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8 minutes ago, JennyD said:

 

The big superspreader event in Israel was at 7-12th grade middle/high school, but there have been hundreds of infections throughout the educational system, from daycare through senior high.  (Just looked up the numbers -- 873 cases in schools, 230 schools shut, 22,850 in quarantine.)

The extent to which young children spread (or didn't spread) the virus to one another in the school setting hasn't been reported yet, and anecdotally it certainly seems like family transmission was much more significant, but anyone looking for an optimistic take on school reopenings should definitely not look to Israel.  It is been an absolute disaster.  

 

@square_25 I think fewer schools and kids were involved in France situation, but several schools at multiple levels.

 

I wonder what mask wearing, Distancing etc was done at the schools involved in both countries. 

 

Asian countries with some school opening success have been shown in news with well distanced students all masked. 

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23 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

 

I wonder what mask wearing, Distancing etc was done at the schools involved in both countries. 

 

In Israel, masks were required for first grade and up but of course there was far from perfect compliance.  There were also reports of some teachers not wearing masks.  And the very first week of full reopening there was a severe heatwave, so even less mask-wearing.  Minimal distancing.  Windows open in all classrooms.

There was an earlier stage when just a few grades and special ed students went back in a socially distanced, small-class capsule format and that was very successful.  I think it was also key that at that time most other things were still not open so there was little community transmission.  

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22 minutes ago, TCB said:

Was just reading a thread on a Covid HCW page and there were some pediatric nurses wondering if an increase in new  T1  patients might be because of Covid-19.

Someone linked this on there

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/27/fact-check-doctors-study-whether-covid-19-triggers-diabetes/3267863001/

 

Yes.

Diabetes  is one of the potential long term effects

I didn’t know it was affecting children particularly 

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26 minutes ago, TCB said:

Was just reading a thread on a Covid HCW page and there were some pediatric nurses wondering if an increase in new  T1  patients might be because of Covid-19.

Someone linked this on there

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/27/fact-check-doctors-study-whether-covid-19-triggers-diabetes/3267863001/

I actually just read a different article about this yesterday. Only they came at it from a different direction. They said that viruses in general often bring T1 to light and they are seeing this in COVID patients as well. I read it as these people would have T1 either way, the virus just brought it to light because they started running bloodwork. I wonder which way is the more accurate way to view this?

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7 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

Yes.

Diabetes  is one of the potential long term effects

I didn’t know it was affecting children particularly 

Several pediatric ICU nurses were saying they had seen unusual amounts of newly diagnosed. They weren’t all tested for Covid and those that were it was for current infection, not antibodies, so they weren’t Covid positive at the time they were seeing them.

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1 hour ago, TracyP said:

I actually just read a different article about this yesterday. Only they came at it from a different direction. They said that viruses in general often bring T1 to light and they are seeing this in COVID patients as well. I read it as these people would have T1 either way, the virus just brought it to light because they started running bloodwork. I wonder which way is the more accurate way to view this?

Viruses have long been known to be major triggers for AI illnesses, and T1 diabetes is AI. So my only question about this is -- is this particular virus more of a trigger than others?

Edited by Pawz4me
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47 minutes ago, Pawz4me said:

Viruses have long been known to be major triggers for AI illnesses, and T1 diabetes is AI. So my only question about this is -- is this particular virus more of a trigger than others?

 

Cases of pediatric inflammatory multisystemic syndrome (PIMS) or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) make it appear that that’s a possibility, though it seems early to tell

there are some concerns I have heard / read that Parkinson’s early symptoms (like loss of smell) being present in some cases of CV19 whether they may Progress to Parkinson’s in some of these patients—but too early to tell

You should have your answer in a few years

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24 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I’m motivated by optimism 0 percent of the time, give or take. All I’m saying is that I haven’t heard of big spreading events in kids under 10... yes, kids get it from parents and bring it to school, but I haven’t heard of lots of kids that age getting it through school. If someone has an example of this happening, I will add it to my large internal dataset, of course.

Despite all the elementary school infections here I too have not heard of any one school that had tons of infections in kids under 10 -- it's more like a few here and a few there.  So that's heartening.  Of course, there's been no official data released on this (or at least that I know of) -- I expect we'll get some before the end of summer break.  

