With all the hoopla beginning about whether schools should re-open, it is surprising to me that none of the major media has spoken about the fact that many other countries have had schools open for quite a while already, without any disastrous consequences. Here's an article which goes in depth examining the topic:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...t-ways-keep-coronavirus-bay-despite-outbreaks
This is a great article but also speaks to why having a leader in the Executive Branch who likes to move like a bull in a China shop is a big negative.
it doesn't allow for the kind of conversations that need to be had that involve deep thought and nuance.
We have things to go on. While some countries in Europe have gone back, they also implemented lots of mitigation strategies as mentioned in the article. Alot of the countries didn't send all their kids back at once, they would only send a few grades and then go from there.
We have a bigger issue, our cases are getting worse as we want to send students back while in Europe they were getting significantly better in their countries.
They also went back and did things like social distancing, wearing masks, not eating in the cafeteria and other measures.
Most of the anecdotal data suggests that elementary school kids shouldn't be too much of an issue, but older kids - especially HS age could be more of an issue. College will be an even bigger issue.
There have been outbreaks in schools in other countries but they haven't been big drivers of spread of the most part. But right now the manner favored by the Federal Government for returning kids to school is not one that other countries did - which is basically just send them back no matter what.
As the article mentions, schools are seen are largely safe if there is little community spread and mitigation measures are used
"Early data from European countries suggest the risk to the wider community is small. At least when local infection rates are low, opening schools with some precautions does not seem to cause a significant jump in infections elsewhere."
But that equation potentially changes when you have significant community spread, which I would say is the current situation in roughly half the states right now.
IMO what we should do with schools is the same thing we should have done with re-opening back in May. It should have been controlled, with strong metrics, and done slowly and methodically. Just opening things up wide is a recipe for disaster. Be ready to pull back if things start to go bad. If they continue on a good trajectory then you open more. That process takes longer, but gives you a better chance of getting back to a more normal state without huge setbacks.
