Steven Singer has written eloquently about the rush to reopen schools without heed to the safety of teachers. Trump and DeVos have urged schools to reopen without lifting a finger to supply the funds needed to reopen safely. Others have jumped on any statistic that encourages reopening, without regard to the safety of staff.
Singer says that teachers will remember those who forget about their safety.
As the global COVID-19 pandemic rages out of control throughout most parts of the United States, teachers all across the country want to be able to do their jobs in a way that won’t put themselves or their loved ones in danger.
In most cases that means remote instruction – teaching students via the Internet through video conferencing software like Zoom.
However, numerous leaders and organizations that historically are supportive of teachers have refused to support them here.
The rush to keep classrooms open and thus keep the economy running has overtaken any respect for science, any concern for safety, and any appeal to compassion.
Thankfully, some districts have been accommodating, worrying about the safety of children as well as adults.
But many others have refused to go this route even demanding educators with compromised immune systems and other increased risk factors either get in the classroom and teach or seek some sort of financially burdensome leave.
Affected teachers often wonder where their union is, where their progressive representative, where the grassroots activists who were willing to organize against charter schools and high stakes testing.
Answer: crickets.
As a result, more than 300 U.S. teachers and other school employees have died from the virus, according to the Associated Press.
In New York City, alone, 72 school employees died of the virus, according to the city Department of Education.
And since Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has refused to collect data on how the pandemic is affecting schools and school employees, this count is probably woefully under-representative of the full tragedy.
About 1 in 4 teachers – nearly 1.5 million – have conditions that raise their risk of getting seriously ill from the Coronavirus, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
In my own Western Pennsylvania community in the last few weeks, we buried high school employee Terri Sherwin, 60, of Greater Latrobe School District and elementary school employee Dana Hall, 56, of Jeannette City School District.
The assertion that children cannot get the disease, which was popularized by the Trump administration, has been proven false.
More than 1 million kids nationwide have been diagnosed with COVID-19 according to a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics .
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says most children who get the disease (especially those younger than 10) are asymptomatic or have only mild symptoms but are still capable of transmitting the virus to others. This – along with the lack of a national database – makes it incredibly difficult to accurately trace the source of an outbreak through the schools.
However, in November the CDC quietly removed controversial guidelines from its website promoting in-person learning, and instead lists it as “high risk.”
“As new scientific information has emerged the site has been updated to reflect current knowledge about COVID-19 and schools,” a spokesperson said.
Yet there has been no subsequent change in the policy positions of most lawmakers, school directors, union leaders or education activists.
Excellent commentary. My only disagreement is with Steven’s final sentence, “We won’t forget who spoke up and who remained silent.” Forgetting is an American habit. Rewriting history–and having it stick in the consciousness of a majority–is more likely.
Anyone connected with education knew that there would be a shortage of substitute teachers.
…………………………..
It’s not just COVID-19 that’s closing schools — it’s a lack of substitute teachers. The shortage has reached crisis levels in some districts.
By KAREN ANN CULLOTTA
CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
DEC 07, 2020
When the long-awaited return of students for in-person classes arrived at Schaumburg High School in late October, Jim Britton sat in his Hyundai Sonata in the school’s parking lot, awaiting his marching orders.
Britton, the director of human resources at Township High School District 211, was among the administrators dispatched to its five high schools as a temporary solution to yet another COVID-19-era conundrum: a serious shortage of substitute teachers at a time when demand has never been higher…
Indeed, the prospect of working as a substitute as the virus continues to rage has discouraged the squad of loyal retired teachers and part-timers who often fill the ranks. Many have told school district officials that the potential health risks are not worth the extra income. That’s happened as the number of teachers and other school employees in quarantine is spiking alongside the latest surge of the virus, only pushing the demand higher.
In response, some districts are stepping up their substitute recruitment efforts to preserve in-person instruction. But others are concluding that remote learning, with all of its flaws, is perhaps the best option, at least until early 2021.
At Schaumburg School District 54, which began the school year with remote learning, students briefly returned to the classroom earlier this fall. But the hybrid plan, which was selected by about 50% of the district’s families, was halted due to both public health and operational metrics, including a rise in COVID-19 rates in the community, and burgeoning numbers of students and teachers in quarantine, district spokeswoman Terri McHugh said.
On Nov. 6, shortly before the pause of in-person learning, 781 students and 158 staff members were in quarantine across District 54′s 28 schools, McHugh said.
