Coronavirus thread

[DavidW]

faculty are authorized to impose mask mandates on our classrooms.

Must be nice.  A local teacher here did that for the safety of his students and their family, and he was put on disciplinary leave.

[krummholz]

Must be nice.  A local teacher here did that for the safety of his students and their family, and he was put on disciplinary leave.

That really sucks. Okay, this is what we were TOLD (by the college dean, not by the president himself). The president is new, and lines of communication are shaky since several of the key administrative positions have been vacant since the spring, so it's possible that things are not as "rosy" as I think. I'm sure the picture will be clarified as we go forward. Anyway, if this president has any respect for science and data, he will make the mask mandate permanent, or at least "until further notice". It's not as if the students were confined to campus - and as long as they can circulate in the community, travel home on weekends, etc., they are at risk of picking up and transmitting the virus.

[Karl Henning]

An anti-vaccine paramilitary group in the United Kingdom has disbanded after a British newspaper exposed the organization's discussions of a violent crossbow attack on vaccine centers. The group consisted of more than 200 former military members and called itself "Veterans 4 Freedom." Members communicated via messaging app Telegram to plan the potential attack, with one member writing that "if it comes to an insurgency, the military will become enemy combatants and we'll take them out using dirty tricks." After The Mail on Sunday published its findings, the leader of Veterans 4 Freedom pulled the plug on the organization, though some members have already formed a new one called the "Global Veterans Alliance."

[Mirror Image]

An anti-vaccine paramilitary group in the United Kingdom has disbanded after a British newspaper exposed the organization's discussions of a violent crossbow attack on vaccine centers. The group consisted of more than 200 former military members and called itself "Veterans 4 Freedom." Members communicated via messaging app Telegram to plan the potential attack, with one member writing that "if it comes to an insurgency, the military will become enemy combatants and we'll take them out using dirty tricks." After The Mail on Sunday published its findings, the leader of Veterans 4 Freedom pulled the plug on the organization, though some members have already formed a new one called the "Global Veterans Alliance."

This is living proof that people need more thorough mental evaluations before returning to society. Absolute crazies.

[DavidW]

An anti-vaccine paramilitary group in the United Kingdom has disbanded after a British newspaper exposed the organization's discussions of a violent crossbow attack on vaccine centers. The group consisted of more than 200 former military members and called itself "Veterans 4 Freedom." Members communicated via messaging app Telegram to plan the potential attack, with one member writing that "if it comes to an insurgency, the military will become enemy combatants and we'll take them out using dirty tricks." After The Mail on Sunday published its findings, the leader of Veterans 4 Freedom pulled the plug on the organization, though some members have already formed a new one called the "Global Veterans Alliance."

I like how they are supposedly for "freedom" but not for people to have the freedom to choose to be vaccinated.  Apparently freedom to them means obey them or be hurt (the opposite of freedom).

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Wait that is where you went?  I was told when I got the shots.  Okay maybe I should be more concerned about my vaccine record.

No, I went to a different chain.  Perhaps it's a state thing?  I don't know.  I was just told in so many words that "they" had been tightening up on the rules or something along those lines and that they were no longer able to give out a duplicate card.  I trust that the person that I spoke to at the pharmacy knew what they were talking about.  Sometime when you happen to go to that CVS, you could ask someone at the pharmacy?  In any event, I would suggest tucking your original away in a safe place.   

PD

[Karl Henning]

The Florida State Motto is being changed to "In order to create a more virulent variant."

In Florida, a summer of death and resistance as the coronavirus rampaged

By Saundra Amrhein, Fenit Nirappil, Jared Leone and Jacqueline Dupree

Yesterday at 5:42 p.m. EDT

THE VILLAGES, Fla. — They trickled into a theater resembling a barn and refashioned as a site administering antibodies to treat covid-19: retired couples holding gloved hands, an elderly man stumbling as a woman held his arm, paramedics donning oxygen masks.

Other retirees zipped past the theater on bicycles and in golf carts, whizzing through the busy shopping and entertainment plaza in the nation's largest retirement community.

Sara Branscome, 61, marveled at how life goes on amid crisis as she sat masked in her home's screened patio several miles away. After returning to the gym for just two weeks, she stopped going as case numbers soared during Florida's devastating summer coronavirus wave and as friends and acquaintances became infected, including a member of her synagogue who died. She has been on shutdown mode ever since.

