Infection rates in 44107 and Lakewood City Schools

[Betsy Voinovich]

Today the school buildings opened for the first time since March in the partial mode, which means the student population is divided in half, so that there can be more space between individual students and staff and students. To me it seems that the virus level is too high to open buildings in such a densely populated community with a new more transmissible variation on the horizon. My children are taking their classes at home, following the remote model. Lakewood Schools gave parents a choice.

Is it safe to be in school? There are strong opinions on both sides: most who advocate for students' return to the buildings have voiced concerns about their children's mental health and academic abilities declining as consequences of being at home. There are also economic issues with parents who cannot afford to stay home to supervise their children and lose work. How healthy will their families be if they lose the roof over their heads?

I don't know the answer and I'm glad I didn't have to make the decision. I think our Superintendent Dr. Barnes has been Solomon-like with the decisions he's had to make.

So they're in! What I want to do is keep track of what happens. There are two indicators we can look at: the dashboard that reports daily cases in our schools and the daily zip code tally from the state of Ohio.

In a story I wrote about the schools opening for this week's print issue of the Lakewood Observer (http://lakewoodobserver.com/read/2021/0 ... -buildings)
, I reported the Covid19 cases within the school district for that day, which was this past Tuesday, two days ago.

On Tuesday, Lakewood City Schools' dashboard listed 9 Covid19 cases with 30 quarantining. This includes staff and students. The state of Ohio zip code listing had 44107 at 2,984 cases which put us at 5,889.6 out of a hundred thousand, or 5.8% of our population.

Today, the first day that students are officially back in the building, the Lakewood City schools' dashhboard lists 22 Covid19 cases with 57 quarantining. This is an increase of 13 infections and 27 quarantining in 2 days.

The state of Ohio's zip code listing for yesterday (they update every day at 2pm) was 3,003 cases, which is 5927.1 out of a hundred thousand, or 5.9 percent.

I am hoping (as is everyone) for the best.

Betsy Voinovich

[Dan Alaimo]

I don't think we need Solomon as much as a City health director / department to tell people, along with the Supintendent and the Mayor,, decisively what we see - that it is simply not safe for the City as whole for the school buildings to be open at this time.

Two questions:
-- Has the HVAC issue been addressed?
-- And to Betsy, what would you tell a parent in another district, in another zip code with COVID numbers similar to Lakewood, who has decided to send her children back, after much consideration?

My sense is rhe numbers have changed so much recently, with the trend line pointed straight up, that with a new President we may be headed for a national lockdown later this month, like Conservative Boris Johnson did in the U.K. It's the only way to knock this virus down enough so we can survive until most are vaccinated. A decision made last month, based on last month's numbers, needs to be reconsidered.

[Amy Martin]

My guess is that it won't be long before an outbreak leads us back to on-line learning. . .

[Betsy Voinovich]

UPDATE:

I wrote my first post at 1:15pm today, just after lunch. I checked the Lakewood City Schools' dashboard just now (5:15pm) and noticed that the numbers have increased since earlier this afternoon. The date on the earlier posting was 1/7/21 so I guess they update more than once a day.

The new number of Covid19 cases in Lakewood Schools is 28, with 56 quarantining. This morning the case number was 22. It has gone up 6 during the day.
My daughters want me to keep track of Lakewood High specifically. When I posted earlier they had 8 Covid19 cases. Now they have 11.

The case count for the 44107 today is 3,033 cases. This is 30 more than yesterday and puts us at 5986.3 out of 100,000 or 5.9 percent of us are infected.

From Dan Alaimo:
-- And to Betsy, what would you tell a parent in another district, in another zip code with COVID numbers similar to Lakewood, who has decided to send her children back, after much consideration?

Hi Dan. To quote my first post: "To me it seems that the virus level is too high to open buildings in such a densely populated community with a new more transmissible variation on the horizon." I can only say to another parent from this city or another like it, I wouldn't do it, I think it's too dangerous for our family. We have family members who are high risk. If the numbers get too high here, I will find another zip code for grocery shopping, a different Drug Mart and probably also order food from restaurants outside of Lakewood.

I'm grateful that I have a choice with the different learning plans available from the LCS. I understand that parents are weighing different factors. I can only speak for myself, and as I said, make sure that all of us get a good look at the numbers as they appear.


Betsy Voinovich

[Dan Alaimo]

Thanks, Betsy.

[Mark Kindt]

Yesterday in the Sun News under the topic of "Lakewood Schools" it is reported that the Superintendent had "access to localized data specific to Zip codes".

The Superintendent is further quoted:

"Our Zip code data is improving in 44107 proper, as well as the county data."

I will not editorialize here. The article, accurate or not, speaks for itself.

[Betsy Voinovich]

Hi Mark--

After I reading your post I googled Cuyahoga County Covid19 rates and went here: https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/state/ohio/county/cuyahoga-county and found this:

covid graphss.png (151.6 KiB) Viewed 8989 times

If you go to the site it's interactive so if you hover your cursor over the graph you can get cases, deaths and percentages by day for the county.

