I have a story. Rascal did not fall asleep last night until like 4 am. I have no fucking clue what happened. By 2 am, Jammies had left to sleep elsewhere and I was feigning sleep, hoping he'd get bored and try to sleep. (However I would snap at him when he messed with my face or turned on the lights.)
He did get bored, and eventually got up and wandered through the dark house, and commenced into his internal world of running back and forth in a straight line, making explosion noises, for the next 45-60 minutes. Then he started playing with Legos or something. After that I was fully asleep and when I woke up at 5:30, he was asleep next to me.
It happens that he has today off school for Indigenous People's Day, but I have no idea what to do if this happened on a school night. He's always been a bad sleeper but nothing like this. (I did reach out to the psychiatrist already, so we'll see what she says. Also he's not keeping it together very well in 1st grade - the teacher called last week to say that she's unable to handle his rudeness/perpetual irritation.) Ugh.
Wow, that sounds miserable. Some kind of side effect from ADHD meds, maybe?
I was wondering that too. But he's on a short-acting stimulant, 2x/day, that is supposedly out of his system by roughly dinnertime, so the other possibility is that this was overdrive symptoms that just broke through his sleep cycle.
I had my first real COVID scare, and even that was glancing. My roommate-tenant was experiencing a symptom, so he got a quick test. Until the results came, he kept to his own room as much as possible, and we both wore masks in the common areas. The test came back quickly as negative, so we're all good (the symptom always had a more likely alternate explanation.)
Good, I think, that we've had this initial test of what we do in this kind of situation.
5: Would be so much better if you had rapid tests on hand that you could take for a few days.
Good, I think, that we've had this initial test of what we do in this kind of situation.
Yeah, we had a scare a few weeks ago that was very helpful in developing an approach that worked well when we did get a probable COVID case later. Amadea is back home and feeling mostly better but still not 100%.
Jammies told me that this morning, when he got up, one of the lights was on in the front of the house, and Rascal had gotten his favorite board game, and also the tortillas were out. So he had himself a party, after he was done with Legos in the dark, in the back of the house.
Jammies didn't let him sleep in past 10 am this morning. (I didn't have the day off.) And reports that he was tired all day, and fingers crossed that he drops off easily tonight.
We had our first contact with the school's "test and stay" protocol this weekend. They're pool testing the kids weekly (opt-in, but it seems almost everyone has opted in) and once before we got a note from the principal saying there was a positive test but our kid was not a close contact; fine.
This time we got that same message on Friday but on Sunday the mom of a classmate told my wife that they'd just gotten a different message: their kid was in a cohort with a positive test, so he was a close contact. The mom-text network revealed that another family had gotten a phone call letting them know that their kid was (we think?) actually in the positive pool, so he'd need a negative test before returning to school on Tuesday. The city testing site was closed today for the holiday, so they needed to get the test done on Sunday; the call came Sunday afternoon, 90 min before closing time. The specific reason this other mom called us was that we had hung out after school on Thursday, so the boys had another level of contact that the school wasn't aware of. Masked, but even so. So we took him in and got a test on Sunday afternoon too (negative, thank goodness).
There are other communication and implementation issues as well (eg the two fifth-grade classes mix for most of their core subjects, so why is only one class considered the "cohort," if that's even how they're deciding who gets what messages?) so while we are happy to have a testing program and glad that so far there hasn't seemed to be any in-school transmission, we have Questions.
1 is a depressingly familiar story for me, except that my kid is 11 and still has great difficulty getting to sleep on many nights.
1 is a depressingly familiar story for me, except that my kid is 11 and still has great difficulty getting to sleep on many nights.
"There are other communication and implementation issues as well"
Lol last week they accidentally sent out the "your child IS a close contact" email to the entire school (~2000 students!) because they copy-pasted the wrong text. I immediately wrote back and asked which kid since we have two in that school and they emailed everyone again 45 minutes later saying whoops our bad, here's the "you're not a close contact" text.
Good luck Heebie- at least you have an embarrassing story you can tell to Rascal's future partner.
