Those Nerdy Girls answer your questions about Monkeypox, masking at school, bivalent boosters, COVID-19 rebound, and more. Hosted by: – Malia Jones, PhD, MPH: Dear Pandemic Co-Founder & former EIC – Chana Davis, PhD: Dear Pandemic Contributing Writer & Founder, Fueled by Science ➡️ Welcome and Intros (0:00-0:46) ➡️ Monkeypox – How worried should I Read more…
An interview with Nerdy Guest Dr. Terra Ziporyn Snider Q: Tell us a little about yourself and how you became interested in school start times. A: As both a mother of 3 and a medical historian and writer (former associate editor at JAMA and co-author of The New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health), I’ve been Read more…
These guidelines are not recommended for children in childcare settings where children cannot mask (babies, infants under 2). See our previous post for full details on updated guidelines for the general public. The Key Points: ➡️ Anyone who has COVID-19 symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 should ISOLATE for 5 days, [archived link] then Read more…
A.) TL; DR: Your eyes need a holiday! Increased time on screens is linked to vision changes, dry eyes, blurry vision, eye fatigue, and headaches. Here are some ocular health tips for you and your family. * GO OUTSIDE. Outdoor time exposes your eyes to a different type of light than screens. Bright natural light Read more…
😷 Reminder: Masks can be worn safely by most children. There are very few reasons for children to be exempt from wearing a mask in school. 😶🌫️ There is a lot of confusion around who can qualify for a medical exemption from a mask, especially as children are getting back to school. Many hospitals and Read more…
A: TL; DR: The Corsi Air Box (sometimes called the Corsi-Rosenthal Cube or a Comparetto Cube) is the hot new trend in DIY air purifiers! See links below for instructions. With the return to in-person school for most US school children and many college students, we need to continue to use many layers of protection Read more…
A recent CDC outbreak investigation found that an unvaccinated teacher infected twelve elementary school students out of a class of 24 students in California. All students were too young to be eligible for the vaccine. Key take-aways: ➡️ GET VACCINATED ➡️ KEEP YOUR MASK ON WHILE TALKING!! ➡️ STAY HOME WHEN SICK ➡️ GET VACCINATED Read more…
A: HEPA filtration units are one good option. See below for some helpful guidance put together by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security: “Parents are facing hard decisions right now about in-person schooling. They may not know, for instance, that HEPA filtration units help reduce COVID-19 spread Read more…
Nerdy Girls Dr. Aparna Kumar and Dr. Ashley Ritter on tips for parents facing another uncertain school year: ➡️”Focus on what is controllable without trying to control everything.” and ➡️ “Think outside the box to maintain things that are important to your child but can’t happen as planned.” Read more here: NBC News: How moms Read more…
A: Delta and a fourth wave of COVID-19 was not the plan. In this unfortunate reality, focus and flexibility will go a long way. Back-to-school will be bumpy. The timing of the Delta surge in the United States is overlapping with the return to classes for students. This is complicated, frustrating, scary (and many other Read more…
We know that school re-opening is already on the minds of many followers. Kids under 12 are not yet eligible for vaccination (nor under 18s in the UK). We’re planning much more school discussion to come, but a quick take on the CDC’s updated guidance on schools from Prof. Joseph Allen: Pros: 1. places primacy Read more…
In this live Q&A, we’re teaming up with our science gal-pals at the Unbiased Science Podcast, Drs. Andrea Love and Jessica Steier! We’ll be answering reader questions about antibody testing after vaccination, viral variants & kids, #thrifting, and whether your COVID-19 vaccine can make you test positive for COVID. https://www.facebook.com/unbiasedscipod/ ➡️ Welcome, Intros, and Comments Read more…
A: There is no magic distance, at 3 feet or 6 feet, that the coronavirus, or any virus for that matter, respects. A recent study has generated lots of buzz with its conclusion that 3 feet of physical distance is just as good as 6 feet of space between students (link below). But the study’s Read more…
A: Schools re-opening for in-person learning remains a big priority. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has provided guidance for K-12 schools on reopening for in-person learning. The guidance focuses on what can be done within a school to make in-person learning as safe as possible as well as what needs to be Read more…
Q.) My family is staring at screens all day now. What are the effects on our eyes? What can we do about it? A.) Eye doctors are indicating that increased time on screens is related to vision changes, dry eyes, blurry vision, eye fatigue, and headaches. Here are some ocular health tips for you and Read more…
A: It’s complicated. TL;DR: Two new well-designed studies find evidence that in-person schooling *does not* contribute to COVID spread when baseline community spread is LOW, but that in-person schooling *does* contribute to worsening COVID metrics when baseline COVID transmission is high. Thus far the research on schools and COVID-19 has been quite muddy, but two Read more…
For this week’s Live Q&A, we are so excited welcome a special guest whose expertise is COVID and K12 schools for our live Q&A! Dr. Chloe Gibbs is an education policy scholar at the University of Notre Dame and writes a weekly review [archived link] of the emerging science on COVID and K12 schools. This Read more…
A: Your “bubble” might be far bigger than you think. To figure out exactly how big and who you might be sharing germs with, think like a contact tracer and sketch out your contact network. 🖧 If you need to pull out a piece of paper to figure this out, that’s a whole lot of Read more…