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14 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

Cases of pediatric inflammatory multisystemic syndrome (PIMS) or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) make it appear that that’s a possibility, though it seems early to tell

there are some concerns I have heard / read that Parkinson’s early symptoms (like loss of smell) being present in some cases of CV19 whether they may Progress to Parkinson’s in some of these patients—but too early to tell

You should have your answer in a few years

Now I have flashes of the movie Awakenings going through my mind. Ugh.

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1 hour ago, square_25 said:

I’m motivated by optimism 0 percent of the time, give or take. All I’m saying is that I haven’t heard of big spreading events in kids under 10... yes, kids get it from parents and bring it to school, but I haven’t heard of lots of kids that age getting it through school. If someone has an example of this happening, I will add it to my large internal dataset, of course.

 

This doesn’t say if the kids got infected from other kids or from adults, and does not break down the under 18 category to distinguish an under 10 group. Still, I find it concerning that over half the positive tests at Maccabi health services in Tel Aviv were under 18 so far in June.

Maybe you can do more with the figures.  If 79% in Tel Aviv were under 45, does that indicate anything useful?   22% between 18 and 45? 21% over 45? 

Perhaps if the number / percentage declines again after schools are shut back down that will be helpful information. 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-silent-spreaders-lots-of-asymptomatic-kids-among-covid-19-cases/

 

“In Tel Aviv, which is seeing the fastest spread of the virus, some 57 percent of Maccabi members who tested positive in June are aged 18 or under, Anat Ekka-Zohar told The Times of Israel. There is a similar pattern in other central Israeli cities where cases are growing, she said. In Petah Tikva the figure is 77%, in Jaffa 60% and in Bnei Brak 43%.

Many of the children tested positive after cases were discovered in their schools and the Health Ministry prescribed screening for classes or for entire institutions. “A lot of the kids were asymptomatic, yet were positive,” said Ekka-Zohar.”

 

I wonder what proportion of Tel Aviv residents are under 18. 

Edited by Pen
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3 hours ago, TracyP said:

I actually just read a different article about this yesterday. Only they came at it from a different direction. They said that viruses in general often bring T1 to light and they are seeing this in COVID patients as well. I read it as these people would have T1 either way, the virus just brought it to light because they started running bloodwork. I wonder which way is the more accurate way to view this?

My husband's diabetes was discovered when he was in for another reason.

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11 minutes ago, square_25 said:

It sounds like they are testing whole schools, though. Unless they are doing that kind of wholesale testing of other locations, of course they'd find a disproportionate number of cases in kids... 

Mind you, my mind is not in any way made up on this issue. It's just been interesting watching places reopen elementary schools without apparent ill effects. Denmark, for example, had primary schools running for a while without a spike. They did open secondary schools eventually, I think, but I don't know if it was for long enough to be sure what happens there... anyone know? 

 

 Idk. Do you think if wholesale testing of students from a few schools in Miami or Houston were done right now while schools are closed that it would show similar higher percentage of cases for under age 18 than over? 

 

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33 minutes ago, square_25 said:

It sounds like they are testing whole schools, though. Unless they are doing that kind of wholesale testing of other locations, of course they'd find a disproportionate number of cases in kids... 

 

 

Yeah, after some dithering the Health Ministry finally settled on the policy of shutting down any school with a confirmed infection and requiring all staff and students to be tested.  So a LOT of kids were tested.  For a hot minute there was actually a policy requiring everyone to be tested twice, 5 days apart, but after laboratories were overwhelmed that was dialed back to "test once and stay in quarantine for 14 days even if you have a negative result."

36 minutes ago, Pen said:

There is a similar pattern in other central Israeli cities where cases are growing, she said. In Petah Tikva the figure is 77%, in Jaffa 60% and in Bnei Brak 43%.

Many of the children tested positive after cases were discovered in their schools and the Health Ministry prescribed screening for classes or for entire institutions. “A lot of the kids were asymptomatic, yet were positive,” said Ekka-Zohar.”

I wonder what proportion of Tel Aviv residents are under 18. 

 

I don't know about Tel Aviv, but the median age in Israel is 30.  The median age in an ultra-orthodox city like B'nei Brak is around 18.

Israel did pretty much everything wrong with its full school reopening.  I have no doubt that other places have done or could do a much better job.

