Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[Andrew C]

I don't care tbh. I'm saying the things you're taking about are happening because people are selfishly choosing not to end this pandemic by getting vaccinated.

But that’s not the case. Tbh.

 

[Andrew C]

The districts closed this year right now that I know of, are lacking staff or have over 1/4 of the kids out. Schools always close with excessive absences. Now I only know my area, but not one school is closed that doesn't have a valid excuse. It literally is that bad now. Even my district I am seeing more cases per day than I'd see all week or even all month previously. The below poverty level districts here are out of subs and out of ability to send kids and have them watched properly. So if the school is closed they have food for the kids and chromebooks and hot spots. When you cannot open, you adapt. Many schools have thanks to federal aid.

I think if there are unions pushing for closures find out why and make sure we are not risking losing more teachers for next year when getting a solution. My kid's bus driver quit due to risk so we're now on bus driver #4 this year. That happens when you push too far too. Most schools are far beyond closing for no cause now. If there are exceptions then deal with it, but as a whole what you are claiming just isn't happening.

First. This has not much to do with preemptive closures. Second, the problems you state exist are due to the crappy way these we are handling schools currently.

really, all schools should be operating in a relatively normal fashion. Teachers and kids should come to school when they feel well and stay home when they feel ill. And once they feel well again, come back. No tracking of cases. No mandated testing or isolation periods or any of that stuff. No well kids or teachers at home waiting for test results. Drop that all. You will see attendance go up for both kids and teachers. Asymptomatic kids and teachers sitting at home does more harm than good. And closing schools just because you are worried about spread is a horrible position to have.

 

[mikejs78]

But that’s not the case. Tbh.

It absolutely, 100% is. We could have been over the severe outcomes from this disease in May if everyone eligible were vaccinated. That would have ended the need for restrictions, and therefore not caused the harm to children (and everyone else) that the pandemic has caused.

Oh, and that's not even mentioning the harm that can be brought to children by the virus itself.

 

[mikejs78]

really, all schools should be operating in a relatively normal fashion. Teachers and kids should come to school when they feel well and stay home when they feel ill. And once they feel well again, come back. No tracking of cases. No mandated testing or isolation periods or any of that stuff.

This is fantasy. We'd end up with schools with not enough teachers and kids to even function.

 

[correcaminos]

First. This has not much to do with preemptive closures. Second, the problems you state exist are due to the crappy way these we are handling schools currently.

really, all schools should be operating in a relatively normal fashion. Teachers and kids should come to school when they feel well and stay home when they feel ill. And once they feel well again, come back. No tracking of cases. No mandated testing or isolation periods or any of that stuff. No well kids or teachers at home waiting for test results. Drop that all. You will see attendance go up for both kids and teachers. Asymptomatic kids and teachers sitting at home does more harm than good. And closing schools just because you are worried about spread is a horrible position to have.

Do you have kids in school right now? Are you experiencing closures? I ask because I see zero of what you are complaining about. That has not happened since 2020 no joke. Since fall we cannot require isolation here. However if you think that asking a kid who was symptomatic to test is bad, then I am at a loss. That's all they are doing here. They cannot even mandate sick kids home.

Because right now I do and am watching closely. What you are ranting against isn't happening here. The schools closing, adjusting schedules, canceling transportation etc is because there is no staff available and they are out of subs. You cannot run schools without adults. If the school is out with 25+% of the kids and staff you cannot go and that happens all years at times with flus or other extremely contagious bugs. They preemptive here is notifiying less than 24 hours in advance. Often that morning. I get notifications for other schools due to contacts I'm on. There are no "let's close for no real reason" situations like in 2020 going on.

 

[The Mom]

I hope I'm posting this in the right place (this IS about Disney and Covid, correct?) but I'm taking a couple hundred high school kids to the World in April and just last week got a copy of Disney's student group requirements. Sharing in case anyone is interested:

View attachment 615765

Thank you for making an actual, on topic post. Yes, this is the right thread for posting this!!!

 

[correcaminos]

This is fantasy. We'd end up with schools with not enough teachers and kids to even function.

Actually our schools cannot do this now. Thanks to our governor. Guess what happened with in 2 weeks of it? Cases per week were 2-3x as many as in the past. Then omicron hit and now we're about 10-15x higher than before.

 

[MaryJaneP]

Actual question, if kids attend school but there is a teacher/sub shortage, does that count towards the "instructional day" number? Likewise, what if many/most of the cafeteria food staff is out with the infection. That second question applies to either/both schools and WDW.

 

[correcaminos]

Actual question, if kids attend school but there is a teacher/sub shortage, does that count towards the "instructional day" number? Likewise, what is many/most of the cafeteria food staff is out with the infection. That second question applies to either/both schools and WDW.

Most schools I know are doing remote to circumvent this. My state does it by hours not days as it is so it takes a few weeks to make it not enough. In 2020 we actually ended early.

We haven't been hit with food staff yet to know that or at least to be aware of. I have some friends in food services and one was even out due to injury/surgery/recovery. I'll ask around though. For some reason bus subs and teachers are the worst it seems.

