We shut our schools down while European schools roll on despite a surge of Covid-19 cases across the continent. NPR reported November 13:
Mahua Barve lives in Frankfurt, Germany, with her husband, a son in first grade and twin daughters in kindergarten. All three children are currently attending school full time and in person. That's despite a coronavirus surge that has led Germany to shut down restaurants, bars, theaters, gyms, tattoo parlors and brothels (which are legal in the country) for November. Schools were allowed to remain open.
Despite the resurgence of the virus, Barve says, her children's school's careful safety strategies give her confidence. Each "pod" of kids goes to recess at 10 minute intervals, for example, so they don't mix in the hallways.
"When I see all the parents who are coming to pick up and drop off, they're wearing masks. The teachers are always wearing masks. They're doing their best to minimize risk. And as soon as something is detected, they are quarantining."
Barve says everyone is doing their part: "It's a little bit of choppy water, but if people are swimming in their own lanes, there's less likelihood of a disturbance."
Across Europe, schools and child care centers are staying open even as much of the continent reports rising coronavirus cases, and even as many businesses and gathering places are shut or restricted. Countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy appear to be following the emerging evidence that schools have not been major centers of transmission of the virus, especially for young children. And experts say these nations are also demonstrating a commitment to avoiding the worst impacts of the pandemic on children.
The U.S. has taken a different approach. As new cases climb above 100,000 per day, there are very few places in the U.S. where classrooms have remained full even as restaurants and bars are empty. In cities such as Boston and Washington, D.C., schools are remote, but indoor dining is allowed. This week, Detroit announced it was closing its schools through January, while indoor dining and bars there remain open at 50% capacity. Meanwhile, in states like Florida and Texas, schools — along with most businesses — have stayed open, even with very high and rising case rates.
Andreas Schleicher has a global view on education from his position in Paris overseeing the PISA international assessment program at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. He says that while schools in Europe were initially closed out of an abundance of caution, "Research has shown that if you put social distancing protocols in place, school is actually quite a safe environment, certainly safer than having children running around outside school."
At the same time, he says that in Europe, "I do think people have understood fairly quickly how much damage the school closures have done, particularly to disadvantaged learners." He says the science especially favors opening elementary schools, with young children both less likely to spread the disease and less able to benefit from remote learning.
Randa Grob-Zakhary of the group Insights for Education recently analyzed school reopening patterns across the world. When it comes to European countries, she says for the most part, "They have ... localized closures based on numbers of cases." For example, at Barve's children's school in Germany, sometimes just a single "pod" of about 20 children and teachers will be sent home to quarantine because of a case.
Johannes Huebner, the head of the pediatric infectious disease department at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Hospital in Munich, recently told NPR correspondent Rob Schmitz that scientific studies have not detected high rates of transmission in schools. "Most of the infections are brought into the schools by adults, by teachers, and then spread among kids. But most of the time, it's only single cases. It's two, three kids, five maybe that get positive."
Grob-Zakhary says, "I think five, six months ago there was a view that we don't know what the heck we're dealing with and we better keep our kids safe no matter what. And now there's a view that, yes, it's dangerous, but we know so much more about how to handle it."...
President-elect Joe Biden has called school closures "a national emergency." Some members of his newly appointed COVID-19 task force — including former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, epidemiologist Michael Osterholm and oncologist and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel — have spoken cautiously in favor of reopening schools, but only with proper mitigation measures in place such as testing, contact tracing, social distancing and masking, which not all schools or locations have the resources to do currently. Murthy and Emanuel have written that schools should be open only where the virus is controlled.
Other American observers are adamant that the United States ought to make a different calculation of the societywide impact of school closures, even when virus spread is high. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital and editor of the journal JAMA Pediatrics, has just published a paper that estimates 5.53 million years of life could be lost as a result of school closures in the United States.
The calculation is based on research showing that missing months of school lowers a child's chances of graduating from high school. Lower educational attainment, in turn, is well established to lower life expectancy because people with less education are more likely to smoke, more likely to drink heavily, more likely to suffer from heart disease, and more likely to perform more hazardous work, among other reasons.
"When you frame it in terms of school versus lives, it becomes a no-brainer," says Christakis. "And everybody says, 'Well, we can't send kids to school if it's going to cost lives.' But in fact, not sending kids to school also costs lives."
Lala Tanmoy Das, an M.D.-Ph.D. student at Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Memorial Sloan Kettering, is familiar with the kind of modeling Christakis used, and calls the paper "fairly robust." But Das also points out that the virus is more dangerous for Black children, Latino children and those with preexisting conditions, and that we don't know enough about its long-term effects on children or adults to capture the full impacts on health. He also notes that many school districts in the U.S. have faced budget cuts that make it hard to do mitigation measures, like regular disinfection, or put proper social distancing protocols in place.... Rest of article.
