How are you dealing with Covid-19 (Novel Coronavirus) ?

[JamieB]

Addy, i figured that with your bee keeping, you’d be using beeswax on your hands. Maybe melt some with paraffin and do paraffin type hand dip to restore moisture. The paraffin dips are good for aches and arthritis as well, I know I would love to do that for my ankles. When I stand after being sat or laying down for a while, that they snap and pop.

 

[addy1]

I will try that, but that bees wax is hard to get off!

 

[Andrew]

My oldest granddaughter (nine years old) was telling me that the annoying kids all lick their hands and run around screaming "coronavirus" trying to touch each other. Remember "cooties"? Covid is the 21st century version. So all kids keeping masks on all day is pretty much a pipe dream.

Our high school district is offering to provide and PAY FOR day care for school aged kids who's parents are teachers for the days their kids won't be in school. (Our elementary and middle schools appear to be going for the two days on, two days off model) The local YMCA has offered to provide childcare... for school aged kids... who can't be in school... because it's not safe. Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking? I mean I totally understand the challenge these teachers are facing - if their kids aren't in school, how are they supposed to work? But if the kids are just going to be in daycare, with the same kids who they can't be in school with... WHY CAN'T THEY GO TO SCHOOL??

Ugh. The world has gone mad. As of July 12:

• According to the CDC, 101 children age 0 to 14 have died from influenza, while 31 children have died from COVID-19.

I've heard people say "well of course kids aren't getting Covid - we kept them out of school!" Then how did 101 of them acquire and die from the flu? And if Covid is WORSE than the flu by every marker, shouldn't the Covid deaths be higher?

There's boundless evidence that Covid is not a problem for school age children, they aren't giving it to each other, they aren't passing it to their parents and teachers... and yet schools are all closed and probably will remain closed for the near future. Why? Ask yourself why teachers unions across the country are saying "Covid is SO DANGEROUS hat we won't go back to work until you defund the police... or give more rights to illegals... or until you impose a "wealth tax"... or shut down charter schools... What do ANY of these have to do with Covid?

And hey - did anyone see the FDA report that over 50 brands of hand sanitizer were discovered to contain so much wood alcohol that they're toxic?

The last update I saw was that middle school and high school aged kids spread the virus just as much as adults: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html

My wife teaches 9th grade and we're currently expecting a disaster when schools open back up. The state has given vague guidelines like trying to enforce social distancing as much as possible, but that's literally impossible when you have 35 kids in a classroom that has 30 desks. They also did a survey of parents in her district and of those who responded 90% said they wanted their kids to do online learning instead of going to school, but the district hasn't decided to offer that yet. They also have no answers for what happens if a teacher gets sick - will their time off be paid? Will the students and their families be notified that they've been exposed to an infected teacher? Keep in mind in high school teachers have over a hundred kids, easy. How do you get a substitute for that teacher when you'd be exposing the sub to the same kids who were exposed to the infected teacher? How do you discipline a kid who coughs on another as a joke (which will happen with 30 minutes of the first day of school)? No answers from my wife's district so far.

Right now we're expecting that my wife will have to go back to teaching in person for maybe a month before the schools close and switch to virtual learning again.

 

[Lisak1]

Sorry @Andrew - can't read the NYT article behind the paywall. But I can share dozens of similar articles with you that say exactly the opposite. European countries have all had students back in school long enough that they know that kids under the age of 18 aren't the vector they originally thought they were. But like with everything else with Covid, it's possible to find "science" to support whichever side of the fence you hope to land on.

Expecting a disaster seems unwarranted at this point quite honestly, but I guess time will tell. Truly examine the numbers and ask yourself how big the risk is. In IL we still have less than 1.5% of our population that's confirmed to have been INFECTED... if we can even trust the numbers. And we're considered to be one of the bad states. Ohio is around half that I believe. How do those numbers line up with the response of keeping everything shut down? When did we all agree that the goal was to eliminate Covid before we could resume living?

By the way, I also work in a high school and we're facing the same issues. But there's also plenty of evidence that NOT being in school is far more damaging to students than Covid ever will be.

