COVID-19 Thread [V2.0]

[RobertR]

I think the argument for teachers, beyond potential exposure, is the effect it will have on learning and the economy. Nobody is very happy with distance learning and we don't want to set a whole generation behind. And it's definitely put a major burden on parents. Preventing deaths is obviously the number 1 priority, but taking steps to get the economy back to normal matters too.

[MrTPlush]

Bars are pretty huge for the Wisconsin economy. Maybe we should vaccinate bartenders next. Maybe even have a vaccination pop up at the bar for citizens.

[PeaveyFury]

Bars are pretty huge for the Wisconsin economy. Maybe we should vaccinate bartenders next. Maybe even have a vaccination pop up at the bar for citizens.

 

This assumes that bars aren't operating right now, which is untrue in most Wisconsin locations....

[BrewersSuperCollector]

Bars are pretty huge for the Wisconsin economy. Maybe we should vaccinate bartenders next. Maybe even have a vaccination pop up at the bar for citizens.

 

I'm surprised the Wisconsin Tavern League doesn't have this set up yet.

[logan82]

I think the argument for teachers, beyond potential exposure, is the effect it will have on learning and the economy. Nobody is very happy with distance learning and we don't want to set a whole generation behind. And it's definitely put a major burden on parents. Preventing deaths is obviously the number 1 priority, but taking steps to get the economy back to normal matters too.

I think teachers being out probably puts more stress on schools than people being out at a grocery store. I would also argue that even keeping distance teachers and students are still in a confined space with the same people for longer than people working in a grocery store. Clerks have very short contact with a lot of people. You don't hear too many people talking about getting sick from the grocery store. You do hear about teachers getting sick. Even if a sick customer would come through, the contact is pretty brief.

[Machu Peach]

I would not put first responders (who should be a priority over teachers), gas station attendants (don't most people pay at the pump with a credit card?), construction workers (aren't most of them outside anyway, and how many are working on any one job?), city workers (some, maybe, but not most), meat processors (lots of people in the factory, but not in a small enclosed room like teachers - they're spread out over a lot more square feet), truck drivers (how many people do they actually come in contact with?), servers (indoor dining is banned where I live, and most places have limited capacity), clinical researchers, or warehouse workers (see: meat processors) as people who are directly or indirectly exposed to nearly as many people as teachers are.

Gas station attendants (don't most people pay at the pump with a credit card?) -Remote work not possible. Indoor contact with many people, same as grocery workers who you put in the higher category.

Construction workers (aren't most of them outside anyway, and how many are working on any one job?) - These assumptions are very very incorrect

City workers (some, maybe, but not most) - Indoor contact with many people, same as teachers.

Meat processors (lots of people in the factory, but not in a small enclosed room like teachers - they're spread out over a lot more square feet) - Remote work not possible, in person, indoors. Massive, massive COVID outbreaks in the spring and summer. Data show this is an extremely at risk group (for infection). "..but not in a small enclosed room like teachers" You've clearly never been to one of the plants.

Truck drivers (how many people do they actually come in contact with?) - Remote work not possible. Vectors for long distance spread of new strains.

Servers (indoor dining is banned where I live, and most places have limited capacity) - Remote work not possible. Teachers where I live have been insisting that they need to work remotely

Clinical researchers(see: meat processors) - Remote work not possible, in-person interactions with at-risk groups constantly, generally in a hospital or clinical environment

Warehouse workers (see: meat processors) Remote work not possible, indoors, with many many people (same as the meat processors that had massive massive outbreaks).

 

To be clear, I AGREE that teachers are essential workers. I'm sure we can quibble about the risk ratio (both for death and for spread) in both a data-based or theoretical manner forever, but they're not fundamentally more at-risk than a host of other essential workers. In fact, serology data shows that they have the same or less risk than the average public service worker (for infection).

 

I DO think it's extremely questionable to vaccinate any essential worker not directly involved in COVID or elder care (or care of specific vulnerable populations). I DON'T think that teachers are uniquely vulnerable (data agrees) or uniquely essential among essential workers.

[Machu Peach]

I don't have access to a lot of information specific to WI, so I would be grateful if someone could run the numbers without my estimates (and double check my math).

 

If we pretend that 58k of vaccine was magically available pre-pandemic and it could either to go "teachers" or "people over 65" in Wisconsin...

Option 1) If you randomly vaccinated 58k people over age 65 (assuming 90% vaccine efficacy) you'd expect to save roughly 340 lives.

Option 2) If you randomly vaccinated 58k teachers (assuming 95% vaccine efficacy) you'd expect to save roughly 16 lives.

