@wildgrass said
Not misquoting. You seem to prefer alternate conclusions than what authors provide, and I admit i take their word for it when they write that learning mode was not an important variable determining community transmission rates.

Schools remained closed after those conditions you mentioned were met. It made no difference in transmission rates, as I think we agree. The bene ...[text shortened]... o do with schools.

This was very bad public policy. We have not even started discussing the cost.

No, I obviously don't agree that reopening schools for in-person learning in areas with existing high levels of COVID19 in the general population would have had no effect on transmission rates. It's quite obviously counterintuitive and the evidence (limited as it is as most local leaders weren't willing to adopt such a murderous, insane policy) is to the contrary. Even the studies you referenced don't make such an outlandish claim.

@wildgrass said

No one said that schools being open for in-school learning was a primary factor in the overall COVID incidence rate in the at-large population, so you're goalpost moving.

I used no such terminology. Just quoting the science.

Misquoting actually.

Saying you can do Policy A without Adverse Consequence B IF Condition C (among others) is met, implies you shouldn't do Policy A IF Condition C is not met or you will get Adverse Consequence B. Here:

Policy A is reopening schools for in-person learning

Adverse Consequence B is an increased amount of a deadly, contagious cisease in the general population.

Condition C is a pre-existing low incidence of that disease in the local population.

Virtually every study you have cited has said Policy A can avoid a significant Adverse Consequence B IF Condition C is met. You keep ignoring that caveat.

@wildgrass said
I am really glad to see we are making progress in this conversation. Your point 1 was not met in some places. Why? It wasn't because of schools. Your point 2 was not met in some areas either. Why? It wasn't schools.

School closures were unnecessary if other mitigation efforts were in place. Unfortunately our society prioritized things other than education.

No one said that schools being open for in-school learning was a primary factor in the overall COVID incidence rate in the at-large population, so you're goalpost moving. What has been said is that, contrary to your assertions, doing so in areas with anything but a low COVID incidence rate in the at-large population would have worsened that rate. That seems to be the conclusion in even the studies you have presented, though it's more in the data than in the stated conclusions.

What mitigation measures were adopted in the schools was obviously a factor in transmission as the recommendations in the studies makes clear. Unfortunately, the areas that decided to resume in-school learning early in the pandemic often did so for political reasons and shared a general stance of COVID minimizers often with mask skepticism and other unfounded hostility to such measures. That is surely a factor in the data you presented esp. in the South.

Our society, at least the competent local decision makers did, prioritized the health and safety of the residents in their areas. Given the low negative effect on test scores presented in the article cited in the OP versus the likely result of thousands of additional deaths, tens of thousands of more hospitalizations and God knows how much more sickness, their policy choice appears to have been a wise one.

@wildgrass said
Right, but in the other studies when you control for whether or not those schools and communities used other efforts to mitigate spread, the question of whether or not the school was in person or remote is no longer relevant.

Data is observational, of course, but suggests the schools could have been open the whole time without any change to transmission rates.

The data suggests no such thing as a general rule; it says, at most, that transmission wouldn't significantly increase only if two conditions were met: 1) COVID incidence in the population at large is low; AND 2) Aggressive mandatory mitigation measures like required masking are in effect.

1 was certainly not met in the majority of schools that did not resume in-school learning in Fall 2020 and whether 2 was in effect is unclear in the parts of the country referenced in the study you keep citing, which found a greater than doubling of cases in the South after a policy was done which you claim would not result in "any change to transmission rates."

Here's a study of 1.4 million individuals regarding children spreading the disease:

" Our findings suggest that children play an important role in within-household viral transmissions. Consistent with demonstrated patterns among other viral illnesses, pediatric-driven transmission was higher when school was in session. During the COVID-19 pandemic, inferred household transmissions increased from the fourth pandemic period (March 7 to July 14, 2021) to the Omicron BA.1/BA.2 wave. More than 70% of household transmissions in households with adults and children were from a pediatric index case, but this percentage fluctuated weekly. Once US schools reopened in fall 2020,23-25 children contributed more to inferred within-household transmission when they were in school, and less during summer and winter breaks, a pattern consistent for 2 consecutive school years."

" However, these transmissions decreased during summer and winter school breaks, which is consistent with prior studies showing school attendance associated with increased respiratory viral spread, and school holidays with decreased spread.26-28"

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2805468

@wildgrass said
What part of " did not increase community transmission" do you not understand?

Jesus H Christ.

Your stubbornness is noted, but all your studies indicate is, at best, in places with low COVID incidence to begin with that reopening schools for in-person learning did not substantially increase transmission.

That says absolutely nothing about what would have happened IF the same thing had been done in places with high rates of COVID incidence, the policy you are retroactively endorsing.

Read this quote one more time: " "School reopenings, in areas of low transmission and with appropriate mitigation measures, were generally not accompanied by increasing community transmission."

