New Jersey and Connecticut (a couple of the only states that aren’t fire engine red in David’s post below) have announced that they will be having school in the Fall. On yesterday’s “Chuck Todd Asks Dumb Questions” show, Cuomo held back, saying, essentially, that if the country’s still on fire in a couple of months, who knows what will happen.
Apparently, in their rush to re-open bars and beaches, the moron yahoo Trump guvs didn’t think about the consequences of schools staying closed. If you want to make sure the economy sucks for a very long time, make sure all of the double income with school-aged children couples have to homeschool and provide daycare for their kids. I already see it on calls — it’s pretty easy to tell the workers who are double income with small kids, they’re the ones who put on 20 COVID stress pounds and have rings under their eyes. And those are the lucky white-collar workers. I just don’t know how double income essential worker families do it.
“The Economy” isn’t getting a drink at a bar or going to a beach. In fact, if I had to bet, I’d bet that New York closes bars in a couple of weeks after a few hotspots emerge and I wouldn’t expect anything but “yeah, they weren’t being careful enough” comments from New Yorkers. I’m certainly not stepping foot inside a bar for the duration — I’ll drink outside at a restaurant if they’re clearly being very careful, but that’s it.
germy
Baud
Roberts issued his first pro-choice opinion (a concurrence), I believe. Louisiana law struck down.
lahke
Going to try my first restaurant meal this week, but at an outdoor venue, and we’re in Massachusetts. Can’t see indoor activity for a long time, or travel to anywhere less safe
JPL
@Baud: So interesting because he voted the opposite way all along. Stare Decisis.. It was existing law
trollhattan
@germy:
Oh lord. I’d be repelled already by the hat but seated next to him, unmasked? “Get me, or him, off this plane. Which of us depends on whether we’re already in the air.”
cmorenc
Well, duh – Trumpers will be convinced the schools *should* and *would* open anyways, if it wasn’t for the over-hyped hoax the libs have pulled conning and pressuring other states to keep schools closed due to COVID scolding. And so the economic stress on dual-income families will be blamed on libs over in the Fox-fantasyland Trumpers live in.
Citizen Alan
@JPL: I am convinced that every decision Roberts makes is based solely on the mercenary calculus of “how will this affect the Republicans in the next election?” The fact that there is serious discussion of expanding SCOTUS has to be freaking him out at least a little.
jonas
Schools in the deep south esp usually reopen by mid-August. I don’t see any way they can do that now. Thanks a lot, maskless, bar-crowding assclowns. You’ve destroyed us all.
ant
https://www.postcrescent.com/story/news/2020/06/26/wisconsin-coronavirus-520-new-cases-20-somethings-drive-growth/3263496001/
case rates here in Wisconsin are rising.
It’s the 20-something bar crowd that is driving it. Anybody with the brains of a fruit fly could see this coming.
Our state supreme court decided our governor can’t close down the bars without the permission of wingnut gerrymandered elected officials.
United States democracy is a walking zombie.
Even under the most optimistic scenario, whereby Hillary moved back into the white house in Jan 2017, and handled things with C-19 perfectly, Republicans would be knee-cutting her at every opportunity, and Dems would be angry and disillusioned with her leadership. We’d be looking at another 10 years of more gerrymandering in the house, more lost senate seats, and have an idiot with a glide-path to the white house. Oh, and we’d still not have any judges seated, with vacancy slots open all over the federal government.
The American experiment with civilization is a failure.
Punchy
@Baud: Roberts will need Secret Sevice protection by the time this session is over. Foxers about to LOSE THEIR MINDS….
Barbara
@Baud: Someone should email it to Susan Collins and ask if her blue eyed boy lied through his teeth or if she is just an exceptionally bad judge of character.
cmorenc
@Citizen Alan:
Alas, expanding SCOTUS as a strategy for de-fanging the current RW-5 majority is not a sound solution. If we expand SCOTUS to 11 during a moment Ds control POTUS and the Senate, the Rs will expand it to 13 next time they control both branches. And so on, until SCOTUS expands near-infinitely.
A far better solution would be to constitutionally change the tenure of SCOTUS justices to e.g. 20 years, non-renewable (similar to the change in max terms a President can lifetime serve) that would be a more viable, equitable solution for both liberals and conservatives. Under the limited-term solution, we’d be rid of Roberts in 2025, if the max term was set as 20 years. Alito even sooner. Yeah, we’d also miss Ruth G., but the tradeoff of also quickly getting rid of Alito and Thomas would be worth it.
The Moar You Know
Posted this below as the same conversation is happening down there:
I have already spent hundreds of dollars on PPE. I am interviewing lawyers, trying to find ones who have pressed the board into settlements before. My wife has a pension at stake and has been doing this for 29 years. She has asthma and is on light chemo for melanoma. They want her to go back into a classroom with 40 kids, no distancing and no PPE on the kids.
