To open or not to open. That really is the question.
Because if we don’t open our schools, we will never find a way to get most of our employees able to return to work. They will have to stay home to monitor their kids and provide secondary instruction (or is that primary?) for when their kids don’t quite get the subject matter of the day. Not to mention that many of our kids lack the resources for schooling at home. (No computer, no internet.) Maybe even more kids manifest food deficits (normally receiving free lunch and free breakfast at school)- and hungry kids just don’t learn well.
But, if we do open our schools- and the underlying conditions render this to be unsafe (trust me, there are very few places in the US that are safe), then we are just going to shut down our economy as family after family experiences COVID-19 episodes.
The first rule about opening schools has to be when community transmission is under control. That would mean not more than a 2% positivity rate (even that may be too high) as manifested by COVID-19 testing. Lots of it. Something we are not doing a lot of in the USA.
| State |
| Positivity Rate | New Cases | Test rate/K | |
| WA | 44.9 | 549 | 0.2 |
| MI | 20.7 | 527 | 1.5 |
| TX | 20.1 | 5696 | 1.4 |
| AL | 17.5 | 1161 | 1.6 |
| FL | 17.3 | 6229 | 1.8 |
| NV | 17 | 811 | 1.6 |
| ID | 16.5 | 178 | 1.6 |
| SC | 13.6 | 975 | 1.8 |
| AZ | 12.8 | 816 | 1.3 |
| AR | 12.6 | 572 | 2.3 |
| KS | 11.8 | 199 | 1.2 |
| GA | 11.1 | 3169 | 2.8 |
| MO | 11 | 1362 | 1.2 |
| IA | 9.5 | 384 | 1.6 |
| OK | 9.5 | 486 | 2 |
| SD | 9.4 | 128 | 1.1 |
| IN | 9 | 1041 | 1.5 |
| UT | 8.7 | 376 | 1.5 |
| TN | 8.7 | 2127 | 3.2 |
| NB | 8.3 | 187 | 1.7 |
| VA | 8 | 897 | 1.7 |
| ND | 8 | 88 | 2.3 |
| HI | 7.5 | 152 | 1.5 |
| WY | 7.3 | 35 | 0.8 |
| KY | 7.3 | 404 | 1.7 |
| LS | 7.2 | 2653 | 5 |
| CO | 6.7 | 336 | 1.1 |
| OR | 6.5 | 262 | 1.1 |
| MN | 6.5 | 797 | 1.9 |
| NC | 6.4 | 1398 | 2.4 |
| WI | 6.2 | 621 | 2.3 |
| RI | 6 | 0 | 1.6 |
| CA | 5.7 | 5358 | 2.9 |
| MD | 5.5 | 922 | 2.2 |
| OH | 5.2 | 879 | 1.8 |
| PA | 1.5 | 647 | 1.1 |
| MT | 4.8 | 63 | 2.1 |
| DE | 4.7 | 73 | 1.9 |
| IL | 4.1 | 1382 | 3.3 |
| WV | 2.6 | 132 | 2.5 |
| MI | 2.5 | 535 | 2.9 |
| MA | 2.4 | 329 | 2.2 |
| NM | 2.4 | 200 | 3.7 |
| DC | 2.3 | 100 | 4.2 |
| NH | 1.9 | 17 | 1.2 |
| NJ | 1.6 | 344 | 2.5 |
| AK | 1.4 | 98 | 6.8 |
| NY | 1 | 515 | 3.5 |
| CT | 0.7 | 0 | 2.8 |
| VT | 0.5 | 5 | 1.4 |
| ME | 0.5 | 16 | 1.8 |
Don’t forget these are little kids. (And, some big kids.) Which is a problem since little kids aren’t going to wear those masks all day long. They are going to touch each other. They are going to touch their teachers. They will hug, they will fight, they will scream. All of that means they can be transmitting the virus. (More on this tomorrow.)
Bigger kids are going to want to hold hands. They might even want to kiss. They will walk in groups. They probably also won’t always have their masks about their mouth AND their noses. (I have seen the prevailing technique of one or the other.) They, too, can be transmitting the virus.
So you know that I am not exaggerating these facts, you should know that just in the last two weeks of July, more than ¼ of the kids tested for the virus showed up positive. (That’s almost 100K kids. And a 40% increase in the rate found over the first two weeks of July.) And, despite the BS spewn by TheDonald, as of last month (30 July 2020), more than 300K (338982, to be exact) kids had COVID-19 (American Academy of Pediatrics)- that’s 8% of all the reported cases in the USA.
It is true that kids are less likely to require hospitalization. But, that doesn’t mean they can’t become seriously ill. (I will propose an hypothesis about this situation tomorrow.) And, we can’t discount the effects on minorities, where Black children (5X) and Hispanic children (8X), manifest the multiples shown where compared with White kids. (Actually, all kids seem to have the same likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 exposure- but those are the hospitalization rates that are amplified. Because minorities manifest more adverse affects.)
This includes those kids who manifest multisystem inflammatory syndrome. Young kids present as Kawasaki disease (blood vessel inflammation) when they contract COVID-19; older kids manifest what looks more like toxic shock syndrome (heart failure, death).
Obviously, kids can contract COVID-19.
Yes they can.Israel opened up schools early and you know what happened , right?There are no second chances and we better get this right at the first one itself.Prevention.Why dont the government provide education and nutritional support at home?
It’s much needed
Not just Israel.
That school in Georgia (North Paulding) that would NOT regulate wearing masks (and a child posted a video of these kids walking around infecting others- and was suspended for doing that- but not the kids without masks) has tremendous infections and is now shut down. What I can’t understand is that these same schools feel obliged to persecute young girls for wearing short skirts, for wearing perfume, for donning nail polish- they CAN be suspended. But not wearing a mask- NOPE. They can’t be.
I’m wondering how many parents can actually help their children with the school work and how the parents can go to work to support the family if they have young children that need supervision.
Two very interesting questions, Martha!
Here in our area, the school districts had continued the meal program after schools closed for remote learning earlier this year and through the summer as well; so families in need could pick up meals at designated places and times… So that was heartening to know..
As for schools reopening, we are going to be remote as school starts next week… since as you mention, this virus does not look at age…
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Our school district kept up the food program, too. Every morning when I go swim, I see folks lined up for those meals. The problem with remote classes, though, is that those same families lack computers in their homes. (At least here in Alexandria, every kid gets a Chromebook [locked down] with the textbooks on the unit- and we have free community wi-fi.)
It really is a mess but it appears that the only real choice is to keep the kids home until at least next year and only then if the numbers are under say 1.5% I think 2% is too high of a number. Once the kids do get it in mass the very first person they will pass it along to will be their teachers. Then you lose the teacher while they hopefully get better and who will be teaching at the school then?
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I’m with you, Chef William. No one seems to try to connect the dots!
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Our school districts (upstate New York) kept the free lunches going, too, with some local restaurants using this as an opportunity to not lay off their workforce. My school district (which is urban for the most part) will open with hybrid learning on September 14 (later than normal). At least on the elementary level, students will attend every other day M-Th with alternating Fridays. My understanding is they will permit families not comfortable with in person instruction to opt out for the coming school year, but it is a rapidly evolving situation and there is supposed to be a public (virtual) meeting at 2pm today.
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Let’s hope these new systems really do educate our younger citizens!
This is such a huge issue, with no answer in sight until everyone sings from the same hymn book. The disparity in resources and guidelines means there’s no easy answer, and no effective strategy. Sad.
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Well said, Barb. And, now we see what just happened at the University of North Carolina. So much for opening up during the pandemic.