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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Only close schools when there is confirmed community spread in that area. Why close all schools everywhere?! [/quote]
Well there is confirmed community spread. The fact that we don't know who gave COVID-19 to the 50 y/o DC resident in the hospital right now is the definition of community spread. However, now, we are hearing the slightly changed definition, of "widespread" community spread. We'd know if it were widespread, if you had only conducted more tests. But they ran 10 tests, and one is already a case resulting from community spread. 
In DC we have skipped over the normal phase of an outbreak in which we can "investigate" and do contact tracing and find the thread of contagion and quarantine/test a few people and help it not spread further. If we don't know how he got it, many others got it the same way, and gave it to others the same way. There was a week between him falling ill and going to the hospital. He was contagious that whole time (he was probably also somewhat contagious before feeling ill).

Academics around the world seem to know what measures to take and when. Governments around the world seem to make the wrong decisions, one after the other, and inflict maximum unnecessary pain to their countries, because they are completely uneducated on the topic, and apparently never listen to their experts quite enough. It's heart breaking.[/quote]

I completely agree. It's mind-boggling to me how dumb some people are. I'm a microbiologist, but I'd like to think that even if I didn't have that training, I would have the common sense to think things through and realize that closures and quarantines are the most powerful tools at our disposal. My parents, who don't have much science education, understand this perfectly. Some rational people do. But when I read all the stupidities that have recently been posted on all the coronavirus threads on DCUM, as well as those expressed live on TV by politicians and passersby, it makes me weep for humanity.

[/quote]

The fact is, there is a window when school closings and other NPIs will help flatten the curve/shift the peak. In the absence of widespread testing we don’t know whether we are in that window or if it has passed. There are a lot of costs to school closing... many healthcare workers will be out of childcare, for instance. So it’s not really as simple as you guys are making it sound.[/quote]

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