“It’s definitely difficult to find substitutes who are willing to work right now, so all of the quarantines did present staffing challenges,” McHugh said….
https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-covid-19-substitute-teacher-shortage-schools-20201207-jv7rdgozkfaq3ai5spqcphmqfq-story.html
The response or lack thereof should spur another round of union activism. Teachers need someone of their side when schools and education become a political football. Biden has openly stated his support for unions. I hope Democrats will work to overturn “right to work” laws. They are designed to keep power and money in the hands of management while they undermine organized labor.
When I read Singer’s post, I had to wonder about the accuracy of the figures of school related victims. He mentions that 72 teachers died in New York City while the entire country of the country only has 300? If only 228 school related personnel passed away in the rest of the country, I have to wonder if the data are being accurately recorded. Some doctors may be recording the deaths as pneumonia rather than Covid. Only 300 deaths seem like a low figure for the entire country.
Schools in South Korea, for example, had extremely low positivity rates compared to everywhere in the United States when they reopened South Korean schools, and 500 South Korean schools had to close after reopening. There are known disease outbreaks in schools taking place. Where are facts like these in the mainstream dialogue? Missing. Corporate America is doing exactly what was done during the charter school attack ten years ago: They’re cherry-picking the data. It’s not science versus teachers unions; it’s junk science versus real science.
There are liability risks for accurate reporting of cases, hospitalizations and so on.
This report from Steve Singer exposes the inaccuracies and outright deceptions in data-gathering and the many politically expedient policies putting the lives of students teachers, their friends and relatives at risk, and not just those who are older and have conditions that put them in danger of infection.
I hope everyone also looks at the full 60 Minutes video that Singer has posted. It reports on the persistence of symptoms after “recovery.” Please watch it through the grim autopsy evidence and to the unexpected tragic ending. I am not at all sure those soon to be available vaccines will be anything close to a miracle cure.
Where are the clowns??
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next hour.
Don’t bother they’re here!
I haven’t seen any yet.
At least not in this thread.
Writing as a licensed driver of a clown car, I think Duane qualifies too! 🤡
I’m talking about eclownomists.
That’s a made up word. The correct term is economidiots.
What’s wrong with economists?
Everything!
Right TE!
You should ask eclownomists what the hell is wrong with them because ill be DAMmed if I know.
Please don’t dam up your poetry!
What’s wrong with economists is they don’t stay in their own lanes in their clown cars.
They think they’re educators (Chetty) or epidemiologists (Oster).
Well said, Christine!
I should have written: What’s wrong the term economists? with a smiley face. Agree with everyone above, especially with respect to applying it to education.
Message to Eclownomists
Stay in your own lane
Play in your clown lane
Stay out of mine
And all will be fine
wonderful
Thank you, Steven!
Yes, the CDC has become emboldened by the defeat of Jabba the Trump, who pressured it to spew this nonsense about how children were magically immune and magically not transmitters of the virus. And some, of course, really wanted to hear the Trumpy bs from what had previously been a scientific organization.
Thank you, Diane, for writing about this on your blog. And thank you, everyone, who has commented about it.
This year has been the most difficult of my career so far. I don’t mind an academic challenge. But I have never felt so ignored or devalued. As a public school teacher, you’d think I’d get used to the gas lighting, but this year has taken it to the next level. The amount of stress is through the roof. My students are suffering. Their families are suffering. My family is suffering. My daughter is suffering. My colleagues are suffering. I am suffering.
Right now I am teaching remotely but I don’t know what will happen next week. So many of my colleagues have been quarantined and/or tested positive for Covid-19. So many students, former students and their family members have gotten sick. In Allegheny County, the western Pennsylvania area where I live, the virus is running out of control. We had 1,470 new cases yesterday and every day it gets worse. We’re three times worse than the state average. Our positivity rate fluctuates between about 20% and 30% a day.
It is obvious to anyone who is actually in the schools that the virus is spreading there. But administrators can’t (or won’t) find evidence to trace it back to the buildings and pretend like that means it isn’t happening. It’s like swimming in bloody water with dorsal fins all over the place and they’re arguing we shouldn’t close the beaches. Those swimmers could have gotten caught in a motor boat accident, they say.
This has been a failure of government at nearly every level. When there is an economic incentive not to find the virus, the people in charge won’t find it. Capitalism is killing us as much (maybe worse) than Coronavirus.
Teachers need our allies in the education activist community to have their backs. We can’t keep doing this alone. We need you to support us. We need you to hear us, to help us.
I know we’re all worried about what this will all mean for the future. Will all this virtual learning mean more ed tech? Will it help charter and voucher schools? Will it boost the standardized testing industry?
Honestly, I don’t know, but I DO know that we can fight them as we always have – together. But if you sacrifice teachers to stop the corporate education reformers, you won’t stop them. All you’ll do is have to keep fighting them without us.
