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

:grimacing:

That’s bad news!

Are you saying that masks are never useful, regardless of type and situation? If masks completely ceased to exist, no problem, that COVID has revealed we’ve been pwned by Big Mask all this time?

Specifically to COVID, if your kid was in close contact with someone with COVID, and you could choose whether one or both of them were masked or not, would you not bother with masking, because any masks wouldn’t do jack squat and your kid is going to be fine and will keep their COVID germs to themselves anyway?

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Is there any one of those 70+ references you find particularly compelling? Or is it just that someone on Twitter compiled a list of articles that referenced masks?

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Each of the ā€œpointsā€ has several references. Usually the first one and sometimes the last one are actual research/data, although they tend not to be super-supportive of the ā€œpointā€. Most of the rest of the references are just opinion pieces in the press.

At least, that’s what I got from reviewing the first several ā€œpointsā€.

That’s what I concluded as well.

@Marcie - I found some people you should follow on social media if you have not already:

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-dozen-test-facebooks-twitters-ability-to-curb-vaccine-hoaxes

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The most interesting link I found was this one

XM Dashboard | Qualtrics Experience Management

(I posted it above, too, but I think it’s worth it’s own post.)
It collected data from a large number of school, and tagged them all by what grades they include (elementary, middle, high) and whether they were being measured at a time when their community had low, medium, or high background transmission.

It also tagged the schools for whether they required masks, whether they improved ventilation, whether they had people distance (no, 3’, 6’) and whether they operated at reduced capacity.

You need to filter by grade, because there’s enough bias in which mitigations tend to be done by grade (and older kids are much more likely to catch and spread covid than younger kids) that otherwise the bias overcomes the data. But if you do so, it’s quite interesting.

Far and away the most useful intervention is masking – to protect teachers. There’s a strong effect at every grade level, and at every background infection level beyond ā€œlowā€ that teachers are more likely to test positive if the kids aren’t wearing masks.

They are much less protective for the kids, and in some cases, kids wearing masks were slightly more likely to become infected. I suspect this is because kids were sloppy about handling their masks and about touching their eyes. If I were a parent looking at this data, I would push for masks in the school when infection levels were higher than the ā€œlowā€ level, and I’d also teach my kid about how to handle a mask and to avoid touching his eyes and nose while at school (unless he’s just washed his hands carefully.)

It’s funny that it showed up in an anti-masker’s tweet. My guess is that the tweeter was more concerned with finding a lot of references than with actually reading them.

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:+1: I wasn’t following any of them (your article only names 1 of the ā€œDisinformation Dozenā€ but I found the list elsewhere)

I started from the end, but similar impression.

Do most schools have windows that open? I though that one of the things being done to improve HVAC energy efficiency was to make buildings about as airtight as possible.

Regardless, now with A/C or heat running, they want to open the windows?

The PDF of the report was linked in the article. :man_shrugging:

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I don’t know what thread this is appropriate for besides the one about ending your sentence in a preposition, but it’s about school and vaccines, so I choose you.

Indiana University’s vaccine requirement should stand, federal judge rules - NPR

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School district is requiring masks for all (except for some medical conditions) in the fall. In person learning is too important, delta is on the rampage, and the vaccination percentage is low, so even the vaccinated have to wear a mask until people start being more responsible and cases aren’t spreading so much.

Knowing that people lie about their status, I’m glad about this policy. Glad my sons will be in person five days a week.

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We’re counting down the days until 11 year-olds can be vaccinated.

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Do they require a birth certificate? If I had an 11 year-old that would be in a school with mostly older youth, I’d be tempted to fudge the birth date and get them vaccinated.

When I was trying to get myself vaccinated and my turn was coming up but hadn’t happened yet, what I found was that the health systems and CVS, all of which used MyChart, you never even entered your DOB. They knew who you were, knew your age. Now whether they allowed you to register if they hadn’t yet hit your age group but would between now & the appointment varied. But you never input your DOB to have a chance to lie.

For places like the grocery store pharmacies that weren’t part of a pharmacy chain and the mass vaccinations at the sports arenas then you did input a DOB and thus had an opportunity to lie. For adults they checked IDs but 12 year olds don’t have them so it would be admittedly difficult to distinguish between an 11 and a 12 year old.

Yeah, Sam’s Club, where I’m going, had me input my DOB, I’ll find out how closely they check my id when I go get jabbed. I imagine you might have a problem when Sam’s bills your insurance for the jab fee they get to charge and your insurance denies it because the kid doesn’t qualify for a shot.

I thought about that. At that point your kid has the shot though. I wonder what you’d have to pay OOP?

For the vaccines that require two doses that could be an issue getting the second shot.

When does this kid turn 12? I assume you could schedule the first shot to be on their 12th birthday.

My niece is only 6, so there’s really no passing her off as 12. Once 6-year-olds qualify that will be the whole family. :crossed_fingers:

In my state, the vaccination sites were explicitly not allowed to require ID. They asked for it. And they asked for insurance info. And if you didn’t have either, they were instructed to jab you anyway. (And the state picks up the tab where insurance doesn’t.)

Yes, the goal was to make sure that vaccines were available to the indigent and undocumented. After all, they interact with the rest of us, and they count towards our herd immunity, and vaccinating them makes the rest of us that much safer.

Of course, if you already told them who you are, they probably know who your daughter is, too. I’d probably just try to get her the first shot on or close to her 12th birthday.

They will likely ask your 11 year old for their birthday, so if you can convince your kid to lie when asked you might be able to get by.

pretty easy to just say you don’t have insurance. i never bothered to give them my insurance info when i got the vaccine. it isn’t needed.