10 ms·

CDC director: Keeping schools closed greater health threat to children reopening

39 points by mrfusion 6y ago

mindslight 6y ago
CDC director, after being pushed by the grim reaper in chief. The federal agency's initial advice can be taken as useful, but once there has been time for the marching orders to come down, it's better seen as outright harmful. Unfortunately that won't stop a lot of people in red states from dying, as their corrupt leaders point to the harmful misinformation when implementing their own backwards agendas.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mindslight 6y ago
  I wrote a reply to a comment that was deleted before I hit submit. It linked https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/29/884638999/u-s-pediatricians-call-for-in-person-school-this-fall https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... . Given the downvotes my comment is receiving, I'll post it to clarify: I'm not saying that the pediatricians are wrong, or even that the headline of "Keeping schools closed greater health threat to children reopening" is false in a vacuum. The problem is the narrow emphasis, ultimately to support a counterproductive political agenda. The pediatricians' quote includes the caveat "wherever and whenever they can do so safely", which will surely be ignored, especially in underfunded school systems. The fact is that the US is basically still at the beginning of our dealing with COVID-19, due a lack of societal and political will to confront the challenge. I too hope that it does magically go away due to a vaccine, silently-growing herd immunity, etc. But it's foolish to adopt hope as a plan of action, as opposed to acknowledging the problem and doing the hard work to address it.
thih9 6y ago
> "I think really people underestimate the public health consequences of having the schools closed on the kids," Redfield said Did he name these consequences? I couldn’t spot that in the article. Did someone find that or does anyone have a quote from elsewhere? Preferably no speculation; a direct quote or a summary of his statement would be ideal.
- verdverm 6y ago
  One example I know of is school meals for low income students. My brother, a teacher, was telling me about socialization and brain development in adolescents. There is a definite impact that we have very little understanding of.
  - johnnyo 6y ago
    We don’t need to reopen schools to solve the meal problem. My school district kept providing meals even after the school itself was closed.
    - bigwavedave 6y ago
      Same, I haven't seen a single instance in real life where the system hasn't kept providing meals.
    - jgalt212 6y ago
      and exposing those folks to similar risk levels as if the schools had not closed int he first place.
      - MikeTheGreat 6y ago
        No-contact pickup works for school-provided meals, too
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - JshWright 6y ago
        Not at all... Depending on the setting the meals are either picked up at the school, or dropped off at the student's home. Both are generally easy to arrange in a "no contact" way. It's not like they are inviting the students into the cafeteria for one big group meal.
      - hamandcheese 6y ago
        No, only the poor people.
claudeganon 6y ago
> "I don't think we should go overboard in trying to develop a system that doesn't recognize the reality that this virus really is relatively benign to those of us that are under the age of 20” Great. How about their teachers and school staff, parents and extended family? What are the consequences of watching you’re teachers get seriously ill or die, losing a grandparent, or your mom or dad? Also, novel disease so we don’t actually know the long term consequences for children or anyone else. 3 teachers in Arizona tried to be extra precautious and do in person instruction over the summer. Now, one of them is dead from COVID: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education/2020/07/09/after-arizona-teacher-kim-byrd-dies-covid-questions-raised-over-school-reopening/5405651002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education...
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > one of them is dead So almost nobody. I rest my case.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  I don’t mean to be harsh, and it is sad, but the plural of anecdote is still not data.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    Ok, but, regardless, it corresponds exactly with the CDC's own assessments. Reopening schools is among one of the highest risk things for spread of the disease: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/us/politics/trump-schools-reopening.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/us/politics/trump-schools...
    - mixmastamyk 6y ago
      It needs to be spread. Remember "flatten the curve?"
      - lostlogin 6y ago
Blackthorn 6y ago
What about the threat to all the adults? Lots of teachers. Janitors. Chefs. Administrators. Support staff.
- vvanders 6y ago
  Yeah, the push to re-open schools just seems like a bad idea on multiple fronts, this part included. A few teachers I follow are being asked to name someone who can "replace" them if they contract covid. I can't wrap my head around putting people in harm's way like that willingly when we don't have any control over the outbreak.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    School districts are already preparing form letters for when kids and teachers die. It’s the height of nihilism when compared to what countries in SE Asia have accomplished in stopping the disease.
    - Blackthorn 6y ago
      Amazing that they pay them like crap and then expect them to put their lives on the line. I have no idea why anyone would ever bother becoming a teacher in 2020.
      - baldfat 6y ago
