You frequently state that schools should not have been shut down during COVID. I assume this is because of the very low levels of hospitalization and death among young children.
Are there other people, more vulnerable, in those same schools? What should have been done about them? I would re…
You frequently state that schools should not have been shut down during COVID. I assume this is because of the very low levels of hospitalization and death among young children.
Are there other people, more vulnerable, in those same schools? What should have been done about them? I would really like an answer to this. I've posed it to many (online) who advocated for no school shutdowns. I have not yet received an answer to this question, which as a former engineer in the medical device industry, would have been an obvious and basic question for any proposal in that industry: Who could be injured and how badly? How can we eliminate or mitigate those harms?
As the spouse of a retired public elementary school teacher (who was in her 60s during COVID), this was an important question to me.
In addition, as any parent knows, schools and school children are extremely effective disease vectors/spreaders. What about the people, more vulnerable, who live with those school students?
Blanket statements that "schools shouldn't have been shut down" seem very narrow and thoughtless to me.
I live in Florida. Our lockdown lasted for like 2 or 3 months. Then everything reopened. Other parts of the country were locked down much longer. O also have friends and family in Hungary in Israel, both places faced very long lockdowns. I think Israel was practically in lockdown for a whole year or something like that.
Yet, none of these places dated better than Florida. They were predicting that Florida will be the next hot spot, everybody dying on the streets etc and none of this happened. For me, this is already a proof that we did the right thing.
But there are other considerations too. You are talking about outliers who can't mingle because of age or health condition. They should be accomodated. However, why don't we talk about outliers in the other direction? What about those kids, for example , who live in abusive situations and the school is their only safe place? What about kids whose only real meal during the day is the school lunch? What about kids who - instead of being safe in the classroom - were out in the streets doing mischief and trying drugs? You can't claim on one hand that you worry about vulnerable people, while ignoring that vulnerable people exist on the other side too.
Hi, I’m not Bari, but I agree with her on most things including the school closures. Aside from the very early pandemic days of 2020 when EVERYTHING was closed, it made no sense to keep *only* schools closed while the rest of society reopened. The people vulnerable people you cite were still vulnerable and would have been regardless of schools. Unless they were so ultra quarantined that nobody in their household worked outside the home, went shopping, traveled, ate at a restaurant, etc., they were being exposed anyway and with schools closed it was only kids who suffered. As for what could have been done about vulnerable students and staff, that’s what medical accommodations are for - remote school and work arrangements, long term disability leave, etc. Exceptions always exist for exceptional circumstances, but if all of society only functioned to “protect the vulnerable” nobody would ever leave the house because there is literally nothing in life that is risk free. If the goal is to eliminate all risk for all people we better outlaw cars ASAP…and so forth.
Hi Bari,
Love your work. You are a superb speaker.
You frequently state that schools should not have been shut down during COVID. I assume this is because of the very low levels of hospitalization and death among young children.
Are there other people, more vulnerable, in those same schools? What should have been done about them? I would really like an answer to this. I've posed it to many (online) who advocated for no school shutdowns. I have not yet received an answer to this question, which as a former engineer in the medical device industry, would have been an obvious and basic question for any proposal in that industry: Who could be injured and how badly? How can we eliminate or mitigate those harms?
As the spouse of a retired public elementary school teacher (who was in her 60s during COVID), this was an important question to me.
In addition, as any parent knows, schools and school children are extremely effective disease vectors/spreaders. What about the people, more vulnerable, who live with those school students?
Blanket statements that "schools shouldn't have been shut down" seem very narrow and thoughtless to me.
I live in Florida. Our lockdown lasted for like 2 or 3 months. Then everything reopened. Other parts of the country were locked down much longer. O also have friends and family in Hungary in Israel, both places faced very long lockdowns. I think Israel was practically in lockdown for a whole year or something like that.
Yet, none of these places dated better than Florida. They were predicting that Florida will be the next hot spot, everybody dying on the streets etc and none of this happened. For me, this is already a proof that we did the right thing.
But there are other considerations too. You are talking about outliers who can't mingle because of age or health condition. They should be accomodated. However, why don't we talk about outliers in the other direction? What about those kids, for example , who live in abusive situations and the school is their only safe place? What about kids whose only real meal during the day is the school lunch? What about kids who - instead of being safe in the classroom - were out in the streets doing mischief and trying drugs? You can't claim on one hand that you worry about vulnerable people, while ignoring that vulnerable people exist on the other side too.
Hi, I’m not Bari, but I agree with her on most things including the school closures. Aside from the very early pandemic days of 2020 when EVERYTHING was closed, it made no sense to keep *only* schools closed while the rest of society reopened. The people vulnerable people you cite were still vulnerable and would have been regardless of schools. Unless they were so ultra quarantined that nobody in their household worked outside the home, went shopping, traveled, ate at a restaurant, etc., they were being exposed anyway and with schools closed it was only kids who suffered. As for what could have been done about vulnerable students and staff, that’s what medical accommodations are for - remote school and work arrangements, long term disability leave, etc. Exceptions always exist for exceptional circumstances, but if all of society only functioned to “protect the vulnerable” nobody would ever leave the house because there is literally nothing in life that is risk free. If the goal is to eliminate all risk for all people we better outlaw cars ASAP…and so forth.