FUCK THAT
I don’t know how I’m going to make this happen, but she is not resigning and she is not going back into a classroom until they spend whatever it takes to make it SAFE. And if that means kids are out of class for the next five years, fine. You’re not killing my wife.
ant
Native Americans persisted here for ten thousand years.
What we got going will not hold up.
Barbara
@Citizen Alan: The more I think about it, the more I think it makes sense to rethink the way the court operates — to expand the number of Justices to 15, but to normally decide cases with panels of five, with the entire court coming together to address cases that affect precedential decisions, and where they agree that the issue is of unusual importance. It’s not just a matter of the political composition of the court, it’s that the court takes so few cases that it is basically inadequate to address the true needs of the U.S. — states, citizens, litigants, you name it — for guidance on a whole realm of issues.
I would also create a senior status track as is currently the case in the appellate courts. None of us is served well by having the court serve as a nine person junta. It’s unseemly for our country to be so beholden to so few people, especially when the composition of the court is so vulnerable to political gamesmanship and outright corruption (see Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor).
jonas
Dafuq? What state is this? That’s absolute insanity.
Barbara
@jonas: I have an unpopular opinion. Any state that finds its way to open bars has to open schools. Unlike bars, schools are essential and the needs of kids and their parents are more important than just about anything else that people are whining about missing (nail salons?). They have to figure this out. Teachers who are vulnerable have to be given liberal leave, but this is an epic disaster for children.
PsiFighter37
Got back to Manhattan yesterday after a week in New Hampshire. Outdoor dining is great in concept, but it’s clear that a number of places aren’t really social distancing that closely, and people are hanging out with each other closer than that. I don’t think folks get that ‘social distancing’ means ‘don’t get brunch with a bunch of different people and sit next to each other’. The fact that it is outdoors helps, but it makes me a bit nervous.
Sab
@germy: That picture is so horrible that I actually laughed out loud.
Barbara
@Sab: I would find my way to disrupt his sleep at every opportunity. I might even spill my drink on him.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Barbara:
Welp, there are a lot of states that will just yell “Leeroy Jenkins” and go for it. Who cares if opening classrooms creates superspreader events?
I doubt you mean it that way, but there’s already a push to open classrooms without protection for teachers or students, as mentioned higher in this thread.
Sab
@Barbara: I suspect your opinion isn’t unpopular at all. We have all learned that adequate home schooling is really hard.
OT thanks for parchment paper advise. It worked like a charm.
PaulWartenberg
My library is hosting online stuff through our Facebook page – it’s the only reason we have it, most of our community is on there – and we’re attempting to do a LIVE Feed from Gatorland Orlando this Wednesday morning July 1 from 10:30am-11:30am and we’d really like to get a good turnout so if you know anybody in Polk County or Central Florida please tune in at https://facebook.com/BartowPublicLibrary danke.
PaulWartenberg
@Baud: wait what
Sab
@Barbara: Yes. I almost wish I was sitting behind him so I could kick his seat.
Barbara
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I am all for implementing protections. Around here, they are talking about staggered schedules and partial remote and in-person learning. I am going to sign off, not because I am in disagreement with you, but because anytime I have to think too deeply about this I find myself confronting a level of rage that I barely knew existed, that is actually debilitating, and I am not an overly optimistic person. I cannot remember being this angry for a long, long time, if ever. I am at the point now that I cheer when I find out that “naysayers” on social distancing end up dead from COVID-19. I don’t care anymore.
Emma from FL
@JPL: from Healthlaw 360:
BREAKING: Supreme Court Strikes Down La. Abortion Law
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals on Monday, finding that it imposed an unconstitutional restriction on access to the procedure.
Emma from FL
@trollhattan: With your permission, I will use those exact words if it ever happens to me.
Marcopolo
@Baud: I hear that Kavanaugh guy, you know the one Sen Susan Collins said would uphold stare decisis vis a vis abortion when she said she’d vote for him, voted with the minority in favor of further limiting it. This is my surprised face…not surprised.
Roberts, since he always has his finger up to see which way the wind is blowing, is the only reason I have any hope that the current SC line up won’t wholesale drop awful decision after awful decision. If the SC decides to uphold the ACA, which I am really hoping they do, it will all be due to Roberts calling those balls & strikes.
geg6
Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) just shut down alcohol sales in bars and restaurants due to spike in cases pegged to full reopening. My county is right next door and since we went green, mask and social distance compliance has gone into the shitter.