        This goes back 25 years. It is even more so if you are the first in your family to go to college. There will be a huge shortage of teachers and there already is a HUGE diversity problem with most minority groups do not go to school for teaching as a profession.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Few of them are elderly, or unhealthy and if they are probably seriously considering retirement if they haven't already.
baldfat 6y ago
Why are teachers never even entered into the equation? You have no teachers you don't have school. Teachers getting sick is going to put a serious hurt on the educational system. Teachers have been demonized for decades now so hardly anyone is going into the field.
- avancemos 6y ago
  “Teachers have been demonized for decades” Lol
  - baldfat 6y ago
    Teachers have been the enemy for decades. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-america-demonizes-its-teachers_b_7463084 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-america-demonizes-its-tea...
codefreakxff 6y ago
Why is this being posed as either closing the schools and kids get no education or making kids go to school with expensive mitigations, and masks, etc. Why hasn't there been a serious effort at converting to online learning just like the transitions that happening around working remotely?
- nradov 6y ago
  Online learning isn't effective for most small children.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    I have 2 ADD children. I’m ADD myself. Yea at home learn is a nightmare. Someone had to sit with kid entire time. Even when video camera is on with teacher
- danielfoster 6y ago
  Many students don't have the right type of environment at home for online learning. I am not an expert in this area but would imagine it is much more diffcult to learn online as a 6-year-old versus a 16-year-old. There are also a lot of skills beyond academics students best learn through direct social interaction.
- ahupp 6y ago
  I have two young children who spent the last few months in online learning. Online learning requires more attention span than most children have available, and I haven't seen a program that's simultaneously a) engaging, and b) does as good of a job teaching as a teacher. Honestly, a big part of this is the social pressure of 21 other classmate sitting there paying attention.
moreorless 6y ago
All I am hearing from this is, "We must reopen the economy."
cs702 6y ago
There is ZERO mention of any data or research in this article providing any evidence that this decision is a good one. It may be a good decision, BUT it hasn't been justified, as far as I can tell. Moreover, the article quotes school administrators, teachers, and their representatives stating in no uncertain terms that schools in the US do not yet have the resources necessary for reopening safely. What the heck?
- lostlogin 6y ago
  There is no mention of the risk to teachers health either. It likely varies a lot country to country and region to region, but there are a significant number of of old teachers. However a brief look at the average age of the US teaching workforce shows a slightly younger teaching workforce than I'd have expected which presumably helps a little. One upside of the distinct gender bias in the teaching workforce is that females seem to fare better when they get corona virus, so there is that. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/state_2004_19.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/state_2004_19.asp https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00152/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.0015...
fabian2k 6y ago
Keeping the schools closed has a high cost, and it is likely to exacerbate many problems for weaker students, or students that don't have an ideal situation at home with strong support from their parents and easy access to all the stuff you need for remote learning. But there isn't really a choice in many parts in the US unless you're willing to let the pandemic run its course and kill as many people as it takes to get to herd immunity. The only way to safely reopen schools is to suppress the virus enough that you can contain it with contact tracing. If you can't do that, there's no way to safely reopen schools in full. You can try alternatives like e.g. teaching outside, using masks, but they're not entirely safe, difficult to do and can't really work at 100% capacity.
- nradov 6y ago
  Safety is not a binary condition. The risk will be higher than it was last year no matter what we do. Keeping schools closed indefinitely is obviously untenable. Since they have to reopen eventually, there's nothing to be gained by waiting.
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Untenable? How? Between open source academics and some basic homeschooling, we can completely meet (or exceed) the average statewide curriculum requirements.
    - Uw7yTcf36gTc 6y ago
      Who is performing this home schooling?
  - xref 6y ago
    I don’t think anyone is advocating keeping schools closed until the heat death of the universe, and there is a lot to be gained by waiting when you’re somewhere in the middle of a pandemic. Hence the ongoing conversation about striking the right balance which is very much going to be regional and fluid.
sjg007 6y ago
I don’t get it, kids have 3 months off in summer. Do we just ignore them during those times. They still have meal requirements and issues at home. Delay school start at a minimum until we can get our positivity rates down. The Feds could feed kids who need it.. it seems like a false narrative to focus on kids here. Am I wrong? Congress could do a lot more and save the day.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > Do we just ignore them during those times. Working parents tend to send them to summer camp... which have also been closed.
  - social_quotient 6y ago
    I know very few kids doing summer camps (before now). Any chance someone could wrangle a stat on this? I know they exist but just didn’t think it was a pervasively utilized thing.
