Next: Trump to shutdown ICUs and ventilators and hospital reporting. #GreatAgain
Texas coronavirus discussion - wear your face masks, y'all
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Next: Trump to shutdown ICUs and ventilators and hospital reporting. #GreatAgain
Oh God, it's like here in Mexico, everyone is out without masks and within inches of each other.
We had an earthquake 2 hours ago and hordes of people were together..... In a city of 30 million people
We had an earthquake 2 hours ago and hordes of people were together..... In a city of 30 million people
Abbott refuses to do a mask mandate because of Dallas:
(transcribed myself from an interview with Fox 7 just now)
I enjoy seeing who he blames every week. Last time it was millennials, this week it's the rogue public servant daring to take action. Is he talking about Eric Moye?
Fucking shameful how the buck stops with everyone except him.
Clay Jenkins. How dare someone enforce rules so people actually take it seriously
you mean the hair dresser, that was setup with a gofundme before she even opened, and then opened defying the order for only essential businesses to be open, and then offered to apologize and not spend any time in jail and didnt' so the judge put her ass in jail, and then it went to the state supreme court and they let her out and the lt governor paid her jail expenses or whatever? That person?
TEA panicked and couldn't make a decision on reopening schools but "inadvertently" posted their draft rules.
Read it and weep:
:watermark(cdn.texastribune.org/media/watermarks/2020.png,-0,30,0)/static.texastribune.org/media/files/b8ba246667921fcedc40cdce5712ff60/Cactus%20Elementary%20MG%20TT%2014.jpg)
www.texastribune.org
My favorite quote:
According to the draft guidance, school districts should require staff and students to "self-screen" for COVID-19 symptoms, including taking their own temperatures, before coming to school each day.
Self screen at home!
Read it and weep:
Texas delays health guidelines for reopening schools this fall. Draft documents show few mandatory safety measures.
Texas education officials delayed an expected announcement of school reopening guidelines Tuesday, but a draft plan shows the state taking a light-handed role in coronavirus prevention measures. Masks and distancing are recommended but not mandatory.
www.texastribune.org
My favorite quote:
According to the draft guidance, school districts should require staff and students to "self-screen" for COVID-19 symptoms, including taking their own temperatures, before coming to school each day.
Self screen at home!
Thing is, we're running out of time before school is back in session and the virus is just getting more and more widespread. Superintendents have no clue what to do
I'm so not going to report to school and teach with numbers like this, then again I don't think we are going to be expected to. Zero chance HISD has face-to-face instruction with this type of surge.
From May 31st, hospital numbers has gone up by 2408. An increase of 143% in 23 days.
From Memorial Day, it has gone up 2580. An increase of 171%.
From Memorial Day, it has gone up 2580. An increase of 171%.
How?
Unless they've been living under a rock, how do they have no clue what to do? The virus hasn't just magically disappeared. And it's not going to either. They should have been planning distance learning since they shut down in the spring. I'm just a random on the internet and I know this.
Distance learning is not feasible for some families. They need to figure out a mixed approach.
Wealth inequality and telecom monopolies make distance learning not possible for a good chunk of public schoolchildren. Not to mention, most of the ones younger than 10 need full time childcare or supervising during the day.
The US simply doesn't have the support systems in place to tackle endeavors like this without leaving millions behind. A proactive government would have been flooding the schools with chromebooks and portable internet by now. We... don't have that.
All of the districts around here did try that. Austin even sent out buses to function as hotspots.
Despite the technological support, some kids still disappeared.
The guy who said he'd die for the economy is the Lt. Governor of Texas. He also said "there are things more important than living."
Last week, the Governor, Greg Abbott, had a phone call leaked where he laid out that he's well aware the number of people who will die, and is ok with it:
Texas governor admits reopening state will lead to increased infections in leaked audio - KVIA
thedailybeast · Gov. Greg Abbott Speaks About COVID-19 AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott acknowledges that coronavirus cases will undoubtedly increase as a result of reopening the state but added that he did not consider it a "decisive" factor in making his determination to proceed. That's...kvia.com
I thought these Republicans were Pro-Life!? They should probably change their stance to Pro-Fetus.
he can shutdown all testing sites but he can't shutdown hospital admissions
unless he shutdowns hospitals
hmmmmmm
You still have the PreK-5 population which cannot do distance learning. And even if they could, they'd require a parent with them at all times. And that means someone home not working. With even the extremely minimal safety nets running out.
