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The explanation that I’ve seen is that closing is not an effective mitigation anyways, as children often end up congregating elsewhere in even closer contact: e

The explanation that I’ve seen is that closing is not an effective mitigation anyways, as children often end up congregating elsewhere in even closer contact: e.g. backup care with groups of kids, older kids getting together while schools are closed. Given the well-known downsides that you list, and the fact that it doesn’t help much, it makes sense to stay open until there are actual cases associated with the schools.

trimbo 7y ago
A coworker asked the other day: what's the end point on WFH and school closure? I think it's a good question. In this specific case, for Northshore, have they specified? Is it some number of weeks, months, years? Is there some inflection point in the spread they've predetermined it will go back to normal?
- vkou 7y ago
  > A coworker asked the other day: what's the end point on WFH and school closure? At minimum, producing enough test kits so that we could actually test every hypochondriac with the sniffles. Since there's a mind-boggling shortage of test kits, reducing transmission rates for as long as possible is all that we can do.
- Tagbert 7y ago
  One of the main reasons to do things like close schools and work from home is to slow the spread of the virus so that it doesn’t spike in large numbers. This helps prevent the health care and similar support systems from being overwhelmed. It is likely that many/most people will eventually get the virus but if that happens over a spread out timeframe there is a better chance of maintaining adequate health support.
carapace 7y ago
> children often end up congregating elsewhere in even closer contact Well that's just fucking stupid. The situation isn't "get out of school", it's "stay home". > stay open until there are actual cases associated with the schools. That's really fucking stupid. By then it's too late.
- Noos 7y ago
  I wonder if the problem is a ripple effect. If you close schools, a lot of parents will have to stay out of work. This means more closings, and overworked remaining staff.
  - carapace 7y ago
    People just don't know the horror of the plague. I think it's just that simple. A lot of people have no living memory of a bad outbreak. We're victims of our own success.
- jedberg 7y ago
  > Well that's just fucking stupid. The situation isn't "get out of school", it's "stay home". If you have a seven year old and both parents work an hourly job, where exactly is that kid supposed to stay? The best they can do is get a bunch of parents together and rotate which house all the kids will stay at each day and pool their wages so no one starves. Only privileged kids have the option to "just stay home".
  - carapace 7y ago
    > If you have a seven year old and both parents work an hourly job, where exactly is that kid supposed to stay? Anywhere that minimizes contagion of the virus. I'm not trying to be coy or flippant. I recognize that there are hardships involved. You gave a very general scenario so I can only re-state the fundamental invariant. > get a bunch of parents together and rotate which house all the kids will stay at each day and pool their wages That could work. Except better not to move them around, and limit their exposure to adults who do move around. I'm not an epidemiologist so I'm not qualified to give detailed advice. I do feel pretty confident about telling people to stay home because that's how you slow down a pandemic. The streets should be deserted right now. Here's the messed up thing: the virus doesn't care. If we have set up our society in such a way that we can't respond properly to this thing it will fuck us up and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. IF there are too many parents working, and not enough extended family (or whatever), and/or not enough sick leave, and/or a system that can't make and distribute tests, or any of a bunch of other factors, THEN people are going to die. A lot of people. And if enough of the die (or just get really sick all at the same time) major additional problems could occur. Most cities have only about three days of food in the pipeline. After that, the only food is our pets, and then "long pork". The best thing you can do to stave that off is stay home now before it's too late. Maybe our civilization are fundamentally at odds with surviving a pandemic, I hope not, but be clear about the danger here.

trimbo 7y ago

A coworker asked the other day: what's the end point on WFH and school closure? I think it's a good question. In this specific case, for Northshore, have they specified? Is it some number of weeks, months, years? Is there some inflection point in the spread they've predetermined it will go back to normal?

vkou 7y ago
> A coworker asked the other day: what's the end point on WFH and school closure? At minimum, producing enough test kits so that we could actually test every hypochondriac with the sniffles. Since there's a mind-boggling shortage of test kits, reducing transmission rates for as long as possible is all that we can do.
Tagbert 7y ago
One of the main reasons to do things like close schools and work from home is to slow the spread of the virus so that it doesn’t spike in large numbers. This helps prevent the health care and similar support systems from being overwhelmed. It is likely that many/most people will eventually get the virus but if that happens over a spread out timeframe there is a better chance of maintaining adequate health support.

carapace 7y ago

> children often end up congregating elsewhere in even closer contact Well that's just fucking stupid. The situation isn't "get out of school", it's "stay home". > stay open until there are actual cases associated with the schools. That's really fucking stupid. By then it's too late.

Noos 7y ago
I wonder if the problem is a ripple effect. If you close schools, a lot of parents will have to stay out of work. This means more closings, and overworked remaining staff.
- carapace 7y ago
  People just don't know the horror of the plague. I think it's just that simple. A lot of people have no living memory of a bad outbreak. We're victims of our own success.
jedberg 7y ago
> Well that's just fucking stupid. The situation isn't "get out of school", it's "stay home". If you have a seven year old and both parents work an hourly job, where exactly is that kid supposed to stay? The best they can do is get a bunch of parents together and rotate which house all the kids will stay at each day and pool their wages so no one starves. Only privileged kids have the option to "just stay home".
- carapace 7y ago
  > If you have a seven year old and both parents work an hourly job, where exactly is that kid supposed to stay? Anywhere that minimizes contagion of the virus. I'm not trying to be coy or flippant. I recognize that there are hardships involved. You gave a very general scenario so I can only re-state the fundamental invariant. > get a bunch of parents together and rotate which house all the kids will stay at each day and pool their wages That could work. Except better not to move them around, and limit their exposure to adults who do move around. I'm not an epidemiologist so I'm not qualified to give detailed advice. I do feel pretty confident about telling people to stay home because that's how you slow down a pandemic. The streets should be deserted right now. Here's the messed up thing: the virus doesn't care. If we have set up our society in such a way that we can't respond properly to this thing it will fuck us up and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. IF there are too many parents working, and not enough extended family (or whatever), and/or not enough sick leave, and/or a system that can't make and distribute tests, or any of a bunch of other factors, THEN people are going to die. A lot of people. And if enough of the die (or just get really sick all at the same time) major additional problems could occur. Most cities have only about three days of food in the pipeline. After that, the only food is our pets, and then "long pork". The best thing you can do to stave that off is stay home now before it's too late. Maybe our civilization are fundamentally at odds with surviving a pandemic, I hope not, but be clear about the danger here.