Reopening Bars Is Easy. Schools Are Difficult

Re-opening is a knapsack problem.

Your budget is Rt (effective reproduction number) which has to stay at or below 1.

All social and economic activities have a benefit to society and a cost in terms of Rt.

The goal is to get to Rt = 1 while maximizing the benefits to society. The problem is that covid is so contagious that many activities have a very high cost.

Seen this way, maybe it makes sense to throw bars and indoor dining out of the knapsack so we can put schools in.

It’s really hard to believe it when you have parents saying crap like “my daughter will never wear a mask and will hug her teachers and friends!”. That was one of the comments made by a parent in a survey my school district sent to help them understand how to proceed for the upcoming school year (we had access to the answers; anonymized, of course). And there were a lot with the same tone.

I don’t know, I’m afraid that even with all measures in place there are too many people that don’t believe the pandemics is real and don’t try even a bit to make their part as a member of the community.

Edit: typos.

Here in Belgium kindergarten and primary schools were reopened in June for about 3 weeks until summer holiday started. The kids didn't have to wear masks, nor the teachers while in front of their class. Teaching was more or less like before, albeit with a bit more distancing between teacher and kids.

Outside the classroom the kids from one class were not allowed to mix with kids from another. The playground was divided up in several areas and each class was assigned one. Breaks were in two shifts and all toys were washed in between (and rotated between areas). Dropping off and picking up the kids was also in two shifts and spread over as much entrances as possible to reduce contact with other bubbles. No parents allowed on the school premises.

As far as could be judged from those few weeks this didn't seem to impact the infection numbers. Even better was that the kids could have a more or less normal ending of the school year. If nothing changes my guess is that in September schools will start again in the same modus operandi, which I'm okay with.

But high school and up, that's a different matter...

The evidence is not rock solid, but points to schools being one of the more low-risk things to reopen.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/school-openings-acro...

It's mistaken to be worrying about reopening schools if you are blithely ignoring problems with care homes, diabetes sufferers, etc.

The author's argument seems to be that sending kids back to school can be less risky than keeping them home, if appropriate measures are taken. And that will require community support, funding, sacrifice, and creativity.

I wish the article had also explored solving the problem by mitigating the risks of staying at home. Perhaps applying the same level of community support, funding, sacrifice, and creativity to stay-at-home strategies would work even better.

I’m convinced, sending my kids to bars this fall instead oof schools.

The article's beginning and very ending was very informative and made clear nuance of the situation of keeping kids/college young adults from school.

The author lost me completely when they started injecting in one sided political perspectives and hindsight bias:

"...opposition to public-health guidance."

Which public-health guidance? Not all of the "opposition" was bad. Example: Any guidance from the W.H.O early on in the pandemic [0]

"Had Trump implored his supporters to wear masks and be patient, case counts might well be dropping across the country. "

Author chooses to show a particular political bias again and fails to mention the other major event that caused a uptick in cases (nationwide protests).

This whole section seems very out of place with the rest of the article, almost like The Atlantic had a requirement to show a left leaning bias to be published...

0: https://www.businessinsider.com/who-changes-timeline-first-c...