Thank you for hearing me today.
Thanks for saying what needs to be said.
I know you have taken abuse , even here on this blog
(Speaking of which, where are the 🤡’s?)
The certainty and generality with which some people speak about a highly uncertain and variable (dependent on local conditions) issue is simply not scientifically justified.
I hear you, Steven. Thank you and I am thinking of you.
I really appreciate reading your views, Steven. My son recently finished his first semester of college in Allegheny County (they went online after Thanksgiving break, but scheduled to go back in mid-January), so I’m interested in your thoughts on this too. I have the luxury of working from home, so your experience–and that of all you good teachers out there–is inducing a great amount of guilt for what you have to endure. Keep venting, it’s good for your mental health.
I’m finally catching up with yesterday, this morning, Steven.
What I see day after day is that a crisis like this pandemic brings out the best and worst in people all around me. It’s like when a carpenter sands a piece of wood and it reveals the grain much more clearly…
Sure, people can and do change. But I think that’s especially difficult to do right now.
So, people who tend to be selfish are even more selfish and the humane people are more humane. The range of human behavior is stunning.
My wife is a writer…she writes a column for one of the local papers. She had this amazing one back from before the pandemic. I think about it all the time these days. Here’s part of it:
“My father, a World War II army veteran, did not talk much about his time spent in Europe during the war. He liked to recall meeting Gertrude Stein in a hospital in Paris when he was recovering from hepatitis. He liked to say how he snuck away one night to go see Stonehenge. But the real, raw and nitty-gritty he would shy away from.
There was one story he liked to tell, however, that I think about often… even more now considering our current cultural and political climate.
‘It sounds like fiction,” he would say. This was an expression he used that might really be comparable to today’s phrase, “You can’t make this up.’
The story goes as follows. It seems that while stationed at one army base, my father met a mess hall cook who sorted through all the discarded food to find the edible leftovers that he would save for the local, often starving, people. ‘Why?’ my father asked, and the cook told him that he had had a hard childhood and he liked to help people out. When my father’s company moved to the next base, he met another mess hall cook who also saved the leftover food—but he would ruin it by mixing coffee grounds with it, making it inedible. Again my father asked “Why?” Well, this cook said, he had had a tough upbringing, too. But, he told my dad, he didn’t have to make it any easier for anyone else.
It is a story that has always illustrated for me one of those big and age-old unanswerable questions. Why is it that when faced with personal suffering, some people become empathetic and compassionate while others do not? In fact, some people may even become less generous and filled with resentment and hate.”
I’ll try to put the link to the piece below.
I guess the column sums up what I’m witnessing now in the United States.
I take great comfort in visiting this blog where there are plenty of people like that first mess hall cook, the guy who tried to help. People like you, Steven.
I was driving home yesterday and NPR’s All Things Considered had this amazing story about two nurses in rural America. The nurses spoke eloquently about fighting the Covid pandemic and the incredible selfishness they are witnessing in their small towns – for example people angrily refusing to wear masks. Their stories made me ashamed for our nation.
My goal during this crisis is to try to help whenever I can, no matter how small that gesture might be. Being a teacher offers me opportunities to do just that almost every moment of the day, even if those days sure wear me out.
Take care.
https://riverreporter.com/stories/the-resonance-of-war-stories,32897
(By my wife, Kristin Barron, August, 2019)
John Ogozalek: That was a fantastically beautiful story. I hadn’t thought about this health crisis bringing out the best and the worst in humankind.
Hope I’m on the best side. I couldn’t stand hurting others but some people definitely have no regard for making things better.
My first thought is our Congress men/women who are all wealthy people and they are in no hurry to help Americans by passing a responsible healthcare plan that will cover everyone, sending out immediate checks for at least $1200 or giving stimulus money to SMALL businesses that are struggling. Where is the state or federal help for public schools?
My next thought is of all those people who selfishly will not wear a mask because their ‘freedom’ is being imposed upon. How about all of those ‘Christian’ ministers who demand that their churches remain open..and the result is more confirmed spreading of a vicious disease.
It’s harder to find the goodness but it exists. It just isn’t being reported as much as the hardships.
In Germany , crisis just brings out the wurst …and the beer, of course.
The Wurst of Humankind
The wurst of humankind
Is really on my mind
So on the grill
I think I will
Cook up the wurst divine
“Cook up the wurst I find”
Might work too
The wurst of a crisis
A crisis brings the wurst
— and beer and also chips.