EDIT: I'll offer to agree with this statement again:

""well, moving back to in-person learning in school districts with low population density and other protective measures like mandatory masking in areas with below average incidence of COVID prevalence in the community might not have caused significant increases in disease transmission"

@wildgrass said
Sorry but why do you insist on resorting to name calling? It's unnecessary and makes your argument seem petty.

I did some digging and in fact there are two meta-analyses on the same research topic posted in the same journal. I wholeheartedly apologize for the confusion this has caused and hope all the keyboard banging has not permanently damaged your computer. For the re ...[text shortened]... ransmission rates. I am sorry that Slate author so badly misrepresented the scientific data on this.

What part of "when community infection rates were low" didn't you understand?

They certainly weren't "low" in the areas that declined to reopen in-school learning in late 2020. Almost a half a million Americans died of COVID during the 2020-21 school year when you are claiming it was a mistake to not fully reopen for in-school learning every single school in the country. That it is an unsupportable position.

@wajoma said
As mentioned before you posted stats to show in country X incidence of wuflu went down after mask mandates, unfortunately for you in country Y incidence of wuflu went up after mask mandates. Your, so called, cost/benefit, so called, 'analysis' means nothing, it's just you finding some separately occurring numbers and cramming them into your pre-conceived conclusions.

No.1 ...[text shortened]... innocent children to satisfy the power trippers and covid maximisers will live on for years. Happy?

Your ridiculous opinions on the effectiveness of mask wearing during a pandemic have been discussed ad nauseam on this Forum.

Their relevance to this thread is only that some of the articles relied on by those who think reopening schools for in-person learning during the peak transmission times of a deadly, contagious disease would have been a peachy idea, partially justified that position by claiming that other mitigation measures, like mask wearing, would have substantially reduced the danger of spread in these high density areas. Thus, even if you are correct that mask wearing is utterly and completely useless, it hardly helps the position of those such as sh76 and wildgrass (sh76, of course, strongly opposed the mandatory masking of children in schools).

I have no doubt you are sufficiently ignorant of logical and scientific principles as to believe cost-benefit analyses "mean nothing".

@wajoma said
No.1 still on his stats and surveys hamster wheel.

Zero proof lower or higher transmission rates are attributable to masks or no masks in schools. There are only about a million other factors could have caused it.

So the only reason for forcing masks on kids are the enforcers are too dumb, or they're vile sadistic power trippers getting their buzz torturing kids, there's no middle ground.

I wasted four years with clowns like you and MB; anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers. No amount of evidence will ever be sufficient to move you to reality out of your ideologically driven DreamWorld; you've been shown the evidence many, many times but persist in your delusions.

I have no intention to do so again; the topic of the thread is essentially a cost benefit analysis of the decision to not resume full in-person learning in schools circa the 2020-21 school year. You obviously have nothing meaningful to add to that conversation.

@wildgrass said
You falsely stated multiple times that not opening schools reduced transmission. Authors in your SINGLE mega article said they had low confidence in the results.

This nature medicine article is rigorous and well cited. They point in the discussion to numerous other studies corroborating their result, and numerous articles have since cited this article with corroborating ...[text shortened]... ep writing false things. Why? Are you covering for something? Youre the one acting like wajoma here.

WG: Authors in your SINGLE mega article said they had low confidence in the results.

This is another falsehood or, maybe a simpleminded misunderstanding. There is a large difference between having "low confidence in the results" (your false claim) and the statistical certainty being "low".

BTW, regarding the GRADE certainty:

" All evidence was observational, and was therefore given a default GRADE of ‘low’ certainty. "

https://ebm.bmj.com/content/28/3/164#T2

The study you keep relying on admits it was "observational" and thus would be given a GRADE certainty of "low".

EDIT: " the GRADE system only allows for randomized controlled trials (RCT) to be rated as high evidence and rates all observational studies as low evidence because of their potential of confounding." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRADE_approach

Pardon if the systemic review I referenced admittedly uses much higher standards in its author's evaluations of the data then the one you rely on.

@wildgrass said

There quite simply isn't enough data at all from either the Pacific or Northeast region regarding schools reopening with traditional learning to make ANY type of judgment

Um you're making a judgement, handwaving, falsely saying the overwhelming opinion disagrees, not me. I trust the null hypothesis on this.

You're lying; there is no "overwhelming opinion" claiming that schools moving back to in-person learning during a deadly pandemic did not increase COVID transmission. The data from the study you are using mostly says differently and the consensus of studies agrees.

Now if you want to make some weak claim like "well, moving back to in-person learning in school districts with low population density and other protective measures like mandatory masking in areas with below average incidence of COVID prevalence in the community might not have caused significant increases in disease transmission" I'd probably agree with that. But claiming that such a one size fits all policy of mass in-person reopening would have been appropriate in the midst of the pandemic in ALL areas, including densely populated urban ones, is completely unsupportable.