"We did everything," Branscome lamented. "And why is it that we have to be the ones who do everything again?"

As Florida appears to be turning the corner from a coronavirus rampage that fueled record new infections, hospitalizations and deaths, its residents and leaders are surveying the damage left from more than 7,000 deaths reported since July Fourth and the scars inflicted by feuds over masks and vaccines. New infections were averaging more than 22,000 a day in the last days of August but have fallen to about 19,000. Yet recovery could prove fleeting: Holiday weekends such as Labor Day have acted as a tinderbox for earlier outbreaks, and late summer marks the return of students to college campuses.

In the wake of the summer surge, older Floridians cling to a sense of safety afforded by vaccines.

Health-care workers process the trauma of witnessing mass suffering and death that could have been averted if only more people had been immunized.

And hospital leaders exhale as covid-19 admissions appear to have subsided from a peak of more than 17,000 in late August, dipping to about 15,000. The decline follows weeks of frenzy as a slew of hospitals treated more patients than at any point in the pandemic, reassigning employees, postponing surgeries and treating patients in hallways and reconfigured rooms.

"Hospitals have pushed to the limits their ability to surge," said Mary Mayhew, president and chief executive of the Florida Hospital Association. "It's going to take us quite some time to really assess the short-term and long-term consequences."

Epidemiologists say Florida taught the nation important lessons as the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus accounts for nearly all new cases.

Even with vaccination rates slightly above the national average, Florida provided ideal conditions for the virus to flourish. Businesses have largely reopened. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has waged high-profile fights to stop mask mandates at schools and to shield businesses from fines for allowing unvaccinated and unmasked patrons.

Cindy A. Prins, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Florida, said her state's experience shows policymakers must act quickly to stave off an explosion of delta variant cases.

"Every time in Florida, we are a warning for everyone else," Prins said. "If you do remove those precautions, I would have a very low threshold before deciding to put them back in. If you wait two or three weeks, it's too late."

As the delta variant began to spread, it appeared Florida might be spared the worst, with vaccines seeming to prevent a wave of death in a state in which vulnerable older residents were immunized in disproportionately high numbers. In late June and early July, the state averaged fewer than 30 deaths a day.

But as of Thursday, Florida averaged 325 newly reported deaths daily in the preceding seven days, the highest since the pandemic started.

Experts attribute Florida's high death count to its substantial population of older residents, which means even an unvaccinated minority includes hundreds of thousands of susceptible victims.

But this wave spared no age group. By early June, 82 percent of all covid-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic had been among people 65 and older. In July and August, older Floridians accounted for less than two-thirds of covid deaths, according to state figures.

With so much virus in circulation, disease trackers fear the emergence of more fearsome threats.

"Unfortunately, there are leaders in very important places that seem to have a mind-set that it's best to let the virus spread out and let the chips fall where they may. But I think that's an incredibly dangerous and callous approach," said Aileen Marty, an infectious-diseases expert at Florida International University. "Remember that every time you allow it to continue to have high transmission, you are facilitating the creation of a worse variant."

Florida health officials did not respond to interview requests.

Christina Pushaw, a spokeswoman for DeSantis, defended the governor's leadership during the summer surge. She contended Florida was faring better than expected because it does not have one of the highest death rates in the country despite having one of the largest populations of senior citizens, the most likely age group to die of covid-19.

Florida's per capita covid death rate since the pandemic started ranks 18th among states, according to Washington Post tracking. But during the Southern surge over the past eight weeks, Florida's rate has been higher than all but those of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Pushaw also credited DeSantis for a string of appearances encouraging use of monoclonal antibodies, an effective, widely available covid treatment that experts say has been insufficiently promoted by the federal government.

All states "should be working to provide patients with free and easy access to monoclonal antibody treatment — and governors have an important platform to educate their constituents about this clinically proven, lifesaving early treatment," Pushaw wrote in an email.

While the antibodies help once people are sick, health authorities stress that vaccines remain the best way to prevent death. Hospitals have reported that unvaccinated people account for most deaths.

AdventHealth in Orange County, one of the first Florida health systems to sound alarms about rapidly increasing admissions, recently activated plans to use refrigerated trucks to store bodies because hospital morgues could not keep up with rising covid deaths.

