Covid-19 #14 - Are We Done Yet?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

As for online learning, I'm kinda torn.
- It's harder to learn in front of a screen (it requires more focus, motivation, and obviously some basic computer skills) and not everyone can do it. In my experience, even "digital natives" don't necessarily do well online. In fact, I'm tempted to say online learning increases existing socio-economic inequalities. Students from poorer backgrounds find it harder for several reasons: they're not used to using computers as tools (they use smartphones more), their internet access isn't great, they often have less time because they work or baby-sit (so they work at night)... etc.
BUT
- Logistically speaking it's interesting for everybody.
The main problem in my eyes is that, of course, many universities will just see the shift as an opportunity to implement budget cuts, when in fact developing online learning would require significant investments (training teachers and students, reorganizing the infrastructure, ensuring equality of access... etc).

These are valid pros and cons, but I really think there are two things missing: cheating and lack of community. College is so much more than just the work you do in the classroom, and many will be denied that. Academically, the experience is diminished too. Many people I spoke with when we had online tests would do them open book. That's really not great IMO, and I think not being in the classroom lets students off on challenging themselves.

1 hour ago, Ormond said:

The problem here is what people mean by "when the lockdown is over." It may be different in the UK, but in the USA the polls I've seen show at least half of Americans believing that governments are ending the lockdown too early. There are a lot of Americans who aren't going to be ending their personal lockdowns until they are sure their communities are meeting the CDC standards, not what their governor says. 

Sad that this breaking down largely on party lines.

16 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

 that many bars and restaurants will close and new ones will eventually have to be created to meet demand.
I could see it easily taking years to go back to pre-pandemic levels.

A cousin of mine is a former brewer, and he's getting back into it. He thinks while bars will comeback, home brewing will become popular, and for a time things could go underground a bit like back in the bootlegging days. He could very well be wrong, but he is informed and has been speaking with other people who know how to make stuff at home, and says that opinion is one he's heard from others.

He does make a damn good cider with a fairly high %, at least by U.S. standards. 

[Rippounet]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

These are valid pros and cons, but I really think there are two things missing: cheating and lack of community. College is so much more than just the work you do in the classroom, and many will be denied that. Academically, the experience is diminished too. Many people I spoke with when we had online tests would do them open book. That's really not great IMO, and I think not being in the classroom lets students off on challenging themselves.

Yeah, don't get me started on cheating.

On the last mock test I did, about one third of students just googled the answer to a question. It's very obvious because they talked of the 2014 IndieRef... which was mentioned neither in the course nor in the document they had to analyse.
And that's a mock test.
Why would anybody learn anything in such conditions?
The problem is, of course that you want a degree to be about more than googling. No one wants our future engineers or lawyers to be incapable of doing anything when the wifi is down.

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

A cousin of mine is a former brewer, and he's getting back into it. He thinks while bars will comeback, home brewing will become popular, and for a time things could go underground a bit like back in the bootlegging days. He could very well be wrong, but he is informed and has been speaking with other people who know how to make stuff at home, and says that opinion is one he's heard from others.

Home brewing was becoming popular here before the pandemic.

[Fragile Bird]

A friend who lives in South Carolina went to the grocery store and got yelled at by some asshole because she was wearing a mask. My friend is not a shy wallflower, I haven't heard all the details yet, but she came home upset. She's immunocompromised. She shouldn't have to explain that to strangers, her reasons for wearing a mask aren't anybody's business.

What is wrong with these fuckers? 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

42 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Yeah, don't get me started on cheating.

On the last mock test I did, about one third of students just googled the answer to a question. It's very obvious because they talked of the 2014 IndieRef... which was mentioned neither in the course nor in the document they had to analyse.
And that's a mock test.
Why would anybody learn anything in such conditions?
The problem is, of course that you want a degree to be about more than googling. No one wants our future engineers or lawyers to be incapable of doing anything when the wifi is down.

I only blatantly cheated once in college, and it's a running joke with my friend. We were in a film class and one day we had a test and I just told her that I had to cheat off of her's because I wasn't prepared. There were 25 questions. She got 23/25. I got 24/25. To this day neither of us have any idea how (and I actually didn't cheat that badly, I just answered the questions and looked if she gave the same one). I guess I just didn't like one of her answers.

