Here is why we should close schools now.

[Anonymous]

Why do Asian countries let people wear masks to protect from COVID-2019?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes you can help people without means to stay home need be..


Australia did it
Josh Frydenberg says the Morrison government will use the tax and transfer system to get financial support to Australian households as quickly as possible as part of a looming stimulus package to counter the negative economic impact of the coronavirus.


We are doing it
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will on Tuesday unveil “very dramatic” measures to protect US businesses and workers from the coronavirus health crisis currently ravaging the economy.

At a press conference in the White House briefing room on Monday evening, the president said he would meet Congress on Tuesday in a bid to pass a temporary payroll tax cut and fund sick leave for hourly employees who are afraid of being unable to work due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

I mean, that’s fine and whatever, I fully support but....we could use some more testing and containment efforts. That should be the 100% priority right now and I find the constant focus on the economy kinda gross. Sick leave and tax cuts aren’t going to matter when you die because there wasn’t a ventilator available.

seriously... the focus must be on closing everything not to keep "the economy" going and the two are mutually incompatible. it's impossible to have thriving economy during epidemic and trump needs to understand that. i mean, democrats are not even attacking him all that much over this.

[Anonymous]

Closing schools is total stupidity/insanity. At risk people should quarantine themselves. Lighting the entire economy & culture on fire so that an 80 year old can make it to 81 without quarantining themselves is the height of stupidity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read the Post article.

1/3 of American nurses have kids under 18. I'm one of them. If my kids can no longer go to school/aftercare who is going to take care of them so i can work? I can think of dozens of colleagues in the DC area who will be in their same position. We cover summers with camp. but there won't be camps run in place of school. I honestly i can't afford to pay anyone to take care of then 40 hours a week in my salary of $40/hour. So very quickly I'll quit as will dozens of nurses i know.

There will be other nurses without kids who will pick up your shifts, including school nurses and those who are dailies.

Not the OP but if it’s one thing this whole COVID mess has taught me is how utterly clueless people are about how nursing in hospitals work. It’s like the fool who said nurses would be ok because we run on adrenaline. Most hospitals are already short nurses. Childless nurses aren’t going to just pick up our shifts. You people live in such a bubble. School nurses don’t know crap about acute care nursing. Nursing is pretty specialized.

The pro-full-closure posters on this thread are so privilege-blind that it's shocking. Let them eat cake, indeed.

I think a lot of the posts are coming from one person. Bored SAHM I’m guessing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read the Post article.

1/3 of American nurses have kids under 18. I'm one of them. If my kids can no longer go to school/aftercare who is going to take care of them so i can work? I can think of dozens of colleagues in the DC area who will be in their same position. We cover summers with camp. but there won't be camps run in place of school. I honestly i can't afford to pay anyone to take care of then 40 hours a week in my salary of $40/hour. So very quickly I'll quit as will dozens of nurses i know.

There will be other nurses without kids who will pick up your shifts, including school nurses and those who are dailies.

Not the OP but if it’s one thing this whole COVID mess has taught me is how utterly clueless people are about how nursing in hospitals work. It’s like the fool who said nurses would be ok because we run on adrenaline. Most hospitals are already short nurses. Childless nurses aren’t going to just pick up our shifts. You people live in such a bubble. School nurses don’t know crap about acute care nursing. Nursing is pretty specialized.

The pro-full-closure posters on this thread are so privilege-blind that it's shocking. Let them eat cake, indeed.

I think a lot of the posts are coming from one person. Bored SAHM I’m guessing.

I am a bored SAHM who is anti closure. Go read just a few of them any threads on the travel forum and see just how many people still plan to travel for spring break. Many rebooked Europe for Florida but most of the other people are still just taking their original trip. Because “what am I supposed to do with my kids that week if we stay home?” They will bring all the germs home with them and the school closure will be pointless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In Italy and South Korea they are bringing in student nurses and retired nurses.

Nurses who are parents of young children and have no other child care able to be arranged I'm sure will not work.

In China many doctors and nurses lived at the hospital for 30 day shifts, like deployed military. They did not go home for fear of infecting others in their apartments. also many neighborhood residences did not want the health care workers returning to the apartments fearing they would bring the virus with them and contaminate the dwelling.

Nurses are not like deployed military. The US will not be able (which is good btw) to force nurses to work like they did in China.

I didn't say that they would force workers. I said workers lived at the hospital or nearby *like* they were on deployment.

Another measure taken in the crisis zones was to cancel all elective surgery and any procedures that were not absolutely necessary. This allows nurses and doctors from those areas to work with coronavirus patients.

Nurses and doctors should support any measures that will slow spread of disease, I would think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Closing schools is total stupidity/insanity. At risk people should quarantine themselves. Lighting the entire economy & culture on fire so that an 80 year old can make it to 81 without quarantining themselves is the height of stupidity.

did you read italian doctors' testimonies, idiot? they (the richest part of italy) don't have resources to attend to anyone over 65 or under 65 who has a comorbidity (e.g. diabetes). that are literally letting people die without doing anything.