"The floodwaters were rising so quickly you had to make decisions on the fly," said Vincent Hsu, AdventHealth's executive director of infection control. "We've had a plan for preparing ever since the pandemic started, but the number of the cases in this surge of the delta variant was just really unprecedented, and it was quite catastrophic."

In southwestern Florida, Lee Health in Fort Myers — which operates a safety-net hospital — has been recording as many as a dozen patient deaths a day from covid and expects that number to grow because fatalities tend to peak several weeks after the peak of hospitalizations.

"If people would only have the opportunity to walk around the ICU hallways and see what's going on and seeing the sickness and how young people are being struck down with this disease," said Larry Antonucci, the hospital's president and chief executive.

But the misery inside hospital walls often remains invisible from outside, frustrating some who have been caught in the summer wave.

In the Villages, David Rubin is recovering from a breakthrough case that left him hospitalized. He received convalescent plasma treatment for three days and oxygen at home for several weeks. Rubin, who is 78 and has a pacemaker and high blood pressure, credits vaccination for saving his life. He and his partner, who had a breakthrough infection with milder symptoms, are regularly wearing masks again and are disturbed to see that many of their neighbors do not share their sense of urgency.

"No masks, partying, carrying on like crazy, people doing all the stuff they did before, not even any consideration," Rubin said.

Other vaccinated people said their brushes with covid left them more confident about their ability to navigate daily life.

Lee Ann Rozanske, 64, a retired Illinois schoolteacher living in the Villages, experienced no serious symptoms after testing positive in mid-August. She said she wishes she had worn a mask during a two-day substitute-teaching stint at a charter school where face coverings were not mandated. A sneezing and coughing student approached her desk.

But she also feels "bullet proof" as she anticipates an upcoming cruise she and her husband plan to take — armed with their masks. She figures she has plenty of antibodies from her infection and from getting the shot. Her takeaway: People should get vaccinated and live life with simple measures such as masks to protect themselves.

"It reduced my anxiety," Rozanske said about her breakthrough case. "I got it. It was the thing that I feared, and it wasn't a big deal."

Florida's relative normalcy was on display at Clearwater Beach near Tampa last weekend. Couples held hands, parents pushed strollers, and mostly maskless groups of people strolled the palm-tree-lined sidewalks along the beach. A string of red and gray balloons heralded the entrance to a private grand-opening party for a bar owned by wrestler Hulk Hogan.

T.J. Haskins, a visitor from North Carolina, said he wasn't concerned about the spike in cases as he jostled for a photo with a wrestling manager he spotted in the bar.

"Florida is open," Haskins, 44, said.

At a mostly deserted grass lawn nearby, Millie Lincoln, 28, and her partner, Carmen Cristobol, watched Cristobol's young niece run around as they sought an escape from the surge in coronavirus cases consuming their lives as health-care workers in Orlando.

Lincoln, a patient care technician, was skeptical about vaccines until the surge of covid patients at work underscored the stakes of inaction. She and her partner, a nurse at a hospital where covid patients take up an entire floor, were the only customers wearing masks at a chocolate shop earlier that afternoon.

"I don't think this will stop if we don't do something," Lincoln said, a mask clinging to her face.

A boat horn wailed in the distance. Lincoln turned and pointed to a rooftop bar packed with people.

"You look up there, and there's a rooftop party going on in the middle of a pandemic," she said.

Meanwhile, Florida funeral homes are enduring the strain of hundreds of deaths a day. Rick Prindiville said the Orange County funeral home he manages fielded more than 40 calls last month — triple the usual — and is booked for the next two weeks.

"With all of these deaths, somebody has to take care of these people passing away and, unfortunately, that is our job," said Prindiville, board president of the Florida Cemetery Cremation and Funeral Association.

At a cemetery in St. Petersburg, heavy equipment buzzed in the background as a nearly 10-worker crew got their orders for the day.

After weeks of overseeing grave digging for covid victims, cemetery supervisor Ross Nelson plans to get vaccinated despite earlier concerns about long-term side effects.

"I'll probably end up getting it," Nelson said. "Hopefully, the best version of it."

Amrhein reported from the Villages. Leone reported from Clearwater. Nirappil and Dupree reported from Washington.

