Can I share a puzzle with you?
Right now, 10% of unvaccinated students in NYC public schools (whose parents have turned in a consent to be tested form) will be tested EVERY 2 WEEKS. Meaning that MAYBE(?) 100% of that tiny group of students will have been tested ONCE after 20 weeks have passed. Also, wtf with the percentage? I wanna see those raw numbers! Just how few kids are getting tested?!
[UPDATE 9/20: they just upped the frequency by doing 10% of (consenting unvaccinated) students once a week rather than once every other….wow how inconsequential. Also to solve the equity piece of unvaccinated kids being the only ones to quarantine if there is a positive case…now NO one is supposed to quarantine when there’s a positive case…]
This is not (and has never been) a public health plan. This is a plan to obfuscate the damage that DOE’s hasty policies are going to cause. This plan will not produce enough data for us to know how safe we are. Many of my students have never gotten a COVID test, and shared that getting tested for the first time in a school building is a scary idea.
So many people are concerned about WIDESPREAD COVID PANIC! This is why we have public health guidance that does not match up with the threat we face. And that’s why kids need to understand and be able to make decisions based on the science, not what the government tells us is safe. Kids deserve to know, and I find it upsetting that the thought of making them uncomfortable is keeping them from learning the truth.
We started this year learning about how aerosols transmit infection, and how little has been done in schools to address this major transmission pathway…kids minds are already blown by the fact that the 6 foot rule (let’s not even talk about the 3 foot rule invented to let us get back to school at full capacity!!!) does not apply to the aerosols that remain suspended in the air for up to 3 hours, come from the deepest in our lungs, and contain the most concentrated amounts of virus…
So this week I shared a puzzle with a couple students, and they had a great answer. How would you answer this?
The question:
Since I am vaccinated and more likely to have asymptomatic breakthrough infection, I want to make sure that I know if I am or was positive at any point in time, so I can share that with anybody I may have been infectious in shared unmasked indoor breathing space with.
How frequently would I need to be tested to make sure I don’t miss the fact that I was positive/infectious?
Clue Bank (sourced from MIT medical):
SYMPTOMS:
On average, symptoms of the virus develop five to six days post exposure, but the incubation period can be as long as 14 days.
For original strain:
Most likely to develop symptoms and/or test positive between 5 and 6 days after exposure
Able to transmit to others during the 48 hours BEFORE becoming symptomatic/testing positive
PCR DETECTION:
“Looking only at cases for which they could determine the exact time of exposure, researchers found that [for delta] the time interval from exposure to positive PCR test ranged from three to five days, with a peak at 3.71 days. In contrast, data from the 2020 outbreak showed that it took an average of six days from exposure to positive test with a range of five to eight days and a peak at 5.61.”
Delta patients are testing positive 2 days earlier and with ~1260 times the viral load than those infected with original strain.
Likelihood of a FALSE NEGATIVE:
1 day after infection: 100%
4 days after infection: 67%
at onset of symptoms (if symptomatic): 38%
3 days after onset of symptoms: 20%
You tell me your answer, I’ll tell you mine…