 

Edited by JennyD
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1 minute ago, square_25 said:

But we don't know what percentage of students are testing positive. What they are saying is that a lot of their positive results are coming from students. Unless I'm misreading, that doesn't mean that students have a higher positive rate of infection than adults. 

Maybe not but I thought a big part about the rationale for re-opening schools was the thought that students have a much lower rate than adults and therefore won’t spread it around.

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2 minutes ago, square_25 said:

But we don't know they are having a higher rate. If they are mostly testing students, they will get most of their positives from students. 

Now, if they are testing students, and students are getting higher positive rates than adults, that's different. Is that happening? 

 

No, not to my knowledge.   For several weeks the vast majority of the tests conducted in the country were being conducted on students, so most new cases were discovered in under-18yos.   

 

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24 minutes ago, JennyD said:

Yeah, after some dithering the Health Ministry finally settled on the policy of shutting down any school with a confirmed infection and requiring all staff and students to be tested.  So a LOT of kids were tested.  For a hot minute there was actually a policy requiring everyone to be tested twice, 5 days apart, but after laboratories were overwhelmed that was dialed back to "test once and stay in quarantine for 14 days even if you have a negative result."

 

Do you have any inkling whether the kids got infected from their parents, or what? Are the kids spreading it to classmates and teachers and to their families?

I get the impression that people are hoping that kids, even if infected, don't spread the infection around as much as adults do. I don't know if there is any evidence that asymptomatic kids don't spread the virus. There isn't even a ton of research about that in adults yet, although adult asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread is real. 

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34 minutes ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

Can you give examples of what they did wrong?  I haven't read much about the situation there. 

 

 

(1) Reopening way, way too fast:  The first stages of reopening, while much of the country was still shut down, brought back just a few grades and special ed students in a socially distanced, capsule format.  This worked well and there were hardly any infections.   (The distance learning system for everyone else was a mixed bag -- some schools did well, others not.)   The rest of the system was supposed to reopen gradually, in two week intervals, but after just a few weeks the Education Ministry inexplicably decided just to throw the doors open again and bring everyone back.  Masks but no social distancing, and Israel's classrooms are very crowded to begin with.   It was a recipe for disaster, and indeed disaster is what we got.  

(2) Not having a plan on how/when to close schools and get everyone tested when there was an outbreak or exposure.  Did schools need to close if just one student tested positive?  For how long?  Were schools allowed to close preemptively -- for example, if many students had siblings at another school currently having an outbreak?  When and how could schools reopen?  Or switch to distance/hybrid learning?  And what about the teachers?  Were they officially on sick leave when quarantined?  Did they get paid?  

(3) Bizarrely refusing to rethink a plan that was clearly not working and in fact spreading infection all over the country.  It was crystal clear by early June -- with just a few weeks left the school year -- that the school system was the center of new infections.  The obvious thing would have been just to go back to the original capsule arrangement and send the other grades back to distance learning, but the education officials just would not consider it.  

(4) Restarting afterschool and especially scouting programs.  These programs, which include students from different schools, accelerated the spread of school outbreaks.  

Edited by JennyD
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5 minutes ago, Kanin said:
 

Do you have any inkling whether the kids got infected from their parents, or what? Are the kids spreading it to classmates and teachers and to their families?

 

 

 I don't think we know yet.  Hopefully this sort of information will be released over the summer.  I'm sure it's all being compiled somewhere.

Anecdotally, kids are definitely infecting their siblings, and I have heard of at least one case of a child being infected by another child at an afterschool activity, but I have no idea what the general pattern of infections has been.  

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20 hours ago, lewelma said:

 

Online options for my ds are miserable because EST classes run from 1am to 9am right now, and when we switch to day light savings they will run 11pm to 7am.  We currently have all 4 of us in a 650sq foot apartment, so he can't just live the night shift and not wake the rest of us up. This means that online classes for him will have no interaction component. Plus it makes it really hard for him to work at all collaboratively with his friends which means taking MIT classes in isolation, which is definitely not a good plan. Put this with the cost of tuition at 50K per year, and online in NZ is not on the list if we can avoid it. 

You may be surprised how much sound proofing can help!  If you hang blankets around all rooms, double blanket his room, it might make a huge difference.  I made a sound room for my YouTube recordings by hanging blankets around the computer area I use, it totally muffles the sound, very cheaply. 

