Alfonso, Ken, Mary and Janet join TWiV to explain their modeling of school reopening strategies during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Rich Condit
Guests: Alfonso Landeros, Ken Lange, Mary E. Sehl, and Janet Sinsheimer
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Download TWiV 653 (34 MB .mp3, 56 min)
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Links for this episode
- School reopening strategies (medRxiv) 1:46
- Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!
Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees
Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv
Thank you all.
There are transparent surgical masks (non fogging) used in health care settings with hearing impaired clients. Maybe they would be useful for teachers?
Here’s a study on their effectiveness with communications:
The Effect of Conventional and Transparent Surgical Masks on Speech Understanding in Individuals with and without Hearing Loss https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28054912/
Teachers and students, of all ages, should check out these two sites.
https://www.youtube.com/c/AmoebaSisters/videos
https://www.amoebasisters.com/
Mostly high school level and beginning college teaching (and learning) and great material for those who don’t know biology, which sadly is a great number of people, and also some ideas for teachers. Good tool for countering the miasma of non-thinking and ignorance! And the cartoons are really fun to watch!
Call it a (learning) listener’s ‘pick of the week’. Since I’m just a way under-educated old coot trying to figure what is going on, including what happened in biology over the last 60 years, I find this site very useful.
Where are the “show notes”?
Regarding TWiV 653: Back to school with COVID-19:
The paper acknowledges that they account only for two separate age classes, children and adults … with no distinction between high school and elementary school children. At one point in the podcast they mention that the model could be used for college.
There are massive differences between an elementary class with a static group of 25-30 students and one teacher interacting daily, compared to 6-7 periods with different sets of 35 students per period and a different teacher, along with hallway transit time between classes. Add in mating behavior, one kiss may double your potential infectious daily contacts, and the middle/high school exposure level is dramatically different from elementary school.
College introductory classes of 150-300 or more squeezing through two lecture hall doors, and even more mating behavior, is even worse for multiplying contacts.
I can’t imagine how a rotating strategy beyond elementary school could possibly work for even one week in the real world, without masks and daily testing being the fundamental requirements. Could you please comment on what you would consider to be the essential parameters necessary for anything remotely approaching reality in a Covid-19 return to school/work model?
I’m just a Ph.D. chemist and I’ve learned so much about virology, immunology and public health by listening to you this year. Thank you for the excellent podcasts that have broadened my horizons.
And now this: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-16/l-a-schools-announce-massive-covid-19-testing-tracing-initiative-for-all-students-staff. Did ya’ll have anything to do with this?