Schools closed until February? (part 3)

HerrKuehn

Blondini wrote: »

Biggest public conspiracy ever.

Over 116,000 lizard people got together and forged nearly 600 letters.

Better call Jim Corr!

Oh you are back? Going to behave yourself this time?

I think it was a fair enough question to ask. Facebook is not generally regarded as a reliable source of information. I have no idea who is verifying it, I can't say whether it is correct or not. I suppose for it to be correct, the official numbers would have to be incorrect? We know who are verifying the official numbers.

One thing I find about this thread, just in general is a lot of hyperbole and confirmation bias. Anything which promotes what someone wants to believe is regarded as gold standard evidence, anything which doesn't is disregarded.

irishblessing

meeeeh wrote: »

What data? The test is either positive or it's not. Are you saying they are recording positive tests as negative?

OMG. You couldn't be more disingenuous if you tried. I already explicitly listed the problems with the testing and tracing system. You can't be taken seriously. If I'm going to be accused of being bad at maths then you need some help with reading comprehension.

meeeeh

8k71ps wrote: »

All of the things they listed could lead to both decreases case numbers and increased positivity via lop-sided and parochial application of testing. It's not just a question of "the more tested the less the positivity rate". If you listen to any experience on the ground you'd know that the stats are effectively duds and we have to look to other countries to see if it transmits in schools higher than the general population (hint: it does)

OK this is lizard people type stuff.

wirelessdude01

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/mouthwash-inactivate-covid-study/2020/10/22/1735cdd4-13c5-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html

We are missing a trick, mouthwash coupled with the auld hand sanitiser and we'll be outta this in jiffy!!

8k71ps

HerrKuehn wrote: »

Oh you are back? Going to behave yourself this time?

I think it was a fair enough question to ask. Facebook is not generally regarded as a reliable source of information. I have no idea who is verifying it, I can't say whether it is correct or not. I suppose for it to be correct, the official numbers would have to be incorrect? We know who are verifying the official numbers.

One thing I find about this thread, just in general is a lot of hyperbole and confirmation bias. Anything which promotes what someone wants to believe is regarded as gold standard evidence, anything which doesn't is disregarded.

If you want the "gold standard of evidence" Irish statistics, and especially HSE statistics tend to not be in that group. Really any evidence about effective covid policy due to the amount of variables. You can, however, look at the statistics of virtually every country on the planet to see at the very least the positivity rate they're quoting is comparable East Asian countries, ie hilariously low.

It is also a question of common sense. If the viral loads in children are similar , and the infectivity seems to increase to adult levels pretty quickly after puberty, then sticking 25 or more students in an unventilated room is bound to cause mass cases

8k71ps

meeeeh wrote: »

OK this is lizard people type stuff.

Please explain how any of this is lizard type stuff. I'm not claiming there is a mass conspiracy, I'm claiming gross incompetency. Are you claiming that it is unlike the HSE or this government to not properly investigate something and then backtrack later?
It is demonstrably true to say that selective and irregular testing and in schools both leads to a low number of cases and a low positivity rate, can you please explain otherwise?

irishblessing

HerrKuehn wrote: »

Oh you are back? Going to behave yourself this time?

I think it was a fair enough question to ask. Facebook is not generally regarded as a reliable source of information. I have no idea who is verifying it, I can't say whether it is correct or not. I suppose for it to be correct, the official numbers would have to be incorrect? We know who are verifying the official numbers.

One thing I find about this thread, just in general is a lot of hyperbole and confirmation bias. Anything which promotes what someone wants to believe is regarded as gold standard evidence, anything which doesn't is disregarded.

Then why haven't the government answered to the discrepancies and easily proven that a huge amount of reports are faked? They haven't because they can't.

On the one hand you have a huge discrepancy of cases that the government can't/won't answer to.

On the other hand, you have the changing and inconsistent definition of close contacts in the school, and a failure of the testing and tracing system. How are those not huge issues.