 

It's not taking into account spread of disease, which is certainly an important variable. Teachers come into contact with more people (classrooms) than people over 65, but people over 65 come into contact with more vulnerable people (other people over 65 in social groups) than teachers, so that could go either way.

 

This is about as simple of an analysis as one can do and I'm certain there are many other important variables, but it does highlight:

1) Having 58k people vaccinated before people over 65 will have a major, significant impact on mortality.

2) Protecting even a small fraction of people over 65 could save many lives.

3) If your goal is to save lives then to justify vaccinating anyone before the elderly they must either A) have an extreme risk increase (people with immunodeficiencies), B) be needed to care for COVID or the elderly (healthcare and nursing home workers), C) be at increased risk of spreading disease to people over 65 (healthcare and nursing home workers).

[PeaveyFury]

There's a lot of discussion here about "vaccinating teachers ahead of older people". Other than the previously linked story about the issue with Janesville schools, which I believe was in the end halted by DHS and called an 'erroneous plan not in compliance with the current phase', is there actually any situations beyond that that show that this is actually something happening on a widespread scale? (Vs. teachers who DO fall into one of the high-risk categories themselves getting vaccinated on a case-by-case basis) Curious where that narrative came from, or if it was purely based on the Janesville story.

[Machu Peach]

Curious where that narrative came from, or if it was purely based on the Janesville story.

I'm responding to this proposal. I can't speak for anyone else.

Wisconsin has 700,000 people age 65 and older, and less than 58,000 teachers. Vaccinating teachers isn't going to pose any significant delays in vaccinating people 65+.

[PeaveyFury]

Curious where that narrative came from, or if it was purely based on the Janesville story.

I'm responding to this proposal. I can't speak for anyone else.

 

Oh, I understand- I was merely hoping to determine the origin of the conversation rather than any of the specific points discussed. I’m genuinely curious if this was sparked by anything more than one story, or if there are actually wider-spread plans to accelerate teacher vaccinations.

[igor67]

There seems to be some small differences state to state. Minnesota has all but wrapped up group 1A, and was moving in to group 1B potentially within the next week. I'm also getting the sense that trying to vaccinate different groups specifically and rapidly leads to modest differences in timing when different categories within those groups may actually get started.

[FVBrewerFan]

Curious where that narrative came from, or if it was purely based on the Janesville story.

I'm responding to this proposal. I can't speak for anyone else.

 

Oh, I understand- I was merely hoping to determine the origin of the conversation rather than any of the specific points discussed. I’m genuinely curious if this was sparked by anything more than one story, or if there are actually wider-spread plans to accelerate teacher vaccinations.

 

Both. Was Janesville a trial balloon? MPS also sent an email to all personnel, called a mistake soon after, and corrected. Was it really a mistake, who knows. We do know there's plenty of time to reallocate the vaccine going to Janesville teachers, but last I heard they're still getting it. It's as simple as saying sorry, no you're not getting it. Not as long as healthcare workers and nursing home/ assisted living residents are still waiting.

 

As Machu said, yes teachers are essential workers. And, for the record, no I never said or implied all teachers are 28 and healthy. Anyhow, I will be watching 1B to see if factory workers or Kwik Trip workers get kicked behind teachers. Especially the 75+ age group. They shouldbe at the top of 1B.

 

1B will essentially be cut into many groups as batches of vaccine arrives. Should it be all/ mostly teachers in the first groups? No, not when the risk of dealing with children is so much smaller than most other work places. Should go to 75+ first, and anyone high risk of any age, any occupation. That "high risk" has potential to be abused, and would have to be defined. But that population should be next, not young healthy teachers, factory workers, truck drivers, or anyone else. I would change essential workers to 1C I guess, to make it simple.

[TURBO]

I can only speak for our district, but school has changed a bit for this year. Students are all in cohorts. Classes are 15-20 tops. Kids are only in class 2 days a week. Either Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and Friday. Kids stay in the same room all day even for lunch.

 

My district has been in person all year, every day, 5 days per week... 20-24 kids per classroom, some more depending on seating arrangement and space.

 

Our kids travel to 6 seperate classes per day in different classrooms, 6 different teachers, and frequent the cafeteria 2 times to boot. (breakfast break and lunch)

 

Teachers in my building are exposed to 80 - 100 kids per day, not counting speacial duties like lunch supervision, coaching, etc...

 

Teachers are definately at risk, but I still think old people should get the vaccine first. I am fine with being in 1B as far as the pecking order.

[homer]

There seems to be some small differences state to state. Minnesota has all but wrapped up group 1A, and was moving in to group 1B potentially within the next week. I'm also getting the sense that trying to vaccinate different groups specifically and rapidly leads to modest differences in timing when different categories within those groups may actually get started.

