Thought we might want a re-opening after (during) Covid thread.
While many states and cities have begun opening back up to some extent, especially shops and restaurants, I thought it would be interesting to follow the other areas which are beginning to resurface.
Today the NHL announced how the remainder of the NFL season will be played. Basically it will be playoffs rounds played somewhere on each side of the country. Something tells me that people who have been missing spots, even if they are not regular Hockey fans, will be tuning in so that they can enjoy a live sporting event.
Today, Wall Street has opened back up in person with traders needing to sign a death waiver and wear masks. Sounds great doesn't it?
New York has soft-opened upstate and Westchester and the countries north of it. New York City and Long Island have yet to reopen. I feel that the downstate will open June the latest.
Seeing that phase two will happen next week, I feel that I may be able to pursue my master's studies on campus, albeit with sanitary standards. I would need to take the trains but would require to wear a mask, safety goggles, and gloves.
@lovendures. I do not feel this opening will go well. The lessons have not been learned and we will likely see some new outbreaks. It saddens me and reminds me of the foolish ignorance about climate change. I have to keep telling myself that it is normal that people just aren't awake, that they can't see what I see and that is my life here on earth. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/12/coronavirus-update-us/
@jeanne-mayell, I totally agree with you about the re-opening. Ignorance and denial.
Virginia Gov. Northam has just announced that Northern VA can begin reopening with Phase I this Friday, adding "just because you can open doesn’t mean that you have to open.” (If you just heard a big, noisy blast, that was my head exploding.)
Meanwhile, this past Friday the coronavirus task force singled out Northern VA as having some of the worst infection rates in the country. The raw numbers continued to climb over the Memorial Day weekend.
Northam has now instituted a mandatory mask-wearing policy (until now it's been "recommended"), but he violated that policy over the weekend when he was photographed without a mask as he mingled with visitors in Virginia Beach. He said he wasn't prepared because his mask was in the car. Northam said he takes full responsibility for his actions and should be held accountable. And this guy is a physician.
I have some annual doctor appointments that are overdue, but I have no idea when to schedule them. My driver's license renewal is up in mid-July and I will have to go there for a vision test. Right now the DMV is closed, but even if they do eventually open, there's no way in hell I'm going into that madhouse. Even if they try to limit the number of people inside the DMV center and have people make appointments, I still think it won't be a safe environment. And I'm concerned about my husband returning to work. Right now he's working from home, but if he's forced to go in, he will be taking the subway. He could drive and park in town, but his office building is so large that it houses 10,000 people. Even though it will create some financial hardship, it might be time for an early retirement.
Update: Long Island soft-reopen today. NYC will soft-reopen by next of the following week.
"Just because you can jump off the Brooklyn Bridge doesn't mean that you should." -- my grandmother
Mental image this morning of people at a theme park gate being given pouches of sanitation wipes to use. Pouches are on a cord around the neck
Costco will be opening its food court again this month and samples will be back, but differently.
Disneyland and California Adventure are re-opening on July 17th. What will be different? Well, there will be no parades and no character meet and greets though characters will be roaming. Not sure what this means for Fantastic though that is a crowd gathering event like a parade. The 17th is the 65th anniversary of the original opening oof the park.
I had earlier heard that masks will be required. If so, I bet Disney will be selling masks which will soon become collectors items in a way only Disney can make that happen.
Bringing in the topic of schools potentially re-opening and the pros and cons etc.to this thread on re-openings.
First clarifying my personal disclaimers:
I studied to be a teacher. I was a teacher before having and raising children within a community network of active involvement in school programs.
I have teachers in a long family history and among my own smaller family. I have young grandchildren whose parents are now seriously looking at and making their own decisions in the up coming month or so.
Now we are all looking to August or September re-openings. Here in Oregon the idea of choices based in geographic locations (some counties have had no or very few isolated cases, others like mine are among the top 4 here in Oregon for cases.
I am concerned about the emotional health of all ages of both students and teachers but i worry about the children stuck and isolated in mental, physical, or sexually abusive homes most of all. Statistically domestic violence and child abuse are both on the rise during COVID-19.