9: I know so many parents at work (mostly support staff) who decline to let their kids be tested. Particularly with those with kids over 12 who are vaccinated. Near as I can tell they feel pretty confident that they will be fine even if they get COVID. But if they test positive, they would have to stay out of school. What are the rules right now about going to school with a runny nose, lost smell/taste etc. if you'r not in the testing program?
I suppose that's also directed at 13.
District policy was described in the email they didn't mean to send to everyone:
If vaccinated- monitor symptoms for 14 days, stay home if symptoms, if none can go to school.
If not vaccinated, 3 options:
1- test & stay- go to school with daily rapid tests, quarantine outside school
2- quarantine at home 7 days, test on day 5, return day 8 if negative
3- if no test, quarantine at home 10 days, return day 11
That doesn't really answer what to do if you're vaccinated and do show symptoms. We had that last week, no positive tests but a minor cold or something went around the house. The unvaxed kid we got a PCR test and she stayed home two days until it was negative. Other kids we bought some rapid tests to confirm they had the same thing and they went to school.
16: I heard something on WBUR about the need to scale up testing for flu, because that will be back this year. We'll have to test more, because we need to distinguish it from COVID which we didn't need to before. Flu also requires isolation, but the requirements are different. Our rule at work was that you had to be fever-free without taking an antipyretic.
Yeah, our kid's under 12 so we don't face the what-if-you're-vaccinated question. In our case it seems like the trouble was the result coming back on the weekend: ordinarily (we're told) the school rapid-tests everyone in the positive pool ASAP tp identify the individual, and then works out who's been a close contact and notifies them of that fact, and tells the rest of the school they're *not* close contacts. Since the pool test result came back Saturday evening, they had to reach out to the pool right away without knowing yet who was the individual affected, and so without being able to initiate contact tracing. It seems the Friday email that started my story was actually from a different positive test; not being in the pool from the Saturday group means we wouldn't have heard anything about it yet, if not for knowing people who were.
As for what to do if you're symptomatic and vaccinated, or not testing, I imagine the rules are the same as they've always been for kids with illness: you're not supposed to be in school until you're 24 hours fever free without medication, like BG's work rule. Less concrete symptoms (sneezing, coughing, runny nose) are a judgment call, but generally because it's a PITA to have kids at home people send them in, I'm guessing.
11/12 is my fear! I do not want to return to newborn baby levels of sleep deprivation.
I have COVID symptoms at the moment, but I suspect it's probably a cold. Lateral flows have been negative. I have been in vague contact with people who are positive, though.
A lot of people we know have had it recently (in some cases, it's their second time). One person I know has had the unusual combination of multiple positive lateral flows AND negative PCR tests, which is a thing in the UK at the moment. He's had COVID before, and still has long covid symptoms, and is vaccinated. It cleared up in about 6 or 7 days, though. Friends who are teachers tell me that they have a very high percentage of kids out with COVID at the moment.
20: I've heard of positive Antigen with negative PCR. Michael Mina (not the chef) is a major advocate for them (epidemiologist, immunologist, and physician). On twitter he said that A net PCR pow antigen testbif classic COVID symptoms could be COVID.
"Friends who are teachers tell me that they have a very high percentage of kids out with COVID at the moment."
Yeah, rates in the 11-16 have been through the roof for weeks now.
21: My youngest has produced a positive antigen and negative PCR three times since the summer. The first was a real shock. By the third, we were like, "Ok, wait 24 hours for the negative PCR to come back." The school my oldest attends was getting a high enough rate of false positives on the quick tests that they switched vendors.
"A net PCR pow antigen testbif classic COVID symptoms could be COVID."
Or a stroke?
Further to 20, I read today that one possible* explanation might be that there's another routine seasonal coronavirus that's causing some of the lateral flow antigen tests to show positive. Apparently, they test the kits against a range of existing coronaviruses, but there are some they can't or don't test against.
* I don't think there's any strong evidence for this, but the virologist talking about it was speculating, because it's much more likely than the PCR tests missing genuine positives or some unusual variant.
