Thread by @jimbuctwit

This South Dakota Dept of Education's @sddoe school reopening guidance. At first glance it looks like a lot of thought & work went into it. On deeper review it strikes me as extremely WEAK. No real guidance at all. Lots of "limit this", "consider that".

bit.ly/3h30dim

I have not studied all the links yet. The one re mitigation in schools indicates that if there are cases in a school they should look for gaps in prevention strategies. Why not assume there will be cases and look for gaps NOW, implement them NOW to prevent the cases?

I find it interesting that there is no consideration given to the degree of community spread of CoV in a school's community, and likewise, no consideration given to a known close contact of an CoV-infected person entering and spending the day in a school.

Here's a cool graphic showing when @SDDOH receives a report of a case, (some # of days after test done?), they'll call the case to determine close contacts. Case & school will figure out close contacts so they can be called & quarantined.

...

For this contact tracing & quarantining to work schools would have to keep students in closed pods with no intermingling with other class pods. No passing in halls, eating lunch in rooms, etc. Possible in grade & middle schools (maybe) but difficult in HS.

Seems untenable.

...

I'm being critical again with incomplete info & no great suggestions. I suspect many/most parents won't review DOE documents nor those offered by local districts. They depend on authorities to do what is right, given current state of knowledge re pandemic. Difficult times ahead.