Schools, K-12 and higher ed, here in PA are scrambling to figure it out on their own, but with some guidance, at least, from the state. It’s very complicated. At my employer, the state’s flagship public research university, the complications are illustrative. We have 24 campuses all over the state, each of which is in a county that is seeing different infection rates and is a different phase of reopening. And each campus is unique, with differences in the number of students, whether it is essentially a commuter campus or residential or a hybrid of both (that would be my campus). Our plan for how we handle something like our campus’ residence hall will differ significantly from that of a campus with more and bigger residence halls. We usually house a bit over 200, two to a room, in one three story hall. We have a student population of 550 to 650 most years. The main campus has about 60,000 students, most of whom live in the many residence halls and grad housing or in big private apartment units all around town. Different challenges that have to be dealt with at the local level. K-12 has similar but not exactly the same challenges that can only be addressed locally. It’s very difficult for us all. I don’t envy the decision makers at all.
Obdurodon
The *only* way I can see schools getting back to anywhere near normal is with lots of PPE, a shift/cohort system to confine any possible spread, and hospital-grade air handling systems. That’s for high school students. Even that won’t work for younger kids, who are unfortunately also the worst served by fully online schooling, or in anything but the most affluent districts, so schools are going to reopen whether it’s safe or not. That means the onus is on the rest of us to do absolutely everything we can, no matter how low-percentage it might seem, to reduce spread. Otherwise sending kids back to school will *guarantee* new clusters of infection.
Barbara
@Sab: When it comes to baking cakes, I have learned that you basically can’t overdo prepping the pans. Nothing worse than having a really nice cake stick to the pan!
The Moar You Know
@jonas: California. Rich, white, beachside southern California.
Hate to see what they’ve got planned in states where they don’t “respect” teachers.
Barbara
@geg6: My brother in law works for your institution’s main campus. I think the epidemic is going to force him into retirement. He nearly died from heart failure earlier this year, pre-pandemic (revived by his wife in time for EMT resuscitation) and simply cannot risk infection.
Gin & Tonic
Haven’t been to any bars, but here in RI, mask compliance is excellent. Perhaps not coincidentally, yesterday CNN reported that the only two states with decreasing case counts are RI and CT. Also among the leftmost in Mayhew’s R(t) chart downstairs.
Just Chuck
I’ve been calling that “The COVID 19”
Elizabelle
@ant:
I agree with you. I got what USAF Colonel Milam was saying in his Philly.com op ed “Thanks to the president” — Trump’s utter depravity and self-interest, and being propped up by the whole elected DC Republican infrastructure — has been horrible and evil and painful, but might bring us along to our goals way more quickly than one term of Hillary would have done. Don’t even want to think about the Fuck the Fucking NY Times of Clinton Derangement headlines and all the slanted and disapproving articles.
Trump — who is actually the logical end of wingnut Republican party ideology and not an aberration striking that party — might actually help burn the whole thing down so that we will have to start fresh with new (and long-existing but repelled by Republicans) ideas to competently try out.
And your comment:
Trump did not just happen. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the wingnut wurlitzer and all the rightwing-funded “think” tanks paved his way. For decades.
It would be nice to be able to make progress without the destruction of our American government and the murders of so many people of color. But it’s the American way to not do so until there is no other option. That is what is “exceptional” about the United States — it’s a snarly adolescent that believes in magic.
I think the Biden administration should break up the big media companies and find a way to rein in Fox News. Which is not so much “news” as propaganda and brainwashing. The Telecomm Act of 1996 had some terrible consequences, and it’s time to undo them.
TS (the original)
@cmorenc:
My part of the world the Senior Judges have to retire at age 70. (via a referendum to change the constitution in 1977).
Leto
@geg6:
Montgomery County (outside Philly, opposite end from you) checking in: similar observations. Mask wearing in local Giant still good, but outside of that it seems since we went “green” everyone went YOLO. Avalune’ s employer, local community college, won’t be re-opening for the fall and is doing online classes. Some specific classes will be on campus, believe the lab portion for some science classes, but everything else is being done online. We’re seeing an uptick in cases here and it’s not surprising. Our complex’s pool was packed yesterday. Every available chair/lounger was filled, lot of people in the water, basically no social distancing/mask… I’m like, are you people fucking insane? Yes, yes they are. We’re green now! smfh…
ant
Don’t get me wrong, I like Biden, and I am really happy with his campaign thus far, but, ah, expecting Biden to save us is likely to be met with disappointment.
Biden has been on the wrong end of a lot policy over the years. It’s not his way to lead, or take the side of working people. It just isn’t.
Edmund Dantes
@Citizen Alan: and it should be seen as that and Dems shouldn’t respect it or be dumb enough to fall for it cause he won’t respect it. He will keep eviscerating things like VRA, CFPB, and other things till the heat gets too much then back off a bit. Plus no future GOP bench holder is going to be like him. Too many in the pipeline now are Rao’s and Kavanaugh’s.
trollhattan
@Emma from FL:
Please use it in good health! :-)
Edmund Dantes
@cmorenc: and what happens in your scenario when a liberal judge term is up and the GOP stonewalls till they fill the seat with a Kavanaugh?