I want to be the first
To get the wurst of this
The “problem” with the wurst poem is that I read it at about 10 a.m. and I’ve been hankering for a hot dog ever since. (And that’s even after “The Simpson’s” famous school cafeteria hot dog water episode came to mind.)
I think on New Year’s Eve I’m going to have a big campfire, cook up a wurst or two and read SomeDAM’s wurst/best poem under the stars. (Assuming the weather cooperates. Last New Year’s was a cold, rainy washout -an omen of the year to come.)
P.S. Thanks for the comment, Carolmalaysia. Out of all the things I’ve read the past few years (and I read a lot) I’m proud to say my wife wrote something that is among the best. It’s really stayed with me throughout this mess called 2020..
Thank you, Steven. Thank you for speaking the truth.
Chicago Teachers Union |
CTU Files Request for Injunction Against Reckless CPS Plan to Push Educators and Students Into School Buildings
An injunction demands that CPS bargain with the Union and land enforceable safety standards before school buildings reopen. We’re also calling on the district to put real resources behind safety protocols — from personal protective equipment (PPE), COVID-19 screening, testing, contact tracing and vaccination, to a nurse in every school, smaller classes that allow for social distancing, social and emotional supports for traumatized students, and true upgrades to make ventilation safe.
Every one of these demands is necessary to provide real equity for Chicago’s public school students and the educators who serve them. CPS has now admitted twice in meetings with the Union that it failed to test school ventilation systems for their ability — or failure — to mitigate the spread of the virus. The district has also promised to hire an additional 400 custodial workers, but barely a quarter of that staff have been hired.
School districts and unions in every major U.S. city except for Chicago have been able to successfully bargain mutually agreed upon safety standards. In Chicago, the mayor and CPS have elected to go it alone, ignoring parents and refusing to work collaboratively with the Union, which has successfully negotiated safety memorandums of understanding with district charter operators.
“CPS has stonewalled us for months as we’ve been trying to bargain enforceable safety standards for our district-run schools,” said CTU President Jesse Sharkey, also the father of two CPS students. “We want our schools open as well, but we want it done safely, and not on the backs of the majority Black and Latinx students we serve.”
While CPS has refused to bargain safety issues, Black and Brown parents have overwhelmingly chosen not to return to unsafe school buildings as the pandemic ravages their families and neighborhoods. These families that suffered the most tragedies from COVID-19 have repeatedly opted for remote learning, yet Mayor Lightfoot and her CPS team have failed to prioritize changes to improve remote instruction. Tens of thousands of students still struggle with broadband Internet access and adequately working devices, and as the pandemic surges, returning to unsafe buildings is prioritized over innovation and accessibility for the district’s most economically and racially disenfranchised students.
“Everything about what they are doing is wrong,” said CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates, whose three children are CPS elementary school students. “Teachers, clinicians, paraprofessionals are all being backed into a corner because they want to provide guidance and support for safety, but CPS and the mayor have decided to go it alone, which means they’re not centering the needs of our most vulnerable students because they refuse to engage.”
Almost a third of the more than 500 district-run school buildings have surfaced COVID-19 cases since September. Union representatives have fielded hundreds of complaints from school clerks and technology coordinators working in buildings about CPS safety failures, from dirty buildings and the lack of PPE, to inadequate ventilation, which is a known factor in the spread of the coronavirus. The district has refused to follow a clerk’s binding arbitration decision allowing clerks and technology coordinators to work remotely four days a week, and many have become infected with the virus as a result.
More than 1,000 CPS parents last week participated in a forum on school safety sponsored by the Union and the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, where topics of discussion ranged from how stakeholders can work collaboratively to keep students on track, to the impact of screen time, to specific demands educators need met to reopen school buildings safely. The CTU is committed to frontloading safety, equity and trust in calling for the schools our students deserve in battling COVID-19, which includes comprehensive support services for families, improving proposed hybrid learning plans, safety committees in each school and a joint CTU-CPS committee to oversee the verification of safety and ventilation upgrades.
“This is not how the mayor should be leading in a pandemic,” Davis Gates said. “Our school communities and everyone in them need a unifying strategy that puts safety first.”
“The fact that we’ve had to resort to legal strategies to have a voice and agency regarding her reopening plan is beyond disappointing.”
Chicago Teachers Union • 1901 W. Carroll Ave. • Chicago, IL 60612 • 312-329-9100
http://www.ctulocal1.org
IMO, if the current health crisis affecting us has not caused Americans to embrace the civic values of solidarity, justice, fairness, and the search for the common good, there is very little hope for politicians to deviate from heir neoliberal ideology. By now civic minded teachers realize that public schools have not had like minded friends for a long time. If public teachers through their associations do not unite to defend themselves, the free-market ideologues will continue dictating the course of action.
