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They followed the CDC guidelines of there being a risk of transmission if one is inside a building for more than 15 minutes. So I agree, the MIT model looks way too risky from my viewpoint.
But the key takeaway from that link was that the size of the room is the big factor. It's misleading to state that X amount of time is ok in a restaurant or church or classroom without defining those spaces. It's all about the air volume. There's also an assumption that it's not being refreshed or purified in any way. Lot's of variables come into play.
Newsom already said there's no plan to close schools, but he's making a poor decision and I don't think local authorities can close anything more than briefly, unless public school district officials themselves choose to (which wouldn't happen in Orange County and in LA few public schools are open).
I read this morning that two online associates in my circle so to speak caught the virus from their kids being in school. There is the major problem of too many parents willing to take that risk and probably many not reporting if they do get sick because they want their children's campuses to stay open. The Newsom couple might share that attitude, in which case Stay-at-Home probably will last into 2021 when the next semester demonstrates campuses spike community cases and forces the government to close them. What the increasing restrictions are amounts to a process of elimination, and what much of the public doesn't want to believe is that 'innocent' kids are to blame. Whenever campuses are open, they will need to have a policy that if students are not tested promptly when suspected of being infected or are and test positive or a guardian does without results quickly given to the school, those kids are then banned from campus for the semester unless subsequently vaccinated. In the near future, the next month or so, the best hope is that school unions force the issue (and that hardly applies outside of public school campuses).
I think that is correlation without causation. It'd be very difficult to say that the schools are the reason for transmission among teens in school. Anecdote - in the public shopping center there are 20-30 teens every day hanging out, skateboarding, general loitering - you know, what kids do. Same with the basketball courts, soccer fields, etc. and that is just during daylight hours in public. The kids are going to get together no matter what. Go ahead and close the schools, but the teens are still going to congregate in a much more uncontrolled way. I haven't yet parented teenage kids, but assuming it isn't much different than my teenage years, good luck trying to get kids age 14-17 to stop hanging out. I wouldn't have listened to anyone at that age, and I imagine they are all still sneaking around to get with boy/girlfriends, hang out, and party together. I really don't think kids being in classrooms with masks on is the primary cause of what you are describing.
There's only six counties not in tier 1 (purple) right now. Being in tier 1 means schools can't reopen without a waiver from their county health department so I don't know what you're talking about. What is he supposed to shut down that the "blueprint" doesn't already address? For the most part, schools are already closed and the mechanisms to open are something the state defers to local government.
Dozens of schools reopened this semester in Los Angeles - as I said, maybe encompassing up to 10,000 students. My impression is that San Diego also granted many waivers and Orange County reopened even more than them.
Let's say it totals 28,000 students. That definitely could affect virus circulation in the Southern California region. I think most of those school campuses should be shut down, because the virus probably is present in classroom air in measurable amounts.
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Again with the supposition and the probably this or that --where is this a major problem? Who, which districts, and how is it happening? Can you actually show me something tangible to support this? In our district parents sign a daily checklist before kids are allowed on campus, plus the requirements for masks social distancing, limited time in class, limited to six cohorts per day, air purifiers, sanitizer, classrooms scrubbed, etc., etc. Nothing about it is a return to normal. You seem to be under the impression that schools which have limited on-campus presence right now are just plain open as usual. That's not the case.
I do know about almost all those restrictions. Nevertheless, they can't neutralize hours of bad air - how many hours are students and staff spending indoors? - and I'm not going to trust regular air purifiers to do the trick, because sizing, filter freshness, and other factors are very important and one person breathing out virus can outpace what purifiers can remove. The anecdotal reports of infected parents and the rapid increase in school cases without reports of school closures tell me something fishy is going on, and the only explanation would be that both parents and schools want to downplay what's happening, just as many private schools want to justify their tuitions and many parents frankly don't want to have to stay home to supervise and teach their kids. Many businesses this year have been caught not properly informing employees or the government of outbreaks. Schools already have a reputation for not reporting types of misbehaviors.
