Corona-zona

Mask-hole parents who disrupt and threaten violence  against school boards over mask mandates look like even bigger idiots than they did before. A new study forthcoming in the journal Pediatrics shows that masking is effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19 at school, just like the public health people have said all along. Researchers studied within-school transmission in the last six months of 2021 among over a million students and over 150,000 staff member in 61 K-12 districts in nine states. Six of the districts had optional masking policies, nine had partial masking policies (changing over time or based on conditions), and 46 had universal masking policies. The differences were big. For every 100 community-acquired infections, the universally masked districts had 7.3 cases acquired in-school, while the optionally masked districts had 26.4 cases. That is a rate 3.6 times (or 72%) higher. Districts with partial masking policies had rates 2.4 times higher. This seems obvi...

  ASU's COVID-19 Community Response Team  has a new project that could help schools reduce the spread of COVID-19 by filtering the air. It's a timely effort considering that school is restarting just as the Omicron variant is running amok . Now that authorities have finally recognized that COVID-19 spreads mainly through the air, people are looking for ways to remove viral aerosol particles through filtration. If you're a school with plenty of money to spend you can buy some of these . But unless you're in a wealthy school district that is probably not affordable. Enter the Corsi-Rosenthal Cube . It's a DIY air filter built with high-efficiency MERV-13 furnace/AC filters and cardboard, duct-taped together and attached to a box fan. It is said to be just as effective as the high-priced commercial units, but the parts only cost around $100. I spoke with someone who is part of the Community Response Team. Over the last month they did a proof-of-concept with 15 units ...

  Schools have been under stress due to the pandemic, but now Omicron is making things worse. A lot worse. Here in Arizona, staffing company Educational Services Inc. says they have seen a 10%-20% increase in absences, depending on the district. Phoenix Union district is reporting "between 10% and 15% staff absences and around 15% to 16% student absences." Some substitutes are staying away too, in no small part because of our governor's public illness campaign . One substitute teacher on  reddit  said: I just saw that Peoria Unified was contemplating having kids sick with covid, back at school after 5 days.... Masks are optional. I'm a substitute, and this is why I will not substitute anymore. It's not only happening here. The situation is similar  in Florida , where they are also experiencing a shortage of bus drivers.   My sister, who is a high school teacher in Illinois, tells me that her district is so desperate for substitutes they are trying t...

  Most posts about Florida on this blog are about the dumb things their governor regularly does. But today, there is a new example of Florida COVIDiocy, this time from a school. Center Academy, a private school in Florida, has enacted a policy saying that students who get vaccinated must quarantine for 30 days afterward. Google has several listings for Center Academy in Florida, and the news story doesn't single out one. So I assume the policy applies to all of them. The policy says kids have the be quarantined after each shot. They are urging parents not to get their kids vaccinated until next summer so they won't have to miss two months of school under this policy.  The school said the "policy was enacted as a prudent precautionary measure after much thoughtful deliberation." One wonders how thoughtful the deliberation could have been, given that the vaccines neither contain nor produce any virus that can be spread.  Had their thoughtful deliberation included look...

  Earlier this month the CDC released a study on the effectiveness of mask requirements in schools in preventing the spread of COVID-19. It was conducted by researchers from ASU, the CSC, Maricopa and Pima counties, and the Arizona Department of Education. (Where is AzDHS?) The researchers compared schools with "early mask requirements"—i.e., in place before school started—to those with "late mask requirements" (instituted after school started) to those with no mask requirements.  Usable data were collected from 999 of 1,041 (96.0%) of K–12 public non-charter schools in Maricopa and Pima counties. The results show that—guess what—masks work. Here is a chart derived from numbers presented in a main results table in the study: In other words, schools without mask mandates were three times more likely to have an our break as schools with mask mandates. Actually the figure is a little higher. Quoting the CDC report: "After adjusting for potential described confoun...

  Arizona Governor Doug Ducey is continuing his public illness campaign. This time he is banning schools from quarantining kids who have been exposed to COVID-19. He has already made it so schools can't require vaccinations and masks. Apparently, he feels that this did not do enough to promote public illness.  So Ducey has now sent a letter to schools saying they can't keep sick kids away, either. Y'know, so they can come in and transmit the more contagious Delta variant to all the unvaccinated, unmasked kids who haven't gotten it yet. Wow. I don't know what to say about this other than WTF? His behavior is unhinged and despicable. Normal governors do things to protect children. This one is doing the exact opposite, and with gusto.   To their credit, the schools are pushing back. They note that following guidance in Ducey's letter violates public health policy set by by the CDC, the Arizona Department of Health (i.e. Ducey's own agency), and the County heal...