But online, it's impossible to stop it. And it's so easy, even if you don't really want to. Sounds like your students weren't all that clever though. If you're going to cheat, don't give the obvious answers other cheaters are giving.  

Quote

Home brewing was becoming popular here before the pandemic.

It's been very popular here for a while too. I just think his argument has some merit. A lot of people don't want to get near anyone they don't know. but a house party with their own homemade shit......

[rotting sea cow]

Just my opinion. Not really interested in discussing it.

I hate online learning. I hate online teaching. I hate telecons and such. Not really against homeoffice (I have no kids), but transmission of knowledge and creation of trust have both enough friction without adding the layer of multiple technical issues and impersonality that these so-called replacement create.

[Zorral]

I can't imagine going to a restaurant, even outdoors, as being any fun whatsoever, if even minimal health precautions against infection are being taken.  It cannot be at all like it was Before.

This Memorial Day weekend is deeply concerning for making things even wors.. FweDumb USA is determined to pack the beaches, tattoo parlors, bars and parks to the max, without masks, etc.

24 states – Midwest and Southern, all Red — declaring full open, while their rates of infection and death continue to climb:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/study-estimates-24-states-still-have-uncontrolled-coronavirus-spread/2020/05/22/d3032470-9c43-11ea-ac72-3841fcc9b35f_story.html

 

Quote

[ “In 24 states, however, the model shows a reproduction number over 1. Texas tops the list, followed by Arizona, Illinois, Colorado, Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa, Alabama, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, New Mexico, Missouri, Delaware, South Carolina, Massachusetts, North Carolina, California, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Maryland.” ]

Yet assholes are refusing service to people wearing masks! And customers come into places of business who request masks, not wearing any, and deliberately cough and spit on the workers. What kind of country is this?????? I watched a video of the R-governor of North Dakota actually crying on camera as he begged NoDaks to stop seeing masks as political, to understand these can be worn by a relative protecting their 5-year old who is undergoing cancer treatments.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/22/us-stores-against-face-masks

 

Quote

[ “In the last few weeks a spate of American stores have made headlines after putting up signs telling customers who wear masks they will be denied entry. On Thursday, Vice reported on a Kentucky convenience store that put up a sign reading: “NO Face Masks allowed in store. Lower your mask or go somewhere else. Stop listening to Kentucky governor [Andy] Beshear, he’s a dumbass.” “]

It’s gonna be bad in those Red states — actually it already is – and continuing to worsen every day. But they’re also hiding and disappearing the numbers and lying about the numbers, because that is who They are.

It will be bad here too, because people from those states will be driving here, looking to party in the streets, if only to own the libtards, while a whole buncha people from NY will have driven to those states to party. Recall, upstate you will find at least as many confederate and nazi flags flying as in Mississippi.

To make it worse, this weekend the governor caved to the pressure, said 10 people can gather together anywhere for any reason. This means blocks will have, at minimum, clusters, one after another, with a chunk of people shoulder-to-shoulder together next to another chunk of 10 people all the way up and down the streets. And soon they will mingle all together — particularly as they are Young, and you know, I do have a lot of sympathy for that — but not for Dumb and Endangering Others.

We’re going to have be extra careful, I think for the next two months.

[Rippounet]

5 minutes ago, Zorral said:

It’s gonna be bad in those Red states — actually it already is – and continuing to worsen every day. But they’re also hiding and disappearing the numbers and lying about the numbers, because that is who They are.

I don't think you can hide an epidemic though. At some point everyone knows someone who's been sick or lost someone.
Anecdotally, in my case:
- One of my friends was sick (possible link with my own case).
- The son of one of my bosses was sick (no link - but same region).
- A friend of one of my colleagues was sick (no link - but same region)
- One of my cousins was sick (no link - different region).
- The grandather of one my friends died (no link - different region).
And this is with only around 5%-6% of the population infected. And I expect to learn of more cases around me as I progressively reconnect with everyone I know.

Conservatives can be idiots in the US, but at some point even the dumbest person can connect the dots. Some of them will ignore reality for as long as they can, but some of them will also have to admit that this is not a hoax.
Of course they'll still find a way to blame everybody but themselves (or Trump)... They'll probably pin this on China for example.