  - tzs 6y ago
    Even accounting for children sent to camp, there are a lot of children left to deal with. In the US, about ~20% of children attend summer camp in a given year (that includes both day camps and overnight camps). For children from poor families it's down around 7%. 38% for children from affluent families. Also, of those who do go to camp many of them go to camps that do not last the entire summer.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  Lots of parents leave their kids home alone, even if they are underaged. Largely it works, but up to a year? Lots of parents are willing for their kids to backslide a little, especially since most kids backslide together, rather than an emerging narrative of kids spending their summers cramming for placement tests. But a year? Some kids will be racing ahead because they're still experiencing personal math tutoring. And what have Americans been doing in the time during lockdown? Have they purchased time? For example, in what ways is TX more prepared for the year ahead? I guess we'll see which kids deserve to place into the best seats.
ceejayoz 6y ago
> The American Academy of Pediatrics has also called for students to return to classrooms, citing the educational and social harms to children of being away from school for a prolonged period of time. They walked this back on Friday. https://www.wbur.org/npr/889848834/nations-pediatricians-walk-back-support-for-in-person-school https://www.wbur.org/npr/889848834/nations-pediatricians-wal...
- dx87 6y ago
  It doesn't sound like they walked it back, but clarified their statement. They still think the goal should be to get kids physically in schools, they just emphasized that it shouldn't be done based only on political reasons.
pornel 6y ago
This is a political opinion, not a scientific one. He's Trump's appointee, and his credentials are in line with the rest of them: > Robert Redfield is a sloppy scientist with a long history of scientific misconduct and an extreme religious agenda. https://cspinet.org/news/cspi-urges-administration-not-appoint-dr-robert-redfield-history-scientific-misconduct-cdc https://cspinet.org/news/cspi-urges-administration-not-appoi...
xyst 6y ago
We have already seen what happened when the bars and restaurants re-opened (increase in infections and deaths). I imagine we won't see anything different when the schools re-open. So this seems incredibly shortsighted to me. It's sad that the administration is willing to sacrifice the teachers, misc school staff, parents and children for short term gains. Not only are we endangering human lives, but we are risking prolonging this disease which will continue to ravage the economy. If you think it's bad now, imagine what it will be like in 2021 if we continue at this rate. Why can't we continue with e-learning for the first half of school and reassess the situation as we approach 2021?
- ryandrake 6y ago
  The sad and frustrating thing is we know how to beat this disease: STAY HOME, wear a mask when you absolutely have to go out, contact tracing. But Americans just won’t do these simple things. They’ve got to go get their nails done, and eat at their restaurants, and walk around flexing their freedom, and by whatever means possible own the libs. Then they wonder why we have so many cases and deaths and can’t open schools without the apocalypse happening. I’m pretty much out of empathy at this point. We are missing out on an entire year because people won’t put a piece of cloth over their face.
foogazi 6y ago
Why not partial reopening? Kids that don’t have caretakers during the day go to reduced attendance classes Kids that have someone to look after them can do online or go a couple of days a week Fortunately decisions like this are up to the local school districts and parents - adjustments have to be made
jshaqaw 6y ago
Keeping schools closed is horrific for my children. That said all of these brave warriors demanding schools reopen from behind the keyboards of their socially distanced houses should have to spend a day to two a week working in the schools and expose themselves as adults to that environment. Our teachers and other educational workers are not disposable. Moreover our school is facing a 20 percent budget cut while being tasked with converting to hospital grade PPE/distancing. Utterly unrealistic.
- mercer 6y ago
  That's a good point. Over here (NL) things have been slowly opening up, to the point where to many of us it feels like things are 'back to normal'. Nonetheless, when it comes to schools reopening, as I understand it, one of the big problems is that many teachers aren't quite as comfortable going 'back to normal'.
  - jshaqaw 6y ago
    I'm writing from NYC. My wife is the Principal of a school here. Schools are being given almost no support or guidance at any level from local to federal. Educational administrators are being told to open schools ensuring student and staff safety without a shred of fiscal support or health science guidance. The physical infrastructure of the schools can't possibly handle the distancing requirements being imposed. My wife is being presented with a Kobayashi Maru here but with the real lives of children, staff, and extended families on the line. I am 110% sympathetic to the importance of getting kids back in school. My kids are suffering from social and educational withdrawal. When schools even partially reopen I'll be solo with the kids on their home days as my wife is back running her school. Not exactly an environment conducive to productive work or my kids' mental health. But the idea that we can just ram through re-openings prematurely is insane. It is double insane that at this time the Federal government is bailing out every private sector millionaire in creation via PPP while schools are being forced to cut budgets by catastrophic amounts.

