to be fair, we thought that last year (covid-classic, i know) and it all seemed to work out. the delta just rips through it all though.
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Were any of them even sick? The article doesn’t say.
Who could have predicted that kids who start practicing together before the rest of the student body gathers, and who are frequently tested because the “experts” think their activity is a dangerous super-spreader risk, are going to make up a disproportionate amount of “clusters” in the very early part of the school year?
It was studied in Wisconsin last year:
But, yeah, covid-classic vs new covid. 
Question:
How common is it for K-12 schools to routinely test kids? I keep seeing Marcie mentioning it, but outside of LA (I think it was LA), I haven’t heard much about it even for athletics.
I’ve never heard of it, either. There are a lot of colleges that routinely test, but I don’t know any K-12 schools that do.
OMG, I was just reading the local school district’s policy on this.
From what I can tell, very little testing required.
-Confirmed case of Covid: return to school 10 days after the later of diagnosis or symptoms appearing and at least 72 hours fever free without fever-reducing medication.
-Covid-like symptoms: return to school return to school 72 hours after being fever-free without use of fever-reducing medication
-Identified as an unvaccinated close contact: return to school 7 days after a negative test taken at least 5 days after exposure OR 10 days after exposure with no test
No mention of special policies for athletics. Appears you only need to get tested if you want to return to school 3 days earlier after being identified as an unvaccinated close contact. It looks like there’s no scenario where a vaccinated person would EVER have to have a test… even after having a confirmed case of Covid.
Again… from what I can tell. It’s possible I’m misunderstanding something.
I hadn’t heard of any public school surveillance testing, other than what I think Los Angeles. But Macie has thrown that comment around several times so I wondered if I was missing something.
Hmm…maybe it’s just more common in my state, where the governor has been pushing a screening testing program for schools. At one point last year, the state university that developed the program accounted for some huge percentage of tests nationwide, because they were testing all students at least weekly, some twice weekly or more. This summer the governor was pushing that program to K-12 school districts by offering it “free” (using federal funds); I actually don’t know how many have adopted it.
I’ve heard some talk of surveillance testing at k-12 schools but no actual implementation of it. Universities are a different situation.
Not surprising. One of my BFFs is a pediatrician at Cincinnati Children’s main location. She’s not in the ICU, but of course she knows the docs who are. She said they’re overwhelmed.
The top docs at something like 7 major children’s hospital chains throughout Ohio jointly signed a letter imploring schools to require masks. From what I can tell it doesn’t seem to have had any effect. The districts that were always going to require masks are requiring masks. The ones that weren’t seem to be standing firm. I hope I’m wrong about that… just the impression I have from my Ohio mom friends on Facebook.
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I’ve been looking around the internet. It’s more common than I realized.
Schools here were very quiet last year about outbreaks in their sports teams. But talk to the parents or the hair stylist. (I swear my hair lady knows EVERYTHING that is happening.) Around here whole teams got sick and one coach’s wife died.
This is why I was so surprised when some schools started publishing dashboards this year.
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On a side topic: Some might recall/know that the Denver Broncos played a game without a QB last season because the QB core was quarantined. Turns out that the 4 QB’s tried to game the system about their location (i.e., social distancing when together) during a film review and got caught.
I did not know that; that’s interesting.
They weren’t permitted to play because they failed to socially distance from one another? Any signs that they actually had Covid?
Because if the problem was violating team or league rules then it seems like a fine is the appropriate remedy. If they were Covid-negative then forcing them to sit out seems unnecessary.
So who QB’d that game? Did they have an emergency QB who was a wide receiver who played QB in high school or something?
Our school district has a policy about testing unvaccinated athletes and other students in “high risk” activities (seems to = band) and also unvaccinated staff that support them. It seems kind of extreme, but when you dig into it, in practice it’s less stringent than it sounds. First the students are screened (temp check and check list). They are only tested if they fail the screening. If they test negative, then they can continue to participate.
As it’s implemented, I think it’s fine. It seems like it actually allows kids who might otherwise be sidelined with cold symptoms to still play once they know it’s not COVID. And it’s a 15 min test on the spot vs being sent home and having to procure their own test.
Violated league rules; they were quarantined as a result (or the team would’ve forfeit their game). League denied request to have game moved to Tuesday (when the QB’s would be available).
Yep; Kendall Hinton was promoted up from the practice squad to do the honors.
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I can certainly see not moving the game to Tuesday. That penalizes the other team, who did nothing wrong.
I guess if tests were still hard to come by then this makes more sense. I’m perhaps backwards projecting the current testing situation to what was going on almost a year ago.
I read an article that said the feds had pushed a huge amount of money for testing in schools last year and that lots of states took the feds up on their money and test kits but as it turned out very little testing actually happened and many of the test kits that were distributed to the schools were either returned or expired.
this is similar to our school last year. It almost seems that parents that do the right thing (get kids tested for covid when they are sick) are being penalized for doing so.
A positive covid test means you lose your day care for 2 weeks. Or hold kid out of school just long enough that they no longer show symptoms. Or if symptoms are mild enough, just load them up with tylonol and send them anyway. People that dont have kids in school would be outraged at the amount of kids that are sent to school sick (and parents know damn well) every day. Many parents dont really have the option to just not send their kids to school as it is their primary daycare; they will go great lengths to put that kid on the bus.
My son was looking sick last week and I saw my wife pushing him to get ready for school… I actually had to step in and tell her ‘you can’t do that… sorry babe but you have to F up your day and keep him home’.
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