Oregon has all possibilities being considered for virtual learning, smaller socially distanced/barriers or even masks as possibilities. But they are also looking into hybrid models. Classes of 10 rotating days between classroom and virtual.
But then i wonder about others abilities to even teach their children at home or willingness of both parent and child(ren) to be taught.
Then i think about the teachers being exposed. I found this research article that just came out and found it quite interesting.
And then of course with a hybrid rotating model what happens to homes with essential or absolutely financial survival work needed homes? Who beings the kids to school one day, stays home with them the next?
Share your thoughts and situations and feelings but do read this article as it is quite interesting statistically if we are looking primarily at the students safety.
ScienceDaily:
Children rarely transmit COVID-19, doctors write in new commentary: Schools can reopen in fall, they say, if safety guidelines are observed and community transmission is low
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200710100934.htm
Thoughts, predictions?
@michele-b here are my thoughts in the form of an essay posted by a friend on FB. I did not write this nor did the person who posted it there, but there was a note that it could be copied as necessary. I was going to post it here, but it's too long for this board software, so I copied it to my FB so you can read the whole article.
https://www.facebook.com/tim.graf66/posts/3388158481203760
I just want to highlight this section here with regard to the link you posted from Science Daily:
“Hardly any kids get COVID.”
(Deep sigh) Yes, that is statistically true as of this writing. But it is a cherry-picked argument because you’re leaving out an important piece.
One can reasonably argue that, due to the school closures in March, children have had the least EXPOSURE to COVID. In other words, closing schools was the one pandemic mitigation action we took that worked. There can be no discussion of the rate of diagnosis within children without also acknowledging they were among our fastest and most quarantined people. Put another way, you cannot cite the effect without acknowledging the cause.
My feeling is we need our government to give $$$$ for every student in America to have a laptop and every community will be having internet access. We have money to give to billionaires, Money to fund Trump's endless golf games, Money to protect the Trumps. I say let's use our money better. We need stimulus money so parents can stay home and work from home if possible.
The argument of "You can't teach online effectively" is untrue. That's what I do and in many ways it is better. 1. I won't die and they won't die or be spreaders. 2. Technology allows all sorts of interesting lessons. The ESY camp I teleteach for is doing a great job of having virtual classes, even transitions online, and group meetings.
We have an opportunity to remake our educational communities. We will save trees and wipe out school shootings at the same time. We will need to be creative and some people may struggle to find in home childcare. That is how it has always been, people struggling to care for kids one way or the other. To this problem I don't see a one size fits all solution. Being a parent involves a lot of sacrifice. Too bad our country has let us down in making it an easier life for working families.
Clinging to the past has not served us.
The issue of unfit homes and abuse needs to be addressed with more funding to mental health and social services. This issue is just so sad.
Excellent! Exactly the kind of response i was looking for and i haven't even read the entire piece yet!. Going there next.
So many, many complexities at play!
Thank you thraf66!
There is a subtext to all of these discussions that bears consideration, namely that the US is not so much United States. We are the only developed country that lacks national anything. No national healthcare. No national education. Even the things that are supposed to be national are undermined by local laws and customs (e.g., abortion, criminal justice, human rights, voting). EVERYTHING amounts to a patchwork.
I also worry about all the kids with parents who are unable to teach them at home, especially kids who usually receive special education services (which again, is a patchwork that varies greatly by state).
If I was the Education Fairy, I'd find a way to get the at risk and special needs some in-home services or near-home services. Across the board, caseloads are too high and there's a shortage of teachers and allied health professionals. It all comes down to money. If we can provide early intervention services (a federal special ed program, btw), we should be able to extend that kind of service at least up through middle school ages. Maybe a large room in a school could be opened for 1 family at a time to visit with therapists, with precautions in place as possible. And for kids with severe challenges, maybe they could do what nursing home residents do and at least get a visit on a patio or through a window.
Maybe the school calendar needs a complete flip: maybe the kids should be off December-February, when all kinds of illnesses are circulating anyway and in most parts of the country you can't be outside. Yes, I know it gets very hot in some places June-August, but large fans can create a breeze outdoors where needed and if people are spaced apart it's doable.