Even if he decides to go away, it might be helpful for everyone's sanity in such a small place to do some major sound proofing.  You can see a bit of it in my About Me video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4w80eIyeP0

If you want to see more, I can take and post a few pictures.

 

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5 hours ago, TCB said:

Was just reading a thread on a Covid HCW page and there were some pediatric nurses wondering if an increase in new  T1  patients might be because of Covid-19.

Someone linked this on there

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/27/fact-check-doctors-study-whether-covid-19-triggers-diabetes/3267863001/

I have a friend who was warning about this because she has two kids with T1 who "got it" as teens when they both came down with a viral or other infection that triggered onset. So genetics + viral trigger?

Edited by EmseB
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5 hours ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

T1 though?  

I think that T2 is often caught that way, but T1 has a different onset.  

They are learning more about T1 all the time--my DH had coworkers diagnosed with T1 in their 60's. It's really late onset, but they think that they sometimes miss T1 and call it T2 in a subset of people with the right genetics. Adult onset shares similarities with both T1 and T2. Every site that discusses it has a little bit of a different take on it. https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes_lada.html

 

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Aus approach to masks may be shifting slowly 

ABC “Victorian CHO Brett Sutton says that his state officials are working on guidelines for the community on where they're best used and which masks give people the best protection.
    
"I'm happy that masks reduce risks in Victoria now," he said.
    
"I take the perspective when you're trying to drive numbers down, to maintain your rest and trace capability, it needs to be considered," he said.”
    
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7 hours ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

T1 isn't something that can stay hidden, once the pancreas stops functioning.  Kids get very very sick.  But my understanding is that the child is born with some sort of propensity or vulnerability to T1.  However, their pancreas functions at first.  The immune system doesn't start attacking the pancreas until something triggers it, and that something is often a virus.  So, in those kids who have that vulnerability, COVID 19 can trigger the process that stops the pancreas from producing insulin.  Presumably, if the kid hadn't had COVID then the symptoms wouldn't have appeared at that time, but might have later after another virus.  

I am a LADA diabetic-I have pancreatic antibodies, and slightly impaired function (I basically function as a Type 2 diabetic as far as my level, but the problem isn't insulin resistance, but that my pancreas doesn't always produce enough insulin) and according to my endocrinologist, I am basically one virus or autoimmune insult away from being insulin dependent. It's one reason why I've been pretty careful with COVID-I really don't want to roll the dice and see if this is the one that kills my pancreas entirely. 

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6 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

75 cases for Vic today with 9 hospitalised and 1 in ICU.

I am going to begin prepping to go into lockdown/sip again at some point in the future.  Hopefully won’t be necessary but I’d rather be prepared.

22 hours ago, Pen said:

 

Of the 75 new cases 14 are linked to other cases, 37 are people presenting with symptoms to testing sights, 1 a returned traveller in quarantine and 23 from unknown. 

Nearly all of them are from the 10 suburbs in Melbourne that have had an increase in the last few days

Twin 1 and I had our test this morning. Will find out results on Friday. Twin 1  no longer has a fever. We are to stay in isolation until Friday when we get our results

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1 minute ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

Wow, that's a long wait.  I think the fact that his fever has gone is a good sign.  I really hope you don't have it!

Long wait because of the mass testing happening this week in Melbourne.  They are now flying some of the tests to other state labs with military planes 

Apparently it was a 24 hour until results just a week ago. 

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8 minutes ago, Melissa in Australia said:

Of the 75 new cases 14 are linked to other cases, 37 are people presenting with symptoms to testing sights, 1 a returned traveller in quarantine and 23 from unknown. 

Nearly all of them are from the 10 suburbs in Melbourne that have had an increase in the last few days

Twin 1 and I had our test this morning. Will find out results on Friday. Twin 1  no longer has a fever. We are to stay in isolation until Friday when we get our results

Hope you guys are all ok.  

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1 minute ago, Melissa in Australia said:

Long wait because of the mass testing happening this week in Melbourne.  They are now flying some of the tests to other state labs with military planes 

Apparently it was a 24 hour until results just a week ago. 

Yep.  My mum in law had to wait 48 in SA last week so I think things have slowed down a bit.

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4 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

Of the 75 new cases 14 are linked to other cases, 37 are people presenting with symptoms to testing sights, 1 a returned traveller in quarantine and 23 from unknown. 

