What Grade Would You Give Americans in Handling the COVID-19 Crisis?

Delusional. Ruinous to society.

 

It doesn't gut it at all for elementary school. For older ages, does the study examine safety measures at all? The study is for society at large, yes? Who thinks distance learning is cutting down on any of those interactions?

The people most hurt by distance learning are the poorly-resourced. Heck, if you can't get all the kids back, at least send back kids under a certain financial benchmark. (Because, rest assured, the wealthy in our nation are getting their kids educated.)

 

I shall cheerfully gut the rest of your argument.

You have a teacher teaching 6 classes a day with 25 students per class. The teacher comes down with COVID-19. In addition to a teacher who must be substituted for, now you have 150 children who also have to quarantine until you can be sure they’re not ill.

Schools ain’t gonna work. Stop embarrassing yourself.

 

Yes this is all because we don't want to believe anything Trump says. If only we would think critically about his words and have a predictive conversation about his ideas about schools opening. Then his administration says this.

Please tell me again how this is only because we have our fingers in our ears every time Trump rationally talks.

 

My God I wish we had a president I simply disagreed with. Trump is just criminally dense about this and it's going to be at the expense of the health of children and the lives of teachers. I get it Alma that you want kids back in school and there's a rational line of thinking for wanting that. However, the reality precludes it. Stop blaming Trump for the position of teachers. We can't trust what he says not because he is saying it, it's because what he says is such delusional bullshit we can't trust it.

And you know the quickest way to get us back in school? Let's deal with the fucking disease. Trump should put out a statement that he wants schools to reopen so wear masks when you go out. Let's slow down openings to get cases down. Let's fix the backlog of analyzing tests so people get them sooner. Let's nationalize efforts to get more testing out to people. Let's have a national plan so we can open schools. And if he does that, this worst thing we'll say about Trump is why the hell did this take so long to do. Instead he doesn't want us to listen to science. He wants us to stop testing. He wants to prevent hospitals from reporting cases. He wants to bury his head in the sand and pretend this problem goes away and is counting on Quislings like you to help him along.

 

Then you will have the parents with resources crying foul and they wouldn't be wrong to do so, especially the ones just over that benchmark.

Even elementary school is an issue. Read that article more carefully. According to that study, children under 10 are half as likely to spread the virus as adults. That's still a relatively high percentage.

What it really does is show us that the idiots who think children are just magically immune really need to shut up. We can't just reopen schools normally right now. We need mask requirements and we need social distancing. There are also filters that can be installed and other ways to cut down on the airborne circulation of the virus. We need smaller class sizes, PPE supplies and diagnostic supplies. (We really should have those devices that measure the oxygen level in the blood in addition to those remote thermometers that you just point at the person's head.) All of that costs money and that is why a federal stimulus package with money for public education should have been passed months ago.

 

People who actually have school-aged children know it's cutting down those interactions.

 

I actually have school-aged children, and yes, can confirm.

 

Here's what I would do: Institute a hard, near-complete shutdown of almost everything, again, for the next two months, and then see where we're at in terms of raising or flattening the disease curve or actually eliminating the problem in however many places. See the impact, and, hopefully, some progress.

It is a length of time I think could be substantial enough to see a difference if truly done and enforced, and yet, still leave time for a return to school (and other things) in a timely (enough) manner if there is a successful impact.

It is also an amount of time that I believe even those who will struggle economically -- still a HUGE, important complicating issue -- might be able to manage getting by, before financial collapse really sets in, for them and/or for much of the country, and a span that I think most people would still be able to stand and reasonably put up with in terms of social health and welfare.

To me, it constitutes at least a semblance of a plan, an attempt, to make some progress that might be helpful, even if we know we won't like it.