Coronavirus

[leftyjace]

My company told me to work the rest of the year from home.

Our company has (had, now) offices in San Francisco, Lehi, and 2-3 offices in Portugal.
San Francisco closed first. Lehi is closing this week.
And we just got told all offices in Portugal are closing.
Mid-sized company, now 100% virtual, and not revisiting the possibility of an established office or offices until our next Fiscal Year.
It's goin' 'round.

 

[Deleted member 365]

Will be an interesting question to have schools opened in the fall. If a student or teacher tests positive, it’s a hard sell to just continually close schools.

My company told me to work the rest of the year from home.

you know what’s even harder? Trying to run a school without teachers. Finding subs was difficult even before covid. Most subs are older retired teachers. Get a few teachers out long term with covid and good luck trying to fill those spots. Then what? Quarantine everyone that those sick teachers have contacted? That means isolating custodians, administrators, secretaries, lunch workers coaches, and students. Does the teacher then send an email out to the community warning them that their children might’ve been exposed? And now those exposed children might expose parents?

if I were a betting man, I’d bet that remote learning will happen in most public schools this fall. Whether it be at the start of the year of halfway through fall, I don’t know. But it’s likely to happen.

 

[Deleted member 365]

316 new cases and no new deaths today. 17 percent of all cases came last week. This is the 2nd day in a day with 300+ cases. We have had 200+ new cases everyday since 5/28.

https://www.ksl.com/article/46761126/utah-sees-316-new-cases-of-covid-19-no-new-deaths

https://www.deseret.com/utah/2020/6...-316-new-covid-19-cases-23-newly-hospitalized

Didn’t see this in the original KSL article but 23 new hospitalizations, a 24 percent increase since Monday. It’ll be interesting to see what effect Memorial Day, all these protests, and the lack of social distancing/masks we are seeing through the community will have on new cases and hospitalizations.

 

[LogGrad98]

I think it’s misguided. There are plenty of holes in the system. I can think of at least one really easy way to get a lot of stuff through security. It’s very obviously but I’ve never shared it publicly. In any case, someone plotting some legit terrorism isn’t going to be foiled by these changing color days “****! They raised the alert and we have to take off our shoes!”

"Wait, not you. I am going to need you to come over here."

"Why?"

"We have a new test."

"What kind of new test?"

"It is a new machine that can detect things way way up inside your butt."

"Oh ****! Run Morty, run!!"

 

[Avery]

you know what’s even harder? Trying to run a school without teachers. Finding subs was difficult even before covid. Most subs are older retired teachers. Get a few teachers out long term with covid and good luck trying to fill those spots. Then what? Quarantine everyone that those sick teachers have contacted? That means isolating custodians, administrators, secretaries, lunch workers coaches, and students. Does the teacher then send an email out to the community warning them that their children might’ve been exposed? And now those exposed children might expose parents?

if I were a betting man, I’d bet that remote learning will happen in most public schools this fall. Whether it be at the start of the year of halfway through fall, I don’t know. But it’s likely to happen.

Yeah, it's going to be a mess. And with our schools already overcrowded and teacher to pupil ratios about 30:1, it's not like hiring more teachers is in the cards. Those overflow trailers ain't that cozy to begin with.

Even if you use extra space like gyms, auditoriums, it's still not going to work. My guess is they'll have to have 50% of students in-class, 50% online and switch out every week.

Doesn't help that in places like South Korea, France, Israel, reopening schools has led to cases and outbreaks even with a smaller population at risk. School openings will need to be on a 1:1 basis - a small 1A/2A school with no active cases in the county and limited travel/visitors can probably operate as normal with common sense precautions. Good luck trying to do that a school with 2,500 kids here in the valleys.

This rollercoaster ain't gonna end anytime soon.

 

[Gameface]

And?

We're seeing the leading edge of a spike.

 

[Deleted member 365]

Yeah, it's going to be a mess. And with our schools already overcrowded and teacher to pupil ratios about 30:1, it's not like hiring more teachers is in the cards. Those overflow trailers ain't that cozy to begin with.

Even if you use extra space like gyms, auditoriums, it's still not going to work. My guess is they'll have to have 50% of students in-class, 50% online and switch out every week.

Doesn't help that in places like South Korea, France, Israel, reopening schools has led to cases and outbreaks even with a smaller population at risk. School openings will need to be on a 1:1 basis - a small 1A/2A school with no active cases in the county and limited travel/visitors can probably operate as normal with common sense precautions. Good luck trying to do that a school with 2,500 kids here in the valleys.

This rollercoaster ain't gonna end anytime soon.

Yep. Most districts are on a hiring freeze in Utah.

I actually had a nice conversation with a friend of mine who works as a business teacher in a computer lab in a middle school here in Utah. She asked me how she's supposed to sanitize 35+ computers every period? Where can you even find wipes? And if they make it so kids eat in classrooms rather than the cafeteria, how do you keep a functioning computer lab if kids are eating in it and getting crumbs and drinks all over the place? Not to mention the sanity of the teachers. If teachers are having to babysit kids during lunch, when are they expected to go to the bathroom?

How do you hold PE classes?
Choir?
Band?
As you said, I guess you could try and go 50 percent with those classes. But I'm unsure of the logistics of doing something like that in Utah.
Even the bus system would be messed up. How would you bus kids into a school all day and avoid traffic jams at entrances and hallways?