I should link to the article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/12/calls-for-inquiry-as-negative-covid-pcr-tests-after-positive-lateral-flow-reported
24: Yeah, no. That was just me being inept on my iPad or iPhone. That was just before my bedtime (9:52pm EDT) which may have played a role in my poor typing.
That's an unusual bedtime. 10:00 would be easier to remember.
So the other day my ex-wife who I haven't had contact with for around ten years liked a year old reply tweet of mine. I think she knows my pseud since I started using it in ye olde days of blogdom. Though maybe it's just a coincidence. It feels a little weird.
And right before your movie comes out.
Rascal's teacher is solid and competent. But she's getting into power struggles and contacting us more and more often in ways that reveal that she doesn't have the skillset to deal with him. (I'm trying to show-not-tell that Rascal is difficult kid in the classroom instead of just claiming that my kids are tiring.) So I think she's a B+ teacher in a situation that requires an A+ skill set.
Anyway, today she texted me about an incident where he hit another kid. Then this afternoon she followed it up with, "We're learning about making predictions this week, so I read a book about being kind to others and tied it to my lesson. Hopefully this helps some."
I mean...no? He knows about kindness and classroom expectations. This is impulse control and poor self-regulation when he's frustrated.
This is going to be a long year.
You've got to be cruel to be kind.
So after several days of raucous public testimony on our proposed local mask ordinance, mostly being used more or less openly as a delaying tactic by opponents of masking, the city manager and another member of the mayor's staff tested positive for COVID and the Assembly abruptly canceled the scheduled extra meetings to hear additional testimony. Then at their regular meeting yesterday they passed a slightly different mask mandate as an emergency ordinance using a different procedural approach that didn't require taking public comment. Today the mayor vetoed it, and tomorrow the Assembly is meeting to override the veto. (The ordinance passed with more votes than are required for an override, so the override will happen.) The emergency ordinance doesn't contain a specific enforcement mechanism and the mayor will of course not enforce it, so it's unclear what practical impact all this will have, but anecdotally I've seen lots of businesses already putting up signs requiring masks and citing the ordinance so it may be enough just to give them cover. Cases may be plateauing but are still very high, as is the positive test rate. Hospital numbers are fluctuating a bit but also very high and crisis standards are still in place. We're not out of the woods yet.
Our transit district board just went wimpy on vaccines. They had a staff report and opportunity to impose a vaccine mandate. The two new members were gung-ho for it. Some older members asked questions about the risk of losing staff but zero of them opposed the proposal verbally. Then the motion to implement the policy while consulting the unions on details failed 3-3 with one member absent. After that failure, one of the previous no voters moved that management simply "discuss" the mandate with the unions and bring it back to the Board for further consideration... in December.
Why does it take two months to have some simple conversations? People are dying! -- asked the two new members. They tried to change the timing to one month from now and failed. December it is.
There are no vaccine deniers present, nor any Republicans; not even anyone in comments opposed a mandate. But apparently it's divisive within the unions whose leadership declined to take a position either way, even though the legal report was clear that setting the mandate itself is not a negotiable matter, only its details. So kicking the can down the road is what we get. So frustrating.
Sorry: try this one. TL;dr -- toddler finds loaded gun in his Paw Patrol backpack, shoots and kills mother with it while she's doing a customer service job remotely, on a zoom with colleagues. Father now arrested and charged. He'd thought the backpack a clever place for the gun.
I mean Paw Patrol is shit. But he forgot that toddlers have horrible taste in TV.
He'd thought the backpack a clever place for the gun.
JFC.
Work in the office: get shot by a co-worker; work at home: shot by your toddler. American women face hard choices.
The only way to stop a toddler with a gun is another toddler with a gun.
25: ttaM - Curious if your PCR test went to this lab.
Because I'm rude, when a colleague sneezed on a zoom, I said, "Oh no, covid." Which fell flat because she has covid.
Now I'm afraid I'll be arrested for violating HIPPA and that I'll get covid because yesterday I was close to someone she was close to the day before yesterday.
He'd thought the backpack a clever place for the gun.
Speechless.
I read the article in 37 and still have no idea why the idiot dad put the gun in the toddler's backpack. Poor kid. I hope he has some other relatives he can go live with.