I think that is correlation without causation. It'd be very difficult to say that the schools are the reason for transmission among teens in school. Anecdote - in the public shopping center there are 20-30 teens every day hanging out, skateboarding, general loitering - you know, what kids do. Same with the basketball courts, soccer fields, etc. and that is just during daylight hours in public. The kids are going to get together no matter what. Go ahead and close the schools, but the teens are still going to congregate in a much more uncontrolled way. I haven't yet parented teenage kids, but assuming it isn't much different than my teenage years, good luck trying to get kids age 14-17 to stop hanging out. I wouldn't have listened to anyone at that age, and I imagine they are all still sneaking around to get with boy/girlfriends, hang out, and party together. I really don't think kids being in classrooms with masks on is the primary cause of what you are describing.
I think you're both right and wrong. Some teens are like that and will spread the virus almost no matter what. However, many aren't that and are homebodies and might grow up into the types of people who spend hours on Internet forums. They are much less likely to bring the virus into their homes if they aren't going to class. They probably are less likely to catch it at school than more sociable peers, but if there's virus in schools, there is risk to everyone there.
Presidents of the 23 campuses of the California State University system are being urged to delay the resumption of any face-to-face instruction— even for classes that have only a limited in-person component — and reassess plans for the end of fall term and beginning of spring term amid the dramatic increase in COVID-19 cases in California.
Education across the CSU is already primarily virtual, with only 7% of classes systemwide offering in-person instruction.
“The goal is to review your campus’ practices to further mitigate the human-to-human (faculty, staff and students) interaction for the duration of this current surge,” estimated to last about eight weeks through the end of January...
But the key takeaway from that link was that the size of the room is the big factor. It's misleading to state that X amount of time is ok in a restaurant or church or classroom without defining those spaces. It's all about the air volume. There's also an assumption that it's not being refreshed or purified in any way. Lot's of variables come into play.
It's too bad that we don't know more about viral transmission in indoor spaces. (Why isn't more research done about this in the U.S.?)
Let's say it totals 28,000 students. That definitely could affect virus circulation in the Southern California region. I think most of those school campuses should be shut down, because the virus probably is present in classroom air in measurable amounts.
Guess, guess, guess, guess, guess.
Do you ever bother to look beyond your own supposition? The measures put in place in SDUSD have resulted in no outbreaks. The district is second largest in the state with well over 100k students. The district collaborated with experts from UCSD to devise a reopening plan which resulted in standards higher than what the state even advises. The panel took into consideration all of these things and more that you're just sitting in a chair wondering aloud about. One of the reasons its been successful is they've kept exposure potential so low because there isn't a huge presence of students on campus. Other smaller districts within the county have had reasonable success too. The more permissive (as in bigger classes) have had the most issues but nothing which has led to widespread community outbreaks and they err on the side of extreme caution when it comes to shutting down.
Do yourself a favor and get a little more knowledge on this and stop with the guesswork. You fundamentally don't know what you're talking about.
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I do know about almost all those restrictions. Nevertheless, they can't neutralize hours of bad air - how many hours are students and staff spending indoors? - and I'm not going to trust regular air purifiers to do the trick, because sizing, filter freshness, and other factors are very important and one person breathing out virus can outpace what purifiers can remove. The anecdotal reports of infected parents and the rapid increase in school cases without reports of school closures tell me something fishy is going on, and the only explanation would be that both parents and schools want to downplay what's happening, just as many private schools want to justify their tuitions and many parents frankly don't want to have to stay home to supervise and teach their kids. Many businesses this year have been caught not properly informing employees or the government of outbreaks. Schools already have a reputation for not reporting types of misbehaviors.
This in particular: Schools only account for 6% of coronavirus outbreaks recorded by Spanish health authorities. The dynamics of transmission via aerosols in the classroom change completely depending on whether the infected person – or patient zero – is a student or a teacher. Teachers talk far more than students and raise their voices to be heard, which multiplies the expulsion of potentially contagious particles. In comparison, an infected student will only speak occasionally. According to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) guidelines, the Spanish government has recommended that classrooms be ventilated – even though this may cause discomfort in the colder months – or for ventilation units to be used.
This is consistent with what all the reopening trainings indicated too (i.e. that staff to staff transmission is the bigger issue). It's not like those materials were based on a bunch of guesswork. The plans have been crafted using actual science for once.