The neoliberal context of 40 years has reshaped Americans’ attitudes and norms about civic matters, which has affected the perception and importance of public schools. Without debate or discussion, the free-market ideology was imposed and adopted. Thus, the traditional composition of the Democratic Party –institutions, associations, and social groups– changed. As much as the Republican Party, the Democratic Party professes and practices that competition is needed, individualism over common good, greed and profits above all, and unquestionable faith on the free-market. This ideology enabled to criticize, debase, and envision a different way of providing public education.
Indeed for almost 20 years, public schools and teachers have seen themselves increasingly at the mercy of the neoliberal policies that started with NCLB. Evidently, the underfunding and dismantling of public schools that has reached critical levels have not come from friends. IMO, teachers should realize that there are no like-minded politicians who value them, only acquaintances that see them as commodities in a free-market.
Beautifully said, Mr. Flores!
My brain is fried after being in my classroom close to 10 hours then coming home and trying to finish grading papers.
I worked like crazy today…. it’s only Monday and I’m already behind.
Hang in there. Take care!
Massachusetts has recorded more than 10,000 covid cases over the just ended weekend. The state board of education is threatening to audit three school systems – Boston, Worcester and Springfield, unless they return to in-person classes.
https://t.co/VFMPLKJkZw?amp=1
Boston is scheduled to reopen 28 schools to 1700 students on December 14. This is a dereliction of an obligation to keep kids and teachers safe.
Amid this catastrophe, New York City public schools reopened Monday for pre-K to 5th grade, bringing together as many as 200,000 students and staff in confined, poorly ventilated classrooms across the city. Less than three weeks after New York City’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio was compelled to close schools when the citywide test positivity rate surpassed three percent, he has unilaterally reopened them, despite the citywide test positivity rate now exceeding five percent and daily new cases having increased nearly 70 percent in the last two weeks.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/08/pers-d08.html
Richard Holsworth: What in the world is wrong with the United Federation of Teachers? Why don’t they care about the lives of students and adults who work in the schools? I read this and couldn’t believe it.
……………………
The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) has again played the pivotal role in reopening schools. After facilitating the agreement to reopen schools in September, the union bemoaned the fact that they were closed last month and then approvingly retweeted de Blasio’s declaration that they would reopen this week.
Data driven
When data are driven–
Along for the ride
They never are given
A chance to decide
It is ridiculous that people are not supporting teachers’ safety (& other adults who work in schools, as well). Truly, the majority of (or all) school administrators/superintendents/
school board members are not going to admit to covid outbreaks in the schools, & yet, many wind up opening/closing then opening (&, probably) closing again. It doesn’t matter & how is it proven that covid was, so to speak IN the school buildings? What matters is that it was brought in. Kids who have been at family celebrations for Thanksgiving…despite warnings. Teenagers who have attended parties w/few or no masks, little social distancing. Adults who work in the schools–including teachers–who were unknowingly exposed & have brought it into their school. The point is, however covid got there, it came into the school building. The more places we have open where groups are present, the more covid will continue. It’s not fair to anyone to continue the charade that schools are “safe.” Anywhere there are people breathing, talking, coughing, sneezing, there’s a chance that covid might be around. & most school buildings and school districts (cleaning protocol) are grossly underequipped to handle safety (shared bathrooms, toilets w/no lids, cold water, no/not enough handsanitizer). Please!!!
I wish I hand my hands on The Chicago Tribune story a woman wrote about her 78-year-old mother–had never been sick, no pre-existing conditions, had had her first minor surgery (very minor) 2 yrs. ago. &, yet, her mother contacted covid. As described by her daughter, she had a horrible death, gasping for air, w/o her family.3 weeks in the hospital, where she would have better days, then worse…& worst. Once again, a caring nurse held her hand & provided her some peace.The daughter was one of those people, she’d written, who hadn’t thought much about covid, until it was her mother.
Again, what if it was your mother, father, wife, husband, daughter, grandparent?
(& last time I asked, “What if it was you, & Eddie wrote that he was “ready to die.”)
Well, that’s fine if you are ready to die, Eddie, but most people aren’t, & that’s your business & your right to say: I don’t argue w/your personal choice. I particularly find it nauseating when people pooh-pooh deaths of the elderly–so many of these people would not have died sooner rather than later, even if they’d had underlying conditions.
I, too, am sorry for families, for kids who can’t be in schools. That, too, is terrible & is, of course, causing terrible mental trauma. I have no answer for that and, again, I am sorry.
But I say–I support you, Steven Singer, John Ogazelak, Roy Turrentine & all the teachers & people who work in the schools.