 

[Andrew]

Sorry @Andrew - can't read the NYT article behind the paywall. But I can share dozens of similar articles with you that say exactly the opposite. European countries have all had students back in school long enough that they know that kids under the age of 18 aren't the vector they originally thought they were. But like with everything else with Covid, it's possible to find "science" to support whichever side of the fence you hope to land on.

Expecting a disaster seems unwarranted at this point quite honestly, but I guess time will tell. Truly examine the numbers and ask yourself how big the risk is. In IL we still have less than 1.5% of our population that's confirmed to have been INFECTED... if we can even trust the numbers. And we're considered to be one of the bad states. Ohio is around half that I believe. How do those numbers line up with the response of keeping everything shut down? When did we all agree that the goal was to eliminate Covid before we could resume living?

By the way, I also work in a high school and we're facing the same issues. But there's also plenty of evidence that NOT being in school is far more damaging to students than Covid ever will be.

Relevant bits from the NYT article:

A large new study from South Korea offers an answer: Children younger than 10 transmit to others much less often than adults do, but the risk is not zero. And those between the ages of 10 and 19 can spread the virus at least as well as adults do.

The findings suggest that as schools reopen, communities will see clusters of infection take root that include children of all ages, several experts cautioned.
...
Several studies from Europe and Asia have suggested that young children are less likely to get infected and to spread the virus. But most of those studies were small and flawed, said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.

The new study “is very carefully done, it’s systematic and looks at a very large population,” Dr. Jha said. “It’s one of the best studies we’ve had to date on this issue.”

Other experts also praised the scale and rigor of the analysis. South Korean researchers identified 5,706 people who were the first to report Covid-19 symptoms in their households between Jan. 20 and March 27, when schools were closed, and then traced the 59,073 contacts of these “index cases.” They tested all of the household contacts of each patient, regardless of symptoms, but only tested symptomatic contacts outside the household.
...
The study is more worrisome for children in middle and high school. This group was even more likely to infect others than adults were, the study found. But some experts said that finding may be a fluke or may stem from the children’s behaviors.

It's hard to compare us to European countries because they generally have the virus far more under control than we do in the US. In Germany they've drastically changed the way in-person school is done, but schools in Ohio aren't getting resources to do anything like this: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/...-trump-claim-their-schools-reopening-n1233286

“Students of all school types are back in school, but not every day,” Günther Schuster, a spokesman for the Ministry of Education in the state of Bavaria, said. He added that at a typical secondary school class, half of the students attended in the morning and the other half in the afternoon.

“Face-to-face instruction only takes place in small groups,” he said, explaining that student groups are not mixed and social distancing measures are in place in classrooms.

Germany has leveled out the rate of infection for a while now, while in the US we're still going up.

I'm not arguing that we should "keep" everything shut down because nothing at all is shut down, at least here in Ohio. Bars and restaurants have been open, stores have been open, and strangely it's getting harder to get tested. Cleveland Clinic isn't even testing people who live with confirmed positive cases, so I suspect the numbers are actually higher than we know.

I believe it's good for kids to be in school, but if we really did shut down EVERYTHING we could have this virus contained in 4-5 weeks (imagine if the US did that 4 months ago!). On the course we're on we're going to have to suffer through this until there's a vaccine six months from now at the earliest.

 

[addy1]

until there's a vaccine six months from now at the earliest.

If we are lucky and if it works as advertised. Until then everybody is infected as far as we are concerned.

 

[Lisak1]

@Andrew - again, I could post a dozen studies that "prove" the exact opposite. But really, who cares?. If you get it, what difference will it make if it's from a child or an adult? The bigger question is - do we consider teachers to be essential workers? And if teachers won't teach, how do we expect that parents will be able to return to work? Is it better to warehouse 100,000 kids in YMCAs and libraries like New York City is proposing to do? And with what adult supervision - someone who's less important than a teacher? Or would those kids be better off in school?

 

[Andrew]

@Andrew - again, I could post a dozen studies that "prove" the exact opposite. But really, who cares?. If you get it, what difference will it make if it's from a child or an adult? The bigger question is - do we consider teachers to be essential workers? And if teachers won't teach, how do we expect that parents will be able to return to work? Is it better to warehouse 100,000 kids in YMCAs and libraries like New York City is proposing to do? And with what adult supervision - someone who's less important than a teacher? Or would those kids be better off in school?