[DavidW]

No, I went to a different chain.  Perhaps it's a state thing?  I don't know.  I was just told in so many words that "they" had been tightening up on the rules or something along those lines and that they were no longer able to give out a duplicate card.  I trust that the person that I spoke to at the pharmacy knew what they were talking about.  Sometime when you happen to go to that CVS, you could ask someone at the pharmacy?  In any event, I would suggest tucking your original away in a safe place.   

PD

I know a couple of people that just went back there to get their booster, I'll ask them.

[Karl Henning]

Can 'breakthrough' COVID-19 lead to lingering symptoms?

Doctors are starting to see 'long COVID' cases among the few vaccinated people who get COVID-19, but it's not clear how common this will be.

By Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff, Updated September 5, 2021, 4:30 p.m.

Doctors who treat people with long-lasting symptoms from COVID-19 are starting to see some cases of "long COVID" in vaccinated people who suffered from breakthrough infections.

But it's too soon to tell whether long COVID will be less prevalent among people who took the vaccine but became infected anyway — those uncommon "breakthrough" cases. Some evidence suggests vaccination may lower the risk of developing this syndrome of persistent symptoms even in breakthrough cases.

"We haven't had enough time to see what happens," as more people have become vaccinated, said Dr. Jason Maley, a pulmonologist who leads the Critical Illness and COVID-19 Survivorship Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Maley said he has seen a few cases of long COVID among vaccinated people, but doesn't yet know how common it will be.

Dr. Jennifer Possick, medical director of the Post-COVID Recovery Program at Yale New Haven Hospital, said she's not aware of any vaccinated people seeking treatment for long COVID at her clinic, but she expects to start seeing some soon.

"We're absolutely anticipating them for sure," Possick said, "because breakthrough cases are otherwise behaving much like the primary cases we saw."

In Philadelphia, Dr. Benjamin Abramoff, director of the Post-COVID Assessment and Recovery Clinics at Penn Medicine, said patients who had breakthrough infections have come to his clinic, but in smaller numbers than unvaccinated people.

When vaccinated people become infected with the coronavirus, their illness tends to be milder, and milder illness is less likely to lead to long COVID, he said.

"People who just have a runny nose and a sore throat are less likely to have long COVID than the ones who are bedbound for a month and have severe headaches," Abramoff said.

By preventing those more severe cases even when it doesn't prevent infection, the vaccine reduces the risk of long COVID, he said.

"Certainly [vaccination] protects you against long COVID," Abramoff said.

A recent study in the United Kingdom, looking at data from 1.2 million adults, backs up this notion. It found that vaccinated people were 50 percent less likely than unvaccinated to still have symptoms four weeks after becoming ill with COVID-19.

"This result suggests that the risk of long COVID is reduced in individuals who have received double vaccination [the two recommended doses], when additionally considering the already documented reduced risk of infection overall," the authors write in the Lancet Infectious Diseases, published Sept. 1.

Long COVID — sometimes called Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19, or PASC — is a little understood condition, or group of conditions, in which people who suffered from COVID-19 remain ill weeks to months after the virus has cleared their systems. It affects an estimated 10 percent to 30 percent of COVID-19 survivors, most of whom were not sick enough to need hospitalization.

In some cases, patients failed to bounce back from their initial illness. Other times, people feel they've recovered and then two weeks or a month later get hit with a new array of symptoms.

Among the most common are fatigue, brain fog, insomnia, headaches, breathing difficulties, and heart palpitations. Some people experience numbness in limbs or dizziness. But the fatigue and cognitive difficulties can be the most troubling symptoms, often leaving people unable to work.

Lauren Bazensky used to run every day, easily traversing 8 miles. But after getting COVID-19 in April, the 41-year-old consultant gets out of breath walking short distances and each day has to parse out a finite store of energy.

"I don't have the energy to do the things that bring me joy," she said.

She also suffers from insomnia and muscle stiffness, and most worrisome of all, her thinking feels fuzzy, impaired. She has a hard time retrieving words.

"I don't have access to my brain like I did before," she said. "That's the scary part."

Bazensky, who lives in Chicago, said she got infected two weeks after receiving her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. She describes herself as someone who has "a very, very weak immune system" and catches whatever bug is circulating.

When she described her prolonged symptoms to her doctors, they didn't have much to offer. Only recently did Bazensky learn of a long COVID clinic near her home in Chicago, the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive COVID-19 Center, which she plans to visit.

The Northwestern clinic is among dozens that have sprung up around the country in response to a growing number of long COVID cases.

