Dear Wendy

Cuomo’s Department of Health has literally said that it will be providing zero school reopening guidance this year. Districts are on their own and, so far, nyc does not have a reopening plan. We know there will be masks and there will not be a remote option. And that’s it. No other details, like testing, how lunches will be handled, quarantine policies, social distance, or ventilation has been shared. A million+ kids – more than double last year’s in-person enrollment – are expected back in school in just under five weeks and parents don’t know how they’ll be kept safe. It’s a nightmare.

Fyodor, I disagree with you about the CDC. Everyone who was following covid data carefully knew what a grave mistake they made in May telling vaccinated ppl to ditch the masks. It was the worst thing they could have said at that point. They hoped it would inspire hesitant folks to get vaccinated and, of course, it backfired.

Leslie, I wish I shared your optimism that schools will be relatively low risk here in nyc but that just is not the case. In summer school, where only 1/5 of our student body is enrolled and only 10% of them are tested every two weeks, thousands – literally thousands – are in quarantine right now bc of in school covid exposure. Over 200 classrooms are closed and two schools, with at least four cases each, are currently under investigation for in-school transmission. (Two schools so far this summer have had proven in-school transmission after days-long investigations).

By CDC standards, NYC is now considered high risk for covid transmission and unvaccinated people are particularly vulnerable, of course. All kids under 12 are unvaxxed and only 1/3 of 12-17 year olds are vaccinated. Cases in nyc are doubling every two weeks and hospitalizations have increased 246% in a month. If this pace continues, when schools open in less than five weeks, we’ll be at January levels of covid transmission and our hospitals will be nearing capacity. NYC public schools have up to 35 kids in a classroom (max of 32 in elementary). Classrooms have poor ventilation – many of the windows don’t even open or they only open a couple inches. My kids’ old school didn’t even have hand soap in the bathrooms and I’m sure that’s true of many public schools in the city. Many of them don’t have adequate outdoor space for eating lunch. Kids will likely eat lunch indoors, unmasked of course. They often eat breakfast together (free breakfast is provided to all nyc public school kids) and snacks for the lower grades.

We may have higher vaccination rates in nyc than other places in the country, but so far, only 60% of DoE staff is vaccinated (my kids’ new charter school is mandating vaccines for the staff so that’s great!). And, I dont know if youve been on public transpiration recently, but it’s like a 70% mask compliance on a good day. NYC kids regularly take public trans to get to and from school every day.

I am *very* worried for the kids on New York this fall.

Not overstepping! Drew and I were both tested last year for antibodies and tested negative. That doesn’t mean we didn’t have covid – I do know of ppl who tested positive for covid but not for antibodies later on – but we decided not to test the kids. I wish we had. I think it’s too late now, but may do it anyway.

GG, sorry to hear about your marital issues. You did the right thing and I hope you’re feeling ok. We’re here for you if you need to vent!

Fyodor: I took a look at that link you shared. The data for pediatric hospitalizations is from May 2020 through feb 2021, before the delta variant even emerged. It’s a much different scene now for our unvaxxed kids. Not to be hysterical and overly alarmist about it – the odds of a kid being hospitalized are still low, but I’m not sure they’re lower than the odds of a middle aged vaccinated person being hospitalized like you say. In fact, based on data I’ve seen, I know the odds are higher for an unvaxxed child. I’ve been following the CEOs of the two hospitals in Springfield Missouri, where delta first hit in the US. Every few days, they share stats about their hospitalized patients. They’ve had a total of about 15-20 children, from two weeks old to 18, hospitalized for covid complications (some needed ICU care, a few needed ventilators). There have been elderly fully vaccinated covid patients hospitalized (I can’t remember the number but they’ve made up around 8% of the overall total). But there have been zero middle aged fully vaccinated covid patients needing hospitalizations. The odds of needing hospitalization – at least in that region, at least during a Delta surge – we’re greater for unvaxxed children than their vaxxed parents.

I’m definitely hear more and more about breakthrough infections. My friend’s husband has cancer and tested positive last week (fully vaccinated). Thankfully, his symptoms have been mild she said (like, a flu). They have a kid (under 12, so unvaccinated) who they sent to the grandparents and everyone was tested yesterday but I haven’t heard what the results are. I was talking to another friend on the phone yesterday who has a group thread with a bunch of college friends who are spread out mostly around the east coast and two of them currently have breakthrough cases. One flew out to California to help out his mom as his dad was hospitalized with a breakthrough case. He got covid while he was there and brought it back home with him (didn’t have symptoms before he left) and potentially passed it along to his son (under 12) – it’s too early still to test him.

All of us with kids under 12 – ok, not all of us, but a lot of us – are kind of freaking out because the risk of getting breakthrough cases and passing it to our unprotected children has suddenly skyrocketed. I had a few weeks of feeling pretty safe and now I’m back to being very cautious. My friend I was talking to yesterday has kids the same age as mine and they’ve both been out of school this whole time too and we are in agreement that our kids are going back this September no matter what bc the damage to their social development, mental health, and academic skills will be a given if they don’t. A year and a half is the MAX kids this age can be out of school and not start to experience some major effects. We both would sacrifice anything to get them in school safely (even part-time! we’ll take a hybrid schedule!). We’d stay home around the clock until they can get vaccinated if that would help at all in keeping community levels lows enough to keep schools safe. Of course, it’s not up to just us, unfortunately…