39 points by mrfusion 6y ago

CDC director, after being pushed by the grim reaper in chief. The federal agency's initial advice can be taken as useful, but once there has been time for the marching orders to come down, it's better seen as outright harmful. Unfortunately that won't stop a lot of people in red states from dying, as their corrupt leaders point to the harmful misinformation when implementing their own backwards agendas.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mindslight 6y ago
I wrote a reply to a comment that was deleted before I hit submit. It linked https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/29/884638999/u-s-pediatricians-call-for-in-person-school-this-fall https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... . Given the downvotes my comment is receiving, I'll post it to clarify: I'm not saying that the pediatricians are wrong, or even that the headline of "Keeping schools closed greater health threat to children reopening" is false in a vacuum. The problem is the narrow emphasis, ultimately to support a counterproductive political agenda. The pediatricians' quote includes the caveat "wherever and whenever they can do so safely", which will surely be ignored, especially in underfunded school systems. The fact is that the US is basically still at the beginning of our dealing with COVID-19, due a lack of societal and political will to confront the challenge. I too hope that it does magically go away due to a vaccine, silently-growing herd immunity, etc. But it's foolish to adopt hope as a plan of action, as opposed to acknowledging the problem and doing the hard work to address it.

thih9 6y ago

> "I think really people underestimate the public health consequences of having the schools closed on the kids," Redfield said Did he name these consequences? I couldn’t spot that in the article. Did someone find that or does anyone have a quote from elsewhere? Preferably no speculation; a direct quote or a summary of his statement would be ideal.