I haven't heard struggles at WDW for this yet either to comment.

 

[Hakunamatata]

I wonder if this will have an impact of more travelers from the UK head to WDW?

England To Scrap Most COVID Restrictions, Boris Johnson Announces

England is set to get rid of essentially all of its COVID-19 restrictions, as was announced by United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. Mandatory mask-wearing on public transportation and in stores, guidelines on working from home, as well as vaccine certifications will be...

www.dailywire.com

 

[MisterPenguin]

I wonder if this will have an impact of more travelers from the UK head to WDW?

England To Scrap Most COVID Restrictions, Boris Johnson Announces

England is set to get rid of essentially all of its COVID-19 restrictions, as was announced by United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. Mandatory mask-wearing on public transportation and in stores, guidelines on working from home, as well as vaccine certifications will be...

www.dailywire.com

Good for them that they were able to negotiate with COVID and get a date when it will withdraw from the British Isles and pinky swear it won't come back as a new variant.

 

[James J]

I wonder if this will have an impact of more travelers from the UK head to WDW?

England To Scrap Most COVID Restrictions, Boris Johnson Announces

England is set to get rid of essentially all of its COVID-19 restrictions, as was announced by United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. Mandatory mask-wearing on public transportation and in stores, guidelines on working from home, as well as vaccine certifications will be...

www.dailywire.com

To be fair, travelling to the US hasn't been too challenging since it opened up to the UK again in October and was made easier a few weeks ago, when they removed the need for a test to be taken before returning home and made the test required when you get back a lateral flow instead of a PCR.

Cases over here have started to fall, though the rate at which this is happening has slowed in the last few days:

Having said all of this, the removing of most restrictions next week and the promise of getting rid of all of them in March (including self-isolation for those who test positive) is mostly Johnson trying to save his own behind. I won't go into that though at the risk of getting political!

 

[hopemax]

I don’t really have an issue closing a single school out of absolute necessity. As a last resort. I have an issue with entire school districts preemptively shutting down all of their schools as a reaction to a wave, in order to “slow the spread.” That’s where I draw the line. It’s dangerous.

A suggestion prior to all of this was to preemptively adjust school schedules so that winter break was longer. Start after MLK day this year, next year, as long as we have post-Christmas waves. Change the school start date, end date, other seasonal breaks to compensate. Basically what school districts that went to year round schools did. It’s not extra time off, it’s just moving a bit of scheduled time to a different part of the year.

Everyone could plan accordingly. No last minute scrambles for subs, bus drivers, childcare. Just plan for a lot of people to be sick the 3 weeks after Christmas.

What would you think of a plan like that?

 

[correcaminos]

A suggestion prior to all of this was to preemptively adjust school schedules so that winter break was longer. Start after MLK day this year, next year, as long as we have post-Christmas waves. Change the school start date, end date, other seasonal breaks to compensate. Basically what school districts that went to year round schools did. It’s not extra time off, it’s just moving a bit of scheduled time to a different part of the year.

Everyone could plan accordingly. No last minute scrambles for subs, bus drivers, childcare. Just plan for a lot of people to be sick the 3 weeks after Christmas.

What would you think of a plan like that?

Ugh..... no to that for me. We have summer trips and camps that are only available in June. That would remove that. Also not great for kids who need to work summer camps for funds. I know some who went back after year round failed for them. 2 weeks at winter is what we have now and it's kind of miserable and way too long here.

Plus this assumes the peaks will be only 1x a year really. Our Delta wave didn't align with this.

 

[Trauma]

I wanted to ask a question for those who follow this closer than I do, I’m sure I’ll get some terms wrong so I welcome the corrections.

I seem to remember the CDC had some guidelines that measured level of spread and linked that to mitigation efforts.

I think that was payed attention to closely here because it was related to masking at the parks.

I think the levels where high, medium and low and once we reached low, mitigation was effectively dropped in most settings.

I remember at the time that reaching a “low” level of spread was actually very difficult and seemed almost unrealistic.

My question is this, with omicron being considerably more infectious will we ever be able to achieve what is currently considered a “low” level of spread?

Furthermore do we need to?

If the hospitals are not overrun and people are not dropping dead, should the CDC revisit their definitions for the different levels?

Clearly cases are starting to drop like a rock in some portions of the country and although we are not there yet, it’s not radical to suggest me may be at a place soon where these decisions will have to be made.

 

[DisneyFan32]

MSN

www.msn.com

The U.S. is currently in the grips of the latest COVID-19 variant, and many experts believe it won't be the last before the end of the pandemic.

Omicron, designated as a variant of concern (VOC) by the World Health Organization, has all but pushed delta to the side, at least as far as sequencing efforts in the U.S. are suggesting. But viruses are constantly mutating, and a widespread virus - like the one that causes COVID-19 - has a better chance of gradually evolving from host to host and producing concerning variants.

CDC: Unvaccinated seniors nearly 50 times more likely to be hospitalized than those with boosters
Davidson Hamer, a professor of Global Health and Medicine at the Boston University's Schools of Public Health and Medicine, told Nexstar that one of the potential mechanisms for the creation of a new variant concerns the animal population.