And–everyone—PLEASE stay home for the holidays. If not for yourselves, do it for others. Do it for our overburdened, overwhelmed & exhausted health care workers.
How can Biden provide an increased staff and smaller classrooms in schools? Existing schools don’t have more rooms and teachers are quitting. More money for better ventilation sounds great but does he have a Congress that supports him? I hate to be downer but reality is grim.
……………………….
Biden pledges to vaccinate tens of millions, reopen schools in first 100 days
The new pledges came as Biden introduced his picks to lead key health agencies and coordinate the federal response to a pandemic that’s infected almost 15 million people in the U.S.
…Biden also wants to open the majority of the country’s schools within the first 100 days of his presidency and provide adequate funding for districts to implement safety measures such as better ventilation and hiring more staff to oversee smaller, more distanced classrooms of children…
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/08/biden-pledges-vaccinations-reopen-schools-443733
I have posted about false negative rates of covid tests many times and am probably sounding like a broken record at this point, but the false negative issue is why a lot of the quoted “positivities” (particularly those less than a couple %) need to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Unfortunately, lots of people (including governors, mayor’s, school officials and, of course, nitwit economists)have been quoting test positivity results like ” 0.2%” as if the result is accurate to the nearest tenth of a percent. It is NOT. Not even close.
“A woman in Oklahoma with worsening cold-like symptoms tested negative for Covid-19 three times before receiving a positive test. Now, she wants others to know to not solely rely on test results..”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/08/us/tulsa-woman-covid-test-false-negatives-trnd/index.html
It’s worth noting that she tested negative once with a “rapid” test and twice with PCR (which is supposedly the “gold standard” of covid tests). The rapid antigen tests can have false negative rates of 50% but even PCR is estimated to have false negative rates between 2% and nearly 40%, depending on when during the infection the test is performed.
As I and other people (including Steven Singer) have said here , there is waay more uncertainty associated with covid than many (if not most) people seem to appreciate.
And it is hard to avoid the conclusion that some people who know better are actually pretending that this is not the case.
Trump still says the meteoric rise in cassszand deaths is due to increased testing. Stop testing and infections will go down.
If it were just Trump and his gang, I could at least understand it.
But it’s not.
Lots of people (including school officials) are quoting test positivities for schools like 0.2% when even the most accurate covid test (PCR) can have a false negative rate that is greater by a factor of TEN or even more.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/which-test-is-best-for-covid-19-2020081020734
That means the infection rates could be considerably higher than the positivities being quoted indicate.
In some cases they might be MUCH higher.
It’s very unscientific to quote test positivities like 0.2% when the test uncertainty is far higher.
And it’s simply not smart to make decisions based on the assumption that the quoted positivities like 0.2% are an accurate reflection of infections .
Reporting results without the associated uncertainty is simply not sciencee and is effectively meaningless.
It’s worth pointing out that the ONLY reason this Tulsa womsn’s covid case was confirmed was because the woman KNEW she had the classic symptoms of covid AND did not trust the 3 negative test results.
How many people would have either the knowledge of covid OR the persistence to take 4 tests?
How many cases of covid are going undetected either because people simply believe a negative test result means they are not interested Ted even though they have symptoms OR are simply asymptomatic, as many people (particularly young people) are?
And , by the way, asymptomatic does NOT mean one is not infections.
“How many cases of covid are going undetected either because people simply believe a negative test result means they are not infected
Not “not interested”
infectious
Not “infections”
I’d like to strangle the person who programmed this self correct. Prolog someone at Microscope.
OMG!
Prolly someone at Microsoft
Not “Prolog someone at Microscope. “!!!
SomeDAM Poet: I’m laughing.
Self-correcting spellcheck does some weird things at times.
I like Mircoscope for Microsoft! Thought it was intentional.
&–if there aren’t enough health reasons to look at not opening schools, Paul Vallas, says it’s okay! (After all, he said, New Orleans has kept their schools open.)
He’s advocating plexiglass dividers.
Is he going to pay for them?
Yes, as everyone knows, air carrying virus droplets is respectful enough not to go around plexiglass dividers.
That would be very rude of air.
One thing the virus has taught us for sure:
The US is a nation of idiots.
I once programmed a device that relied on the human thermal plume, which lofts particles on and around the body up over the head.
In the case under discussion, as the air cooled it would drop back down in a different location (beyond the plexiglass divider), carrying the droplets with it.
A Plexiglass divider only catches the virus carrying droplets that are sneezed directly on the divider.
You can see that as the the woman in that video breaths out of her nose, the exhaled air gets entrained in the plume (air heated by the body and head) which is lofted over her head.