[Jeor]

I'm a school teacher, and with regard to the online learning stuff, I think usage of it in education will increase, but not in a "paradigm-shift" sort of way and not to the same extent that we are seeing changes in the workplace with working from home.

At the college/university level, there's already been a fair bit of online delivery (depending on where you are). But as has been pointed out, one of the biggest issues is assessment. Purely online learning is a hotbed for plagiarism and cheating, and people will (rightly, in my view) question the credibility of some of those courses. The second part of that is the cost. If courses are delivered online, I think there is a limit to how much someone will pay for it. Certainly nowhere near the usual level of American college fees. And the third part is the community/networking that occurs at a lot of these places; people are paying as much for the experience as they are for the content.

I think there is a market for online courses, but it will necessarily have to be at a lower revenue stream and not for everybody. Some community colleges and so on could probably make a good play for it, I think the model will be mostly online material with some designated "on-campus" or in-person "intensives". Almost like having to complete 10 weeks of pre-work before attending a "conference" (at which there will be an exam).

[Kalbear]

24 states are on the upswing and are looking at an uncontrolled epidemic:

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/study-estimates-24-states-still-have-uncontrolled-coronavirus-spread/

Good times, good times.

[A True Kaniggit]

I don't really like the sad reaction face. It looks more worried than sad.

It needs tears.

[rotting sea cow]

I don't think I've seen this here

The mystery of the pandemic's ‘happy hypoxia’

Quote

Among the many surprises of the new coronavirus is one that seems to defy basic biology: infected patients with extraordinarily low blood-oxygen levels, or hypoxia, scrolling on their phones, chatting with doctors, and generally describing themselves as comfortable. Clinicians call them happy hypoxics.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6490/455

 

[rotting sea cow]

Another from Science Magazine

How Sweden wasted a ‘rare opportunity’ to study coronavirus in schools

Quote

There’s nearly universal agreement that widespread, long-lasting school closures harm children. Not only do children fall behind in learning, but isolation harms their mental health and leaves some vulnerable to abuse and neglect. But during this pandemic, does that harm outweigh the risk—to children, school staff, families, and the community at large—of keeping schools open and giving the coronavirus more chances to spread?

The one country that could have definitively answered that question has apparently failed to collect any data.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/how-sweden-wasted-rare-opportunity-study-coronavirus-schools

I actually asked @Ran about it. I would have expected that COVID had burnt its way through the schools, universities and kindergartens, but apparently even the Swedish don't know. It would have been certainly very interesting.

On a general sense. I feel there is a lack of care in terms of data keeping and using opportunities to understand the disease better, with many opportunities missed. Sure, some of them can be looked retrospectively, but in many cases won't be possible. For example, I still expect that something come out from the USS Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle aircraft carriers outbreaks. I also hope that some people look in detail the huge disparity in morbidity and mortality among nursing homes. I've heard of nursing homes completely obliterated, others where most of the cases are mild or asymptomatic and others which have avoided any problem.

I feel there is too much focus on the sick (understandingly)  and not on the healthy, i.e. those who don't get sick at all and those who have had only mild cases. The later categories might have the key to defeat the disease.

 

[Ran]

Yes, saw that article. I think in the early stages of this, where tests were very limited, it made sense that the resources were focused on those who were seriously ill and doctors needed to know whether this novel coronavirus was a cause or not. Spending tests on random sampling from, specifically, school workers or students was probably not in the cards. Now, though, we have lab capacity for 100,000  tests a week... but there's a bit of furor in Sweden right now over the fact that nothing like that number are actually being done, largely because the regional and communal governments can't seem to figure out how many tests they should authorize and for whom beyond the ill and essential workers (which school staff are not considered to be, though IMO I think by this stage they should be). But as the article notes, there are also legal and privacy restrictions that seem to make it harder to do research.

That said, other than the one outbreak in Skellefteå (which seemed to be driven by adults passing it to each other) there's been little evidence of any significant cluster outbreaks in Swedish schools. It's not the kind of depth of data researchers would want, but it's something.

[Which Tyler]

https://www.nationalmemo.com/militia-gang-threatens-police-over-shutdown-protests

Radical anti government militia group threatens police - but it’s cool, they’re white. If they were not, well, you know what would be happening...

