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You have to have the virus under control to even consider a plan. Denmark reopened schools months ago, after painful negotiations with the government, parents,

by papito 6y ago

You have to have the virus under control to even consider a plan. Denmark reopened schools months ago, after painful negotiations with the government, parents, and faculty. There were new rules and lots of remodeling (I think they even added bathrooms). We don't have any of this, and it's aggravated by a large population of aggressively ignorant and anti-science parents. Israel was one of the models for controlling COVID-19, and school reopening completely wrecked their progress.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
If people think school is so important that it needs to open even though the virus is spreading, then we need to help them find the best way possible to do that. Throwing our hands up and saying there's no way to even consider a plan won't stop schools from opening - it just means they'll open with bad plans or no plans.
- papito 6y ago
  Schools are not an island in this plan. Any strategy, without proper federal plan, resources, money, tests, and tracing is going to fail. A municipality or a city is not going to single-handedly solve this while a pandemic is raging all around, with the President golfing for the 9th weekend in a row. With our level of infections, and essentially none or useless testing, there is no need to plan. We are all agreeing we are creating a massive spike.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The point of a school reopening plan isn't to "solve this" - as you say, there's no way to escape the fundamental problem that the coronavirus will spread at school. The point of a plan is to make targeted reductions in the spread while accounting for the likely secondary effects. Paulding County has chosen to allow the virus to spread, and whether or not we agree with that choice, it would still be better if they didn't have students jammed shoulder to shoulder in interior hallways.
  - jonahbenton 6y ago
    Not just golfing. Actively interceding to create maximum chaos, which in most cases, means harm.
eloisius 6y ago
> aggressively ignorant and anti-science parents This is what came to mind for me. I've lived in Georgia my whole life. In fact my hometown is right on the county line of Paulding County. There have been plenty of quips about the unenforceability of a mask mandate, but they can enforce rules against spaghetti strap tops or above-the-knee shorts. The first thing that came to mind when I read it was Road Rage Randy bursting into the principal's office demanding to know why his son was told he'd have to wear a dangerous, oxygen-restricting, anti-freedom muzzle to come to school this morning. It might be unenforceable just because of unhinged dads. Judging by the stream of Facebook posts and arguments in comment threads among my own family, people I went to church with as a child, and other connections from "outside the city," the anti-scientific beliefs are deeply entrenched here. The zeitgeist is some kind of rapidly evolving mixture of: it's just a flu, the numbers are faked, masks rob you of oxygen, there's nothing you can do about a virus we just have to live with it like we do colds every year, vaccines weaken your immune system. To compound the madness, this crap is all mixed with reactions to Black Lives Matter protests. I'm losing it.

by papito 6y ago

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

If people think school is so important that it needs to open even though the virus is spreading, then we need to help them find the best way possible to do that. Throwing our hands up and saying there's no way to even consider a plan won't stop schools from opening - it just means they'll open with bad plans or no plans.

papito 6y ago
Schools are not an island in this plan. Any strategy, without proper federal plan, resources, money, tests, and tracing is going to fail. A municipality or a city is not going to single-handedly solve this while a pandemic is raging all around, with the President golfing for the 9th weekend in a row. With our level of infections, and essentially none or useless testing, there is no need to plan. We are all agreeing we are creating a massive spike.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The point of a school reopening plan isn't to "solve this" - as you say, there's no way to escape the fundamental problem that the coronavirus will spread at school. The point of a plan is to make targeted reductions in the spread while accounting for the likely secondary effects. Paulding County has chosen to allow the virus to spread, and whether or not we agree with that choice, it would still be better if they didn't have students jammed shoulder to shoulder in interior hallways.
- jonahbenton 6y ago
  Not just golfing. Actively interceding to create maximum chaos, which in most cases, means harm.

eloisius 6y ago

> aggressively ignorant and anti-science parents This is what came to mind for me. I've lived in Georgia my whole life. In fact my hometown is right on the county line of Paulding County. There have been plenty of quips about the unenforceability of a mask mandate, but they can enforce rules against spaghetti strap tops or above-the-knee shorts. The first thing that came to mind when I read it was Road Rage Randy bursting into the principal's office demanding to know why his son was told he'd have to wear a dangerous, oxygen-restricting, anti-freedom muzzle to come to school this morning. It might be unenforceable just because of unhinged dads. Judging by the stream of Facebook posts and arguments in comment threads among my own family, people I went to church with as a child, and other connections from "outside the city," the anti-scientific beliefs are deeply entrenched here. The zeitgeist is some kind of rapidly evolving mixture of: it's just a flu, the numbers are faked, masks rob you of oxygen, there's nothing you can do about a virus we just have to live with it like we do colds every year, vaccines weaken your immune system. To compound the madness, this crap is all mixed with reactions to Black Lives Matter protests. I'm losing it.