@wildgrass said
ok, you seem lost, I can catch you up. Much of this has already been covered in this thread. It's not off topic at all.

The NYT article cited one of the seminal research papers on the subject. Addressing the criticism that "it's only one study" it is notable that this paper has been cited more than 2,000 times in follow up studies, mostly corroborating the findings.

N ...[text shortened]... tals should close last, they're too important.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01563-8

WG: Back to the Nature Medicine article, they explain this result may have been due to the inclusion of low quality studies and bad statistics.


This is lie or plain stupidity. How an article written in 2021 was doing a post-mortem on a systemic review of hundreds of studies done the following year is a bit unclear.

@wildgrass said
You falsely stated multiple times that not opening schools reduced transmission. Authors in your SINGLE mega article said they had low confidence in the results.

This nature medicine article is rigorous and well cited. They point in the discussion to numerous other studies corroborating their result, and numerous articles have since cited this article with corroborating ...[text shortened]... ep writing false things. Why? Are you covering for something? Youre the one acting like wajoma here.

I'll waste some time and demolish this.

Here's the data from the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01563-8/figures/1

There quite simply isn't enough data at all from either the Pacific or Northeast region regarding schools reopening with traditional learning to make ANY type of judgment: only two out of 64 counties reporting in the Pacific even did so and only 11 out of 103 in the Northeast did and every single one of those counties was in low population rural areas. This is hardly surprising; the study only included data from July 2020 to September 2020, when virtually no counties with significant populations went back to "traditional" learning as the article calls it in areas with semi-competent leadership.

How about the others? From the article:

After adjustment, a traditional school mode was associated with increases in the number of SARS-CoV-2 cases compared to a fully remote mode from week 4 (effect = 13.8 cases per 100,000 residents, 95% CI = 1.1–26.4) to week 6 (effect = 11.2, 95% CI = 0.1–22.3) in the Midwest. In the South, a traditional in-person mode was associated with increases in the number of SARS-CoV-2 cases during the period from week 2 after school opening (effect = 10.7 cases per 100,000 residents, 95% CI = 3.6–17.8) to week 12 after opening, (effect = 10.0, 95% CI = 3.1–16.8)."

Quite simply, the data in the article shows the exact opposite of your claims though there is some misleading commentary masking the results.

EDIT: The article itself does not make the extravagant claims you do. It says:

"Schools can reopen for in-person learning during the pandemic without substantially increasing community case rates of SARS-CoV-2; however, the impacts on community transmission are variable. Additional studies are needed to elucidate the reasons for the regional differences identified in our analysis more fully." (Italics and bolding added).

Here's what we do know about the "regional differences"; the data from the Pacific and Northeast was pathetically insufficient due to the small number of counties in those areas who fully turned back to in-person learning by September 2020 and the fact that the few that did were in low population areas.

@wildgrass said
Fuggoutahere. You know I'm not an anti vaxxer or any of that other BS. Quit the name calling.

Respond to the data from major medical journals. Those articles say the schools who stayed closed did not help the COVID response in a meaningful way.

Clutch your pearls. I know it's hard to admit you're wrong. If all US schools opened full time in person in fall 2020, the da ...[text shortened]... er stuff we did wrong. Let dad go to the football game but junior can't go to school ? Fn backwards.

I've already sufficiently responded to a single journal article that claims parts of the country had double the number of COVID cases when schools were re-opened for in-school instruction as far as your claim that such a result didn't exist. The study itself makes no claims like the ones you do, has incredibly improbable and contradictory results and offers no logical explanation for such wide variances (it admits it's only "observational"😉.

If that's what your hanging your hat on for the unbelievable claim that putting large groups in close proximity for extended periods of time during a pandemic has no effect whatsoever on transmission (in opposition to virtually to the vast majority of other studies even though they admit there are confounding factors making the extent of, not the existence of that reality, hard to measure) - well good luck. You're following in MB's and Wajoma's footsteps.

@wildgrass said
You keep writing vast majority of other studies but that's demonstrably wrong. Your slate article could barely find an article with a weak correlation.

Common sense? Sure. That's fun. We had a period of time in our country when the city NFL stadium seating 80,000 fans was open and sold out, but the local school was closed. Does common sense tell you that school closures made one iota of difference on transmission?

You keep misquoting the Slate article and the link it provided; it did not reference one study but 132 to create a megadata approach to the problem. Perhaps you don't understand what that means but the fact that those who complied such a large sample of various studies couldn't state with a large statistical certainty an ultimate conclusion is hardly surprising. Nonetheless, the evidence cited points to the utterly logical result that leaving large numbers of persons in close proximity during an outbreak of a deadly, highly contagious disease would result in higher rates of transmission of that disease.

I'm unimpressed by your foot stamping insistence to the contrary.