verdverm 6y ago
One example I know of is school meals for low income students. My brother, a teacher, was telling me about socialization and brain development in adolescents. There is a definite impact that we have very little understanding of.
- johnnyo 6y ago
  We don’t need to reopen schools to solve the meal problem. My school district kept providing meals even after the school itself was closed.
  - bigwavedave 6y ago
    Same, I haven't seen a single instance in real life where the system hasn't kept providing meals.
  - jgalt212 6y ago
    and exposing those folks to similar risk levels as if the schools had not closed int he first place.
    - MikeTheGreat 6y ago
      No-contact pickup works for school-provided meals, too
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - JshWright 6y ago
      Not at all... Depending on the setting the meals are either picked up at the school, or dropped off at the student's home. Both are generally easy to arrange in a "no contact" way. It's not like they are inviting the students into the cafeteria for one big group meal.
    - hamandcheese 6y ago
      No, only the poor people.

claudeganon 6y ago

> "I don't think we should go overboard in trying to develop a system that doesn't recognize the reality that this virus really is relatively benign to those of us that are under the age of 20” Great. How about their teachers and school staff, parents and extended family? What are the consequences of watching you’re teachers get seriously ill or die, losing a grandparent, or your mom or dad? Also, novel disease so we don’t actually know the long term consequences for children or anyone else. 3 teachers in Arizona tried to be extra precautious and do in person instruction over the summer. Now, one of them is dead from COVID: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education/2020/07/09/after-arizona-teacher-kim-byrd-dies-covid-questions-raised-over-school-reopening/5405651002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education...

redis_mlc 6y ago
> one of them is dead So almost nobody. I rest my case.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
I don’t mean to be harsh, and it is sad, but the plural of anecdote is still not data.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  Ok, but, regardless, it corresponds exactly with the CDC's own assessments. Reopening schools is among one of the highest risk things for spread of the disease: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/us/politics/trump-schools-reopening.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/us/politics/trump-schools...
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    It needs to be spread. Remember "flatten the curve?"
    - lostlogin 6y ago

Blackthorn 6y ago

What about the threat to all the adults? Lots of teachers. Janitors. Chefs. Administrators. Support staff.

vvanders 6y ago
Yeah, the push to re-open schools just seems like a bad idea on multiple fronts, this part included. A few teachers I follow are being asked to name someone who can "replace" them if they contract covid. I can't wrap my head around putting people in harm's way like that willingly when we don't have any control over the outbreak.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  School districts are already preparing form letters for when kids and teachers die. It’s the height of nihilism when compared to what countries in SE Asia have accomplished in stopping the disease.
  - Blackthorn 6y ago
    Amazing that they pay them like crap and then expect them to put their lives on the line. I have no idea why anyone would ever bother becoming a teacher in 2020.
    - baldfat 6y ago
      This goes back 25 years. It is even more so if you are the first in your family to go to college. There will be a huge shortage of teachers and there already is a HUGE diversity problem with most minority groups do not go to school for teaching as a profession.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
Few of them are elderly, or unhealthy and if they are probably seriously considering retirement if they haven't already.

baldfat 6y ago

Why are teachers never even entered into the equation? You have no teachers you don't have school. Teachers getting sick is going to put a serious hurt on the educational system. Teachers have been demonized for decades now so hardly anyone is going into the field.

avancemos 6y ago
“Teachers have been demonized for decades” Lol
- baldfat 6y ago
  Teachers have been the enemy for decades. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-america-demonizes-its-teachers_b_7463084 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-america-demonizes-its-tea...

codefreakxff 6y ago

Why is this being posed as either closing the schools and kids get no education or making kids go to school with expensive mitigations, and masks, etc. Why hasn't there been a serious effort at converting to online learning just like the transitions that happening around working remotely?

nradov 6y ago
Online learning isn't effective for most small children.
- treeman79 6y ago
  I have 2 ADD children. I’m ADD myself. Yea at home learn is a nightmare. Someone had to sit with kid entire time. Even when video camera is on with teacher
danielfoster 6y ago
Many students don't have the right type of environment at home for online learning. I am not an expert in this area but would imagine it is much more diffcult to learn online as a 6-year-old versus a 16-year-old. There are also a lot of skills beyond academics students best learn through direct social interaction.
ahupp 6y ago
I have two young children who spent the last few months in online learning. Online learning requires more attention span than most children have available, and I haven't seen a program that's simultaneously a) engaging, and b) does as good of a job teaching as a teacher. Honestly, a big part of this is the social pressure of 21 other classmate sitting there paying attention.