 

Demographics plays a role. I believe Wisconsin has a lot of long term care residents relative to other states. Makes sense it would take a little longer to get them all inoculated.

[logan82]

I can only speak for our district, but school has changed a bit for this year. Students are all in cohorts. Classes are 15-20 tops. Kids are only in class 2 days a week. Either Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and Friday. Kids stay in the same room all day even for lunch.

 

My district has been in person all year, every day, 5 days per week... 20-24 kids per classroom, some more depending on seating arrangement and space.

 

Our kids travel to 6 seperate classes per day in different classrooms, 6 different teachers, and frequent the cafeteria 2 times to boot. (breakfast break and lunch)

 

Teachers in my building are exposed to 80 - 100 kids per day, not counting speacial duties like lunch supervision, coaching, etc...

 

Teachers are definately at risk, but I still think old people should get the vaccine first. I am fine with being in 1B as far as the pecking order.

That sounds like business as usual and seems insane to me.

[TURBO]

I can only speak for our district, but school has changed a bit for this year. Students are all in cohorts. Classes are 15-20 tops. Kids are only in class 2 days a week. Either Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and Friday. Kids stay in the same room all day even for lunch.

 

My district has been in person all year, every day, 5 days per week... 20-24 kids per classroom, some more depending on seating arrangement and space.

 

Our kids travel to 6 seperate classes per day in different classrooms, 6 different teachers, and frequent the cafeteria 2 times to boot. (breakfast break and lunch)

 

Teachers in my building are exposed to 80 - 100 kids per day, not counting speacial duties like lunch supervision, coaching, etc...

 

Teachers are definately at risk, but I still think old people should get the vaccine first. I am fine with being in 1B as far as the pecking order.

That sounds like business as usual and seems insane to me.

 

Pretty much, but many safety precautions are taken, and added to our hourly workload... On top of everything else, we do have virtual kids who chose that option vs in person. I have 16 total sprinkled throughout each hour of the day, so meeting with them and the in person kids at the same time is a challenge, a BIG challenge.

 

What is insane is how teachers in this environment are stretched to the limits daily. This is NOT the job I signed up for, however, I have 1.5 years until retirement, so I'm riding it out.

[Fear The Chorizo]

 

Pretty much, but many safety precautions are taken, and added to our hourly workload... On top of everything else, we do have virtual kids who chose that option vs in person. I have 16 total sprinkled throughout each hour of the day, so meeting with them and the in person kids at the same time is a challenge, a BIG challenge.

 

What is insane is how teachers in this environment are stretched to the limits daily. This is NOT the job I signed up for, however, I have 1.5 years until retirement, so I'm riding it out.

 

That's the insane part - expecting teachers who are doing in person instruction to also facilitate elearning/meetings with kids doing that option. Our district in MN had enough flexibility to have teachers do either or based on what kids were doing, and that worked out really well until Thanksgiving timeframe when the entire midwest had its spike that led to staff availability shortages (not spread within schools, but staff/teachers getting COVID or being a close contact from exposure outside the classroom). Over the past 6 weeks or so, our district has been full elearning with an option where kids can still elearn from their classroom with their paras(teachers aides) watching them - which has worked ok. Even during this time the district hasn't tried to merge the kids who started the year in person with the group who've been elearning the entire semester.

 

We're scheduled to go back to full in person this week (elementary), with the hope of even through high school being back to full in person by late February.

[jerichoholicninja]

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-17/covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine-update-pandemic

 

New strain found in California after finding new strains in the UK and South Africa and a few others. When the new variants started popping up, everything I read said that the vaccines should be effective against them. Now whenever I read a story of the new strains they say they're not sure if the vaccines will work. Who knows, maybe reporters are only choosing to ask "experts" who will give answers that create sensational news but if the vaccine we just rushed to make and start injecting people with is useless or throwing a dart at a moving target then we're pretty much screwed.

 

Personally, I've felt an effective treatment was more important than the vaccine. People are still going to get it even with the vaccine. The fact that the outcomes from people who become infected range from never even knowing they had it to being dead within days just boggles my mind.

[homer]

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-17/covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine-update-pandemic

 

New strain found in California after finding new strains in the UK and South Africa and a few others. When the new variants started popping up, everything I read said that the vaccines should be effective against them. Now whenever I read a story of the new strains they say they're not sure if the vaccines will work. Who knows, maybe reporters are only choosing to ask "experts" who will give answers that create sensational news but if the vaccine we just rushed to make and start injecting people with is useless or throwing a dart at a moving target then we're pretty much screwed.

