Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of November 2

Usual personal update:

I plan on doing a much longer writeup for my Timasomo project, but the short less long of it is this:

The goalposts have moved from "it's safe to open schools" to "it's not THAT dangerous to have schools open". My district administration, who has patted themselves on the back every step of the way through their mismanagement of this, now sends out updates celebrating the "low" numbers of confirmed cases in our buildings. That's where we are: hooray for only a little COVID! Education is so mired in a faux, affected optimism that's divorced from actual realities that we can't even turn it off when we're almost a year into a global pandemic.

The talking point has also moved from "kids can't get it" (which was always false) to "it doesn't spread in schools", which is partially true but has become a bit of a lie by omission. Because of the significant precautions we're taking, we're not seeing the kind of superspreader events in classrooms that we see elsewhere. Unfortunately, this reality is being used to give a false sense of security. Me and everyone I know has been beating the "BUT. WHAT. ABOUT. WINTER?" drum since July and have gone unheard the entire way.

I can't speak for all schools, but part of the reason my school hasn't seen outbreaks from our positive cases yet is because we have the windows open and fans blowing air out constantly. Have I mentioned before that we bought the fans ourselves? We bought the fans ourselves. That strategy has gotten us this far, but we're now at a point where I'm layering up and wearing my heaviest winter coat to school, and I'm still shivering. Students are doing the same; freezing in their seats. It was recently in the 40s in my area, and even with the heaters going in our school, the outdoor temperature pretty much becomes the indoor one thanks to our ventilation needs. And as bad as it is in classes, it's even worse on the bus where everyone's next to a window and the moving air yields a de facto wind chill.

There are potential solutions to this, but those required foresight, planning, and investment that hasn't happened. Our district just recently started distributing HEPA filters to classrooms, and I do have to give them credit -- I wasn't expecting that to actually happen. Unfortunately, the ones they got us are tiny and don't even come close to meeting minimum air changeovers for rooms of our size. My deeply ingrained pessimism also leads me to believe that they're doing this not as a genuine measure of safety but because it was the cheapest way of making it look like they were doing what they were supposed to. I understand that I sound like I'm ungrateful right now, but that's also part of the strategy: give just a little bit so that asking for anything more looks presumptuous.

I'm sure as soon as the rollout is finished we'll get another missive about how all classrooms now have state-of-the-art air filtration, all while leaving out that we need about five of those devices per classroom in order to merely meet minimum standards.

Because the filters we were issued are inadequate to protect us and our students, many teachers in my school, myself included, are buying our own higher-capacity HEPA filters to supplement the ones given to us, all at costs of several hundred dollars a pop. Have I mentioned before that we're buying these filters ourselves? We're buying the filters ourselves.

I know I'm coming across as flippant and a little pissed off, but really I'm exhausted. Every single day at work I'm cold and I'm stressed and I'm afraid, and I'm supposed to be the even-tempered adult in the room. I come home exhausted even though I did little more than stand in one spot for most of the day, as there's literally nowhere I can move without coming within 6 feet of someone else. Teaching well with in this environment is next to impossible, so I feel like I'm doing a terrible job at my job, which I hate, but there's also a vindictive part of me that keeps saying that if my own district will only do the barest of minimums to assure safety for me and my students during a global pandemic, then why on earth should I invest anything more than the barest of minimums in my role for them?

Anyone who has seen my other posts here about teaching know that I was already experiencing a loss of faith in the career in general, and the response to COVID has brought all of those issues into the sharpest of focuses. It always sounds callous for teachers to throw in the towel, because doing so always hurts the kids, but I'm tired of having that fact used against me as a way of letting everyone else that isn't a teacher off the hook. You know what's hurting the kids more than anything else right now? The fact that their teachers have to keep the windows open when it's 40 degrees outside because the district refused to consider and implement ventilation and filtration solutions in the seven months since we shut down for this pandemic in the first place.

The virus is spreading so widely in the US now that tracing the source of infections is almost impossible, contact-tracing is increasingly futile, and many people have no idea where they're getting it.

Twelve people are currently registered as infected with a mutated form of the coronavirus in Denmark, according to news wire Ritzau. The mutated virus is reported to respond weakly to antibodies.

COVID in Boston wastewater is now trending down, which is good to see.

The COVID Tracking Project reports 103,087 new cases in the US today, the first time over 100,000 and about 6000 / 6% higher than the previous high of 97,080 on October 30.

Not news, but I just wanted to say: I miss shaking people's hands when I meet them, and I miss hugging my relatives. It's been so long since I thought nothing of doing these things, but it looks like several months more (maybe a year or more) until we can feel at ease doing these things again. Definitely an era we all won't soon forget.

Spain rocked by second night of clashes over coronavirus measures

Demonstrations against coronavirus restrictions turned into violent clashes between police and protesters in several Spanish cities for a second night on Saturday.

Around 60 people were arrested and about 30 officers injured on Saturday night, El País reported, with clashes erupting in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga and other cities. On Friday, demonstrations in several cities had similarly descended into violence.

[...]

On Thursday, the Spanish government decided to extend the state of emergency for six months and allowed the country’s regions to impose their own restrictions. As a result, some provinces introduced nighttime curfews and shut restaurants, bars and cultural venues.

How North Dakota became a covid-19 nightmare