Covid-19 discussion

I took an actual correspondence class for high school credit. LOL Things were mailed!

It was not very educational but I finished high school a year early.

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Same in all of the indoor public places we went on our recent vacation, including two aquariums.

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I think there is a big difference between a virtual school, and an in person school trying to function with virtual work.

The kids I tutored, the systems they had to use were HORRIFIC, and the time they had with the teachers was horribly used.

Not to mention, the kids I know who use virtual school (like connections academy) have intentionally chosen it because it works for them.

For many of the kids forced into virtual school, it very much does NOT work for them. They either don’t have a home environment that will allow them to learn well, or they have special needs that require in person intervention they did not receive.

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Yes, totally agree! That’s precisely why I’m saying that you can’t judge virtual schooling as a whole by the shit experience so many families had this past year.

Edit: I also know, just like full-on homeschooling, it’s definitely not for every kid or family

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I did one of these in college.
Mailed all my assignments and tests to an adjudicator. There was no instruction though, it was self taught.

In high school, I missed the last 2 weeks of my junior year when I was in the hospital after I broke my neck. The principal just had my teachers make up the grades I would “probably have gotten”. I was so mad my pre-cal teacher gave me a C+, though she was probably right… All my other teachers gave me As, but well, they were probably right too. I sucked at math.

Oh- and as far as I can tell, 95% of kids under the age of 12 are vaxxed here, because there are no masks to be seen anywhere. (I do my best to get my kids to wear them in public indoors, but Drew usually gives up after an hour.)

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Predictably, cases are climbing rapidly here now that the state has fully reopened.

I’m so frustrated that we’ve gone from pretty well thought out policies to “anything goes” in a matter of weeks, despite cases climbing. My family got tickets for the Hollywood Bowl back when the plan was to have sections reserved for vaccinated people vs non-vaccinated people. Well, now that we have tickets they have decided that anyone can sit anywhere.

I have heard multiple second-hand accounts of people who aren’t vaccinated saying they never mask in stores now that they don’t have to (note:they have to but there’s no way to enforce it).

With an unvaccinated child, this is forcing us further back into isolation. At least mask compliance still seems 100% at daycare.

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GUHHHH choices are hard.

The two neighbor boys are Latte’s main social outlet. Parents are fully vaxxed. Until now, they’ve been only taken care of by their parents (nurses who trade off who is home). But now the older boy is in school 3 days a week. He’s 4 and has a sensory processing disorder, so mask compliance probably isn’t very good.

I already promised to watch the younger boy today in my home so his mom can go to PT (appointments are being scheduled more than a month out, so she’s in a tough spot). But moving forward… do we only let them hang out outside? That’s what they normally do for now anyway, but what about come another heat wave, or fall? Plus they tend to drink each other’s water lol.

But if she doesn’t see them she is SO isolated.

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If I were you, I’d let them hang out outside, and masked inside your house. (So even if he can’t handle it for a full day at school, possibly he can for the length of a playdate.)

You might know better than me, but I don’t think covid can spread through water sharing, it’s a respiratory disease, and that doesn’t give it a path into the system, so that’s just normal grossness between kids.

I am worried about social outlets in winter. We were so isolated last spring.

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If covid is similar in to flu for little kids, is it a huge issue? From a numbers perspective! Emotions are still hard. No judgement, just curious on your thoughts.

I know in the boston area most schools are back to normal in Sept.

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Not B_J, but the thing is, I get a flu vaccine for my kids. Because the risk of flu to my kids is serious enough to warrant that. But they can’t be vaccinated against covid-19.

To me, at least, flu is not “no big deal”.
(In early 2020, despite vaccine, I was sick in bed for 5 days with the flu. I could barely move. Yeah, no long term damage, I think, but I still am so glad that didn’t happen to my kids.)

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I had to remind my mom recently that people with unvaccinated kids who are too young to mask adequately or families who have someone with a compromised immune system (or both, like some people I know) are basically having to continue to live like it’s 2020. Her response was that kind of joking “Ugh, just kill me.” and I said, completely seriously, “Yeah… That’s literally the choice they’re facing.” She didn’t have a response for that. I don’t think she liked being reminded that her experience is not everyone’s experience. It’s just so frustrating.