You can see that if you compare where we are at now to the 7 day average of 1453 cases a day on Dec 13, that we are much better. That high probably had to do with people getting
together for Thanksgiving. It looks like the lowest 7 day average in recent weeks was 683 on Dec 28th. From there the curve starts climbing again but nowhere near as high as that high
on Dec 13.

So if Dr. Barnes is using that high as his starting point, Cuyahoga County has only half as many cases as that day. The Lakewood City Schools' Administration made the decision
to keep the kids home in September. If you look at September 20 for example, the 7 day average was 56 cases. So we are way higher than back in September.

Death rates, for the latest day they reported which was Jan 6, 17 people died of Covid19 in the county. Jan 5: 6 died, Jan 4: 8, Jan 3:1, Dec 31:2, Dec 30: 7, Dec 29: 2.

I don't know of anywhere to find death rates for Lakewood.

So my point is that depending where you start on the chart you could say that we are much healthier or much sicker.

The District has stated that the health of the school population is not the only thing that guides their decisions. If a lot of parents want their kids to go back, they have to pay attention to that. If parents are okay with the risks and are demanding that their kids go back into the school buildings or else, the Board and Administration responds to that. They don't want to lose their jobs either. Board member Ed Favre told me that 80 percent of parents want their kids back in school. I'm not sure that's exactly right, because on the survey we were sent, parents had to check a box only if they wanted their kids to stay with remote learning. If you didn't check anything, or you didn't see the survey, the default position was that your child was counted
as one who wanted to return to the buildings. Mr. Favre also told me that the District is losing kids to other school systems and programs that have in-person school. So in the same way that
a parent sends their kid to school because they cannot afford to stay home from work, to some degree our District is sending kids back into buildings because they can't afford not to. All of this stuff factors in.

As I said, Lakewood parents are fortunate to have a choice to keep their children home and learning remotely with real Lakewood curriculum and full time Lakewood teachers online if we want to.

Betsy Voinovich

[Dan Alaimo]

Some survey. Another reason for me to be skeptical about the school board/administration, and why I voted against the last levy - again, it wasn't about the dollars for me. Transparency, please .

[Dan Alaimo]

Some survey. Another reason for me to be skeptical about the school board/administration, and why I voted against the last levy - again, it wasn't about the dollars for me. Transparency, please .

[Betsy Voinovich]

Here are today's numbers from the LCS District's dashboard: 25 Covid 19 cases, 50 quarantining. The case number has gone down by 3, the quarantine number has gone down by 6. The number at Lakewood HS is still 11 with 10 quarantining.

The new case number for 44107 is 3,071. The new percentage number is 6.012. Over 6 percent of Lakewood is infected. That's up from yesterday by 38 cases.

Betsy Voinovich

[Dan Alaimo]

Just checking: are these cumulative numbers or current numbers?

[Jim O'Bryan]

Just checking: are these cumulative numbers or current numbers?

Dan the 3,071 would be cumulative .

The important number here is new case rate. That has been steadily climbing.


.

[Dan Alaimo]

So riddle me this:
What are chances of a student in the lower grades being exposed to an asymptomatic student who has in turn been exposed to an adult household member, symptomatic or asymptomatic? 1 in 20, 1 in 30, or much lower than that? My understanding is the other student would be a potential carrier, correct? Masks will help, but can't be expected to be consistently worn, especially over an extended period of time, and in lunch room and PE.

[Betsy Voinovich]

Hi Dan,

All of this stuff is pretty confusing. It seems like from the number of cases listed for Lakewood (over 3000) that the 44107 numbers must be cumulative. As Jim says the number to look at is the new cases, which last week started at around 20 new cases a day and was up to 30 new cases a day by the end of the week.

The Cuyahoga County chart I posted up there is not cumulative, those are daily rates which go up and down. (If something's cumulative the number always goes up, right?) Those are
new cases per day and a seven day average of new cases and deaths per day, not cumulative.

The way Lakewood Schools list Covid19 cases is both? Like the 11 Covid cases at the high school. I'm assuming that the 11 cases on the chart today are the
same 11 cases that were there on Friday, not new ones. But the number of cases at Harding has gone down one, so someone is recovered and back to school.
I'm confused, I'm not sure how to read this stuff and I'm the last person you want to ask about percentage chance of exposure in schools.

Rocky River's Covid dashboard is different from Lakewood's. They list new cases one at a time, by the day that they are reported. So
they don't tally it up. A person who tested positive and reported it on Thursday is not included in Friday's tally. You have to count them up yourself.


I'm hoping that LCS' Administration is better at understanding and crunching these numbers than I am.

Betsy Voinovich

[Betsy Voinovich]

Update on today's numbers.

In Lakewood Schools there are 26 cases with 50 quarantining. Still 11 at Lakewood High School, one more at Harding.

In the 44107 zip code the number of cases is 3201, that's up 130 new cases since Friday. About 43 new cases a day on average including today.

Betsy Voinovich