"Because [the virus that causes COVID-19] can infect certain animals - some very well, like mink or white-tailed deer - the virus could go into an animal, reassort and pop back out into the human population," Hamer said.

"That could be a potential mechanism by which a new variant might arise, and a very worrisome possibility," he added.

Preteens could be vaccinated without parents' consent under California bill
Another potential avenue that epidemiologists have identified involves immunosuppressed, or immune-deficient human patients who become chronically infected with the virus, but do not succumb to it.

"People who are immunosuppressed have a harder time clearing the virus from their bodies, and many mutations may accumulate in a single person and then be transferred to others," explained Jorge Salinas, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at Stanford University.

Experts also say this mechanism - incubating in a chronically sick patient - is thought to be the avenue by which the omicron variant and its numerous mutations came about.

Researchers say it's difficult to predict where and when a new variant will emerge. And when they do, it doesn't always mean the variant is better adapted to spread. There is always the possibility, however, that one of the variants could transmit better, or be more severe, or have properties that make it better at evading immunity or become less responsive to current therapies.

Post-COVID ‘brain fog' could be result of virus changing patients' spinal fluid
George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, likened a virus's mutations to "typos," some of which are more harmful than others.

"If viral evolution were logical, which it is kind of, we would expect … the variants that would survive and thrive would be more transmissible or more immune evasive," said Rutherford. But there's also "no premium" for a virus to kill off its host immediately, he said, as that wouldn't be an efficient way for the virus to spread.

Rutherford warned, however, that virus mutations won't always follow the most logical path.

"Be prepared," he said. "The [next mutation] could be something that's very different.”

I'm scared that variant will be emerge to worse if the pandemic will be EVEN longer for years. Now the pandemic will never ending this year for the world.

 

[hopemax]

Ugh..... no to that for me. We have summer trips and camps that are only available in June. That would remove that. Also not great for kids who need to work summer camps for funds. I know some who went back after year round failed for them. 2 weeks at winter is what we have now and it's kind of miserable and way too long here.

Plus this assumes the peaks will be only 1x a year really. Our Delta wave didn't align with this.

Any plan is going to be inconvenient for someone. So if we take reducing infections, no more “stop the spread,” off the table, we’re going to have to learn how to deal with a lot of people sick at the same time. If we won’t be proactive about the one time of year that seems easiest to predict because it’s inconvenient, it doesn’t seem like we will be learning to live with the virus anytime soon. Just playing wack-a-mole and being reactive whenever it shows up. We’ll get more of the same a patchwork of ineffectiveness that is driving people up the wall. The fact that waves can occur at additional times, which are harder to predict shouldn’t be a roadblock to the one time it is more predictable.

 

[hopemax]

And timing is funny sometimes, I finished reading here, went to Twitter and there is chatter about how anticipating “endemic” might be the wrong term. “Seasonal epidemic” is an alternative to endemic, and we need to think about plans in terms besides endemic.

Short thread…

 

[correcaminos]

Any plan is going to be inconvenient for someone. So if we take reducing infections, no more “stop the spread,” off the table, we’re going to have to learn how to deal with a lot of people sick at the same time. If we won’t be proactive about the one time of year that seems easiest to predict because it’s inconvenient, it doesn’t seem like we will be learning to live with the virus anytime soon. Just playing wack-a-mole and being reactive whenever it shows up. We’ll get more of the same a patchwork of ineffectiveness that is driving people up the wall. The fact that waves can occur at additional times, which are harder to predict shouldn’t be a roadblock to the one time it is more predictable.

I think you missed this schedule would have done zero to help with our Delta wave. Problem is we don't know exactly when it will show up entirely. 2 weeks off in wasn't enough to stop spread (our numbers rose after schools were out significantly) and honestly we peaked at MLK day so making it a month won't help either. So we still are at super high numbers. Last year the problem was before break by about a month as well. So we had to end early and go remote. In short this is a big fat no to this because it doesn't help in additon to it royally sucking. Why screw with lives more than we are? We worry about kids? Stop messing up their lives unless you need to.

 

[correcaminos]

I wanted to ask a question for those who follow this closer than I do, I’m sure I’ll get some terms wrong so I welcome the corrections.

I seem to remember the CDC had some guidelines that measured level of spread and linked that to mitigation efforts.

I think that was payed attention to closely here because it was related to masking at the parks.

I think the levels where high, medium and low and once we reached low, mitigation was effectively dropped in most settings.

I remember at the time that reaching a “low” level of spread was actually very difficult and seemed almost unrealistic.

My question is this, with omicron being considerably more infectious will we ever be able to achieve what is currently considered a “low” level of spread?

Furthermore do we need to?

If the hospitals are not overrun and people are not dropping dead, should the CDC revisit their definitions for the different levels?

Clearly cases are starting to drop like a rock in some portions of the country and although we are not there yet, it’s not radical to suggest me may be at a place soon where these decisions will have to be made.

Issue I cannot answer is what level now of cases will be okay to not mess with schools and hospitals as well as business temporarily closing due to lack of workers. Below that level is a safer level to me. I do not know where that is yet to say?