Opening schools increase the spread of COVID-19 ~24%

The service industry has been hit pretty hard with Covid - I wonder if it will eventually leak to teachers/ing. Online schooling is looking more and more probable in the near future.

This is somewhat validating. I played the role of teacher maybe 5 times during that span and I didnt know how my wife was going 6 hours a day.

But then she explained that is like 2-3 hours before lunch, then food/run errand/play outside, back after lunch for 2 hours, then some chores before dinner. Still a long day for her.

wife was doing most of the housework in the AM before school, then making dinner and everything else after school. So she was busy from about 8am to 8pm every day.

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These are weekly new case #’s for my town:

1st week of July: 10 (reported July 7)
Last week of July: 88 (reported July 28)
1st week of August: 233 (reported Aug 4)
Last week of August: 474 (reported Sep 1)

School opened for students August 12. While teachers may have been getting classrooms ready in July, they wouldn’t have officially started until August, so they wouldn’t have had any big meetings until then.

It’s entirely possible, based on my states horrible history of reporting Covid data, that they got behind in counting and caught up that first week of August. They don’t report new cases. They report cumulative totals and I track those to get new cases. They only report at the city/zip level once a week.

This doesn’t look to me like opening schools, even maskless, has caused an increase. It looks to me like our numbers were going up and opening schools didn’t do anything to stop that.

I might have been wrong to worry about opening schools, except to the extent that mr aj interacts with around 150-175 kids a day on his bus in the next town.

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More tests are being done!! THAT’s why there are more cases!!!
–Sturgis government

Yeah only I don’t know this week’s positive % but one week it was like 51%. Also there is anecdotal evidence that it is harder to get tested than it was a year ago. I haven’t had any reason to try, knock wood.

So many COVID threads not sure whereto put this one.

Study that masks due in fact help and that surgical masks were more effective than cloth masks but that both reduced transmission rates.

I’ll see if I can find the actual study and not just the twitter feed with some highlights.

This was a longer article linked within the twitter thread. The Impact of Mask Distribution and Promotion on Mask Uptake and COVID-19 in Bangladesh | Innovations for Poverty Action

And the full paper can be found here https://www.poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publications/Mask_RCT____Symptomatic_Seropositivity_083121.pdf

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I have what is probably a head cold but want a test anyway. I looked Monday evening and the earliest I could find was this afternoon.

anecdote = anecdote + 1

When they say surgical masks do they mean KN-95 or those flimsy paper masks?

the plastic surgical masks. I’m assuming those blue ones you see a lot.
I’d guess N95s would yield even better results but I don’t believe they were tested.

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Ok and wastewater tests show “levels of SARS-CoV-2 … that we haven’t seen since the surge last winter.”

Also, talk about bad data, one week the state had more new cases reported than tests so…

Yeah, it’s pretty much a conspiracy. Those hospital officials we keep seeing on the news are actors.

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I love this study. Some good data.

Why in the world did masks reduce COVID for 50+ year olds, but not for anyone younger than 50 (page 28)? Behavior differences? Like did under 50 year olds not wear masks or is it something with the way it spreads?

I also didn’t read every paragraph, but I saw villages that wore masks also socially distanced more. Could some of the benefit of mask wearing be contributed to social distancing or did they control for that?

Thanks for posting this study. I appreciate seeing actual studies on mask effectiveness in the real world and not just a laboratory.

I disagree with your statement above, based on this study. Cloth masks did not significantly reduce prevalence (p=0.54, confidence interval goes from 20% lower to 11% higher), and the minor observed amount lower could be as easily explained by the larger social distancing that mask wearing places did with the intervention (or, pure randomness given the p value and confidence interval).

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Pasting the table for those that didn’t click the link (note this is for Surgical Masks Only). Very interesting, and I’m curious. I couldn’t find anywhere that they mentioned it. They did not control for age in mask wearing, so maybe something with that? Maybe something with viral load? Who knows.

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They state that while factors such as social distancing could have impacted the results for mask wearing, they think the results are the direct impact of masks because-

  • Cloth masks and surgical masks induced the same amount of extra physical distancing, but they found statistically significant reduction in COVID prevalence from surgical masks, but no difference from cloth masks compared to no masks
  • Mosques did not alter social distancing, it was only outdoor use that did
  • Prior hypothesis based on labs that masks have an effect

I was going by this from the article

Villages where cloth masks were distributed experienced a 5 percent reduction in symptoms, while villages where surgical masks were distributed saw a reduction of 12 percent.

Ah I hadn’t read the article about the study, just the study itself. Study surveyed people and asked about their symptoms, which did have respondents stating that they had fewer symptoms when wearing cloth masks, but actual testing for COVID itself did not show any differences for cloth masks.

From the study

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Our school board president wrote an op-ed. I live in a very conservative rural Iowa town. He encouraged mask wearing and the community to get the vaccine if eligible. They are bringing back the covid dashboard. He said the sky isn’t falling but our cases are climbing and school has only been in session 10 days. I’m so proud that they want to be transparent. I do think that if masks weren’t banned by our governor that there’s a decent chance the school board would have voted in favor of it.

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Were masks banned, or just mask mandates? I thought your state’s law was similar to Florida & a few other states that ban mandates but allow people who want to mask to do so?

Yes mask mandates.

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