moreorless 6y ago

All I am hearing from this is, "We must reopen the economy."

cs702 6y ago

There is ZERO mention of any data or research in this article providing any evidence that this decision is a good one. It may be a good decision, BUT it hasn't been justified, as far as I can tell. Moreover, the article quotes school administrators, teachers, and their representatives stating in no uncertain terms that schools in the US do not yet have the resources necessary for reopening safely. What the heck?

lostlogin 6y ago
There is no mention of the risk to teachers health either. It likely varies a lot country to country and region to region, but there are a significant number of of old teachers. However a brief look at the average age of the US teaching workforce shows a slightly younger teaching workforce than I'd have expected which presumably helps a little. One upside of the distinct gender bias in the teaching workforce is that females seem to fare better when they get corona virus, so there is that. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/state_2004_19.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/state_2004_19.asp https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00152/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.0015...

fabian2k 6y ago

Keeping the schools closed has a high cost, and it is likely to exacerbate many problems for weaker students, or students that don't have an ideal situation at home with strong support from their parents and easy access to all the stuff you need for remote learning. But there isn't really a choice in many parts in the US unless you're willing to let the pandemic run its course and kill as many people as it takes to get to herd immunity. The only way to safely reopen schools is to suppress the virus enough that you can contain it with contact tracing. If you can't do that, there's no way to safely reopen schools in full. You can try alternatives like e.g. teaching outside, using masks, but they're not entirely safe, difficult to do and can't really work at 100% capacity.

nradov 6y ago
Safety is not a binary condition. The risk will be higher than it was last year no matter what we do. Keeping schools closed indefinitely is obviously untenable. Since they have to reopen eventually, there's nothing to be gained by waiting.
- craftinator 6y ago
  Untenable? How? Between open source academics and some basic homeschooling, we can completely meet (or exceed) the average statewide curriculum requirements.
  - Uw7yTcf36gTc 6y ago
    Who is performing this home schooling?
- xref 6y ago
  I don’t think anyone is advocating keeping schools closed until the heat death of the universe, and there is a lot to be gained by waiting when you’re somewhere in the middle of a pandemic. Hence the ongoing conversation about striking the right balance which is very much going to be regional and fluid.

sjg007 6y ago

I don’t get it, kids have 3 months off in summer. Do we just ignore them during those times. They still have meal requirements and issues at home. Delay school start at a minimum until we can get our positivity rates down. The Feds could feed kids who need it.. it seems like a false narrative to focus on kids here. Am I wrong? Congress could do a lot more and save the day.

ceejayoz 6y ago
> Do we just ignore them during those times. Working parents tend to send them to summer camp... which have also been closed.
- social_quotient 6y ago
  I know very few kids doing summer camps (before now). Any chance someone could wrangle a stat on this? I know they exist but just didn’t think it was a pervasively utilized thing.
- tzs 6y ago
  Even accounting for children sent to camp, there are a lot of children left to deal with. In the US, about ~20% of children attend summer camp in a given year (that includes both day camps and overnight camps). For children from poor families it's down around 7%. 38% for children from affluent families. Also, of those who do go to camp many of them go to camps that do not last the entire summer.
threatofrain 6y ago
Lots of parents leave their kids home alone, even if they are underaged. Largely it works, but up to a year? Lots of parents are willing for their kids to backslide a little, especially since most kids backslide together, rather than an emerging narrative of kids spending their summers cramming for placement tests. But a year? Some kids will be racing ahead because they're still experiencing personal math tutoring. And what have Americans been doing in the time during lockdown? Have they purchased time? For example, in what ways is TX more prepared for the year ahead? I guess we'll see which kids deserve to place into the best seats.

