I don't imagine I (or my kids) will be masking all the time or even seasonally post covid (or post pandemic. I don't know that post covid will ever happen), but I can see them being useful in a lot of situations....like as a precaution in those "probably just allergies" situations, or on public transportation. Or inside at Disney World. My kids hardly ever get sick, but someone managed to pick up something every time we went to Disney World, and often something pretty nasty. But, yeah, I don't think it's reasonable to expect kids to wear masks all day at school (and, of course, kids should be able to be vaccinated by late fall anyway) in normal times, but I can definitely see it in situations where there's a lot of close contact with people from all different places. Personally, I don't mind my kids picking up colds every now and then, but I'd much rather avoid the latest imported stomach bug at Disney World and that kind of thing.

I think if we can stay/become a society where it's socially unacceptable to be in public places while sick (instead of stuff like perfect attendance and not taking sick days being valorized) and where it's expected to wear masks much more frequently, we can save a ton of lives and keep a ton of people out of the hospital every year. One thing I've learned this year is how rarely it actually is "just allergies" for me. ETA: of course a lot of the responsibility for it becoming socially unacceptable to be out when sick lies with employers and with policies around sick leave, not with individuals.

So many kids were in school, though--I think it was 50% by winter. That would explain a big reduction in flu, but not it being almost non-existent. Most of the kids who were in school were wearing masks, though. I suspect people being more likely to stay home when they were sick this year had something to do with it, too. It would be interesting to see numbers on whether flu was more prevalent in areas where kids were in school and also to see if mask mandates (in schools, especially, but elsewhere, too) correlated with local flu numbers.

Yeah, that's why the CDC information that includes the placebo group is so interesting to me...a lot of the common side effects are pretty general. It also tracks pretty well with the range and frequency of side effects in my family and people I know.

That's a good point. The ability to have a placebo group in the trials is really valuable when you're looking at reactions (and efficacy of course), but the controlled nature of the trials does of course affect things.

I couldn't find anything specifically about covid, but I found this from 2010 that says that placebo ingredients can be a concern: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-whats-placebo/so-whats-in-a-placebo-anyway-idUSTRE69H51L20101018

you think a larger percentage of people on this board are reporting symptoms than in the CDC study?

well, surely a study where every participant was asked to report all symptoms, that includes thousands of participants and a placebo group, is going to give us better information than the selectively reported experiences of a bunch of a people on a homeschool message board, though?

It says all participants were asked to keep a diary of symptoms for a week.

In this case everyone who received a vaccine or placebo was asked to keep a diary of symptoms for 7 days after....so in this group that was studied, all the reactions were officially reported. It's true that it would not take into account symptoms that lasted longer than 7 days, but that would be rare if the median duration of symptoms was 1 day. ETA: it's also not making judgements about whether the symptoms were a result of the vaccine, just reporting them (and, based on how often the same symptoms showed up in the placebo group, they very often WEREN'T related to the vaccine)

One fun fact from that link is that 47.4% of vaccine recipients studied reported fatigue after pfizer....as did 33.4% of people who got the placebo. Hmm... Maybe a lot of people could just really use more sleep. Headache was similar: 41.9% who got the vaccine vs. 33.7% placebo.

Do we have any particular reasons to doubt the results the CDC has compiled about vaccine reactions? https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/pfizer/reactogenicity.html I mean, anecdotal evidence from people on this board is interesting and all, but I would expect that to be a lot more comprehensive and accurate. Median length of symptoms was 1 day.

OR can people start loading recommendations before the common app officially opens in August? Apparently students can start filling some parts of it out earlier--recommendations, too?

So for people who ask Junior year--you're saying you just ask to give them a head's up and make sure you have someone, and then come back to them when applications open up in the late summer/fall to say, "okay now I need that letter you said you'd do?" My oldest didn't ask for any until fall of senior year, but my 11th grader just finished a couple of online courses and should probably ask now before the teachers forget who he was, yes? He'll be applying as a music major and has two music teachers who know him very well and should be able to write great letters, but he should get at least one academic one, too. The best person for that is probably his...music theory teacher. Well, at least they'll know he's dedicated to music!

Some is, but he's using AP materials and a test prep book right now along with the course materials.

This is what my son is doing this year. AP exam isn't until next month, though, so I can't how well it's working (he's been doing it pretty much totally independently). He doesn't love it, but I don't think he'd love any physics; it's just not his thing. So far he says he's doing fine with all the AP review and practice stuff he's doing alongside finishing the course, so I figure that's a good sign.