I care, because when schools open up again my wife will be exposed to 150 people every day who she wouldn't be otherwise. It also means she won't see her immunocompromised mother until there's a vaccine. It could also mean people might die who don't need to!

I'm still not seeing any of these studies that say it's safe, but if there are contradictory studies that's even more reason to err on the side of caution. This is a new virus and we have no idea what the long term effects are.

And frankly, parents being able to go back to work should have absolutely nothing to do with it. Schools are either safe or they aren't, we shouldn't push it just to use teachers as babysitters. I didn't hear much pushback when schools closed in March and April but the virus is actually more widespread now. I suspect the real reason for the push to open schools on time is to avoid the economic and political consequences of those parents not being able to go to work, with considerations for students and teachers secondary at best.

 

[GBBUDD]

yea and you can turn on cnn msnbc . etc etc do a little history home work and look who has said what and when they are so full of sh-- they finaly have a MAJOR Catastrophe that one side absolutley positively will not let go of . gee lets see 3.5 years of constant attacks . but now not attacks only the virus seems a bit odd to me and for god sake look at the people talking. GO to walmart ask them who have been open the entire time how many of there fellow workers have died or bet yet who have even come down with it . When the flue comes around we all know someone fiting has fought it and thankfully we have to look pretty hard to find those cases. In one day the media said 6 states all had 322 new cases of covid which i may have let slide but when they ALL also said there was 17 deaths in each of those 6 states i call BS.

 

[GBBUDD]

So you want the country to stay home and protect you ?

Are you going to put food on the table for those who don't have a nest egg?

Have you been to a store lately ? it's starting to look an awful lot like a third world country with empty shelves

I'm still not seeing any of these studies that say it's safe, but if there are contradictory studies that's even more reason to err on the side of caution. This is a new virus and we have no idea what the long term effects are.

The studies have been WRONG every step along the way EVERY....... IF THIS WAS TRUELY A PANDEMIC i would think we would all know of 10 and even a 100 people who have had this .... DO YOU .....

 

[GBBUDD]

And frankly, parents being able to go back to work should have absolutely nothing to do with it. Schools are either safe or they aren't, we shouldn't push it just to use teachers as babysitters.

SAFE ARE YOU KIDDING ME statues areN'T safe today POLICE ARENT SAFE TODAY

 

[Lisak1]

So either way we stay closed? How does that make sense? And what about the people who will die from despair? Or kids who will die from abuse or neglect? Every decision you make will negatively inpact someone. You’re just choosing winners and losers now.

Here’s a study to contradict yours:
"A commentary published in the journal Pediatrics, the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, concludes that children infrequently transmit Covid-19 to each other or to adults and that many schools, provided they follow appropriate social distancing guidelines and take into account rates of transmission in their community, can and should reopen in the fall."

Children rarely transmit COVID-19, doctors write in new commentary

A commentary published in the journal Pediatrics concludes that children infrequently transmit COVID-19 to each other or to adults and that many schools, provided they follow appropriate social distancing guidelines and take into account rates of transmission in their community, can and should...

www.sciencedaily.com

 

[GBBUDD]

Lisa its a waste of breath . Andrew is about me me me and his not anyone else . He has said so time and again . TIMES HAVE CHANGED SO WHY NOT FIND A NEW JOB WHY SHOULD EVErYONE FIT YOUR BILL. you go to the store and get food they provide a nessasary service so why arent teachers on that list. Electrical works make sure your lights are on every day that your ac works . Maybe they should stay home. Oh and the police why don't they stay home to let see they deal with junkies THESE SO CALLED PROTESTORS WHO ASSALT COPS and all the best society has to offer. there was a time not so long ago if a mob attacked the cops they fird back to many have become whipped and affraid to be called a name. GET OVER IT

 

[Andrew]

I don't want things to be closed at all. I wanted this country to have handled this pandemic responsibly from the beginning so we could've been done with it months ago. I'm incredibly angry about all the time that's been wasted. I didn't want to stay home all summer.

I truly hope your study is right. But you're basically saying since there's conflicting evidence we should throw up our hands and go back to normal. I'm saying since there's conflicting studies we should err on the side of caution.

 

[Lisak1]

Tell me how were we irresponsible?