Whatever about the positivity rates aside, the point is that the contact and testing and tracing system in the schools (and wider community) have not been adequate, have failed, and it leaves us all at huge risk for this virus to be caught by our children and brought into our homes. Schools are not controlled environments, they are too small and overcrowded often lacking ventilation, ppe and any ability to social distance and one whole sector (the primary) aren't wearing masks. There is no blended remote learning plan that protects those more at risk and allows education to continue at some level of equity and which would reduce class sizes. We're all worse off because of it. That's the main point at the end of the day.

meeeeh

8k71ps wrote: »

If you want the "gold standard of evidence" Irish statistics, and especially HSE statistics tend to not be in that group. Really any evidence about effective covid policy due to the amount of variables. You can, however, look at the statistics of virtually every country on the planet to see at the very least the positivity rate they're quoting is comparable East Asian countries, ie hilariously low.

It is also a question of common sense. If the viral loads in children are similar , and the infectivity seems to increase to adult levels pretty quickly after puberty, then sticking 25 or more students in an unventilated room is bound to cause mass cases

Please read the link on positivity rate I posted. I'm talking about A and you are talking about Z.

meeeeh

8k71ps wrote: »

Please explain how any of this is lizard type stuff. I'm not claiming there is a mass conspiracy, I'm claiming gross incompetency. Are you claiming that it is unlike the HSE or this government to not properly investigate something and then backtrack later?
It is demonstrably true to say that selective and irregular testing and in schools both leads to a low number of cases and a low positivity rate, can you please explain otherwise?

Selective testing leads to high positivity rate not low.

khalessi

HerrKuehn wrote: »

Oh you are back? Going to behave yourself this time?

I think it was a fair enough question to ask. Facebook is not generally regarded as a reliable source of information. I have no idea who is verifying it, I can't say whether it is correct or not. I suppose for it to be correct, the official numbers would have to be incorrect? We know who are verifying the official numbers.

One thing I find about this thread, just in general is a lot of hyperbole and confirmation bias. Anything which promotes what someone wants to believe is regarded as gold standard evidence, anything which doesn't is disregarded.

NOw you are getting it.

Firstly, the people with offical numbers are lying.

Secondly, The hyperbole on this is people not agreeing with your or a certain couple of others opinions.

What is regarded as gold standard evidence (numbers by HSE) has been seen to be incorrect by those on the floor. I dont care if the the positivity gets lower the more they test. What I care about is honesty and transparency.

The fact the HSE only wanted a pod in a classroom tested after a positive case and the teacher insisted on whole class, and lo and behold 7 more asymptomatic positive cases will tell you that the protocol the HSE is using is incorrect.

Best practice would be to test the whole class and if that results in less positivity rate - great!! At least it is honest. But the HSE is not carrying out best practice.

So people resort to FB where the letters have to be verified before publishing. Martina the head admin, has stated that she has plenty of schools with positive cases and cant publish them as not verified. SHe has also been the subject of 2 reports in the paper where I am sure good journalists would check her sources before publishing as she has offered them up for scrutiny.

meeeeh

irishblessing wrote: »

meeeh, I understand how it's calculated. Stop trying to turn it into a misunderstanding of maths which it isn't and actually answer my questions which calls into question the validity of the data used in the maths. You're always so disingenuous in effort to be right at any cost it's ridiculous.

What validity. You are going on about contact tracing but if they would test too few positivity rate would be high. So unless you have proof they are counting positives as negatives then I don't know what are you on about.

8k71ps

meeeeh wrote: »

Selective testing leads to high positivity rate not low.

If you read what I said you'd know that in the case where they test either many contacts or few contacts than it wouldn't, which is again what most teachers seem to be claiming, alongside everything else which you're ignoring.

wirelessdude01

All this arguing about positivity rate. None of us in the education sector give a hoot about it. Up or down we don't care.

What we want is a properly defined close contact that is stuck to for testing purposes. Not one that seems to be fluid and open to interpretation by the public health person that takes the school case.

In primary once a positive case has been in school within their infectious period then that whole class should be tested and all associated staff. No ifs and buts.

I know I'd be happy with that.

It would lead to more trust from us in the system that is meant to be be keeping schools open.

MelbourneMan

irishblessing wrote: »

Thank god it's me, ha ha :pac:



You can't answer direct questions and you conveniently ignore criticisms. You're not an authority on anything and provide no proof of anything yet you think you've got some kind of special importance or legitimacy here. You don't.

Hello. I am sorry you have that impression. I try to answer any questions as fully as possible. My main goal, and that of those trying to help the general communication and understanding of the crisis, is to simplify as far as possible, while providing factually correct answers.
I observe that there is a lot of poor quality information here, which leads to circular discussions, and the citing of poor quality references, or ones beyond the training of some drawing conclusions from them to make a point. I some cases, less is more, and à streamlined answer to some of the questions being posed or discussed here, is, I think, more helpful to all.