Middle school distance learning might be possible, but those students would likely still need significant support. High school is the most likely able to do it with the least amount of parents support.
It's a complicated, logistical issue. Ideally you could have most of high school online, as much middle as possible. Then with the extra space freed up in high schools, spread out classes and reduce class sizes as much as possible among middle and elementary students across elementary, middle, and high school campuses.
But that would require a massive increase in teacher resources still. And no money or time exists to find, hire, and train that many teachers. And Texas politicians sure as hell wouldn't even consider paying for it.
Yes apparently getting multiple warnings that you are breaking the law and need to cease or else you will face a fine and jail time is a judge being rogue.
so to you all and everyone else, my kids are 4 and 5, i know exactly how hard it is for parents of kids that age. I also deeply understand the technological boundaries presented by wealth inequality.
there is simply, plain and simple, no way to send kids to school safely this fall, even at 25% capacity. And at that who gets to go in? And who doesn't? do you rotate? Unless the public all starts taking this seriously, everyone wears masks 100% of the time out in public, and so much more that people aren't willing to do, there's just no way. In fact in the slightly rural town i live in, im in the local facebook group for the town and I would say there is a vast majority of people that aren't taking this seriously. I regularly see people posting that they're not going to wear a mask, period.
some of these technological beariers can be fixed with donations, with laptops for kids, but rural internet sucks. I know, my ATT "dsl" was 6mpbs down and 1mbps up, and it regularly dropped packets. I ended up getting UBIFI, even created a thread here about it.
Yes some kids will be left behind, but would you rather have some that are alive but need to catch up, or have some where their peers and or their parents died because schools were open at 100% capactiy.
We say it's a difficult problem.
You say no! And then present reasons why it's a difficult problem b
The district I work for had to scramble and order hundreds of wifi hotspot devices back in March/April. We handed them out to students and staff who don't have acceptable internet access at home. The other issue, however, is that we're not a 1:1 devices. So not all students had iPads/Chromebooks/whatever to use at home for distance learning. And, unsurprisingly, a lot of those same students who didn't have a device to use also don't have a computer at home. So, yeah. Depending on the income levels in any given district, there are lots of issues to work around.
This fall is gonna be hard on a lot of schools and their families.
This fall is gonna be hard on a lot of schools and their families.
I never said it wasn't a difficult problem.
What i said is there is no logical way to do it safely, so opening the schools its simply shouldn't be an option.
We're saying it's possible there might be solutions between those two outcomes, and it takes time to investigate how that would work.
And it's not just a socioeconomic/technology issue. What's going to happen to all the SpEd kids who need more involved instruction and care?
i disagree, but i err on the side of caution. I'm not sending either kid back to any school until theirs a vaccine. And if im not willing to send my own kids, i would not be willing to send anyone elses kids into danger either.
what have parents of special ed kids been doing since schools shut down in march? Day cares have largley been closed since then, as have schools, so what have they been doing?
Yeah the district my wife teaches at was able to provide hotspots and enough laptops for at least one per family. So the tools were there for distance learning. But that still doesn't help PreK-5 students that much (wife is a Kindergarten teacher). And it doesn't solve the fact of meaning millions of parents across TX would have to stay home when they would have been otherwise working.
No solution from the state or feds have come anywhere close to solving the latter problem.
With the rate of growth it won't be long before hospitals really start struggling. Even with a full on lockdown tomorrow a few weeks of growth is guaranteed. Kinda scary that not only isn't a lockdown happening but we're still seeing things open up with a big holiday coming up.
this is why republicans want schools open. and the only reason. they don't give a fuck about actually educating kids.
Texas Children's, where both my kids were born, is admitting adults for COVID and we're days away from hospitals literally having no where to put people, but the schools should definitely open up in a month and a half.
Right. That's why it's so complicated. Well it's simple, but, GOP and hell I'm sure some Dems will not go for an income replacement scenario for parents to stay home helping to teach their kids.
And because of that, shit-tier solutions have to be thought out to have at least something to ensure US children don't fall even further behind in education.
