Coronavirus in Massachusetts (Boston: broadband, advantages, connection)

[jayrandom]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

Please provide a citation to this mounting evidence? Children don’t land in the ICU with severe pneumonia but I’ve never seen anything that says they’re not contagious if they are infected with the disease with mild symptoms.

I’ve posted the same lancet studies here three or four times.

The idea isn’t that kids can’t spread the disease, just that schools aren’t some super spreading hotbed that requires them to be the absolutely last thing to ever open. Children that are symptomatic should be required to stay home, as they are now, but if society is ready to start eating out and watching live sports, it’s ready to let kids go back to school.

My main concern is, as a working parent, that everything else is going to speed back to normal and kids are going to be stuck at half time at best.

[bjimmy24]

Originally Posted by jayrandom

I’ve posted the same lancet studies here three or four times.

The idea isn’t that kids can’t spread the disease, just that schools aren’t some super spreading hotbed that requires them to be the absolutely last thing to ever open. Children that are symptomatic should be required to stay home, as they are now, but if society is ready to start eating out and watching live sports, it’s ready to let kids go back to school.

My main concern is, as a working parent, that everything else is going to speed back to normal and kids are going to be stuck at half time at best.

This is really having a major effect on kids, both educationally but also mentally. Seems like a total disaster, and nobody in charge is really all that concerned. Schools should be reopened for the fall as normal. I dont know, maybe install some hand sanitizer stations. This whole school debate has been an exercise in ridiculous speculation and incredibly short on actual facts.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by jayrandom

I’ve posted the same lancet studies here three or four times.

The idea isn’t that kids can’t spread the disease, just that schools aren’t some super spreading hotbed that requires them to be the absolutely last thing to ever open. Children that are symptomatic should be required to stay home, as they are now, but if society is ready to start eating out and watching live sports, it’s ready to let kids go back to school.

My main concern is, as a working parent, that everything else is going to speed back to normal and kids are going to be stuck at half time at best.

I scrolled back in this thread as far as Memorial Day. That's more than two weeks ago. Your only Lancet link was about vitamin D on June 2nd. In something where information is evolving as quickly as for COVID-19, you'd might as well be talking about aquarium cleaner as the miracle cure. Again, please provide a citation where school age children, particularly High School age children, are no risk of spreading COVID-19. I've seen lots written about mild symptoms but I have never seen anything I'd consider credible that children with the disease don't spread it. When I Google for it, I see references to a Lancet paper from the University of Queensland that has not been peer reviewed. The only thing I've seen is a recent WHO disclosure where they don't think asymptomatic people spread the disease much. I also see things like:

Researchers at the Institute for Virology at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin said that an analysis earlier this year of nearly 4,000 positive test samples found that the very young did not differ significantly from adults in viral load, leading them to caution against unlimited reopening of schools.

The name of the game is to keep the transmission rate below 1.0. If we open up schools, we need to lock down other things in a very severe way to compensate for that. What do you propose?

[yesmaybe]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

I scrolled back in this thread as far as Memorial Day. That's more than two weeks ago. Your only Lancet link was about vitamin D on June 2nd. In something where information is evolving as quickly as for COVID-19, you'd might as well be talking about aquarium cleaner as the miracle cure. Again, please provide a citation where school age children, particularly High School age children, are no risk of spreading COVID-19. I've seen lots written about mild symptoms but I have never seen anything I'd consider credible that children with the disease don't spread it. When I Google for it, I see references to a Lancet paper from the University of Queensland that has not been peer reviewed. The only thing I've seen is a recent WHO disclosure where they don't think asymptomatic people spread the disease much. I also see things like:

We'd be talking 3 months from now, since the schools aren't coming back for this school year.

[BostonMike7]

This was yesterday's dashboard.

https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-da...-2020/download

198 new cases and 38 deaths. That's a really significant decline for the numbers from MA.