8k71ps

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

All this arguing about positivity rate. None of us in the education sector give a hoot about it. Up or down we don't care.

What we want is a defined close contact that is stuck to for testing purposes.

In primary once a positive case has been in school within their infectious period then that whole class should be tested and all associated staff. No ifs and buts.

I know I'd be happy with that.

It would lead to more trust from us in the system that is meant to be be keeping schools open.

Would you not be a wee bit concerned if the positivity rate in schools was massively higher than what is reported and higher than the population at large. That is literally impossible at current PCR capacity without innaccurate antigen test that would lead to practically the same situation they're probably in.

Trust is impossible because at the current level of community transmission they should be closed, and if they aren't it'll likely extend lockdown to much much further out than it otherwise would be.

wirelessdude01

8k71ps wrote: »

Would you not be a wee bit concerned if the positivity rate in schools was massively higher than what is reported and higher than the population at large. That is literally impossible at current PCR capacity without innaccurate antigen test that would lead to practically the same situation they're probably in.

If the positivity rate was that much higher then it would lead to other issues and I think keeping schools open would slide down thr last of priorities.

As it stands we in the education sector don't have much if any faith in the system that is meant to be keeping us open.

JimmyVik

The thing im worried about is that if/when schools close, as they are starting to in the rest of Europe, we have nothing in place for remote learning.
Totally wasted the window that schools, kids and parents had to get trained up and prepared for remote learning.
Now it will be back to the hodge podge suck it and see methods for everyone.
That is just not going to work.
Seriously, what harm could have come from just prerparing for the eventuality that schools be closed.
What a monumental waste of time, just because some politicians and medical people wanted to not have to swallow their words.

wirelessdude01

JimmyVik wrote: »

The thing im worried about is that if/when schools close, as they are starting to in the rest of Europe, we have nothing in place for remote learning.
Totally wasted the window that schools, kids and parents had to get trained up and prepared for remote learning.
Now it will be back to the hodge podge suck it and see methods for everyone.
That is just not going to work.
Seriously, what harm could have come from just prerparing for the eventuality that schools be closed.
What a monumental waste of time, just because some politicians and medical people wanted to not have to swallow their words.

Think most schools have been working away on something. Now again it won't please everyone. Not the schools fault. We wanted some form of central framework but the govt didn't want this.

Str8outtaWuhan

if a nurse or a doctor has the covid tracker app and they receive notification they are a close contact do they isolate for 14 days or do they have to contact their hospital manager who asks PH to determine if they are to disregard the notification? Heard one of the journo's asking the weird red headed woman on briefing about teachers and the app, couldn't believe the app was context specific?

irishblessing

MelbourneMan wrote: »

Hello. I am sorry you have that impression. I try to answer any questions as fully as possible. My main goal, and that of those trying to help the general communication and understanding of the crisis, is to simplify as far as possible, while providing factually correct answers.
I observe that there is a lot of poor quality information here, which leads to circular discussions, and the citing of poor quality references, or ones beyond the training of some drawing conclusions from them to make a point. I some cases, less is more, and à streamlined answer to some of the questions being posed or discussed here, is, I think, more helpful to all.

And I'm sorry that you refuse to answer direct questions even though you said if I would expand upon a particular question, you would be happy to answer that. There were also other questions and points made that you conveniently ignored.

For the third time, what is your position of authority? Your opinion as a random user on boards is no more valid than anyone else's. That spiel above actually didn't argue any point, give any information or contribute to this discussion other than to try and place yourself up on some kind of weird pedestal.

wirelessdude01

MelbourneMan wrote: »

Hello. I am sorry you have that impression. I try to answer any questions as fully as possible. My main goal, and that of those trying to help the general communication and understanding of the crisis, is to simplify as far as possible, while providing factually correct answers.
I observe that there is a lot of poor quality information here, which leads to circular discussions, and the citing of poor quality references, or ones beyond the training of some drawing conclusions from them to make a point. I some cases, less is more, and à streamlined answer to some of the questions being posed or discussed here, is, I think, more helpful to all.

