Bleah [teaching in the time of the coronavirus]

[rebeccmeister]

Definitely in the doldrums right now.

I had that variety of insomnia last night where my brain questioned everything I'm doing with my life. Then I woke up with slightly swollen lymph nodes and some mild sniffles, so I canceled on rowing and tried to sleep some more, with only partial success.

Right now, Covid cases in my county are holding steady, at around 80 new cases per day. That's high enough to keep us in the "high" CDC category where masks are recommended for everyone indoors, regardless of vaccination status. This college opted to NOT do any surveillance testing this fall, so all that we know comes from daily reports of the number of positive Covid cases from students and employees that reached a point where their symptoms warranted a PCR-based Covid test.

It is very frustrating to work in an environment where certain best practices are being ignored. I can require masks in my classroom but they aren't required indoors here.

I would also really like to see more implementation of rapid antibody tests. What needs to happen now is that someone with potential Covid symptoms should go and take a rapid antibody test as soon as they can; by the time a person has symptoms it's already too late, so immediate action is needed. If that comes up positive, isolate as a precautionary measure and then go get a confirmatory PCR test. If the rapid antibody test comes up negative, repeat the test three days later.

When I was worried two weeks ago, it took four days for results to come back from a PCR-based test. By that point, there's almost no point to it all. It can confirm, yup, that was Covid, but that's four extra days where a person has to make decisions about what to do. That's four days of teaching, for anyone who teaches. It is VERY difficult and stressful to make arrangements for missed teaching days.

For this round of sniffles/etc, I've come in to work and I will teach this afternoon. S had the same symptoms on Sunday, and tested negative with his first antibody test. By the way, antibody tests are fun to try and find right now, but that situation is supposed to get better in the near future because of some recent efforts by the US government. The first chain drugstore I checked had a ton of empty shelves and zero antibody tests. I called a second nearby one, and they had plenty in stock.

Comments

[larryhammer]

This.

[bluepapercup]

Yeah. My household has been relying on the very good but now hard to find Binax tests to assess sniffles, fluishness, etc. So far none of it has been covid, thank god. Per your comment about shortages, they're impossible to get at CVS right now but I've been able to order them four at a time from Walgreens online. They are not cheap, and the fact that it's a privilege that my household can afford them is an awful state of affairs. Antibody tests should, at this point, be available freely and at no charge because they are such a helpful tool for all the reasons you describe.

[altamira16]

If that comes up positive, isolate as a precautionary measure and then go get a confirmatory PCR test. If the rapid antibody test comes up negative, repeat the test three days later.

This would have saved us from our current situation.