? Experiencing the same thing?

100% true. Sadly it's also disproportionately effecting lower income communities. HARD. I talked about it last summer when all the well-to-do folks here were like "SChooLS NEEd To BE ShutDOwn FOReVER! My KIdS ArE DoinG GreAT wItH REmoTE LEArnING! WhAT's ThE ProBLeM?!" and was also somehow deemed a "racist" for pointing out that kids from struggling households were getting hosed on this one. Now that test results and statistics are starting to be revealed, the cat is officially out of the bag. In my wife's school district, something like 60-70% of kids are failing to read/write at grade level, and a very large percentage of the student population is also wholly unaccounted for. It is tragic what we are doing to an entire generation of children. They are getting eff'd over more than we can even quantify right now.

[Skidog]

100% true. Sadly it's also disproportionately effecting lower income communities. HARD. I talked about it last summer when all the well-to-do folks here were like "SChooLS NEEd To BE ShutDOwn FOReVER! My KIdS ArE DoinG GreAT wItH REmoTE LEArnING! WhAT's ThE ProBLeM?!" and was also somehow deemed a "racist" for pointing out that kids from struggling households were getting hosed on this one. Now that test results and statistics are starting to be revealed, the cat is officially out of the bag. In my wife's school district, something like 60-70% of kids are failing to read/write at grade level, and a very large percentage of the student population is also wholly unaccounted for. It is tragic what we are doing to an entire generation of children. They are getting eff'd over more than we can even quantify right now.

I said it from the start of the lockdown, the effects on society, especially kids, because of covid, will end up much worse than the virus itself.

[schuss]

I said it from the start of the lockdown, the effects on society, especially kids, because of covid, will end up much worse than the virus itself.

Only if we ignore it. It's a shit situation, but there's plenty that can be learned from this of how to effectively support kids, communities and different learning styles. Our remote teacher was a fucking triumph of getting through to the first graders (talk about distracted...) and keeping the ball rolling. Luckily, they're all back in school with the same teacher, but I think it's key we don't disrespect the utter disruption kids have seen. I know our district is staffing up on counselors and doing more support/learning sessions of teaching kids how to interact again. Unfortunately, many of the communities that need it won't get it as you have significant pressure all over the place to cut education funding.