StrangeSox

I 100% agree that even in the best of times, fully online education is a joke compared to in-person instruction. When it was as ad hoc as it was this spring, it's even less useful. I'm guess I'm just saying our menu of options is pretty bad.

I'd be shocked if IDPH's school guidelines are just "back to normal, plus masks" I posted Wisconsin's guidelines on the last page. I'd expect something similar. The exact implementation is going to vary widely district to district. edit: It's selfish, but I'm thinking about my family's personal chains of contact. We're at just my immediate family (me, wife, two toddlers) plus once a week the kids to both grandparents' houses. The grandparents have no other contact aside from a weekly grocery store trip or delivery people. It's a very closed chain. My FIL's in good health but diabetic, my MIL had some mystery immune disorder a decade ago that went away on its own but who knows if its lingering, and my mom's on immunosuppresants for arthritis. Come August, if my wife's middle school opens back up, we're now going to have to add her 100+ students and any staff she interacts with. We'll also have to add in a dozen kids each plus staff for each of our kids at school. That's an enormous expansion of potential primary exposures for one single family. The secondary contact is probably another order of magnitude beyond that (all of the students' and staffs' family or friend or whoever else contacts). What's our plan for that? Is several hundred new cases every day with no unified contact tracing something that can support that without going exponential? Are state and local leaders really willing to slam us back into a lockdown if we turn into Texas or Arizona or Florida or parts of California?

Sure, everything includes some level of risk. Putting over a thousand people into a building at the same time for hours with lots of talking seems to rank higher on the risk chart than anything outdoors or going to the grocery store. The number of secondary contacts in your chain will be so much larger. I'm not sure how well defined the risk of normal in-school education is at this point. However, if we actually get high mask compliance, even packed public transit can be safe, apparently

It still represents increased exposure risk for everyone, though.

This seems bad:

WI released their school reopening plan: https://fox6now.com/2020/06/22/wisconsin-department-of-public-instruction-releases-guidelines-for-reopening-schools-this-fall/ These are some example plans schools could adopt. Four-Day Week Each student level (elementary, middle, and high school) reports to school, outdoor learning spaces, or community-based organizations four full days a week. Schools are closed on the fifth day to allow for deep-cleaning. Students are provided with virtual learning materials—digital, analog, or a combination of the two formats—to support learning on those days when they do not report to school for in-person learning. All English learner, special education, gifted and talented, and resource teachers work with small groups of students to reduce the student-teacher ratios to 10/1 or fewer in each learning environment. Learning in outdoor spaces or partnerships with community-based organizations may be needed to keep student-teacher ratios to 10/1 or fewer. One day per week is used for teacher planning and professional learning. On this day, students do not report to school but virtual learning continues. Two-Day Rotation All students report to school, outdoor learning spaces, or community-based organizations two full days per week (Monday/Tuesday or Thursday/Friday). Students are provided with virtual learning materials—digital, analog, or a combination of the two formats— to support learning on those days when they do not report to school for in-person learning. All English learner, special education, gifted and talented, and resource teachers work with small groups ofstudents to reduce the student-teacher ratios to 10/1 or fewer in each learning environment. Learning in outdoor spaces or partnerships with community-based organizations may be needed to keep student-teacher ratios to 10/1 or fewer. One day per week is used for teacher planning and professional learning. On this day, students do not report to school but virtual learning continues. A/B Week Rotation Half of the student population reports to school, outdoor learning spaces, or community-based organizations four full days per week for in-person learning while the other half of the school population participates in virtual learning at home. The two student groups alternate between in-person and virtual learning weekly. All grade bands are included. Students are provided with virtual learning materials—digital, analog, or a combination of the two formats—to support learning on those days when they do not report to school for in-person learning. All English learner, special education, gifted and talented, and resource teachers work with small groups of students to reduce the student-teacher ratios to 10/1 or fewer in each learning environment. Learning in outdoor spaces or partnerships with community-based organizations may be needed to keep student-teacher ratios to 10/1 or fewer. One day per week is used for teacher planning and professional learning. Students do not report to school on these days but continue learning independently. Elementary Face-to-Face and Secondary Virtual Learning Elementary students start back to school first, before other levels. Elementary students attend four full days per week and are distributed across multiple sites (e.g., elementary and middle school buildings) to reduce the student-teacher ratio in accordance with physical distancing recommendations. Secondary students continue to engage in virtual learning. Students are provided with virtual learning materials—digital, analog, or a combination of the two formats—to support learning on those days when they do not report to school for in-person learning. All English learner, special education, gifted and talented, and resource teachers work with small groups of students to reduce the student-teacher ratios to 10/1 or fewer in each learning environment. Learning in outdoor spaces or partnerships with community-based organizations may be needed to keep student-teacher ratios to 10/1 or fewer. One day per week is used for teacher planning and professional learning. Students do not report to school on these days but continue learning independently.

There isn't really a good answer in what to do here. Online learning is a poor substitute, but letting a pandemic spread ain't so great either.

Hmm

Illinois is on pace to move to Phase 4, but we still have hundreds of new cases a day and don't seem to have any sort of contact tracing in place at all. Seems unwise imo.

We don't seem to be seeing upticks from the protests.

Iirc he got free super charging for a year or something But that would mean always going to "fill up" rather than just plugging in at home

I don't know how you safely have teams and staff traveling all around the country every week, and the spring training facilities are in some of the worst hotspots right now.

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/health-care/chicago-has-unique-covid-strain-research Chicagoans are being infected with a unique strain of COVID-19 that’s linked to the early coronavirus outbreak in China, according to new research. Northwestern Medicine scientists have determined that the Chicago area “is a melting pot for different versions of the virus because it is such a transportation hub,” Dr. Egon Ozer

Do you have any info on contact measures being put into place in Illinois? I haven't seen much about that yet.

I'm still curious what article you copy-pasted these bullet points for since the Nature paper Balta links doesn't contain the phrase in the quotation marks, doesn't mention Sweden at all and states their IFR as 0.75%.

Abbott's approach is certainly better than Ricketts, I'll give him that. But who's responsible if Bob's Hamburger Stand has a mask requirement that a customer flagrantly violates? Now you're just breaking some business's rules, not an actual ordinance.

We know more now than we did in February and March. Whatever restrictive measures may be necessary in outbreak areas/second waves going forward can and should be adjusted based on new information. That doesn't mean the initial reaction, when we didn't and couldn't know the efficacy of a variety of different options, was bad or overblown. Things are still bad out there in a lot of parts of the country, and they're getting worse.

It's going to result in less enforcement, fewer requirements and lower compliance though. Not the best of both worlds for anyone but Abbott, it seems.

In Texsox' example, the owners are getting 50% no matter what the revenue is. That's what I was referring to, sorry if it wasn't clear.

Kinda wondering why owners should have guaranteed profit margins at the expense of contracts they've signed and agreed to. It's not like players' salaries suddenly increase if the teams make more money than expected.