Reply to Allegedly there are several options for the fall none of which include being back full time?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Do the people pushing for DL — be they teachers, staffers, parents, or whoever — honestly feel that DL is an adequate substitute for children? Self/driven adults seeking pro dev? Sure! But kids? [b]Can you honestly say that?[/b] And at what age and for how many hours a day do you think this is true? Straight answers, please — no “it’s better th an nothing” or “we all have to sacrifice.” Really answer the question.[/quote]

In normal times, no. In a pandemic, yes. And for as long as necessary because it is not possible to create the conditions listed as precautions.[/quote]

DP, but really?  You really think preventing COVID deaths is the only consideration in our society?  Really?[/quote]

Only, no. Top, yes. The death of a loved one impacts children emotionally, socially, educationally, and financially. Really.[/quote]

And what's the death rate that leads you to conclude that the death of a grandparent (much less commonly, a parent of young kids) is more traumatic than the cumulative stress of social isolation, missing school, potentially living in an unsafe home, having parents laid off, etc.  What's the calculus there?

Here's another way to think about it: severe child abuse is increasing during the pandemic.  What are the lives of those kids worth?[/quote]

How much death are you willing to tolerate?[/quote]

Death of whom?  And what are the trade-offs?

You probably don't know that in many hospitals, physicians were/are considering unilateral DNR orders in cases when patients with COVID crashed, because of the substantial risk that resuscitating them posed to medical staff who, if they became infected, couldn't care for other patients.  Ethics aren't that simple, as much as you may want them to be.[/quote]

Which lives are not worth saving in your opinion?  I'm not discounting that there is a huge cost to closing schools.  I'm saying there will be a cost to opening them, which you are assuming is smaller than the cost of keeping them closed.  You may be right but I certainly am not in a position to determine that, and I suspect you are not either.

The unilateral DNR orders is a great example of why it's important to prevent people from catching COVID.  [/quote]

Correct. The cost of opening is more than just the the number of deaths caused by COVID. Community spread has to be considered, as well as the cost of putting reasonable mitigation measures in place. There are many competing interests that need to be considered on both sides.

It’s just like those who don’t think that shutting down was necessary. There might be truth to that under ideal circumstances. If we had enough PPE for everyone, if testing was readily available, if we had isolated and tested travelers earlier, if we had better contact tracing, etc., maybe we wouldn’t have needed to shut down. But we didn’t.

In a perfect would, we could protect teachers with plexiglass, add extra buses to allow social distancing, provide high quality masks to all teachers in school, have instant testing for staff or kids exhibiting minor symptoms, have extra custodial staff,  have a solid plan in place for excluding sick kids and making sure they don’t lose out if they can’t come to school for two weeks, have staggered start times,  etc.  If we had all of those things, then the risk of reopening would likely be outweighed by the educational and mental health needs of children and the economic need for parents to have childcare. But we don’t live in a perfect world and we don’t have all of those things.

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