Considering the natural gerrymander of the senate. Your solution does nothing to solve the problems we are seeing now and will continue to see
Steeplejack
Report from my little corner of the coronasphere (NoVA).
Took my life in my hands and went to a dentist’s appointment this morning—regular exam and cleaning postponed from early April. Turned out okay. Filled out an e-mailed questionnaire early this morning, then got my temperature taken at the door. All the office workers were masked, including clerical/bookkeeping types. The hygienist wore a mask and a plastic shield and maintained safe practices, in the context of being wrist-deep in my mouth.
Afterwards I had a surprisingly strong urge to go eat at the nearby IHOP, which is my usual habit if my mouth is not numb or out of action. Couldn’t believe I was seriously considering it for even five seconds! Fought off the urge and drove home to Threadkill Lane, but I did stop at the McDonald’s drive-through to get a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit. Transference.
Saturday was the three-month anniversary of my “day job”—driving a friend to and from her job at Trader Joe’s in Clarendon. In March Metro closed the two train stations she used, and with the extremely light bus schedule her commute went from an easy 15 minutes to a 60-90 minute ordeal. Back then I thought, “Yeah, I can do this for a month or so.” ? Little did I know. The tactical gear (pants!) has really been getting a workout—two trips five days a week. I’m happy to do it as my little part of the battle, but at times it wears on me, especially as the future prospects extend ever farther into the future, given the criminal lack of a federal coronavirus plan.
In that context, something clicked inside me last week and I started shopping for really comfortable masks. I had been using a couple that a friend sent me, which work fine, but they don’t quite fit right—too tight on the ears. I ordered a 10-pack of inexpensive cloth masks from Woot and, what the hell, a big batch of the blue disposable ones. Neither order has arrived yet. Still looking at some others.
Then, in a bit of serendipity, I went to the Lost Dog Café on Saturday night to get a takeout pizza and found that they are selling really nice masks at the register. Eight bucks a pop, but some part of the proceeds goes to their rescue charity. I bought one to check it out, and it’s very comfortable. Think I might get a few more and declare mission accomplished.
My nightly trips into Clarendon (hipster restaurant/bar enclave of Arlington) over the last three months have given me a time-lapse view of the quarantine. In March and April the streets were almost completely empty, even on the weekends, but starting in May and especially since Memorial Day the activity has increased a lot. Friday and Saturday nights look like old times: streets busy, people jammed outside at restaurants or waiting to get inside. Almost nobody wearing masks. Good times. During the day, on the other hand, more pedestrians wear masks and seem to maintain distance. (I see people swerve to leave more space when they go around someone else.) But the percentage seems to be going down.
I am lucky in that my usual grocery stores, the substandard Safeway and the new super Giant, both seem to have good mask compliance among staff and customers. I don’t go anywhere else. I gas up the doughty Kia when necessary and get takeout once a week or so to support my favorite restaurants. Such is life these days.
With the lack of a federal plan and 50 states running 50 different coronavirus plans, I think we’re in for a long slog—through the end of the year and past the winter flu season. So almost a year. No word from Metro about when the closed stations will open, but I did a full Danny Thomas spit-take the other day when I read a press release pimping the fact that they are running extra trains on July 4 for the holiday, including the “Salute to America” fireworks display on the Mall. Passengers are expected to wear masks and (try to) maintain social distance. Right.
Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
FlyingToaster
All of the school-reopening guidance we’ve gotten in the
People’s RepublicCommonwealth has been geared to elementary schools. None of it has a chance of working for middle and high school.At WarriorGirl’s tiny, tiny (private) school, I suspect that the PK-5 kids (upstairs) will be there 2-4 days per week. PK-K-1 might be there 4-5 days a week. Teachers may well be in hazmat gear. Unless we get lucky, the college kids are going to bring a massive wave and it will wipe out our Summer gains.
At most, the Middle School (basement) should be in person 1 day per week, by grade. So that they can shrink the exposure to something manageable. The specialist classes (chorus, instrumental music, art, performing arts, Spanish, PE) all suffered mightily from attempts to deliver on Zoom. The core curriculum is already all assignments/homework-on-Chromebook; most of us are at least satisfied with the spring trimester “5 hours zoom per day”, modulo the essential suckiness of trying to do Chorus on Zoom.
States assuming that they can just re-open and have nothing bad result should be learning that lesson in, oh, about 4 weeks when their crematoria are backed up for months…
jl
” I’d bet that New York closes bars in a couple of weeks after a few hotspots emerge ”
Just my opinion, but if a place lets its down its guard and opens too quickly, the result is a building invisible wave that takes a month or so to swell, then explodes.
Good news and band news there. If you work hard and get the prevalence down very low (as a growing number of countries have), and have good surveillance and testing to detect early spread, it can be managed. If not, suddenly a month out from your mistake, it seems like suddenly it is everywhere.
