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Why are cases surging? I’ll answer my own question. A thread 
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We are in this situation because all logic about how an epidemic progresses was ignored for months and the concerning reservoir of hundreds of cases from summer was left unchecked with no critical pushback and advocacy for prevention by most health professionals.
The needed expansion of the testing/lab capacity was scrapped to cut costs. Very few complained as it happened. The lack of TTI planning for the certain fall surge was a very shortsighted move. But how dare you close schools early or extend the break?
Investing in setting up the structure to process large volumes of samples would have costed much less than running tests in a California private lab. Expanding our lab capacity would have also come in handy for when the next pandemic hits. Instead: schools need to open.
Next: I think what encourages socializing and travel is the bad public health messaging that has been going on all along. Not extended breaks.
Regarding the reaction to closing schools for just enough time to reduce transmission: are folks once more going to push against it?
Regarding the reaction to closing schools for just enough time to reduce transmission: are folks once more going to push against it?
The consequences of lack of epidemiology and public health training of those advising the government on population interventions, that was glaringly obvious in June...
...has been fully realized: exponential growth of cases, full hospitals, deaths and the now documented high prevalence of infections in schools that have conducted surveillance. But that is not yet clear if the solution we’re advocating for is no extended school break.
It is still appalling that the idea of sending kids to unsafe schools with no ventilation, air quality control, no strict cohorting, no proper surveillance and without a functional contact tracing system that prioritizes school populations was, and continues to be, acceptable.
This seemed to be the only thing child health advocates could think of as a recommendation and solution for child mental health (was it really that)? Nothing else was proposed, just a baseless ‘reopen, let kids mingle, it’s safe, they don’t get infected, they don’t transmit.’
The argument that HCWs need schools open as long as possible, and reopened as quickly as possible, so they can go back to hospitals to deal with the mess that was caused by the ill informed advice given by people with no public health experience to policy makers is ridiculous.
It is clear that prevention is not the expertise of most tertiary care hospital staff, and even I may argue it should not be. Excellent complex care is their forte. Still, the key advisors of the policies and half-baked measures that led us to this were not trained in prevention.
If prevention was a priority, we would not be in this mess. Still, it seems the choice is to advocate to reopen schools as quickly as possible, so HCWs can quickly go back to their posts and staff the ICU beds that are full because of exactly this short sighted medicalized advice
Maybe, over the holidays, we should take some time to remember why hospitals and ICUs are past capacity and so many people are dying. It has to do with prevention and proper planning. Those concepts that were never a priority.