[rotting sea cow]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

Yes, saw that article. I think in the early stages of this, where tests were very limited, it made sense that the resources were focused on those who were seriously ill and doctors needed to know whether this novel coronavirus was a cause or not. Spending tests on random sampling from, specifically, school workers or students was probably not in the cards. Now, though, we have lab capacity for 100,000  tests a week... but there's a bit of furor in Sweden right now over the fact that nothing like that number are actually being done, largely because the regional and communal governments can't seem to figure out how many tests they should authorize and for whom beyond the ill and essential workers (which school staff are not considered to be, though IMO I think by this stage they should be). But as the article notes, there are also legal and privacy restrictions that seem to make it harder to do research.

That said, other than the one outbreak in Skellefteå (which seemed to be driven by adults passing it to each other) there's been little evidence of any significant cluster outbreaks in Swedish schools. It's not the kind of depth of data researchers would want, but it's something.

Thanks for the info.

One thing that actually bothers/worries me is that it seems (at least from my PoV) that governments do not have actual plans for the forthcoming autumn/winter other than pray that a vaccine is available and/or close everything if things start to look bad again. Since there is an increasing amount of information about the disease and its transmission, countries in the northern hemisphere should use this window of opportunity during summer to think and prepare more clever strategies.

In that respect, the Swedish model is very important to tune the said strategies. To see what things went well, what went wrong, what can be improved, etc. Hopefully something like that can be implemented instead of the Spanish model, which terrified me more than the disease itself.

[Fragile Bird]

4 minutes ago, Triskele said:

I ordered a pulse ox on Amazon weeks ago and am told I might get it by early June.  

I had one that was 12 years old, purchased when my mom was dying in hospital. When I got sick I dragged it out, cleaned it up - and it worked, for a few days, then died. Ads for them keep showing up on Facebook, for a lot more money than what I paid. A nurse friend thought I was nuts when I told her I was using it.

[Fury Resurrected]

I think if you check bondage stores you might find places with pulse oximeters in stock for breath play.

[karaddin]

I'm always wary of the pushback against online learning in that yes the experience of in person teaching is better, but online learning can make it accessible to people who would never be able to do it otherwise and that's still a hell of a lot better than nothing. It can be much more accessible for single parents, for people with certain disabilities etc. Its just another tool to use, and of course it needs to be tailored appropriately, including not expecting to be able to duplicate testing methods.

In general though I think more tests need to move away from being closed book - yes you may need to be able to perform some tasks without internet access, but for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of situations the internet will be available. The ability to quickly find what you need on the internet, understand it and know how to use it is more important than what is known for immediate recall. In the above example of students quite blatantly cheating - that gives you a clear avenue for approaching the same "assessment" accepting that people are going to use google and still structure it in a way that punishes poor google usage.

[dog-days]

My background has mostly involved studying humanities (school); humanities plus dead language (university); and as an adult learning modern languages plus a social sciences postgrad. 

I don't want to deny that for some people online learning really works. At the same time, when my boss starts on her favourite spiel about how online learning is so marvellous, so convenient, so much better than attending all those silly lectures, I mostly want to curl into a ball and cry. Lectures made me want to get out of bed as an undergrad when I was feeling very down; dialogic tutorials at postgrad and hours spent with fellow language pilgrims in classrooms in the UK and Europe have been wonderful, meaningful shared experiences. They've been about education as a pleasure and a collaborative process, not just education as another tick-boxy exercise. 

At the same time, I've done various online modules of compulsory training at work, and found it largely involved clicking through slides and doing a multiple choice test at the end. Having a decent short-term memory, I'd zoom through the slides, ace the test, then forget everything in a couple of hours. 

[Proudfeet]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

In general though I think more tests need to move away from being closed book - yes you may need to be able to perform some tasks without internet access, but for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of situations the internet will be available. The ability to quickly find what you need on the internet, understand it and know how to use it is more important than what is known for immediate recall. In the above example of students quite blatantly cheating - that gives you a clear avenue for approaching the same "assessment" accepting that people are going to use google and still structure it in a way that punishes poor google usage.

Is that not how it is already done even with paper tests? You start with basic questions that can be answered with regurgitating textbook definitions and minimal application of concepts at introductory levels and end with only application at the higher levels.