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Comment by testfoobar | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: will schools and universities reopen in the fall?

A large university with dormitories is kind of like a cruise ship on land: everyone eats, sleeps, plays and works together.

Elementary and High schools are somewhat better in that kids go their own homes at night. But they still eat, play and study together. Hallways of high schools between classes see lots of cross-campus shoulder-to-shoulder traffic as kids rush from one class to the other.

What are the odds that schools and universities open at all in August/September? Will they shutter for a full year? Will there be tuition discounts?

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In the Uk I expect they will shut down hard, then after the NHS recovers a little we'll get a little holiday from the shut down to spread the infection a little.

I guess they will do this in phases (e.g. some shops will be opened for a weekend) over the spring/summer and then we'll all go back to school next academic year.

> Elementary and High schools are somewhat better in that kids go their own homes at night.

Isn't it the other way round? For containing the spread of the virus, it's better to have the students mixing the same closed group 24 hours a day, than to spend 12 hours back with their families or other communities.

I have a feeling governments are going to relax restrictions given the enormous economic costs we're absorbing right now. It may be medically advisable to keep this up for like 18 months, but there's a cost to plunging the world into a global depression that could outweigh the cost of treating a rampant virus. At some point we're going to have to declare the curve to be sufficiently flattened and ride it out until a vaccine can be deployed.

The cost to plunging the world into a global depression is far worse than this virus will ever be.

Could you share the analysis that led you to this conclusion?

conclusory statement.

You got to ask, are our homes burning, our factories being bombed. Our skilled workers going to die?

Answer is no.

Only danger we face if we bring the hammer down and squash this is it'll upset the delicacy balanced system extracting passive rents from working class people.

Worse than killing millions? What's the economic impact of that?

And then we'll have to learn to live with the knowledge that our "strong" economy can't handle a pandemic with a 1% death rate, and that we were incapable of handling it as well as other countries like South Korea.

That depends entirely on how long it takes for the pandemic to cease. If, like some studies show, the virus gets stopped by the warmer weather, it could be in May that we return to normalcy.

> If, like some studies show, the virus gets stopped by the warmer weather

Looks at the map of infections, focusing on areas near the equator... No, I wouldn't count on it.

It’s less warmer weather than higher humidity. Not going to help most of Europe or North America and winter will come round again, likely before a vaccine or a cure. Everyone should be wearing masks to inhibit spread.

I guess we fucked ourselves moving to green energy. Time to turn on the coal burners and get to warming this planet up.

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