 

Personally, I've felt an effective treatment was more important than the vaccine. People are still going to get it even with the vaccine. The fact that the outcomes from people who become infected range from never even knowing they had it to being dead within days just boggles my mind.

 

The two COVID-19 vaccines on the market in the U.S., produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, train the body’s immune system to target the spike protein. This means that, in theory, the virus mutations could alter the spike protein to a degree that the vaccines become less effective.

 

Chiu said researchers are prioritizing the study of the variant and are working to determine whether the virus is “more infectious or affects vaccine performance.”

 

Yes, very sensational.

 

Science isn't always black and white, yes or no.

[PeaveyFury]

Personally, I've felt an effective treatment was more important than the vaccine. People are still going to get it even with the vaccine.

 

The whole point of the vaccine is to prevent people from getting it and potentially to reduce the severity of the cases for people who eventually do get it after getting the vaccine. There is no effective 'treatment' on the horizon to my knowledge that would benefit society more than a preventative vaccine. The vaccine is our only realistic way out of this at this point.

[igor67]

Prior to break throughs in HIV treatment (which was the last remotely comparable mass research effort) treatments for viruses were pretty much a complete dead-end. That did unlock some progress, but drugs to treats viruses are still rare.

 

Walz currently announcing that phase 1b is beginning on a very limited basis tomorrow with some new pilot sites. The number of doses is highly limited at the moment and being spread around to some people within the 1b subgroup. Paired with continuing lower case numbers in the state that is rather promising. Hopefully lightening the restrictions within the last 2 weeks won't reverse that. By total case numbers there have been about 100K fewer in MN than WI despite roughly equal populations.

[logan82]

Fulltime school is completely different than in person in our district. None of the teachers are doing the online parts. They farmed out the online schooling to Edgenuity and it kind of sucks.

[Machu Peach]

That idea spontaneous vaccine-escape mutations would occur and spread without any sort of selective/evolutionary pressure seems extremely unlikely. Not completely impossible, but certainly quite implausible and I can't think of any examples of that occurring with any other disease. Once the vaccine is in widespread use (and if the vaccine does not offer sterilizing immunity) then you could potentially see escape mutations, but not now.

 

Escape mutations are something that are always discussed. The COVID spike protein is quite large and has many epitopes (an epitope is what the immune system can 'see'). Generally the immune system will generate a strong immune response to one epitope and secondary responses to other epitopes. If the secondary responses are also able to control the infection than escape mutations become quite unlikely. (A 1 in 1,000,000 mutation is pretty much guaranteed to occur in an infection. Two 1 in 1,000,000 mutations, occurring simultaneously, is much much rarer. Three 1 in 1,000,000 mutations, occurring simultaneously, is near impossible. ...and so on.)

 

The other thing to consider is escape mutations can (typically?) have major impacts on the fitness of the virus. Viruses have to outcompete their sister-virus in the same infection, so generally they quickly evolve to be very optimized and streamlined (compared with other diseases). Forcing them to make even a single, small genetic change will often severely hamper their ability to replicate and spread. So even if a vaccine resistant strain does evolve it likely will be less pathogenic than the wildtype virus.

[Machu Peach]

Prior to break throughs in HIV treatment (which was the last remotely comparable mass research effort) treatments for viruses were pretty much a complete dead-end. That did unlock some progress, but drugs to treats viruses are still rare.

This depends on what you mean by "treatments for viruses." Small molecule anti-virals remain difficult to invent and mass produce, but biologics like IFNa and IL2 (and even monoclonal antibodies) have show great success as therapies for specific diseases and their use is an area of great research.

[Fear The Chorizo]

Personally, I've felt an effective treatment was more important than the vaccine. People are still going to get it even with the vaccine.

 

The whole point of the vaccine is to prevent people from getting it and potentially to reduce the severity of the cases for people who eventually do get it after getting the vaccine. There is no effective 'treatment' on the horizon to my knowledge that would benefit society more than a preventative vaccine. The vaccine is our only realistic way out of this at this point.

 

Actually, based on how the Pfizer and Moderna studies were structured that led to their emergency use authorizations the whole point of the vaccine is to reduce the severity of COVID cases for people who eventually do get exposed to coronavirus after getting jabbed twice, and potentially/hopefully to prevent fully vaccinated people from getting it as an asymptomatic carrier and transmitting to others. That's at least where we are at this point with the vaccines in distribution.

 

Agreed that a preventative vaccine would be fabulous for society to get past this...but at this point we don't know whether the vaccines in circulation are preventative in terms of infection/transmission to others or simply symptom-limiting for the vaccinated individual.