  The other day, I did a post criticizing Gov. Doug Ducey's executive order promoting public illness at state funded universities and community colleges.  However, I missed a detail that moves the order into a category beyond asinine.  As I noted before, the order says schools can't require proof of vaccination, and they can't require people to wear masks. But I missed that it also bans requiring testing for students and employees.   In other words, Ducey is prohibiting colleges and universities from taking any mitigation steps whatsoever .  Schools can't require vaccinations, the one thing that would make masks and testing unnecessary.  They also can't require masks, which would help prevent infected people from spreading the virus in poorly ventilated classrooms.  But they also can't test to identify infected people and keep them away from people who are uninfected.  That's straight-up reckless . Testing doesn't threaten anyone's "freedom....

  [Hey...been off for a couple days due to work demands. I had a choice of what to post about today, but I'd be remiss if I didn't cover this particular topic.] Yesterday the Arizona governor dropped another Ducey, signing an order prohibiting universities from mandating vaccines or masks. You can't require people to be vaccinated, and you can't require those that aren't (or can't be) to wear masks to prevent them from catching or spreading disease.  This is—straight up—an order to promote public illness. It's like when Ducey decided in spring 2020 to ban local government mask mandates, only to change his mind when Arizona became the worst place in the world for COVID-19. If we needed masks to prevent illness then, why are they bad now? Of course, Ducey says this is all about individual freedom. But it's not just about individuals. If you don't get vaccinated and also don't wear a mask, you are endangering not only yourself but others around yo...

  The CDC has released new guidance suggesting that kids can be as close as three feet apart when in school. The previous standard was six feet. I have always thought that putting kids together in poorly ventilated classrooms for long periods, no matter what the separation, was just asking for trouble. Kids are more likely to have asymptomatic infections . They travel back and forth between home and school, making classrooms potential distribution points for infection. The thing is, there is no evidence of this.  The CDC says "[b]ased on the data available, in-person learning in schools has not been associated with substantial community transmission." Now an just-published study shows there is no difference between three and six feet either. It's a very thorough study of 266 school districts comparing those that maintained six or more feet of separation with those that maintained three or more feet of separation. It controlled for a range of factors including other as...

  The New York Times is maintaining an infection tracker page for U.S. Colleges and Universities. It's a great example of how such dashboards are meant to inform people but often paint incomplete, and sometimes misleading , pictures of the pandemic. The main feature of the NYT tracker is a list of states and colleges/universities in them, and the number of infections in each (along with some historical trends).  Here is what the top part looks like for yesterday, with the Arizona item expanded: As you can see, the primary numbers are "cases." This data makes the state schools look like disaster areas, particularly Arizona State.  But As I have noted before , using the right numbers is critical. Total cases are practically never the right numbers, especially when you are making comparisons.  For example, ASU is one of the largest public universities in the country, so you would expect it to have a lot more cases than a smaller school like NAU. In an attempt to accoun...

Here are some updates on recent Corona-zona posts. Vaccine Supplies Last Sunday, I noted the increasing pace of vaccinations here in State 48.  According to Bloomberg , the U.S. is delivering about 1.6 million doses a week. Johnson & Johnson does not have as much inventory as anticipated. Nonetheless, the pace should start picking up. Manufacturers have promised enough doses by the end of June to vaccinate all Americans. Of course, manufacturers delivering doses is only the first step. They have to make their way to the states. It seems that the recent cold weather has delayed some of the shipments to Arizona. Who Gets Shots? There have been many reports about minority groups not getting vaccinated at the same rate as the majority group.  As noted in last Sunday's  by-the-numbers report , this is true in Arizona, where blacks and Latinos are getting vaccinated at about a quarter the rate that their share of the population would suggest. On the other hand, the Navaj...

  This week the CDC released a report on COVID-19 trends among people 24 and younger. It contains good news for those of us, especially beleaguered parents, who want to see their kinds back in school. Reviewing data from March 1 to December 12 of last year, they found that the prevalence of cases decreases with age. Here is a pie chart based on numbers in the report:  Moreover, they found that there doesn't appear to be much difference between infection rates in counties that did offer in-person instructions and those that did not: As of December 7, nearly two thirds (62.0%) of U.S. kindergarten through grade 12 (K–12) school districts offered either full or partial (hybrid with virtual) in-person learning. Despite this level of in-person learning, reports to CDC of outbreaks within K–12 schools have been limited, and as of the week beginning December 6, aggregate COVID-19 incidence among the general population in counties where K–12 schools offer in-person education (401.2 p...