Most under 55s I know who had covid had much longer lasting symptoms than anyone I know who had vaccine side effects. I don't know anyone personally who felt bad for more than 2 days post vaccine. My brother had "a cold" that dragged on for weeks and turned out to be covid. My cousin had a mild initial illness but took a very long time to regain her sense of taste. Another friend had maybe a week or two of flu like symptoms. My friend's SIL and my SIL'S SIL both described illnesses so bad they couldn't walk across the room easily. Another friend, late 40s, had covid early on and long covid symptoms that have finally started to get better since she got vaccinated. My aunt's neighbor, healthy guy in his 40s, died. So, yes, on average way worse than 2 days of feeling bad post vaccine. And, as I've said, at least half the people I know who've gotten the vaccine haven't had any significant symptoms. I also don't know anyone who's died or been hospitalized because of the vaccine. I keep thinking of more--high school friend and his wife, in their 40s, both had nasty cases that lasted for at least a week. Honestly, I know a lot more people who've been surprised by how bad/weird covid was for them than who had super mild symptoms or asymptomatic cases. The only one I can think of offhand is my son's baseball coach, who was diagnosed a few days after the vaccine and initially dismissed his fatigue as a vaccine side effect, but it turned out to be covid.

I don't think covid is necessarily more dangerous for kids than flu (the number of deaths in kids for covid vs. in an average flu year supports that). I do think there's a lot we don't know about long term complications. I do think it's foolish to assume covid won't evolve to be more dangerous for kids in the future. And I also think that I don't want my kid to get the flu, either. No, we don't mask regularly for flu season (although they do in some places), but flu is also a lot easier to prevent by staying home when you have symptoms than covid is. I'd be pretty mad if my kid got the flu because someone went to school or wherever when they knew they had symptoms. Unfortunately, staying home when you're sick doesn't cut it for preventing covid transmission; otherwise we'd be done with it by now (like how there's been so little flu this year). I think wearing a mask is pretty much the common courtesy equivalent of staying home when you're sick to prevent flu transmission, and it's also considerably EASIER and less burdensome than staying home when you're sick for most people. And, of course, we DO vaccinate kids for the flu. ETA: and flu outbreaks cause a lot of disruption when they run through schools...particularly in the schools near me that haven't taken basic covid precautions, that has been much more true for covid, with lots and lots of quarantines, teachers out and not enough subs, and not infrequent closures of entire schools for a period of time when numbers got too bad. Even for kids who don't have serious cases of covid, and even if we're not worried about long term side effects, uncontrolled spread can really mess things up for them.

Emory, by any chance? The FA package DS was offered by Emory was his worst by far; I was pretty surprised, but I suspect it's because they hit home equity really hard. Not everyone does.

My best guess is that summer will be fairly awesome (and I'm planning to enjoy every second of it). The question is whether we're able/willing to do what we need to do in the fall/winter when K-12 and colleges start back up, people start to go back inside, we see whether boosters are needed, etc. etc.

...for my adjacent county, incidentally, with a mask mandate (but no distancing, hybrid, etc), the incidence rate is 63/100,000 over 14 days for schools; 108/100,000 over the same period for the county as a whole.

I hadn't run the numbers in the big school system next door (that's taking basically no precautions other than quarantines for positives and close contacts and teachers wearing masks) much in these times of relatively low covid, so I just took a peak. Incidence rate over 14 days (as of last Friday) for students was 194/100,000...compared to 99/100,000 for the county as a whole over 14 days. So an incidence rate nearly twice as high for school kids in that county as for the total population. ETA: that hasn't changed much even as overall numbers have gone down; it's been 2-3x higher for kids every time I've checked. E(again)TA: and, of course, that's given a presumably significantly lower testing rate for kids.

The main issue in the fall with kids will be schools and wanting to be able to open them without mask mandates, distancing, etc. We won't really be able to tell much over the summer about how much covid is still circulating because kids aren't vaccinated. And small numbers can turn into big numbers really quickly if you stuff everyone back in full classrooms, doing indoor sports, etc. with no precautions and no vaccines.

Yeah, and this was just a case report about this particular outbreak; it wasn't intended to draw any bigger conclusions, I don't think.

Yes, that's definitely possible. Although then the percent positive would be even more startling. It's fascinating all around (and why I've been pleasantly surprised that we haven't seen more big outbreaks in schools--I expected a lot of situations where whole classrooms tested positive, and that just hasn't happened. Places we've seen school related big outbreaks have been more at off campus parties or associated with indoor sports--so more like a summer camp, I guess, and not like sitting in a classroom sharing air).