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Thread about the school reopening (Ms. Ranny’s thread, not Mr. Roner’s)::
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COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US) (8 Viewers)
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This article may have already been posted but piggybacking off the Twitter thread so the concept of pooling surveillance testing can be explained.
Federal Officials Turn to a New Testing Strategy as Infections Surge (Published 2020)
Millions of additional coronavirus tests may be processed with “pooling,” enabling widespread surveillance as the country struggles to reopen.
Devildog
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Ten out of the 12 hospitals in Texas' Rio Grande Valley are now full
"We are now at the point of grave concern," said the CEO of one hospital system in deep South Texas as local hospitals began diverting patients away from their emergency rooms amid a crush of COVID-19 infections.www.texastribune.org
Texas not looking so good.
They just have to do it bigger and better than anyone else, even if it's in the stupidity department.
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Pool testing is an interesting idea, but I'd like to see more information from virologists and epidemiologists on how well it works when compared to traditional testing. I mean, the guy that wrote the thread is a Professor of Economics at NYU. I'm sure he is a very good economist, but I'm not sure whether he understands the medical and epidemiological issues involved with pool testing. Maybe he does, but I'd like to hear from experts in other fields more closely related to containing viruses.
One concern I have is if contact tracing isn't working, then how are they planning to track down all the people who were in the testing pool to test them again? I guess if they all go to a single school it works, but probably does not work for the general public. My other concern would be that it might not actually save money depending on how wide spread the virus is. And, even if it does save money, is it really the best way to do it? Is it just being pushed because the Feds refuse to spend the money necessary to do individual testing and/or didn't ramp up production of test kits fast enough? Is this just the next best thing we can do because we messed up so bad not making more tests and the Feds won't fund testing?
What I found concerning was the idea that we know that contact tracing isn't working. It was supposed to be one of the big pillars to build on to get the economy back open and now we are learning that it's basically impossible to carry out.
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I was actually posting her thread, not his. She uses his as a launching point for the school discussion. I haven’t actually read his yet.
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I remember us discussing here that because of the sheer size of the country, that contact tracing would become impractical once community spread gets beyond a certain point. Pretty sure we're well beyond being able to get the most out of contact tracing at this point.
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Sorry. I guess I clicked on the part that brought me to his thread. It is actually an interesting read BTW. Not sure I think pool testing is the way to go without more information, but it's an interesting idea.
Edit: Anyway, I looked at her thread, the idea that maybe kids can't spread COVID or aren't big spreaders is interesting, but I think we need a lot more research on that and at what age this strange transition to being a non-spreader takes place. Also, I noted that she cites a Reuters article saying that Denmark has not seen a rise because they opened schools. But, I don't think that's actually true. They are seeing a rise is their R rate that coincides with them opening schools and I know they are watching that very closely to see if it's a problem. And, the Danes have pretty much so crushed the virus in their country so it's certainly less of an issue to open schools when there is very little virus around than in the situation the U.S. is in. But, I do agree with her that opening schools should be driven by science. But what is really driven by science in this country anymore?
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Yeah, but this kind of sounded like even on a small scale it's a problem because people either refuse to be interviewed by contact tracers or when they do get interviewed don't give them any information, whether because they don't recall or because they don't want to "rat" anyone out, I don't know. But, I suspect some of this has to do with a stigma attached to getting the virus.
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2 weeks ago 7 day average was 3100 roughly. Now it is over 6900. this week there was 50000+ new cases of covid in Texas. In Over a month that would project to be 200000 plus new cases. the latest seem to be doing nothing to slow the virus down. At this point it seems it is too big to stop.Ten out of the 12 hospitals in Texas' Rio Grande Valley are now full
"We are now at the point of grave concern," said the CEO of one hospital system in deep South Texas as local hospitals began diverting patients away from their emergency rooms amid a crush of COVID-19 infections.
Texas not looking so good.
Sun Wukong
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She asks a bunch of questions she admits there are no answers to, then proposes a bunch of things that will never happen because of the reality of budgets.
Not criticizing you sharing it, but this just underscores my belief that no one has any idea what they're doing re: school reopenings. The Advocate had an article yesterday about how no one in the state is quite sure how to interpret the guidelines on student face mask wearing the state provided, and at the district level parents are falling into "must wear masks or they're not going," "who cares?" and "must not wear masks or not going" groups.
We're going to have a massive clusterfork on our hands come August. There's no way around it. Everything I see indicates a total lack of preparedness.
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That 10.6% positive test rate is ominous. We're adding about a thousand a day now and trending upward.
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Pool testing and even increased testing and contact tracing simply isn't going to do much at this stage in the game. What should have been done was have every aspect of this planned out to introduce as we were first coming out of lockdown. That lockdown should have happened weeks to a month sooner. Had we done that the rest would have been easy to allow it to fall into place.
Right now this is all just a fairy tale in all but a few states. This would probably work in Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont and maybe 1-2 other states but that's it.
The only way we are going to reopen schools or have sporting events is with another lockdown to get cases under control and one that is a lot more strict than the last.
None of that is going to work without a clear unified message at a Federal level.
Right now this is all just a fairy tale in all but a few states. This would probably work in Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont and maybe 1-2 other states but that's it.
The only way we are going to reopen schools or have sporting events is with another lockdown to get cases under control and one that is a lot more strict than the last.
None of that is going to work without a clear unified message at a Federal level.
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It appears that it is being left up to individual school districts or schools which is just not adequate. My daughter goes to a charter school in New Orleans so they had to make their own plan. My understanding is that the plan is if we are in Phase 3, it's on campus learning with only 4 classes per semester; if we are in Phase 2, it's a mixture of both; and if we are in Phase 1, it's distance learning. That all seems reasonable, but we haven't really been given any details about what the on campus learning would be like or what the remote learning would be like. And I don't blame the school admin or teachers since they are seemingly being given no guidance by the Orleans Parish School Board or the State Department of Education.
I've heard nothing of plans to test students. And that's not surprising either because there is no way a local charter school (or public school in general) has the budget to do testing. They can barely afford to do what they do now.
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'even if'?
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this x a septillion
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