Kingfish note: Going off of past posts, here are some numbers for the hospitalization of Mississippi children due to Covid-19 just to give readers an idea about pediatric Covid-19 cases in Mississippi.
June 5: 27 hospitalizations (1% of all hospitalizations)
June 28: 28 hospitalizations
August 12: 64 hospitalizations, 0 deaths
October 25: 99 hospitalizations (1.55% of hospitalizations, 0.08% of cases)
November 17: 109 hospitalizations, 2 deaths ( 1.6% of all hospitalizations, 0.67% of all pediatric cases)
30 comments:
Just a cold. Take off your face diapers and live your best life.
It's a good thing there are only children in schools, isn't it?
250k dead and an economy in shambles. Wearing a damn “face diaper” works and won’t put a single person out of business.
But sure, 10:08, keep refusing to do your part because ItS a PeRsOnAl DeCiSiOn.
"CDC quietly removes guidance pushing for school reopenings"
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has quietly removed controversial guidance from its website that pushed for schools to reopen in the fall and downplayed the transmission risks of COVID-19 to children and others.
The documents, one of which was reportedly written by political appointees outside of the CDC, stated that children appear to be at lower risk for contracting COVID-19 compared to adults and that children are unlikely to be major spreaders of the virus.
The CDC removed two guidance documents from its website in late October with no public announcement.
When reached for comment, a CDC spokesperson said, "Some of the prior content was outdated and as new scientific information has emerged the site has been updated to reflect current knowledge about COVID-19 and schools."
While kids are far less likely than adults to become seriously ill from COVID-19, less was known at the time about what role children play in spreading the virus to others including teachers and staff.
The Trump administration made a hard push for reopening schools this fall, citing the importance of in-person education to children and the boost parents going back to work would give the economy.
However, experts criticized the CDC’s guidance, which they say appeared to be politically motivated and light on evidence.
Before the documents were removed, CDC Director Robert Redfield told Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, that the guidance was “out of date” and would be updated.
“I am pleased that, in response to this request, CDC has now removed two guidance documents unsupported by science and has agreed to update two more that Director Redfield concedes are ‘out of date,’” Clyburn said in a statement.
“With infections rising dramatically across the country, it is critical that schools, teachers, and families have accurate, trustworthy public health information on the coronavirus.”
The operative words in your article are
"safety strategies" and " localized closures".
Other countries also are doing a better job with testing and contact tracing and national coordination.
We, on the other hand, have "it's a hoax" or a scattergun approach without rhyme or reason and without full cooperation by the citizenry.
It's always been possible for us to be rational. Sadly, politics and misinformation has made that impossible.( see 10:01 unless the post is misguided sarcasm ...misguided if he/she hasn't notice some of us are stupidly literal).
Follow the effective mitigation strategies used in Europe and schools can operate safely. Keep the students in the same classroom, have them wear masks, keep the teacher a safe distance away. Go to school and then go home.
Simple common sense that Americans can't seem to figure out as you see massive gatherings of students on and off campus and rednecks screaming for competitive sports. Education is a low priority in the U.S.
You guys just don't it. It's not so much about being cautious for the children as it is eliminating places where there are large numbers of people (regardless of age) in close proximity to each other 5 days a week. Schools are just that. Basketball games are closed not because of the fear of basketball fans becoming contaminated but people becoming contaminated.
@11:01. Yet Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum openly stated COVID is “our” opportunity to “reset” society as we know it. He literally was pushing for the elimination of cash, the elimination of national Constitutions, a Green New Deal and and to move all of us cattle into city centers under the guise of “COVID” response.
And here we have China, WUHAN even, where people were “dropping dead in the streets” yet have zero cases today? This is a scam, dummy. You are walking right into it while proclaiming that people with common sense and EYES are the problem.
you misspelled siege
this is the great china seige of 2020
wait until they come ashore in San Fran next month
The rest of the civilized world has their kids in school while they deal with this crap. We don't or certain communities make every excuse not to have them in school. Call it a failure of nerve. Period. Forget politics, the rest of the world laughs at us because we are soft spoiled brats who can't handle making tough decisions.
To be clear, your position is that wearing a face mask paves the way for the Green New Deal?
I really hope you’re trolling. If so, that’s actually a somewhat good job. If not, God help you.