There are a number of highly transmissible diseases with no herd immunity that we can control. But you have to learn each disease’s bag of tricks, how it can defeat you, and what weak points in its attack that you can leverage to get control. We can see more and more countries finding a way to adapt to their own circumstances what needs to be done to control it. The US isn’t even trying. Let’s hope some states and regions can learn from the latest mess in South and Southwest and keep it under control.
And… seems to me there are plenty of things people can do rather than go to nightclubs and bars. The last big outbreak in South Korea that caused them big headaches started in nightclubs that they mistakenly opened.
Ohio Mom
I am torn on the school issue, and selfishly I am glad my kid is finished with his public school years.
I keep thinking about how many adults work in schools. Not just classroom teachers but also: specialists like gym and music teachers who see many classes in day; classroom aides; administrators and their secretaries; nurses and interventionalists such as speech therapists, OTs, PTs, psychologists, counselors and social workers; cafeteria staff; custodians; bus drivers and the bus maintenance staff; and who did I leave out?
A lot of times the nurses and interventionalists split their time among several buildings. That just raises the risk of spreading.
I certainly understand the arguments for opening schools, but I also foresee a huge exodus of older, experienced teachers. That loss of expertise will echo for a long time.
TL;dr: whatever happens will be awful.
jl
@Ohio Mom: I’m probably a broken record here, but other countries have opened schools and they are doing OK. Greece and Switzerland are two examples.
But they did serious studies on how school outbreaks worked in their countries, and devoted the resources to adapting. So, actually, I guess you have a point, since no sign yet in most places the US can do things like that, at least anymore.
Kelly
Change the law to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice when a current Justice reaches 70. Four of our sitting Justices are over 70. Justices still have life time tenure, number of justices varies. It’d also eliminate retirement gaming by Justices that want a specific party to appoint a successor. The Supreme Court has always been a political institution.
mali muso
Reporting in from my corner of VA where the 3 year old went back to daycare exactly one week ago. She was desperate for mental stimulation, a schedule, and playground time, and I haven’t been able to get any “work from home” done since March. So even though I don’t like it, we went ahead and let her go back. Six kiddos to a room (pods), teachers masked, temperature check-ins in the morning, lots of hand washing. I guess we are technically only as “safe” as the other 5 families in her friend group. Our local area is doing well in terms of keeping cases low and the hospital has plenty of capacity (friends work there and have been giving us updates). Brave new world we are living in.
jl
@Ohio Mom: From what I’ve read in news and journal articles, Australia was able to keep its schools mostly open all they way through the initial wave of infection in the country. But they studied carefully and made quick and cautious adjustments as the info came in.
Australia is doing two orders of magnitude better than we are in cases and deaths.
Barbara
@cmorenc: Can’t do limited tenure without changing the Constitution. Can increase number of justices through legislation. I think we need to worry about today’s problem today and not paralyze ourselves because someone might do something in return in the future. That’s what McConnell has been able to capitalize on at great expense to Democrats. Just do what you feel needs to be done and defend it to the teeth.
Barbara
@Kelly: Yep. This is the simplest strategy, though I think as I said above that there are good reasons to rethink the way the Court works more generally.
Leto
@jl: If we had a coherent national plan, maybe we could have this discussion. But on Earth 1, this is where we are. Maybe some localities can open, the ones that have been hyper aggressive about testing/tracing, but for the vast majority of states that’s simply not wise. So it’s probably exactly why it’ll happen.
Kay
@Ohio Mom:
I’m sympathetic to the concerns but school and child care are essential. They are essential workers and they’re not alone- there are a lot of essential workers. Daycares have been much safer than food processing plants.
We know more than we did in March. We have three months of daycares that stayed open in hige hotspots like NYC and they were serving the children of health care workers- the people with the most exposure. In terms of all work it is NOT high risk.
trollhattan
@Kay:
Something like half the kids at my kid’s HS qualify for lunch and breakfast programs. No school leaves a void there as well (the district has continued nutrition programs over the summer).
Kelly
My other idea is eliminate the Supreme Court as a permanent body. Replace it with rotating or random draw panels of Appeals Court Justices.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: What part of working with 200 teenagers a day in a sealed small room, locked door, with recirculating air conditioning and masking only for teachers is striking you as “not high risk?” I’m kind of hard pressed to think of anything that’s higher risk other than “working in the COVID ward with no mask”
Not saying much, given what’s been happening in those plants.
Aleta
@Steeplejack: I like this news report.
