Yep, I heard that camp story from my wife this morning, eroding my trust in the back to school plans even more.
It's much worse than the conference made it out to be, the actual plans laid out in the article the day after are very inadequate, theater.
In September all elementary schools are set to re-open at full capacity, same class sizes.
- Grade 4 to 8 are required to wear face masks, except during lunch breaks. (lots of fiddling, on and off, long break in the same space without mask)
- Desks will be put 1 meter apart (still sitting in the same room for 6 hours)
- Lunch and Bathroom breaks will be staggered to keep classes apart (yet they mingle on the bus, at after school activities, siblings at home)
- Teachers and staff wear face masks as well (but mingle with other teachers as well and their own kids at home)
- Normal occupancy on the bus but siblings and classes should sit together and the (tiny) windows left open when possible.
- More cleaning in general (not specified how)
To detect Covid19 teachers will get an 8 hour seminar to turn them into medical professionals recognizing the signs of Covid19...
However kids usually have mild to no visible symptoms (are they going to check for covid toes for example...) and you are already infectious up to 3 days before showing symptoms anyway. If suspected, kids will be isolated and required to have a test before returning to school.
Parents are also advised to look out for symptoms and not send their children to school sick. However there is no program in place for people to stay home from work with their 'sick' kids. So the incentive is there to simply send kids with minor symptoms to school to be able to continue paying the rent, as has always been the case.
6 hours a day inside the same room with minimal measures to reduce the risk of airborne transmission, nothing to stop micro droplets (that survive 3 hours in the air and pass straight through masks) from building up during the day. Exposure time plus up to 30 people per room while relying on elementary kids to do the proper cleaning and mask handling. It sounds completely inadequate while cases are set to rise before September.
We had 2 days of under 100 reporting, 76 and 89 (while pending cases kept rising, now 29.2K pending) to announce more phase 3 re-openings and back to school plans. Then it jumped back up to 134 yesterday. The trend has been a rising one already since phase 2 re-openings.
It looks like we'll just have to keep the kids home from school. Unfortunately still no information on the home schooling plans.
Update: 124 new cases today, 5 new in my local county, 27K tests pending. High for a Saturday but a huge backlog to work through.
Those 2 days under 100 look more and more like deliberate postponement of test results to deliver the phase 3 and back to school plans....
It feels more and more that actual safety doesn't really matter, just making people feel safer.