I completely understand erring on the side of caution. However, it's very rare for kids to catch covid (CDC says 2% of cases are under 18 years), and of those who do it's very rare that it's serious. The NY Times reported on a study which said the vast majority of kids hospitalized (again, very rare to begin with) had serious underlying issues such as cerebral palsy, cancer, etc. There have been multiple studies showing it's extremely rare for kids to be passing it on to other people. So if you have someone at risk in the household, or it's just an abundance of caution, again I totally understand that. As the saying goes, it's all low risk until it happens to you, so no judgment. I am certainly not one of those "die for the economy" people, but I also feel that life in general carries some risk every day which we all accept, and if the risk is extremely low then we get on with things because zero risk is an unattainable goal. I'd be concerned too about the lost education time for kids doing distance learning, since it very much seems that's a poor substitute so far for in-classroom learning at that age. You could be waiting a long time for a vaccine, and more importantly for a vaccine that enough people in a red state in America trust to take it, and your kids education could be suffering that whole time.
This ignored the fact that closing schools creates a rich get richer delima as well. Kids with college educated parents and good internet connections are going to hire private tutors and instructors to continue to educate their kids and be far more capable than poor families that may lack educated parents in the household. This could be a major economic setback for an entire generation of poor kids.
It's complicated and required a better thought-out answer than what the TEA did.
Like, if we had PPE requirements and limited class-room sizes and had a hybrid approach where half the students A/B in-person attendance on a daily basis we could likely have done this safely.
I work at a dedicated special education school (In admin not work directly with students), and we have been trying distanced learning the last couple months with mixed results. It's possible with some of our more high functioning students, but with a lot of our students there really isn't a whole lot we can do from home. We've been having meetings recently about what reopening in the fall would look, but frankly a lot of us are doubtful if it is even possible. Things like wearing masks for prolonged periods of time, and social distancing are going to be pretty much impossible for a large swath of our students.
Yep.
Study Finds Gap Widening Between Rich Pets And Poor Americans
STANFORD, CA—Highlighting the consequences of decades of U.S. policies that have contributed to rising economic inequality, a new study released Tuesday by Stanford University’s Center on Poverty and Inequality found a widening gap between the nation’s rich pets and poor citizens. “Our data...
www.theonion.com
That's another dynamic with rich parents able to get tutors or having the ability to competently tutor their kids themselves due to their educational advantages. My wife definitely experienced parents that sometimes didn't know things from and instructional perspective - even in kindergarten, and especially struggled just with the technology. I don't know how you solve that. Those parents are going to take as many advantages as they can.
If a hybrid model with as many "self-sufficient" students as possible are able to be put online, I wonder if that in-person staggered schedule would allow things to work while not requiring a whole lot more teachers to pull it off. Right now, we only have an option online format for students in our district. But we're fully expecting the PreK-5 kids to take the least advantage of that. And the entire district is Title I.
Basically I see no scenario where a full online model isn't an unmitigated long-term disaster for child development.
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I have several friends who are University professors and they are seeing a drop off in what they are able to impart to people in master programs who are there of their own volition. Online education is just far less efficient and we could wind up with a generation that is severely set back as a result of this disease. I don't think there are easy answers here, but the state of Texas seems to think there are, so thats great.
While we're about to cross the official high, testing capacity was so bad in March and April that the case numbers were likely significantly higher than what the numbers show. We're catching a much higher percentage of the cases now than we were a few months ago. This makes it so that we won't really be able to compare ratios of cases to deaths from March to now.
Certainly in terms of Pre-K and Elementary kids, I'd be very concerned about the gap between kids that go to school and those that don't. Most parents are not teachers and will not be able to effectively home school. Additionally, virtual learning is practically impossible without a parent constantly observing. I know it sucks, but if the studies are correct about spread from children being extremely rare then schools and day cares should be open, even if businesses in general go back into lockdown.
It's possible, but to be honest, I'd only be inclined to believe that if I could see the percentage of positive tests from back then, but I can't seem to find that data anywhere.
if this were true we would have seen the hospitalizations and deaths in higher numbers than they were.
Depends on how we go about opening up.
If the German model is followed, they could do alright. If it's a free for all, then yes we can expect an increase.
Long story short it really depends on the policies enacted.
It's possible, but less likely I think. The people there are probably more aware and careful of it, I hope, and there's probably higher herd immunity too. OTOH, public transport in NY subways compared to driving in your car in Texas looks dangerous wrt covid.