Our students come back this weekend. The university, in its wisdom, decided to test them all once, so the first week of classes is going to be a complete dumpster fire as everyone once again discovers that a) viruses are contagious and b) testing describes an outbreak THAT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED.
Meanwhile, my next door colleague, who has a very serious and life-limiting disease, is quite concerned about getting covid with only half a functional immune system and we are trying to figure out how to cover lab for them.
I am teaching a new class, about which my boss has very strong feelings; also, I am starting to panic about it. The public schools may close at any moment (they will be the only thing! not the bars or the university!). My spouse is understandably getting kind of cranky about his year as the Default Childcare.
The university is requiring boosters, in line with our whole country doing the least effective thing at all times. Fine, whatever; except they are trying to dictate what booster I may and may not get. Friends, I have discovered the hill upon which I will plant my flag! NOPE. I will get the FDA-approved booster of my choice and they will deal.
So, overall, I'm filled with a mixture of dread and anticipation at all times.
How are all of YOU?
Our university is making noises like we might teach remote for awhile. (My idea of hell.) Our local public schools will never close. My kid's boyfriend has Covid, and since my kid lives with him in a tiny apartment, probably my kid has it too, though he's showing no symptoms. (He's fully vaxxed and boosted.) And no one here is wearing masks or curtailing their travel or avoiding long unmasked conversations in the aisle of grocery stores. No surprise, Covid cases and deaths are surging here.
ReplyDeleteEverything is terrible!!!
DeleteI don't really know what's going on with covid in our area because the health department has been mostly on vacation since Dec 22nd (I think they were also back the 29th and 30th) and got back yesterday and has a large backlog that they haven't gone through yet. They don't report what is reported to them, only things they've "investigated."
ReplyDeleteSchool started today. Bus drivers unmasked, of course.
OMG, how, I thought buses are covered under the federal mandate!!!!
DeleteYeah, it's funny. The minority-majority town next to ours (which also provides masks to families, not just to students, and has been doing at school after hours vaccine clinics and basically all the public health things they can do) has said that Federal law covers buses.
DeleteOur school board (heavily influenced by a minority of Trump supporters) says no, state law preempts that (we complained about it at school board meetings in September along with a bunch of other stuff). DC2 says very few kids in middle school are masked and about half her teachers (and one kid threw away his mask after he got to school). DC1 says there's more masking than there was before break, but not 50%.
My only RA from last year who didn't get covid is currently covid-positive. At least he was able to put it off until after he got vaccinated!
Our university is doing remote for all of January. Our kids' schools are remote this week to let the dust settle from vacation, which I can't get too mad about because we came back from our own vacation with covid. But if they don't go back in person next week I am going to be mad. I'm convinced we are all getting omicron and closing schools is not going to make a whit of difference. We'll all just get it somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you all got sick BUT on the bright side you'll get it over with!! (Closing schools will 100% not make any difference. Closing schools and nothing else is not a public health measure; it is a tax on parents.)
DeleteYes! Except despite not isolating in our house only 2/5 have it. Spouse and I are still sleeping in the same bed and he hasn’t gotten it yet! We were hoping to just knock it out this week but it seems like that’s not how it’s going to go.
DeleteLocal paper reports the backlog of unconfirmed cases is around 2000 cases and went up 300 cases since yesterday, which is more than the number of cases they actually confirmed.
ReplyDeleteBacklog went up another 300 cases since yesterday, which is again more than the number of confirmed cases they reported for today. The local paper ran a little news story on it and in addition to just stating that they have to confirm cases before they report them, the health department said, if you have a home test that you report, we're not going to confirm it and it won't be counted.
DeleteThe NYTimes is reporting 2.5X the number of new cases today for our county that our county health department is reporting. Usually those numbers are closer (including always reporting 0s for weekends). I'm not sure why they've diverged.
7 cases at the high school and 2 cases at the middle school yesterday. None in my kids' classes though.
I mean to be fair *everywhere* for sure has at least 2.5 times the number of cases that are being reported, but I take your point about unusually unreliable data. Blaaargh.
DeleteThe nytimes must be getting those county numbers from somewhere?
DeleteI doubt either number is equivalent to the number of actual cases.
It's a mystery! They claim to be relying on state and local officials but ??? (All the numbers are not real anywhere!)
DeleteNew news story, "[Company providing free covid tests] not sending results to [our] county health district." Given that university testing has been mostly shut down and the health department itself hasn't been offering testing the past month...
DeleteNYTimes currently reporting 400/100K new cases yesterday for our county, health department reporting 140/100K new cases. Number of still un-investigated cases has grown to 1150/100K. (None of this counting the two drive through sites that aren't reporting results, unless they're reporting to NYTimes?)
So much dread and anticipation! With a healthy dose of resignation mixed in. We have already discussed the woeful lack of available tests and All Choices Are Bad paths forward.
ReplyDeleteMay the odds be ever in your favor.
I feel we should start a betting pool at work on who's gonna get covid first/when/whose whole class will be quarantined first.
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