School had mask requirement but from article the unvaccinated plague rat teacher regularly disregarded the mandate in class. 12 of 22 kids now have COVID. So far 8 with symptoms but fortuanetly no hospitalizations. All students believed to be under the age of 12 and not eligible for vaccine.
Not my district but I know the area, wealthy suburb north of San Francisco.
Wow, that is kinda harsh. The teacher removed the mask for reading time when the teacher was reading a book to the class.
Strongly disagree that is harsh. Seems pretty appropriate, other than being completely unfair to rats..
Rats didnāt spread the plague unlike this teacher.
When the teacher is getting students sick due to the teachers selfishness and disregard for others, including their students, then i think the teachers should be called out for their actions.
True - the rats hadnāt been told to wear flea collars or anything like thatā¦
Also, fucking Marin County.
That doesnāt surprise me one bit.
If you follow the link to the CDC article, youāll note that the teacher was symptomatic and yet still came to school and unmasked for a couple of days before even bothering to test. If the teacher hadnāt been symptomatic, I might agree the comment was harsh, but to violate a mandate and be unmasked while symptomatic around unvaccinated kids during a pandemic earned it. The teacher shouldnāt have been there in the first place, much less there and unmasked.
From the CDC article:
On May 25, 2021, the Marin County Department of Public Health (MCPH) was notified by an elementary school that on May 23, an unvaccinated teacher had reported receiving a positive test result for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The teacher reported becoming symptomatic on May 19, but continued to work for 2 days before receiving a test on May 21. On occasion during this time, the teacher read aloud unmasked to the class despite school requirements to mask while indoors. Beginning May 23, additional cases of COVID-19 were reported among other staff members, students, parents, and siblings connected to the school. To characterize the outbreak, on May 26, MCPH initiated case investigation and contact tracing that included whole genome sequencing (WGS) of available specimens. A total of 27 cases were identified, including that of the teacher. During May 23ā26, among the teacherās 24 students, 22 students, all ineligible for vaccination because of age, received testing for SARS-CoV-2; 12 received positive test results. The attack rate in the two rows seated closest to the teacherās desk was 80% (eight of 10) and was 28% (four of 14) in the three back rows (Fisherās exact test; p = 0.036). During May 24āJune 1, six of 18 students in a separate grade at the school, all also too young for vaccination, received positive SARS-CoV-2 test results. Eight additional cases were also identified, all in parents and siblings of students in these two grades.
If the shoe fitsā¦
So, while engaged in a moderately high-risk activity, āspeaking loudlyā.
That seems pretty unreasonable of him, if he had symptoms. Which, according to the CDC paper the article is based on, he did:
Really, teachers are supposed to be the responsible person in the room.
S/he (was the gender of the teacher revealed?) should not have been in the room, since s/he was symptomatic. But I have to wonder if our incessant moralizing around a respiratory virus along with the extreme quarantine rules didnāt have something to do with his/her decision making process. Also wonder whether the universal masking of children in the class made the teacher feel it was āsafeā to teach regardless.
Perhaps the reason s/he would pull his/her mask down/off to read is because itās difficult to speak & be understood with one on, as this MNPS Board member (who voted for universal masking of schoolchildren) discovered less than one minute into delivering her written statement at a recent board meeting:
https://twitter.com/robbystarbuck/status/1431283100177387523?s=20
Weāve seen similar throughout covidtimes from politicians, public health officials, coaches/athletes, cashiers, etc: people often pull down their masks to be better understood.
The teacherās mask wasnāt doing anything anyway: even if s/he had kept it on the entire time, over the course of a 6-hour school day, thereās no way it was going to contain/block/filter enough virions to prevent any of those kids in that room from being exposed.
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe fewer people would have become sick. But because the teacher violated two rules (coming to school sick and unmasking), you donāt have something to contrast with Great Clips.
Viral load also seems to contribute to how sick somebody becomes. Even if wearing a mask doesnāt keep people from getting sick, it might keep them from getting as sick.
I donāt think you are disagreeing with this point, but regardless when you are watching over somebody elseās child, you follow the safety rules, regardless of whether they are hard, or you think they are pointless. To do otherwise is a profound violation of trust.
Teaching with a mask on is awful. It is not as awful as the working conditions endured by health care workers treating covid patients because so many people are not vaccinated, and are not wearing masks, but still awful.
But this is true for every teacher. There is an infuriating egoism in the decision by this teacher that this rule, which was no fun for anybody, didnāt really need to apply to him/her.
Thereās really no data supporting this āvariolationā hypothesis. You should look up how well that worked with actual variola back in the day.
This study mentions another classroom that reported an outbreak. No mention that the teacher or students in that classroom ever unmasked.
In the other class, 3 of the 6 kids had a sleepover together.
Investigation revealed that one student in this grade hosted a sleepover on May 21 with two classmates from the same grade. All three of these students experienced symptoms after the sleepover and received positive SARS-CoV-2 test results.
I didnāt see any stated connection between the two affected classes, though.
I agree, it isnāt clear how much exposed viral load contributes to severity.
Iām not sure about the relevance of the small pox example. There it looks like the idea was to intentionally try to give somebody a case of small pox with a small exposure.
Iām not suggesting that at all. Iām simply saying masks might help prevent severe illness in those cases where they donāt prevent illness entirely.
If i have to either be exposed to a microscopic amount of virus in the air through a mask, or have somebody with covid sneeze directly in my face with no masks involved, Iād prefer the former, in other words.
True. I had forgotten about the sleepover. Like so many āschool casesā these were likely* caught outside school.
The point remains that, just like the hairdressers, thereās no ācontrolā in this āstudyā either - itās really just an anecdote. The CDC should
be embarrassed if theyāre pushing this as āscienceā.
*I say ālikelyā because in many cases itās almost impossible to know exactly how or where a respiratory virus was contracted, sometimes difficult to identify index vs secondary cases. Contact tracing is not an exact science.
**The teacher anecdote seems like a clear exception where there is a very likely order of the teacher infecting his/her students (itās possible one of the students was the index case, infecting both the teacher & his fellow students, with the teacher simply showing symptoms first, but that seems unlikely based on the description). Regardless, the teacher should have stayed home when s/he had symptoms.
Should we set up some randomized control studies to evaluate COVID spread in schools?
Better late than never.
The real question is: why havenāt we?
Do you think most of Europe has this all wrong?
ETA: Iād phrase that slightly differently. We should have done RCTās to evaluate proposed mitigation measures. One outcome metric would be COVID spread, but Iād want to measure other outcomes, too (other illnesses, academic performance, psychological effects, social-emotional development, etc.)
And how would you structure this trial?