Have appt. to get my teeth cleaned in 2 weeks. Starting to think it may be safer to have appts now before the ‘2nd wave’ and flu sweep in come fall. My dentist mentions at length the precautions they’ll do on us, but not much to relax me about the person who’ll put their hands in my mouth that day. Do they live with someone in the “live-free-and-die” club or someone in the “my-bar my-rules” gang … who knows. So then I find myself urging myself to dash out for an ice cold martini or g&ts on a local patio …. like a movie scene where the pressure finally breaks someone who used to be OK.
Kay
@trollhattan:
We distribute the breakfast and lunches to kids during school shutdowns and summers now- we have about 50% who qualify. It started during the financial system crash, in 2009.
As someone who works in the juvenile justice system I cannot overstate how essential schools are. We are going to lose 10 million kids. They’ll just drift away. It’s already happening.
Designate schools as essential and then commit to opening them, or lose 20% of an entire cohort of students. They won’t recover. They have no room for error. One hit like this can knock them down and keep them down.
Aleta
Not sure what the reporter means, but I think “besides yesterday, which was highly unusual” means the 352 pos. number is still highly unusual even though the ‘all of the tests were positive’ part is typical of weekend reporting
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
Because day cares stayed open. They were taking the kids of all the other tens of millions of essential workers. Hundreds of YMCA day cares stayed open. We know more now. Teachers really want school to be deemed “nonessential”? Have they thought that thru? That doesn’t seem like a good long term approach to their profession, in my view. They’re optional now? Somewhere below opening a shopping mall?
Another Scott
@Steeplejack: Thanks for the report.
We’ve been hunkered down a few mile south of you, teleworking, etc. Last night we got take-out for the first time in ages (we didn’t do so much in the Before Times). The carry-out place was deserted – I hope it was just my timing and that they aren’t hurting (they have done brisk business for decades).
On the schools – I have a feeling that (as I’ve said before) unless the Senate passes something like the House’s $3T rescue plan, that states and localities won’t be able to do much about re-opening them because of the bloodbath in their budgets. And then it become self-reinforcing. 80 kids per remaining teacher kind of things that make parents say “NOPE!!”.
All of these pieces fit together – we can’t beat COVID-19 piecemeal.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: Teachers don’t want to die. The ones in my district are being asked to come back to classrooms the same size as the ones they left (about 18″ of distancing between students) with no PPE save a garbage cotton mask and a bottle of hand sanitizer. I only wish I were exaggerating for dramatic effect, but I’m not.
That’s not acceptable and it’s not defensible.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
No one is saying just send them back. Even Republicans are discussing 75 billion to schools for covid prevention. That was Lamar Alexander’s opening offer and that’s in addition the CARES Act funding they’re getting and what will be a giant state bailout package (because they won’t have any choice- states have to be bailed out).
But you can’t keep telling people it can’t be done. That’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Essential. Not if they open but when and how.
Obdurodon
@Aleta: FWIW, here’s what my experience has been like having needed a root canal recently (two trips to endodontist plus one to my regular dentist). Had to call when I got there so they could open the door. Initial check-in questionnaire. Temperature checks. Noisy air sanitizers in every room. Endodontist had me do a peroxide mouthwash before, and the assistant (more in the “line of fire”) was barely one step shy of a full hazmat suit. Dentist was *double* masked, thin gaiter style over what looked like an N95. And both used those rubber dams to limit exposure to just the direct area they were working on. I’m sure not all practices are like that, but I was pretty satisfied with the precautions they were taking.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: Oh yes they are. We even have a date: August 24th. No changes to class size, air conditioning, distancing or PPE. I’m not sitting here spraying “what ifs”. This is the current district plan and working conditions, decided at the last board meeting and sent out in writing to the entire district.
You might not like it but this is what California teachers are facing in about eight weeks. And it is not defensible.
ETA: this is an OSHA “maximum exposure” job and needs to be treated as such: full medical grade PPE, limited exposure, and social distancing. Just like doctors and dentists. And if we don’t have enough of that PPE, we can wait until we do. Is teaching important? Hell yes, important enough that we can’t afford to lose any teachers. So treat it as such.
joel hanes
@Kay:
I pushed back hard last time this came up, largely on the basis of Israel’s bad experience with opening its schools.
Since then:
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24/882316641/what-parents-can-learn-from-child-care-centers-that-stayed-open-during-lockdowns
I’m mollified a bit. I still think that the push to re-open too-greatly discounts the threat to parents and grandparents (family members who are as essential to the kid’s welfare as school, and less easily replaceable) and the possibly-permanent organ damage done by some asymptomatic coronavirus infections, but I no longer feel I have as strong a case. So I resign from the discussion. I hope that the optimists turn out to be correct.
Full disclosure: my sister has for two decades been an outstanding teacher of high-school special ed in a small town. She’s 65 years old and has several risk factors. Her school told her she’d be required to do face-to-face instruction in the fall, and she told them that she could not agree to that, and is is choosing to retire. It’s sad: a few of those kids benefited enormously from her tutelage. It’s wonderful: my family has been sick with worry that she’d get COVID this winter, because if she gets it, she’ll almost certainly die.