BTW–&, Floridians, you would be very familiar with this story–a FL friend sent it to me from the Tallahassee newspaper (you might have a link, Bob or Ken Previti), but the video was aired on MSNBC, & Rebekah, the former FL health statistician (who was fired by Rick DeINSANEtis, because he didn’t/doesn’t want the real # of FL infections/deaths getting out there, esp. being it45’s “adopted” state, & it45 always pointing to their “low” 3s–ha!), had her home raided by armed officers, who actually pointed guns at her husband, who was at the top of the stairs, holding one of their 2 young children, w/the eldest standing by his side). It was terrifying. Of course, they had warrants, & Rebekah (a very brave woman, telling truth to power), said this was the work of DeINSANEtis (some bad covid news for FL had gotten out on the internet, & she was blamed for it…but she wasn’t the one who did it).
& now her children are traumatized.
Things are NOT getting better in this country.
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After weeks of surging infections and rising levels of virus hospitalizations, the United States recorded more than 3,000 covid-19 deaths in a single day, a pandemic record, according to a Washington Post analysis.
Lots of people are just acting like the pandemic is over.
It’s mind boggling.
Even some of my sibblings and their children are doing risky stuff like going out to eat when they KNOW it is not safe — because I have told them as much in no uncertain terms.
Of course, they don’t listen to me. What the hell do I know?
And no, they are not Trump supporters.
So we can just dispense with that excuse.
It is indeed mind boggling, SomeDAM. &, because tis the season of consumerism, it continues to get worse. The commercials keep a-comin’: happy people finding brand new SUVs in their driveways, then going out & about–no masks, of course, just like this isn’t happening.
I had to go to the doctor last week, & there’s a big mall right near the office. Again, just as if nothing was going on, the parking lot was very full (the streets you have to drive down & back are parallel to the mall).
A big party in a Chicago nightclub was found (few, if any, wearing masks & no S.D. The owner was shut down & fined. Indoor dining is prohibited, & several restaurant owners (one, also a Chicago Alderman) was fined.
it45 would just say, “We’re bringing Christmas back!”
But you’re right, SDP, it’s not just it45 fans.
There’s NO excuse.
&–if those aren’t enough reasons to not open schools, Paul Vallas says it’s okay to do so!
On Chicago’s “Progressive” Talk Radio, he’d said that the New Orleans Schools have stayed open (and…??). He advocates plexiglass surroundings for every desk.
Will he put his money where his mouth is to pay for that?
&–if those aren’t enough reasons to not open schools, Paul Vallas says it’s okay to do so!
On Chicago’s “Progressive” Talk Radio, he’d said that the New Orleans Schools have
stayed open (and…??). He advocates plexiglass surroundings for every desk.
Will he put his money where his mouth is to pay for that?
Trump’s message of FREEDOM is working. How wonderful to have the freedom to kill yourself and your family and friends. He is responsible for the ugliness and cruelty.
There is no fixing STUPID! Where did common sense go?
I grew up in Boise. I lived in Ada County. Gad. 3,000 dead in one day doesn’t phase these people?
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Tensions rise over masks as virus grips smaller US cities
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Arguments over mask requirements and other restrictions have turned ugly in recent days as the deadly coronavirus surge across the U.S. engulfs small and medium-size cities that once seemed safely removed from the outbreak.
In Boise, Idaho, public health officials about to vote on a four-county mask mandate abruptly ended a meeting Tuesday evening because of fears for their safety amid anti-mask protests outside the building and at some of their homes.
One health board member tearfully announced she had to rush home to be with her child because of the protesters, who were seen on video banging on buckets, blaring air horns and sirens, and blasting a sound clip of gunfire from the violence-drenched movie “Scarface” outside her front door.
“I am sad. I am tired. I fear that, in my choosing to hold public office, my family has too often paid the price,” said the board member, Ada County Commissioner Diana Lachiondo. “I increasingly don’t recognize this place. There is an ugliness and cruelty in our national rhetoric that is reaching a fevered pitch here at home, and that should worry us all.”
Boise police said three arrest warrants were issued in connection with the demonstrations at board members’ homes.
In South Dakota, the mayor of Rapid City said City Council members were harassed and threatened over a proposed citywide mask mandate that failed this week even as intensive care units across the state filled with COVID-19 patients.
The tensions are flaring amid an epic surge in U.S. deaths, hospitalizations and infections over the past several weeks.
The U.S. topped 3,000 deaths Wednesday in what is a single-day record, according to the COVID Tracking Project. That’s surpassed the level seen during last spring’s peak in and around New York City. New cases per day have rocketed to more than 200,000 on average, and the number of patients in the hospital with COVID-19 stood at almost 105,000 on Tuesday, another all-time high.
