Yes, we can re-open schools this fall. Here's how.

[Anonymous]

The title of this piece is "There Is a Way to Reopen Schools This Fall. Do We Have the Will to Make It Happen?" and it seems to me like the answer is, "No, we don't."

https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/06/reopening-schools-risk-spending-choices.html

"imagine that in this ideal world, the needs of children and their working parents were primary in the minds of planners and politicians. In this Perfect Town, Perfect State, USA, the perfect leaders might say, “We are going to keep the schools open until we absolutely cannot anymore. (Or, if schools are closed for summer, we’re going to aim to have transmission rates at a place where we can open them in fall.) In order to accomplish that, we are going to do everything else we can to keep transmission low.” That approach would mean that disinfecting, mask-wearing, and other measures that rely on individual action, along with school resources, would not be a school’s first defense against transmission. If a school is open in a community that has kept other things closed, the virus would simply be less likely to be present at that school. The perfect execution of these sanitation and distancing plans, which seems so unlikely when you think about the nature of children, would be less crucial to success."

The author seems to think the answer is no we don't, too:

"our predicament, which seems “natural,” is a result of choices—made, and not made. As I wrote in my own rant about the closed-schools/open-jobs problem in late April, if American policymakers think it’s OK to put parents in this position, it may be because they’ve long been accustomed to papering over shortfalls in policy with huge sacrifices of parents’ and children’s well-being. High costs and unavailability of day care, gaps in summer and after-school coverage—if that’s hard for you, our pre-2020 system said to parents, perhaps you should contemplate simply having enough money to live on one income? (Of course, you’re raising kids in a two-parent household. That goes without saying.)"

[Anonymous]

Yup.

We need to tell parents and employers: Schools can open when the local transmission is close to nil.

Make it happen.

Once schools are open, if there's ONE case in a school, close that school for 14 days.

If while closed you learn another student or staff member is positive, keep schools closed for 28 days.

If three or more -- close nearby schools as well or the whole town.

That's EXACTLY what they did in several European countries. Open the schools, but be vigorous about getting spread down to zero in each city or town, and just shut down those schools if there is evidence some transmission is happening (not even an outbreak -- just a few cases.)

[Anonymous]

NO country has implemented the ideal way.

Europe will surge just like the USA because they're done with distancing. Some countries have just reopened certain schools no, just at the end of their school year.

Rich Asian nations implemented draconian measures to schools and other places, but they rely on stay-at-home mothers on childcare when schools have to close for local positive cases. These are not modern westernized cultures by any means.

So the ideal of a two-working-parent, child-at-school solution with proper distancing and hygiene measures HAS NOT ACTUALLY HAPPENED ANYWHERE FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME.

You can blame governments for not doing enough for working parents, but the reality is somewhat different: in times of pandemic, our society simply cannot work as it did before and what we need is better vaccine development technology so that we don't wait one or two years between the start of an outbreak and herd imnunity. for the next pandemic, we need a vaccine rollout in a 3 months.

[Anonymous]

Maybe the new administration will get back to all the vaccine protocols and systems that the Bush + Obama administrations painfully put together and developed.

Maybe next time you'll vote for someone who has the best interests of the country at their hearts and looks to long-term development not just slogans.

Make America Great Again!

[Anonymous]

BTW the author is a PhD in American studies. They'd be more qualified to write about the development of the modern political party than they would on how to re-open schools during a public health crisis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:BTW the author is a PhD in American studies. They'd be more qualified to write about the development of the modern political party than they would on how to re-open schools during a public health crisis.

The author is a journalist, doing journalism (as journalists do), about opening schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:BTW the author is a PhD in American studies. They'd be more qualified to write about the development of the modern political party than they would on how to re-open schools during a public health crisis.

The author is a journalist, doing journalism (as journalists do), about opening schools.

No, she's an Opinion writer. It's an Opinion piece with no direct citations of studies or evidence by Epidemiologists, Public Health experts, or even Education experts. All she does is grab quotes from Twitter or the NYT.

Even in the casual conversation she dropped with a scientist couple/Helen Jenkins, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Boston University’s School of Public Health, there are no citations, no studies, not even 'From my 10 years working in infectious disease I can say confidently that kids have a transmission vector of -0.5 and I'm advising....yada yada'.

The entire piece is 'desires' with nothing to back it.

“Transmission in our area is really low right now, and if schools opened Monday, we’d send our kids in a heartbeat,” Helen Jenkins said. “But of course, schools won’t open until fall, and we suddenly realized that what we cared about was less the nature of precautions schools might take, and more the level of community transmission. We realized we’d been looking at it the wrong way around. The school is not a bubble.”