And they're using a full capacity classroom in the example. So, revise that to show no more than six students in a room with maximum ventilation (we live in a climate where it's 75f in December) and with classes running around an hour long. The risk drops to practically nothing, especially taking into consideration the required symptom checklists prior to even being on campus too. Done right, schools could easily operate with basic safety protocols in place as they are. I said months ago that the biggest thing holding them back is resources to do it on a larger scale. On a related note, a friend in the UK told me they didn't even require masks for primary grade school children in their area.
Guess, guess, guess, guess, guess.
Do you ever bother to look beyond your own supposition? The measures put in place in SDUSD have resulted in no outbreaks. The district is second largest in the state with well over 100k students. The district collaborated with experts from UCSD to devise a reopening plan which resulted in standards higher than what the state even advises. The panel took into consideration all of these things and more that you're just sitting in a chair wondering aloud about. One of the reasons its been successful is they've kept exposure potential so low because there isn't a huge presence of students on campus. Other smaller districts within the county have had reasonable success too. The more permissive (as in bigger classes) have had the most issues but nothing which has led to widespread community outbreaks and they err on the side of extreme caution when it comes to shutting down.
Do yourself a favor and get a little more knowledge on this and stop with the guesswork. You fundamentally don't know what you're talking about.
Needless to say, most data related to COVID-19 remains badly flawed and any type of indoor environment has more outbreaks than are ever reported. The lesson learned this year should be, Never be confident that you have COVID-19 under control.
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Clueless.
Rude and biased (more in favor of opening campuses than anyone else in this thread at least). Don't talk to me that way; it's especially bad coming from a probable educator.
Furthermore, you're disingenuous in two ways. 1) I think you know I live in the biggest school district, in the county with the most COVID-19 cases. 2) Colleges technically are schools too and in supposedly near-perfectly managed San Diego, SDSU has had many, many coronavirus cases.
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Originally Posted by joosoon
Those are great graphics. Thanks for the link.
This in particular: Schools only account for 6% of coronavirus outbreaks recorded by Spanish health authorities. The dynamics of transmission via aerosols in the classroom change completely depending on whether the infected person – or patient zero – is a student or a teacher. Teachers talk far more than students and raise their voices to be heard, which multiplies the expulsion of potentially contagious particles. In comparison, an infected student will only speak occasionally. According to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) guidelines, the Spanish government has recommended that classrooms be ventilated – even though this may cause discomfort in the colder months – or for ventilation units to be used.
This is consistent with what all the reopening trainings indicated too (i.e. that staff to staff transmission is the bigger issue). It's not like those materials were based on a bunch of guesswork. The plans have been crafted using actual science for once.
And they're using a full capacity classroom in the example. So, revise that to show no more than six students in a room with maximum ventilation (we live in a climate where it's 75f in December) and with classes running around an hour long. The risk drops to practically nothing, especially taking into consideration the required symptom checklists prior to even being on campus too. Done right, schools could easily operate with basic safety protocols in place as they are. I said months ago that the biggest thing holding them back is resources to do it on a larger scale. On a related note, a friend in the UK told me they didn't even require masks for primary grade school children in their area.
"Practically nothing" never should be said but maybe done right it's low-risk, yet they aren't like that in many places, by the various indicators I've seen, especially in disastrous Los Angeles. No way many classes in LA are tiny now, and I can't even say that classrooms in LA routinely are quiet except for the teacher, a good argument for safety otherwise. Even 6% of outbreaks coming from schools is far too many when the virus is rampant like it is where I live.
....they're using a full capacity classroom in the example. So, revise that to show no more than six students in a room with maximum ventilation (we live in a climate where it's 75f in December) and with classes running around an hour long. The risk drops to practically nothing, especially taking into consideration the required symptom checklists prior to even being on campus too.
The study was done in Madrid, so who knows.
I don't know about other workplaces, but they take our temperature every day as we enter the building, and an outbreak still occurred. Temperature checks are good only for the moment they're taken. Anyone who's an asymptomatic carrier can still transmit the virus. It depends upon how much viral shedding there is as well. We just don't have enough studies about transmission indoors OR outdoors in this country.
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