Who guessed this pandemic would lead to us watching Boston’s wastewater reports on a daily basis? Well, I’ll take good news wherever I can find it, even in a pile of public poop. This week, there is dramatically less Covid-19 in the fecal matter of Boston’s general population, and that means the caseloads for Covid-19 should soon decline.
When I first heard the predictions that January was going to be a difficult month, I rolled my eyes. Then, the graphs turned skyward. Then, my Christmas dinner with the in-laws turned into a spreader-event (7 of 8 people testing positive, including my wife and myself – our kids weren’t present.) Then, many friends and acquaintances reported similar news over the holidays. Then, my nephew tested positive while staying with my parents. Then, my son (a public-school teacher in Boston) let us know that he had tested positive. Then, my daughter called to say her work colleague had tested positive, and that as a close contact, she needed to quarantine, and could she do so with us instead of putting her housemates at risk?
We’ve had a lot of concern about individual health in my family over the past month, and it appears that the vaccine and booster regimen are working. Omicron appears to be both extraordinarily contagious and less virulent.
We’ve had a lot of discussion as a staff to reach a consensus regarding North Star’s Covid-19 policies. While we have a lot of general agreement, consensus can be difficult. Also, our conclusions certainly cannot satisfy all of our 55 current families. To summarize for those of you interested, North Star has chosen to be remote-only during the first three weeks of January. We are holding our local Five-College Consortium as a model here, even while many of our local schools have been open. Here is the most recent note of January 14, 2022, to our members explaining our official position:
North Star will remain in the “red tier’ of our Covid policy for the week of January 18-21. All of our activities will be online next week. (Monday’s classes and tutorials are canceled as planned for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday)
We are going week-by-week at this time. The staff is eager to resume in-person time together as soon as possible. Here are some items from our weekly staff meeting and discussion:
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- Based on our existing policy, we are clearly in the “red tier” based on the surge of local cases, and because a number of North Star families are dealing with both Covid-19 cases and close exposures to the virus.
- Local hospitalizations remain high.
- “Fully vaccinated” now includes having a booster shot, which we request
- teens get as soon as possible.
- Based on our advisory conversations, many current members would choose not to attend in person next week either due to isolation, quarantine, or their family’s abundance of caution. We know that attending for half-days is unworkable for many of our current members due to family transportation issues, and staying indoors all day raises concerns regarding exposure to the virus and how to manage eating and drinking. These concerns are exacerbated by the very cold weather making spending time outdoors difficult.
- One of our local models, the Five Colleges consortium, remains online-only for their January intersessions next week.
- Local public schools are open but struggling with staff and student attendance issues along with rising cases in their communities.
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We will continue to conduct classes, tutorials, and advisories by Zoom to make the most of these weeks. We will be closely watching the progress of this Covid-19 surge over the next ten days.
One way to address this current loss of in-person time together is to offer North Star being open during the week of March 14-18, our currently scheduled spring break week. This would mean providing one extra week of in-person time for those of us who will be available in March.
We appreciate the support many of you have expressed to us. We miss you and send along our best wishes to each of your families.
Thank you, Ken
The two attached charts for Covid-19 cases in Massachusetts and the wastewater testing for traces of Covid-19 in Boston’s wastewater offer us some optimism. We will be interested to see how things feel after this Omicron surge has passed. I expect by then many people in our wider community will be both be vaccinated and have natural immunities from contracting the virus. What new norms might arrive in the coming months? As dark as the winter can feel, the days are already getting longer, and we can feel some hope in the coming weeks.
In this moment, let’s support each other to hang in while this surge passes, and do what we can on behalf of our health care workers and institutions. Unfortunately, a tiny percentage of “everyone” is an unmanageable number of people going to the hospital, and our sense of collective responsibility leads us (North Star) to be cautious at this time.