Another good metric is that the number of tests is going down. I would imagine that this is due to the number of people needing to be tested dropping.

[porterhouse]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

Please provide a citation to this mounting evidence?

Please provide a citation to evidence where children are culprits in spreading this virus. Any examples of school aged children spreading the virus to their families or teachers in school?

Originally Posted by GeoffD

If we open up schools, we need to lock down other things in a very severe way to compensate for that.

This is based on what exactly?

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by yesmaybe

We'd be talking 3 months from now, since the schools aren't coming back for this school year.

So COVID-19 is magically going to vanish on Labor Day? The hottest hotspots in Massachusetts are seeing about 10% with antibodies. The rest of the state is far lower than that. There is no vaccine and we're not remotely close to herd immunity.

[lrfox]

Originally Posted by BostonMike7

This was yesterday's dashboard.

https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-da...-2020/download

198 new cases and 38 deaths. That's a really significant decline for the numbers from MA.


Another good metric is that the number of tests is going down. I would imagine that this is due to the number of people needing to be tested dropping.

Looks like we're at our lowest rate of testing in months: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/...ks-new-levels/

There's this humblebrag of a statement from the Gov's Office which credits the decline in demand due to the decline in cases:"The Baker administration said in a statement that its stay at home advisory, social distancing, and face coverings have reduced the number of COVID-19 cases, and thus demand for tests."

It also says we currently have the capacity to conduct 30k per day and the state plans on keeping that capacity in place in case of another spike or surge.

[yesmaybe]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

So COVID-19 is magically going to vanish on Labor Day?

It kinda has already, due to the protests and riots.

[jayrandom]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

I scrolled back in this thread as far as Memorial Day. That's more than two weeks ago. Your only Lancet link was about vitamin D on June 2nd. In something where information is evolving as quickly as for COVID-19, you'd might as well be talking about aquarium cleaner as the miracle cure. Again, please provide a citation where school age children, particularly High School age children, are no risk of spreading COVID-19. I've seen lots written about mild symptoms but I have never seen anything I'd consider credible that children with the disease don't spread it. When I Google for it, I see references to a Lancet paper from the University of Queensland that has not been peer reviewed. The only thing I've seen is a recent WHO disclosure where they don't think asymptomatic people spread the disease much. I also see things like:

The name of the game is to keep the transmission rate below 1.0. If we open up schools, we need to lock down other things in a very severe way to compensate for that. What do you propose?

Originally Posted by porterhouse

Please provide a citation to evidence where children are culprits in spreading this virus. Any examples of school aged children spreading the virus to their families or teachers in school?


This is based on what exactly?

Here is the Lancet article: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...095-X/fulltext

It's not hard to find and you're going to just dismiss the conclusions for some reason or another, so it wasn't worth the tricky exercise to find and post the link on my phone (I'm at a computer now, so not as hard). For someone who demands peer review for a counter-agrument, you seem pretty slow to post links to peer review in favor of your argument.

Sure, maybe the proposed six feet of seperation is the magic formula that will be THE difference maker. In the absence of any evidence that this is the case (everything I've seen has been conjecture) so the usual rejoineder is that "it can't hurt". That's true, but misses the point that every restriction carries a cost. You want the benefit to outweigh the cost.

My intuition tells me that schools should probably be open open or just entirely closed. The six foot thing seems like the epitome of cargo-cult science. Someone somewhere said six feet, so that is what we're using in pretty much all situations from outside in parks to spending the entire day indoors. I wouldn't be surpised if no amount of social distancing makes much difference for people who spend the whole day in the same room.

In three months, many schools in the world will have been open for four or more months. There is already evidence that opening schools doesn't cause a spike in infection rates. In three months we will know even more. My hope is that schools will look at the evidence as it comes in and make plans based on evidence, not "common sense" or worst-case scenarios. If it means schools are totally closed, that is what it is. If it means that schools can totally open, I hope officials are going to be OK with that.