Quote:
Originally Posted by NewChief
I get that suspension of social services (how did we get to the point where a school is primary provider of social services) might be a case of the cure doing more harm than the disease.... but I have ZERO understanding how keeping schools open could be justified if you're closing all these other gathering places.
You're talking about assemblies of up to 5000+ people in a confined area for 8 hours a day, many of whom have horrible hygiene. I mean, if schools don't contribute to spread, then it would seem that NO public gatherings/places would contribute to spread. I"ve also seen the talking point of closing schools doesn't help (our governor, Asa, used it quite a bit to justify his "late" decision to close the schools here)., but I guess I just don't understand it.
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It's been presented a couple times on this thread (I don't expect anyone to go back and find it in this behemoth).
But the suggestion is that kids aren't very good carriers at all for this particular disease (counterintuitive as that may be) and the suggestion is because they don't have close, sustained contacts with a lot of adults while in school (just look at teacher/student ratios) and that their bodies do a lot to keep this hammered back at the gates rather than running through their systems. Moreover, that through effectively turning them into shut-ins with their parents, in the event the disease gets into the home somehow, you actually create a harsher 'wildfire' within the home that creates worse health outcomes to those that are in it.
I agree that on its face, the idea of closing the schools does seem pretty simple and the reasons straightforward. It's the easy, politically expedient answer. But the early evidence (which flamed out when ALL schools closed and you couldn't get useful data) suggested that there were reasons that it simply wasn't the case.
A one size fits all approach here wrecked a myriad of opportunities to actually learn something about what our national response
should be moving forward.