Working with the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 35 of these clinics — including the one at Beth Israel — have formed a collaborative to develop treatment guidelines. The first guideline, on managing fatigue, was recently published.

But there remains no silver bullet, and treatment typically comes down to managing each symptom one by one, with such measures as breathing exercises, meditation, and physical therapy.

At Beth Israel, which currently treats about 400 long COVID patients, most patients gradually get better and some have improved so much that they no longer have to come back, Maley said.

There's one sure way to avoid long COVID, said Possick, the Yale doctor: Avoid getting COVID-19 in the first place. And the vaccine — along with masking and distancing, especially in high-transmission areas — remains the best way to do that, she said.

[Mirror Image]

The lunacy never ends. The disbelief in science and the belief in "personal freedom" are the two deadliest attributes one can level at these anti-vaxxers.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I know a couple of people that just went back there to get their booster, I'll ask them.

If you do ask them, you might also ask when they were told their answer (as in, it might have changed or they might be relying on old info).

A young woman decided to go to Hawaii for a vacation only she created a false Covid-19 vaccination card!

https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/09/02/vaccine-fake-card-hawaii-arrest-moos-pkg-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/wacky-world-of-jeanne-moos/

By the way, my card also lists the vaccine batch numbers that I had received (for each round); nothing like it there!

PD

[Mandryka]

Some comments which give some insight into the UK Government strategy this morning  from Zahawi, the minister responsible for vaccination.

I think the right thing is that we open schools . . . The way we do that is by protecting the most vulnerable, which is why my focus is on the booster programme. . . We've had the interim advices from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). That will help protect the most vulnerable from serious infection, and will actually help us transition this virus from pandemic to endemic status. . . and by next year hopefully transitioning this virus from pandemic to endemic,

I think (but I'm not 100% sure) that by endemic he means that the incidence is running at a more or less steady state, with a manageable level of infections etc. There will still be peeks and troughs in the numbers, but not much.

This is to all intents and purposes The Great Barrington Declaration strategy, with Endemic substituted for Herd Immunity. It is what some of the Barrington signatories are now proposing in fact, given that using vaccination to create herd immunity with delta is probably not currently achievable.  Targeted protection to produce an acceptable stable state.

I haven't thought about it enough to comment on whether it makes sense. In particular I've not explored how stable this endemic end state will be.

[Holden]

Some comments which give some insight into the UK Government strategy this morning  from Zahawi, the minister responsible for vaccination.

I think (but I'm not 100% sure) that by endemic he means that the incidence is running at a more or less steady state, with a manageable level of infections etc. There will still be peeks and troughs in the numbers, but not much.

This is to all intents and purposes The Great Barrington Declaration strategy, with Endemic substituted for Herd Immunity. It is what some of the Barrington signatories are now proposing in fact, given that using vaccination to create herd immunity with delta is probably not currently achievable.  Targeted protection to produce an acceptable stable state.

I haven't thought about it enough to comment on whether it makes sense. In particular I've not explored how stable this endemic end state will be.

Pandemic applies to many countries, endemic applies to one. If you now treat Covid19 as endemic in your country you view it as a constant presence in particular locations. Think of it as malaria in parts of Africa. You're never going to get rid of it. Yes it will kill some people but it's not really out of control and precautions can be taken. Another instance is influenza which is seasonally endemic and covers a multitude of countries. Yes, it kills people but it's still capable of being controlled.

In the UK, the endemic approach has wisely taken over. There are methods of keeping most of the population safe (vaccination, immunisation, etc) but life basically goes on normally. Occasionally this may elevate to 'epidemic' but simple controls that we've used for a long while will eventually cope with this situation.

Living in Australia, who for a long time tried to use an elimination process, was frustrating for me personally as I couldn't see how it could work. Our Federal big guys have now admitted that this is impossible and the march towards endemic should begin. Unfortunately, certain state premiers are still playing the elimination game.

The Kiwis still have their heads buried firmly in the sand and elimination is still the key. This is probably because the initial strong indoctrination of their population that this is the only path has struck home so firmly that most NZers can't see any other way. The government is struggling to convince their people that elimination won't work because they probably don't believe it themselves.

Sitting at home, watching full stadiums at EPL and MLB games shows me how much further ahead countries like the UK and USA are despite case figures in the thousands each day. Look beneath those figures and it's the unvaccinated that are dying.