Nearly all of them are from the 10 suburbs in Melbourne that have had an increase in the last few days

Twin 1 and I had our test this morning. Will find out results on Friday. Twin 1  no longer has a fever. We are to stay in isolation until Friday when we get our results

Hope you guys are well.  Glad that the fever is gone.  

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Did we talk about the concept of an exposure budget? I think it's an interesting idea.

If we want it to be safe for schools to be open, we need the overall level of transmission in the community to be low, so we need to take precautions accordingly--maybe you just can't have restaurant dining areas open, bars open, contact sports, unmasked shopping, etc. and think you can keep it down enough. If it's important to have schools open, there's going to be a tradeoff.

With schools, the thing is, you don't need a huge number of infections to cause a problem. In a given classroom, maybe having 5+ kids out sick is what it takes to disrupt the flow of lessons--but only one teacher, and teachers will get sick more readily than children. I know some areas will be horrified to have no football and no marching band this fall, no going out for lunch after church, no gathering for some wings and a few beers while you watch the game, but that might be the price of making sure the first-graders get uninterrupted reading instruction.

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8 minutes ago, whitehawk said:

Did we talk about the concept of an exposure budget? I think it's an interesting idea.

If we want it to be safe for schools to be open, we need the overall level of transmission in the community to be low, so we need to take precautions accordingly--maybe you just can't have restaurant dining areas open, bars open, contact sports, unmasked shopping, etc. and think you can keep it down enough. If it's important to have schools open, there's going to be a tradeoff.

With schools, the thing is, you don't need a huge number of infections to cause a problem. In a given classroom, maybe having 5+ kids out sick is what it takes to disrupt the flow of lessons--but only one teacher, and teachers will get sick more readily than children. I know some areas will be horrified to have no football and no marching band this fall, no going out for lunch after church, no gathering for some wings and a few beers while you watch the game, but that might be the price of making sure the first-graders get uninterrupted reading instruction.

I haven't seen that but it seems like common freaking sense that you open up the most important things before the non essential things. Schools, grocery stores, retail with limited capacity and mask and ecouragement for online shopping and curbside pick up (hey - how bout some covid money for helping businesses create online stores). Not bars and gyms. 

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1 hour ago, Acorn said:

 

The center seems to be huge and well run so far as I can tell.  If they are having troubles, places that are more cramped for space would likely to be even worse hit if someone brought in infection. 

I wonder who was its first actual case, a teacher or an Asymptomatic child. 

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@ElizabethB@Pen@Quill

San Quentin Prison, Goodwill 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-live-updates-news-bay-area-15237940.php

“9:23 a.m. Active cases among San Quentin inmates top 1,000: The number of inmates who have active cases of the coronavirus at San Quentin State Prison reached 1,011 as of Monday morning, increasing by nearly 200 for the second day in a row, according to data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The number of infected staff remains at 89.

8:08 a.m. Bad times for Goodwill: As a nonprofit with 600 employees, Goodwill San Francisco was too big to qualify for federal help when the coronavirus shutdown hit. On the Fifth & Mission podcast, CEO William Rogers talks about having to close all of the organization’s shops and furlough most employees. Click here to listen.”

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2 hours ago, square_25 said:

I would really really love more data on transmission in kids. 

Me too. I re-read that NPR study people have been talking about. A coworker emailed it to all the teachers as a mood-lifter... like don't worry, we teach mostly younger kids! We're good! When I re-read, I saw that only "a few" parents and caregivers tested positive during the time period they were talking about. If only "a few" adults tested positive, then it makes sense that not many kids caught the virus, right?? And since many kids are asymptomatic, we really have no clue about how many kids have been infected. Unless they were testing the whole class when one kid was positive, there would be no way to know. 

We also don't know if asymptomatic kids can spread the virus.

I may be repeating what someone else already said.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24/882316641/what-parents-can-learn-from-child-care-centers-that-stayed-open-during-lockdowns

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Scotland has had no deaths in the past few days and had five new cases yesterday. Weekend reporting is always low, but it's looking hopeful.  There are ten people in intensive care. The population is 5 million.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/

 

 

Edited by Laura Corin
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One thing parents are commenting on with schools open here is the kids are having a lot of time off anyway.  Because the schools are really strict that none attend with any mild symptoms of anything and it’s winter kids are spending more than usual days away.  

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