The severity of the impact on the livelihood of these people and the residual impact to the economy cannot be overstated.
> Are childcare options being provided during closures?
> Closing schools has a major impact on our ability to staff hospitals, health care facilities, and other fire and medical departments. Superintendents have been asked to provide childcare, at no cost, to families who are in the medical field or who are first responders.
> What if I don’t work in those fields?
> If families don’t work in the healthcare or first responder fields but are expected to continue to attend work during the closure, they should reach out to their school district. Districts can make additional decisions that are needed for their communities.
As this is an executive order from the Governor, teachers won't be required to make up the time when students return.
Let's be honest, that duty will likely fall on an extended family member. The worst part? That extended family member will likely be a member of a covid-19 vulnerable population. More precisely, grandma.
(edit: I see I'm being downvoted.... ok. I'm genuinely curious, and also hoping that people aren't keeping their own out-of-school kids away from their own grandparents out of fear)
In any case, that information seems to have been confirmed by the experience of Western authorities. So I'm inclined to believe it.
The idea here is probably to slow down the spread among kids now, which would slow down the spread to less vulnerable adult populations down the road. The drawback is that if some children are carrying the virus now, there is a short term danger to vulnerable adult populations.
I'm betting they've already wargamed all that out and the numbers right now favor accepting the short term danger?
I would go so far as to suggest that if she can take care of herself, grandma should self quarantine as much as possible for the duration of the crisis. People do not become less dangerous just because they are relatives.
After the family spent 2 weeks in self quarantine, visiting grandma is probably fine.
Many grandparents in the US live nearby and see their grandkids often and often look after them with some regularity. That seems to be the sort of scenario where they'd be employed to watch them while they are in learning from home situations, no? I don't think we are talking about frail people in nursing homes.
Specifically, younger people are sometimes being told to avoid older people, sometimes when the older person is in need.
IIRC, some place had bans/restrictions on visiting nursing homes because the potential for spreading the virus might end up exposing a large percentage of the occupants to a significant chance of death.
No citation because I cannot remember where I read it.
You can be a grandparent of young kids very easily in your late 50s.
Their parents, who are about to be either working from home if they are white collar, or laid off if they are blue collar, because local economies and services take a nosedive during a pandemic. We're in the middle of this in Seattle - service workers aren't being called in, or are getting laid off.
And if you aren't in either of those categories, you should have a friend or relative who is, who you can ask to childsit.
Some parents are now going to be working at home, side by side with their kids attending school at home. While this may not be ideal all the time, it's not a terrible thing to make all of this work. We're all going to be set up for telecommuting and online education going forward. If nothing else, it's less fossil fuels being burned.
Just like WW2 got us out of a depression and started us on a huge economic upswing -- and yes, at an immense cost -- this might have a similar effect, albeit on a smaller scale. I would not be surprised if 6 months from now, with the virus gone and a whole lot of disruption behind us, we'll find it stimulated the economy more than it hurt it.
And late comedians are making jokes about the whole situation right now. Not about the deaths, but about other aspects of it.
[1] https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market...
No one knows the scale of the problem. It's the uncertainty that's driving the volatility.