I honestly have no problem with very rural school districts where there are close to zero cases reopening. Unfortunately that's not where most people live in this country.
It also drives me bananas when people in the US point to other countries (e.g., Denmark) that have reopened schools successfully because it is a Grand-Canyon Sized False Equivalency! You can't compare a smallish country with progressive policies that also has a functional and funded safety net to the [allegedly] United States.
I'm lucky my daughter is grown and not in school. I'm glad I don't have to deal with it. But when I reflect on what I would do, it brings my mind back to where we used to live, in the DC exurbs of Northern VA. If we were all younger and still living there, I think what I'd do is find a way to participate in cooperative services. Here's how I'd work it:
- Schools closed.
- Limited remote learning.
- Develop a homeschool curriculum for my kid and 2-3 of her friends who live nearby.
- Commit to contact only with those 2-3 families, and everyone quarantines for a couple of weeks before we start.
- Provide some socially distant day care/homeschooling (outside in good weather, but maybe spaced apart in winter with masks on inside for sure) on a rotating basis/set schedule.
- This would allow each set of parents to either go to an essential job or get work done from home.
- This also allows a psychological stress relief valve for all involved.
- It enables a sense of "normalcy" for the kids, at least they get out of their own house for a half day every couple of days, and they get to see those age peers doing what they are doing.
And just to circle back to something @michele-b said, personally I wonder how many abused children are actually being killed right now but we don't know it, and how many bodies will be discovered, and how many abusive parents will say "We got scared, we thought they died of coronavirus." I have no solution for that. It's a lose-lose.
Came over here to add that I heard last night that the county that sits between LA and SD - Orange - has decided to reopen all K-12 schools with NO mask requirements nor social distancing nor hybrid options.
Here in CA it's a little harder than in most places to pull your kids and homeschool them. It requires a certain amount of finances and privilege to do.
All of what you said in your post. This is such a complex and difficult series of issues right now. My kids are in middle school and school plans have not been finalized yet. Lots of discussion going around between parents/teachers/schools on all the points you made. We are not sure what we will do with our girls yet. We will hear final plans in the next couple of weeks, but those will also depend on how things go through mid-August with the virus and some legislation (for my older daughter's school, which is a public charter.) My younger daughter's school is private and is hoping to open for 5 days a week in-person, with lots of safety protocols. But there has been a lot of push back to offer a virtual option for those that don't feel safe doing so. We have yet to hear what they will decide to do. No easy answers or decisions for anyone. Do you bite the bullet and trust that the school is doing all they can? Will that be enough? Will they all close down in the fall due to the confluence of COVID and cold/flu season? Ack! The girls are already feeling isolated, so a mitigated risk of attending school with protocols might be the better answer. But do we really want to find out the hard way that we were wrong? I waffle between feeling like, let's just give it a go and wanting to keep them home until we see things improve.
@lovenures
Laura, very good shorter reiteration/inclusion of all of my often too long points added with excellent additional points!!
So glad you seconded my concern about the victims of domestic abuse and inhome sexual abuse. And my concern about not being able to get them out of their houses through school attendance, which is often is the only clean, non disgusting bug ridden meals of their day thanks to free meal assistance at schools.
If you knew what I knew from those who have intervened and now cannot now enter the homes for even greater safety concerns well frankly, you'd see and know they're are a lot of truly superb and truly concerned members of law enforcement involved with specific branches we seldom hear about that go into homes never knowing what is facing them behind closed doors or the extreme danger they work in on a daily basis.
It's not social workers who most often intervene in horrific multimulti-faceted levels of income inhumane and monstrous living situations many, many children are now stuck in. It is law enforcement because of their training and carrying of needed weapons to face those high on drugs, beating their wives and sexually abusing entire families.
But, I love ALL of these comments! Between us we are really covering a lot of views, most crucially important factors and why people often truly must make the choices they make or even more why so many have their choices limited by the states and governance they often are limited by!
Love this! Thanks for the back-up Laura.
Love,
Michele who only posts ahem on a cell phone.
????
I am always, always in awe of the the poetry/posts you make on your cell phone! ?