[Anonymous]

I'm a pro-closure poster. I'm not bored. I truly believe closing schools *early* an outbreak will reduce spread and help us all and in the long term help our economy.

I admit to having a fascination watching countries from afar sputter and protest that they... can't !
They just can't! They just caaaaaaaan't close the schools. There's no need to do anything THAT drastic!

and then 9 days later.... BOOM..... schools are closed.

I've watched it happen in Japan, S. Korea, and Italy so far.

Spain is next. Germany and France will follow shortly after Spain (Switzerland seems more proactive so they might squeeze in a little earlier.) Netherlands is clueless. UK seems a bit more with it.

Australia will close proactively for 2 weeks I think... they seem to be really on top of things.

Haven't been following Arab countries but they mostly have all closed. They were very scares by what happened in Iran.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Closing schools is total stupidity/insanity. At risk people should quarantine themselves. Lighting the entire economy & culture on fire so that an 80 year old can make it to 81 without quarantining themselves is the height of stupidity.

What do you not get about slowing the virus down?

We do not have the infrastructure to save even 40 year olds if this gets full blown here.

Hospitals do not have enough of anything from staff to respirators.

Trump is a complete idiot who only cares about re-elections.

We had time to mitigate this and he blew it.

People will die because we did not prepare. And it’s surely not only going to be 80 year olds.

[Anonymous]

I just can't help but think that if schools were to close now, 10% of the parents would view it as an extended vacation, which would put their kids (and eventually ours) at a much greater risk than if they were to continue to just go to school daily. Yes, someone's parent may have been at the BioGen conference in Boston, but it's a lot less likely than Jimmy running into infected people on the flight home from Barcelona because his mom saw a 3 week beach vacation instead of a voluntary quarantine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are not grasping the full extent of what may be about to unfold.

So true! We could avoid an Italy by closing schools, banning public gatherings, and suspending religious services NOW.

"Everything we do before the epidemic hits seems alarmist. Everything we do during an epidemic seems inadequate."

The government cannot ban or suspend religious services.

They can encourage churches etc. to consider it. In Singapore and Hong Kong (BTW two of the places coming out best in this mess) the Catholic Church took the lead in suspending services and others followed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a pro-closure poster. I'm not bored. I truly believe closing schools *early* an outbreak will reduce spread and help us all and in the long term help our economy.

I admit to having a fascination watching countries from afar sputter and protest that they... can't !
They just can't! They just caaaaaaaan't close the schools. There's no need to do anything THAT drastic!

and then 9 days later.... BOOM..... schools are closed.

I've watched it happen in Japan, S. Korea, and Italy so far.

Spain is next. Germany and France will follow shortly after Spain (Switzerland seems more proactive so they might squeeze in a little earlier.) Netherlands is clueless. UK seems a bit more with it.

Australia will close proactively for 2 weeks I think... they seem to be really on top of things.

Haven't been following Arab countries but they mostly have all closed. They were very scares by what happened in Iran.

Yep. What did Churchill say, "trust Americans to do the right thing.... after they have tried everything else".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Closing schools is total stupidity/insanity. At risk people should quarantine themselves. Lighting the entire economy & culture on fire so that an 80 year old can make it to 81 without quarantining themselves is the height of stupidity.

Your theories are so fantastic. I would love to hear many more. But for now...

Close to 40% of maryland residents are in the risk groups due to the age alone, add to it younger people with asthma, hypertension, smokers etc... and you go easily over 60%.

Pray tell how this will work in your world when all the parents, teachers, doctors and nurses self isolate onlu to avoid exposure to their kids bringing virus from school and taking it to school being secret spreaders...?

Closing schools is super easy and effective method comparing to the hot mess you are proposing.

If your plan were a chicken, it would have no head and no legs.

[Anonymous]

Plan A for nurses: figure out some sort of way to provide cover for your kids and/or colleagues kids should school be canceled.

Plan B for nurses: get stuck working a 7-14 day shift living in the hospital without the ability to go home because you are Covid-19 suspect (as is the case with nurses in Wuhan, Italy, and Korea), while you figure out a way to provide cover for your kids and/or colleagues kids because school is canceled.

p.s. not everyone here is a white-collar, give the kid to the nanny kind of poster. Some of us also have to figure out a way to deal with kids at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Closing schools is total stupidity/insanity. At risk people should quarantine themselves. Lighting the entire economy & culture on fire so that an 80 year old can make it to 81 without quarantining themselves is the height of stupidity.

Problem is.....they don't. Also $$$ is a factor, if you're living paycheck to paycheck, (too) many days of from work means a $$$ hit in the butt which many will try to avoid.