Agreed it is a bit disturbing how seemingly lightly K12 schools have been treating cases, which is possibly an indication of how lightly they will treat impending local outbreaks like that in Cambridge. I get there are fierce arguments on the side of keeping them open, NYC schools for example pointed to their free- and reduced-lunch program as why they can't close or go remote, (& that students don't have computers at home, or that parents rely on the school as babysitting).

This Seattle school figured out measures for handling lunch and remote schooling availability, at least: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/10/us/covid-19-s...

Especially in these early days, dispersal of dense populations can easily mean saving many lives. We need to flatten the curve so spread rate does not exceed hospital bed availability.

Nobody's saying we won't all be extremely inconvenienced by this, but slowing the spread will mean that inconvenience does not include many avoidable deaths. And now is the time to do everything we can. In weeks, once we feel the effects more closely, it is too late to make an impact.

This comic puts it well, the goal is to flatten the curve: https://twitter.com/SiouxsieW/status/1236721200291655680