ceejayoz 6y ago

> The American Academy of Pediatrics has also called for students to return to classrooms, citing the educational and social harms to children of being away from school for a prolonged period of time. They walked this back on Friday. https://www.wbur.org/npr/889848834/nations-pediatricians-walk-back-support-for-in-person-school https://www.wbur.org/npr/889848834/nations-pediatricians-wal...

dx87 6y ago
It doesn't sound like they walked it back, but clarified their statement. They still think the goal should be to get kids physically in schools, they just emphasized that it shouldn't be done based only on political reasons.

pornel 6y ago

This is a political opinion, not a scientific one. He's Trump's appointee, and his credentials are in line with the rest of them: > Robert Redfield is a sloppy scientist with a long history of scientific misconduct and an extreme religious agenda. https://cspinet.org/news/cspi-urges-administration-not-appoint-dr-robert-redfield-history-scientific-misconduct-cdc https://cspinet.org/news/cspi-urges-administration-not-appoi...

xyst 6y ago

We have already seen what happened when the bars and restaurants re-opened (increase in infections and deaths). I imagine we won't see anything different when the schools re-open. So this seems incredibly shortsighted to me. It's sad that the administration is willing to sacrifice the teachers, misc school staff, parents and children for short term gains. Not only are we endangering human lives, but we are risking prolonging this disease which will continue to ravage the economy. If you think it's bad now, imagine what it will be like in 2021 if we continue at this rate. Why can't we continue with e-learning for the first half of school and reassess the situation as we approach 2021?

ryandrake 6y ago
The sad and frustrating thing is we know how to beat this disease: STAY HOME, wear a mask when you absolutely have to go out, contact tracing. But Americans just won’t do these simple things. They’ve got to go get their nails done, and eat at their restaurants, and walk around flexing their freedom, and by whatever means possible own the libs. Then they wonder why we have so many cases and deaths and can’t open schools without the apocalypse happening. I’m pretty much out of empathy at this point. We are missing out on an entire year because people won’t put a piece of cloth over their face.

foogazi 6y ago

Why not partial reopening? Kids that don’t have caretakers during the day go to reduced attendance classes Kids that have someone to look after them can do online or go a couple of days a week Fortunately decisions like this are up to the local school districts and parents - adjustments have to be made

jshaqaw 6y ago

Keeping schools closed is horrific for my children. That said all of these brave warriors demanding schools reopen from behind the keyboards of their socially distanced houses should have to spend a day to two a week working in the schools and expose themselves as adults to that environment. Our teachers and other educational workers are not disposable. Moreover our school is facing a 20 percent budget cut while being tasked with converting to hospital grade PPE/distancing. Utterly unrealistic.

mercer 6y ago
That's a good point. Over here (NL) things have been slowly opening up, to the point where to many of us it feels like things are 'back to normal'. Nonetheless, when it comes to schools reopening, as I understand it, one of the big problems is that many teachers aren't quite as comfortable going 'back to normal'.
- jshaqaw 6y ago
  I'm writing from NYC. My wife is the Principal of a school here. Schools are being given almost no support or guidance at any level from local to federal. Educational administrators are being told to open schools ensuring student and staff safety without a shred of fiscal support or health science guidance. The physical infrastructure of the schools can't possibly handle the distancing requirements being imposed. My wife is being presented with a Kobayashi Maru here but with the real lives of children, staff, and extended families on the line. I am 110% sympathetic to the importance of getting kids back in school. My kids are suffering from social and educational withdrawal. When schools even partially reopen I'll be solo with the kids on their home days as my wife is back running her school. Not exactly an environment conducive to productive work or my kids' mental health. But the idea that we can just ram through re-openings prematurely is insane. It is double insane that at this time the Federal government is bailing out every private sector millionaire in creation via PPP while schools are being forced to cut budgets by catastrophic amounts.