Aleta
@Obdurodon: I do feel for the assistants and dentists, am humbled by their dedication.
Logan Brown
@jonas: Here in the upper South (NC) we are going to find out what our Dem Gov is going to do. He was begging people to wear masks last week with an emphasis on reopening the schools at least on a partial basis. Every plan I’ve seen floated for this is a nightmare for both students and teachers.
I have 20-30 kids in my room at a school with 2200 kids which was built for 15000. A similar story can be found across the state. My own kids need 2 credits to graduate this year and I hope we don’t have to enroll them in North Carolina Virtual Schools to receive those credits (not an online charter so the classes are “real”).
Another Scott
@joel hanes: Thanks for the link.
(Emphasis added.)
Sounds great and sensible.
Now maybe someone can explain how that can work in classrooms that normally have 30+ students in over-crowded 100+ year old buildings. In school districts that are going to see massive budget cuts and increasing unemployment beyond the already horrid levels, unless the Senate acts.
:-(
I think Kay is entirely too sanguine about this. Maybe she’ll be proven correct, but…
Cheers,
Scott.
geg6
@Barbara:
We have had a number of somewhat unexpected faculty and staff retirements at my campus. Some for age/health reasons and some because they simply cannot adjust to online learning and greater use of technology. I’m about 3 years short of retiring and, after all of this, it can’t come soon enough.
joel hanes
@Steeplejack:
I started shopping for really comfortable masks
Camp Collection
I have twelve of these, and like them; CC reliably ships within a week. (I like the dual-tie setup much better than ear loops. I wish they had a synthetic third inner layer, but I’m putting coffee filter paper in the pocket, so nusuth. They don’t have the over-the-nose wire, but they fit so well that I haven’t missed it.)
If you want them imprinted with slogans, Raygun does that, and somehow delivers even more quickly than does CC itself.
I also have some synthetic ear-loop ones from VIDA, but I have a big face, and they’re apparently designed for people with small jaws. Inadequate coverage, and they eventually chafe my ears. Also, they took six weeks to deliver.
Steeplejack
@joel hanes:
Thanks for the tip. I’ll check out Camp Collection.
Kay
@joel hanes:
I just think there was almost an “oh, they’ll be FINE – they can learn everything from You Tube anyway!”
We turned their lives upside down and we did it overnight. Attention must be paid. I am watching HUGE airline bailouts which came BEFORE schools. No other country did that. Only the US.
It isn’t just smaller kids. We have a displaced college student working in our office and she’s a fucking national treasure. REALLY talented. She has no idea what shes doing. This is a kid who has been busting ass for the last 15 years to execute her career plans and it’s all ashes. No one cares. We’re too busy protecting PGA golfers to worry about her.
Aleta
@geg6: Do you know whether your faculty* are allowed the option of teaching entirely online if they wish? Or if instead made to retire if they’re not willing to come in for age/health reasons? I’m wondering what other institutions are saying because it’s becoming an issue here. Department heads are playing their cards close to the chest, perhaps hoping to encourage retirement so they can rehire new at lower salaries. (While avoiding the issue of refusing to accommodate.)
*the ones who are comfortable/willing to use the technology, that is
lee
Here in my red county of North Texas our school district said at this point it is up to the parents if they want to send their kids to school or continue with virtual classroom learning. There are a lot of dual income families in our wealthy/educated area. I’m guessing that is factoring into their decision. They are sending out emails for parents to indicate their choice this week. I’m going to guess they are going to get a lot of virtual.
It looks like they are going to require face coverings and it is dependent on the current infection rate.
I have no idea if that is going to stay the policy when August rolls around.
Aleta
@Kay: One thing that bothers me (everything you point out does) is how inflexible the education system seems to be in places that can’t even shift to smaller classes and increased emergency hires for those classes. I know some recent college grads and teachers at private schools with reduced enrollment (for ex., Montessori-type) who were suddenly let go who would love to find teaching jobs in the fall if small classes.
joel hanes
@Aleta:
No money to do better. The GOP has seen to that, and will continue to do so. California, which has been back under unified Dem governance for some time, is still hobbled by the lasting damage the Republicans did while they were in power *cough*Prop 13*cough*
And every government in the the US except the federal government is facing incredible budget challenges from the unprecedented downturn in tax revenues caused by the pandemic. Most school districts will have less money than they did a year ago; some of them will have catastrophically less money.
The feds could fix this; Trump and the GOP Senate will prevent that.
randy khan
The school problem is pretty disturbing. There are huge risks to reopening, but I keep hearing that the pivot to online classes for K-12 had pretty significant impacts on outcomes, particularly for students who already were struggling or who live in low-income households. And on top of that, we can’t forget the impacts on families that need two incomes but also need to have someone at home to take care of the kids if they can’t go to school and/or go to after school programs.