I also don't think that the general public gets the demographics of Utah's teaching profession either. Since the pay sucks and up until just recently, the private sector was booming, you had a severe split in education. You saw significant percentages of teachers with 5 or fewer years under the belt (most would leave for greener pastures within 5 years), with few teachers in the middle, and then many teachers just holding on to retirement. Many of those teachers nearing retirement would be at-risk. You really don't want large percentages of at-risk people working with 250+ students each day during a pandemic. And finding long term subs for sick teachers would be a nightmare on top of a nightmare not to mention the massive PR nightmare of communicating to the community about the illness...

 

[Beer]

We're seeing the leading edge of a spike.

Sure, maybe, but just # of cases is a dumb scare tactic stat. # of current hospitalized is far more relevant. When we start to near anywhere near 50% of bed utilize I might get worried. But what are we at right now? Less than 200? For the entire freaking state? Only 850 over the last 3 months. Thats not scary or worrisome.

 

[Gameface]

Sure, maybe, but just # of cases is a dumb scare tactic stat. # of current hospitalized is far more relevant. When we start to near anywhere near 50% of bed utilize I might get worried. But what are we at right now? Less than 200? For the entire freaking state? Only 850 over the last 3 months. Thats not scary or worrisome.

I agree. I don't think the current numbers are scary at all. But I do think hospitalizations are related to total number of cases and that percentage of positive tests also matters. When total number of cases are up and percentage of positive tests are up even more we can assume a couple things. First, hospitalizations are going to go up. Second, number of new cases per day are going to go up.

If we knew what the ceiling was that would be one thing. But we don't. What you seem to be saying is don't worry about it until it's a problem. I mean that's fine. Maybe we'll never exceed our capacity. I certainly don't know either way.

I also think it's okay to look at these numbers and use them to advocate for greater levels of personal responsibility. I'm a freak these last few days wearing a mask in public. I get glares, mostly from old out of shape dudes, like I'm not on "team freedom" because I'm wearing my communist mask.

I want to have things open and I want to keep them open. I think it's reasonable, well, more than reasonable, to have the expectation that as things open up we become MORE diligent about social distance, hand washing and mask wearing, not less. But what I'm seeing is as things open up people take that as a sign that we're done with all this, and the numbers of infected and the percentage of positive tests are increasing as a result.

Again, if 300-500 positives a day in Utah is the ceiling regardless of what we do then let's go for it. But we don't know that.

 

[Beer]

I agree. I don't think the current numbers are scary at all. But I do think hospitalizations are related to total number of cases and that percentage of positive tests also matters. When total number of cases are up and percentage of positive tests are up even more we can assume a couple things. First, hospitalizations are going to go up. Second, number of new cases per day are going to go up.

If we knew what the ceiling was that would be one thing. But we don't. What you seem to be saying is don't worry about it until it's a problem. I mean that's fine. Maybe we'll never exceed our capacity. I certainly don't know either way.

I also think it's okay to look at these numbers and use them to advocate for greater levels of personal responsibility. I'm a freak these last few days wearing a mask in public. I get glares, mostly from old out of shape dudes, like I'm not on "team freedom" because I'm wearing my communist mask.

I want to have things open and I want to keep them open. I think it's reasonable, well, more than reasonable, to have the expectation that as things open up we become MORE diligent about social distance, hand washing and mask wearing, not less. But what I'm seeing is as things open up people take that as a sign that we're done with all this, and the numbers of infected and the percentage of positive tests are increasing as a result.

Again, if 300-500 positives a day in Utah is the ceiling regardless of what we do then let's go for it. But we don't know that.

I agree. I'm just sick of the constantly moving goal posts. I've been hearing "Just wait its about to get really bad" for the last 3 months. I know SLC was much more strict than Utah Valley and Utah Valley was much more strict than Washington county in terms of quarantine and social distancing neither of the 3 had an issue, even with the differing levels of quarantine. Even opening things back up in Utah county isn't much of a difference because people only took it seriously for like 2 weeks. Other than that is was business as usual outside of not being able to go to restaurants and movies. So I just don't believe that opening things up is going to cause this insanely dramatic spike that I keep being told is just around the corner.

 

[Gameface]

I agree. I'm just sick of the constantly moving goal posts. I've been hearing "Just wait its about to get really bad" for the last 3 months. I know SLC was much more strict than Utah Valley and Utah Valley was much more strict than Washington county in terms of quarantine and social distancing neither of the 3 had an issue, even with the differing levels of quarantine. Even opening things back up in Utah county isn't much of a difference because people only took it seriously for like 2 weeks. Other than that is was business as usual outside of not being able to go to restaurants and movies. So I just don't believe that opening things up is going to cause this insanely dramatic spike that I keep being told is just around the corner.

I hear you. I also think there has been some moving of the goalposts as far as determining when this is considered "bad." There was a time when the projection was announced that between 100k and 200k people in the U.S. would die and people were looking at 8k deaths or so and saying that those projections were pure fear mongering. "This is no worse than the flu!" was a common phrase. Well we're inside the goalposts as far as total deaths and there's a reasonable chance we'll overshoot by a decent margin. But where once 100k deaths seemed ridiculous it is now firmly in the rear view mirror and we're still hearing that COVID-19 is a hoax and a left-wing conspiracy to take away our freedom and/or force us to get an immunization laced with body tracking microchips.

 

[Deleted member 365]

https://www.ksl.com/article/46761499/utah-sees-439-new-cases-of-covid-19-3-more-deaths

New record high. 439 new cases and 3 new deaths. Precious high was 343 on 5/29