[SimonNZ]

The Kiwis still have their heads buried firmly in the sand and elimination is still the key. This is probably because the initial strong indoctrination of their population that this is the only path has struck home so firmly that most NZers can't see any other way. The government is struggling to convince their people that elimination won't work because they probably don't believe it themselves.

Dude... we see all the ways because we have tv and the internet. We trust the PM because she's been smart both then and now. She's not "struggling" to convince anyone. Auckland isn't out of the elimination effort yet and it only takes one drongo to ruin it for everyone but I'm seriously hoping we can show all the skeptics that it can be done from single case to elimination in a matter of weeks.

[Mandryka]

Dude... we see all the ways because we have tv and the internet. We trust the PM because she's been smart both then and now. She's not "struggling" to convince anyone. Auckland isn't out of the elimination effort yet and it only takes one drongo to ruin it for everyone but I'm seriously hoping we can show all the skeptics that it can be done from single case to elimination in a matter of weeks.

The problem is, of course, where do you go from here? Are you guys now saying that you'll open up to the world again when you've vaccinated most of NZ? Or do you plan on living in a state of isolation for the foreseeable future?

[Spotted Horses]

Pandemic applies to many countries, endemic applies to one.

There are three terms, pandemic, epidemic and endemic. Pandemic and Epidemic both refer to a condition where there is rapid spread of disease and number of new cases rapidly increases, the difference being that epidemic is restricted to one country or region and pandemic spans the globe. Endemic refers to a condition where the outbreak has stabilized, is widespread, but cases are not increasing.

It seems obvious that Covid-19 will become endemic. Hopefully the general proliferation of immunity due to vaccine and previous infections will result in fewer severe cases and deaths. I read that an 1890 pandemic is now thought by some to have been caused by a Coronivirus which is new endemic and generally produces a "common cold."

[SimonNZ]

The problem is, of course, where do you go from here? Are you guys now saying that you'll open up to the world again when you've vaccinated most of NZ? Or do you plan on living in a state of isolation for the foreseeable future?

Quite possibly opening up. The PM has stated that once we reach a peak vaccination level we won't be going through hard lockdiwns like the current one and will start "living with covid". I don't know what this will mean and imagine the specifics will be situational, but she's earned our trust and I'll follow where she leads.

[Mandryka]

There are three terms, pandemic, epidemic and endemic. Pandemic and Epidemic both refer to a condition where there is rapid spread of disease and number of new cases rapidly increases, the difference being that epidemic is restricted to one country or region and pandemic spans the globe. Endemic refers to a condition where the outbreak has stabilized, is widespread, but cases are not increasing.

It seems obvious that Covid-19 will become endemic. Hopefully the general proliferation of immunity due to vaccine and previous infections will result in fewer severe cases and deaths. I read that an 1890 pandemic is now thought by some to have been caused by a Coronivirus which is new endemic and generally produces a "common cold."

The problem is that the cost of open society and R=1 is many deaths. In the UK we're currently at 50K deaths a year, with a highly vaccinated population and an open society but closed schools. Opening schools will take it north of that. That's the price we're being asked to pay, the media is being groomed to hide it so for most people, out of sight out of mind.

[Spotted Horses]

The problem is that the cost of open society and R=1 is many deaths. In the UK we're currently at 50K deaths a year, with a highly vaccinated population and an open society but closed schools. Opening schools will take it north of that. That's the price we're being asked to pay, the media is being groomed to hide it so for most people, out of sight out of mind.

The schools have to be open. Without schools we don't have a society. There is nothing more important than that. A generation of students has already been greatly harmed. Schools should be the last institution that is closed. Hopefully vaccination can be brought near complete, treatments will improve, and deaths and severe illness will be brought down. Perhaps hospital capacity will have to be increased.

[Mandryka]

The schools have to be open. Without schools we don't have a society. There is nothing more important than that. A generation of students has already been greatly harmed. Schools should be the last institution that is closed.

Nobody would disagree. Where there is disagreement is around two areas. First, how much to invest to make schools safer, in particular improving air quality. And second, when to say enough's enough and there's too much covid circulating  in a particular group of children to allow them to continue to attend there.

I note in passing that the degree of transmission from schools to the wider community, and the efficiency of the vaccines at preventing transmission, are both still uncertain as far as I can see.