MaH FrEeDuMbS
Kingfish - it is amusing to me that we tend to compare ourselves to other nations when it promotes our position. So let's sit back and see what Europe, Asia and Africa do about economics, human rights, civil liberties, defense, terrorism, etc., and then we make a decision on what to do. Yeah; that's the ticket. That's just what we've done for the past 250 years, right?
KIngfish call it like it is. This is a United States Shit Show and one big as hoax to take control over the people of the United States.
1:00 - so let's see, the Iluminati (or fill in with whatever subversive group you want) has convinced every mayor, every governor, every school superintendent, every member of Congress, every state legislature, and on and on and on that there are significant harmful effects of COVID when there really are none? Boy, they did one hell of a selling job. If they are that smart and persuasive perhaps they do need to take over the country.
" The rest of the civilized world has their kids in school while they deal with this crap. We don't or certain communities make every excuse not to have them in school"
Kingfish summed everything up in a nutshell.
We can't have classroom instruction in many school districts, but the kids all have to return to the classroom to take the these goofy State "tests".
None of this makes sense.
If we can have "mail in" votes around this country, why can't we have have "mail-in" tests ?
The people making fun of the "muh freedums" are eventually going to wish they had some gun toting right wing friends. You cant defend yourself with your liberal arts degree, some fancy coffee, and a better that you attitude garnered from watching Rachel Maddow in your parents house. Just hang tight.
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before"-Rham Emanuel
Europeans prioritize education. That's why they are socialist. Greed has ruined the USA.
" Kingfish - it is amusing to me that we tend to compare ourselves to other nations"
That goofy idea went mainstream with Hillary Rodham when she TOLD her husband to promote such.
Bill did whatever she said and the left saw an opportunity to run with it . . .
I'm not sure Billy agreed, but hey . . . that Arkansas boy had married into money.
Obama ran with it too.
The United States really does have much in common with Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries.
@12:26,
I didn’t explain my point well as I still can’t believe there are people in this particular state okay with this and was aghast. This WHOLE thing is overblown, purposely, by a bunch of lunatics in, primarily, Europe, as a way to take complete control of nations across the globe. Why did the IMF offer the president of Belarus millions in exchange for a lockdown, which was refused and THEN a coup was attempted against him?
Why did Trudeau say this is an opportunity to reset and usher in initiatives toward Agenda 2030 in Canada? Why are “leaders” across the planet all using the pre-packaged tag line “Build Back Better?” Why has every megacorp used the same phrases “We are all in this together” and “the new normal” (might I add using these slogans a week into this bullshit, almost like a memo went out.)
The worst of it is, when the conspiracy “theorists” were saying this in March, I laughed at the insanity. Now you have world leaders openly saying it.
My point is, for every lockdown and every mask, YOU are giving them what they want. Stop.
Looks like Whitfield is letting the patients online now. Sure are some loose screws in this bunch.
@kingfish
“ Forget politics, the rest of the world laughs at us because we are soft spoiled brats who can't handle making tough decisions.”
The rest of the world laughs at us for lots of reasons and politics is probably the biggest. If we are going to start making decisions that make our European allies proud, I don’t think it’s going to be anything you will like. Guns, healthcare, fast food, and the orange clown are top of the list. Which would you like to address first?
It would appear that those that consider themselves, haha, superior in intellect and education, are either suffering from lack of information or feigning ignorance. Perhaps they should use their Google machine to investigate a man by the name of Klaus Schwab. You will find him involved with an organization called the World Economic Forum. This lesson will be for free.
Ah yes, socialism. The form of government you can vote your way into but must shoot your way out.
YES! @3:59! Using common goddamned sense and listening to what the Presidents and Prime Ministers of countries across the globe, as well as unelected heads of the IMF, WEF, WHO and CDC and World Bank are saying is absolutely Whitfield level crazy.
Does Netanyahu pay you in cash or gift cards to Wal-Mart?
@11:01 am
"Wearing a damn “face diaper” works"
Can you provide any study that supports your claim that masks work, especially considering that the public is wearing thin, cloth/mesh/sheer masks?
If at some point it is shown that SCIENCE supports the claim, I'll quit sneezing on you. Until then, gesundheit!
Covid is the third leading cause of death in the US for 2020. Trolls, digest that fact before posting your inane garbage about "hoaxes", "frauds", and other QAnon conspiracies.
Let's spoon feed you, Clown Down.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-science-sars-cov2.html
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-about-masks-heres-science-behind-how-face-masks-prevent
https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/07/do-cloth-masks-work
Etc., etc, etc.
Must be hard living a lonely, angry little life, encouraging disease and suffering, to no avail. The mark of a small man.
Well 6:31, you are assuming the Covid death figures are correct. We all know what happens when one “assumes”.
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