This is yet another example of how the wasted time over the last several months has immensely complicated the path forward. We’re left with no good choices as a society, just degrees of bad choices.
Tenar Arha
@Steeplejack: & @Aleta: I had to (at the beginning of June) go to the dentist 2x in < a week when I finally got my quarterly checkup at around 5.5 months. Everyone including in reception was masked. The regular hygienist was masked, goggled, gloved (& now I’ve forgotten what else she was wearing). But when I had a small cavity filled in the follow-up the doctor & assisting hygienist wore the full PPE including N95 & faceshields, gowns & hair covering etc.
I’d been having significant foot & ankle pain partly as a result of spraining my ankle at the end of March as well. Anyway, I had to go to the orthopedist & a podiatrist the same week as the dentist (it’s just the way the appointments worked out, really!)
The podiatrist was in a medical office building adjacent to the hospital, & there were no checkpoints to get in. But you had to be masked up even during the appointment. Even the x-ray tech has developed a no-touching even to position your feet by instructing you what to do. IIRC Neither the podiatrist nor his fellow touched me, preferring the x-rays, but I did have to walk down a hallway barefoot.
To get to the orthopedist, who was in the main hospital building, they had a checkpoint right by the entrance with a couple people making sure everyone was masked, asking who you were there to see, & directing you to the right elevator(s). IIRC The X-ray tech there didn’t touch me either. And the orthopedist & his fellow avoided it as much as possible as well. Also, at both offices the medical assistants were behind plexiglass/glass partitions & masked.
Lot of work to find out I have tendonitis on top of arthritis. But I did got some relief from the pain with a prescription for a steroid pack, PT, & some new & better inserts strongly suggested.
ETA for clarity
Steeplejack (phone)
@Tenar Arha:
I hope you’re on the mend!
Tenar Arha
@Steeplejack (phone): Thank you! I hate taking them bc I get side effects, but the oral steroids really really helped the inflammation. And the PT has been mostly by telesession, except for the initial apportionment, & I think that’s working okay too.
WaterGirl
@The Moar You Know: Terrible situation. Does something magic happen at 30 years? If so, and making it thru 30 years is the goal, perhaps they can “give her” the extra year so she makes it to 30 and can then retire?
WaterGirl
@PsiFighter37: It should make you nervous, It should make you nervous enough to take no part of it and stay the hell away from outdoor or indoor dining in a public place. :-)
WaterGirl
@Just Chuck: Ha!
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: I read the whole thing, and then laughed out loud at your last line.
Sab
@Barbara: Thanks. Also too for not noting that “advice” as a noun is spelled with a “c” not an “s”.
The Moar You Know
@WaterGirl: The pension she’s been working for her entire life. She has nothing otherwise (teachers do not get Social Security). I have a 401k that might get us through about 8 years or so, plus Social Security. Not enough.
As far as “giving her” an extra year, that would be violating quite a few state and federal laws, because the one thing we’ll never do in America is treat an employee well.
Especially if they’re a teacher.
WaterGirl
@The Moar You Know: I assume she gets her pension without making it to 30 years, yes? But I am guessing that there’s a big jump between 29 and 30, or you would just say screw it?
jl
@Leto: I think the way to get out of Earth 1 is lay out the evidence of what is possible, and ask why the US cannot do it, and how we can get to where it can be done here.
I may have more optimism than others because in California, we seem to be at least half way on the ball. Bars were shut back down at early signs of trouble, not until we got back on the massive epidemic wave roller coaster. SF Bay has had an unfavorable 10 days, but no sign of a renewed wave (yet). Some counties flattening new case load or starting to head down over last week, despite a new surge in testing. Positivity rate flattening. So, some chance Northern California can stay out of Earth 1
Edit: what really worries me here is prison and workplace outbreaks. I don’t see how we can continue to have outbreaks of several hundred, or dozens every couple of days at those places and get the curve down, rather than just flattened.
gvg
@Kay: The reason nothing can be done is Trump is President and the GOP Senate are supporting him, not that nothing could be done with different leadership.
Daycare closed here. Very few camps have reopened. Yes the virtual teaching was a pain. So? Dying is permanent. Frankly I’m surprised grocery stores are still open but the latest info is short shopping trips with short exposure are sort of OK. Prolonged hours of exposure aren’t.
Lots of fool voters put us here. Years of being suckers for liars.
Sure the democrats can run on plans to improve it. They should make plans. But the GOP conservatives are in the way of doing anything on time for this year. And school boards are pretty stubborn plus out of money.
Also no plans will totally fix this. The virus is actually a big problem.
joel hanes
Very late on a dead thread, but this seems relevant:
Georgia — UGA confirms 143 people have tested positive for corona virus on the campus.