Communication is pi$$ poor at the moment. Message is being lost in all the noise.

wirelessdude01

Str8outtaWuhan wrote: »

if a nurse or a doctor has the covid tracker app and they receive notification they are a close contact do they isolate for 14 days or do they have to contact their hospital manager who asks PH to determine if they are to disregard the notification? Heard one of the journo's asking the weird red headed woman on briefing about teachers and the app, couldn't believe the app was context specific?

Teachers are being asked to disable it while in school.

irishblessing

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

Think most schools have been working away on something. Now again it won't please everyone. Not the schools fault. We wanted some form of central framework but the govt didn't want this.

There should be some equity framework here for students as many posters have pointed out. Teachers and students and parents should be provided with the equipment and training necessary, and additional funding for more teachers or assistants who can help manage the dual workload. We shouldn't leave this burden to each school to figure out on the fly, on their own with no more funding support. While they are currently teaching, so the DES/gov't have wasted the spring, summer, and now fall break opportunities. Even our school principal is a teaching principal. There is absolutely no capacity for attention on anything else in the schools that would normally need working on. I honestly don't know how they do it, working in such an unsafe environment to boot. When I'm out an about near someone who either has no mask or it's under their chin, I move away and feel stressed. I can't imagine being stuck in a small room with 30+ people fully adept at spreading and unmasked. JFC. And the government people won't sit anywhere near each other in the same room, having booked out venues and called a recess due to a suspected case at one stage.

This is a government failing, absolutely nothing to do with teachers or schools, I agree.

JimmyVik

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

Think most schools have been working away on something. Now again it won't please everyone. Not the schools fault. We wanted some form of central framework but the govt didn't want this.

Probably, but what was needed was a unified model. And training for teachers, kids and parents in using it.

SusanC10

Do you think realistically that we will get to the Christmas break with the Schools remaining fully open ?

JP100

Another study this time from the University of Edinburgh across 131 countries showing how the reopening of schools causes the R transmission rate to surge.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/coronavirus-r-rate-school-closures-lockdown-lancet-study-b1251617.html

meeeeh

SusanC10 wrote: »

Do you think realistically that we will get to the Christmas break with the Schools remaining fully open ?

What gives you idea they wouldn't? the numbers leveled off or are even falling (we will see better today considering we were getting bank holiday weekend numbers yesterday). So if schools were opened at 1200 cases why would they be closed at 700 or 600 or 100 as Nphet are aiming for?

I really don't get this wishful thinking for numbers to be higher just so we can close schools.

khalessi

meeeeh wrote: »

What gives you idea they wouldn't? the numbers leveled off or are even falling (we will see better today considering we were getting bank holiday weekend numbers yesterday). So if schools were opened at 1200 cases why would they be closed at 700 or 600 or 100 as Nphet are aiming for?

I really don't get this wishful thinking for numbers to be higher just so we can close schools.

I dont get how the fact no one wants schools closed is consistently ignored by you.

meeeeh

JP100 wrote: »

Another study this time from the University of Edinburgh across 131 countries showing how the reopening of schools causes the R transmission rate to surge.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/coronavirus-r-rate-school-closures-lockdown-lancet-study-b1251617.html

It's the same Lancet study that was posted here 100 times always by someone who hoped that people wouldn't actually read link provided.

“We found an increase in R after reopening schools but is not clear whether the increase is attributable to specific age groups, where there may be substantial differences in adherence to social distancing measures within and outside classrooms,” said Harish Nair, professor of paediatric infectious diseases at the University of Edinburgh. “Furthermore, more data are needed to understand the specific role of schools in increased SARS-CoV-2 transmission through robust contact tracing."

Results indicated that people took some time to adapt their behaviour to comply with workplace closures and stay-at-home requirements, which was similar to the delay between the measures and the effects seen on R of between one and three weeks.

Researchers suggested the delay was possibly due to the population taking time to modify their behaviour to adhere to measures.

They said some of the greatest effects on R were seen for measures that were more easily enforceable by law, like schools reopening and public events bans.

This may have been because their effects were more immediate and compliance was easier to ensure, the researchers added.

SusanC10

meeeeh wrote: »

I really don't get this wishful thinking for numbers to be higher just so we can close schools.

I am not wishful thinking for higher numbers or school closures.
I am just trying to be realistic about what will happen. Schools are closing in various European Countries already and moving online.