The grim figures led the usually stoic health director of the nation’s most populated county to become emotional. Barbara Ferrer described “a devastating increase in deaths” in Los Angeles County, with the total hitting 8,075 on Wednesday.
“Over 8,000 people who were beloved members of their families are not coming back,” Ferrer said, fighting back tears….
https://apnews.com/article/public-health-south-dakota-coronavirus-pandemic-boise-california-7898d8d87a12fe88145986ec38db45e9
84% of ICU beds are now filled in Boise. 74 of 89 beds in local hospitals
100% of the ICU beds are filled in Chicago Heights, IL. 94% are filled in Crown Point, IN.
I worked as a music teacher for 12 years in Chicago Heights and my daughter and her family live in Crown Point.
There is a movable chart to see what capacity exists in each area of the U.S.
One HUGE problem is that this comes from that “fake source of news”…the NYT.
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‘There’s No Place for Them to Go’: I.C.U. Beds Near Capacity Across U.S.
More than a third of Americans live in areas where hospitals are running critically short of intensive care beds.
In El Paso, hospitals reported that just 13 of 400 intensive care beds were not occupied last week. In Fargo, N.D., there were just three. In Albuquerque, there were zero.
More than a third of Americans live in areas where hospitals are running critically short of intensive care beds, federal data show, revealing a newly detailed picture of the nation’s hospital crisis during the deadliest week of the Covid-19 epidemic.
Hospitals serving more than 100 million Americans reported having fewer than 15 percent of intensive care beds still available as of last week, according to a Times analysis of data reported by hospitals and released by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Many areas are even worse off: One in 10 Americans — across a large swath of the Midwest, South and Southwest — lives in an area where intensive care beds are either completely full, or fewer than 5 percent of beds are available. At these levels, experts say maintaining existing standards of care for the sickest patients may be difficult or impossible.
“There’s only so much our frontline care can offer, particularly when you get to these really rural counties which are being hit hard by the pandemic right now,” said Beth Blauer, director of the Centers for Civic Impact at Johns Hopkins University.
Sharp increases in Covid-19 patients can overwhelm smaller hospitals, she said. “This disease progresses very quickly and can get very ugly very fast. When you don’t have that capacity, that means people will die.”
The new dataset, released on Monday, marks the first time the federal government has published detailed geographic information on Covid-19 patients in hospitals, something public health officials have long said would be crucial to responding to the epidemic and understanding its impact…
Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported each morning this week: Monday, 282,312; Tuesday, 283,743; Wednesday, 286,325; Thursday, 289,431.
CNN:
All 50 states and the District of Columbia have now certified their presidential election results. The next major step in the Electoral College process is Monday’s meeting of the electors. President Donald Trump escalated his baseless claims of voter fraud yesterday, asking the Supreme Court to intervene in a lawsuit seeking to invalidate millions of votes cast in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
I wish these lying Mother-Phuckers would STFU. This garbage is destroying our country.
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The FBI raided a house and turned up this stunning theft of voter data
By PatriotPulse The true voice of the American Right
Americans have been wondering what the FBI has been doing about voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Those questions just grew louder.
And the FBI raided a house and turned up this stunning theft of voter data.
Forbes magazine broke an explosive story that in Maricopa County Arizona – the state’s largest county – the FBI raided a home and uncovered hard drives and USB sticks that the Bureau seized as part of an investigation into stolen voter data.
“On the morning of November 5, as the 2020 election hung in the balance, Arizona federal agents raided a two-story house in Fountain Hills, Maricopa County, a county that had become a key battleground in the presidential race. The agents were looking for evidence of a cyberattack on an unnamed organization and stolen voter data. They left with eight hard drives, three computers and a bag of USB sticks. The resident of the property, a 56-year-old IT expert named Elliot Kerwin, was served the warrant. He is not yet facing charges and was unreachable for comment at the time of publication. There is no indication that anything other than voters’ information, which can be acquired for a few hundred dollars in Arizona counties, was taken from the affected office,” Forbes reported.
And Maricopa County is at the center of those allegations.
Trump supporters are now wondering what role – if any – this FBI raid is playing in a federal investigation of what tens of millions believe was the biggest political crime in American history.
Arizona is one of the states President Trump and his supporters believe was stolen by Joe Biden through voter fraud.
Biden carried Arizona by a razor thin margin of around 10,000 votes.
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PULSE POLL: Should the FBI investigate allegations of voter fraud?
Yes 99%
No 1%