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I’m excited by the lawsuits too @anomalily ! I was really glad that woman (visually impaired) won against lyft or uber or whatever it was. I’ve been reading about them denying rides to people with dogs for a long time. This woman actually lost a job because the car wouldn’t take her, and she sued and won. This is what will change stuff IMO. We need every disabled person who has any kind of financial resources to sue every single time this shit happens.

I think this is exactly why the lawsuits need to happen! There is this attitude that if you’re disabled you’re “lucky” for getting anything at all. It’s wild how permanent disability gets treated so much worse than people with temporary injury or illness. It’s like you’re lucky people tolerate you even being there if you’re disabled, or like you should be grateful for being allowed to have worksheets. I had teachers make such a big deal about my time out when I got back. Like they acted so freaking put upon and also acted put upon for my extra set of books (which I paid for out of pocket) etc.

The problem is no one is afraid of disabled people and that’s what we need. We need schools and employers to be terrified to make a misstep with us. Callout culture will never come for ableism, because able people don’t care en masse, and most of them waste their time calling stuff ableism that literally isn’t even ableism. But lawsuits? Lawsuits can strike real fear.

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Same. My parents are providing child care two days a week so it’s been a new round of discussions and negotiations since my dad has basically decided covid is over. We recently found out they have knowingly interacted indoors with unmasked/unvaccinated people and I was livid. We made them both take a covid test before coming back into our home which I’m hoping will drive the point home how seriously we are taking this. They live in an area with relatively low rates if vaccination and rapidly rising delta variant cases.

It’s so hard to trust them now but the alternative is more days in daycare where the other babies don’t wear masks either and we have no idea what their parents’ vaccine/activity status is. (But my affluent city has super high vaccination rates so they probably are?)

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Personally I think we (Mr Pug and I) have a different risk tolerance than most with little kids. Puglet goes to Daycare twice a week, the younger kids (under 5) don’t have to wear masks, I know the kids in Puglet’s class don’t wear them. We are not at all concerned with Puglet getting COVID from classmates. He doesn’t have any underlying health issues which is our main reason for feeling this way and from talking with his pediatrician last fall about how kids are not as likely to spread COVID (something about a lower level of respiratory droplets?) plus we’re in a high vaccinated area of the country. I know other peoples risk tolerance is different so I can only say that this is what we are comfortable with.

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This is where I have landed with my kids. LB was allowed to have a birthday party (er, he had 2 guests) with that restriction and that was the rule at my grandfather’s memorial as well.

But we are going on a week-long beach house vacation… huh, this will need further consideration. As my children will just have gotten off a plane from Italy*, they will arguably be more dangerous to their cousins than vice versa… and they are all at least 9. Well, they are used to masking and maybe we can mark eating spaces 6-8 feet apart?

*(If you haven’t been following along, sending them to Italy was not my decision…)

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My county is only about 45% vaccinated last I checked. And it’s not the acute infection I worry about, it’s the possible long-term weird stuff. Since we still don’t have any explanations about all of her weird medical stuff at the start of her life, I don’t know how that influences her case. She still has baseline lab values that are out of range, they just didn’t seem to be affecting her brain or metabolism so we’ve had to let it ride. No one can tell me a good answer for what that means for any sort of risk profile for anything really. But she’s walking around with double the serum calcium as is considered normal.

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My personal kid may be an outlier, but my fourth grader flat-out thrived in his public school-based virtual learning. Now, I don’t know how much math he got. But he LOVED it. They had at least 4 hours of live instruction every day, maybe more, and he was busy from 9-3 with 40 minutes for lunch and a couple other breaks. He would make himself some cocoa and sit down in the La-Z-Boy ready to start the day.

I do think a huge part of the appeal for him was that it was a combined 4th/5th class and he was allowed to choose to do 5th grade work, which made him feel smart and special… ACTUAL 5th grade may be kind of shit show now that he thinks he knows it all :sweat_smile:

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My office just announced mandatory vaccinations :slight_smile: staff AND guests.

CEO said it’s for the benefit of the vulnerable people we serve and to keep America open as delta spreads.

HQ is in a purple state so wheeee.

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That is some heartwarming shit right there.

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Sad news:

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