Why don’t our schools reopen? Is it because of the Coronavirus (COVID-19)? No. Look around. Have you seen your neighbors dropping like flies?
The answer is that we have given up too much of our ability to run our own lives. We have given our elected officials and government bureaucrats more responsibility for our security than we have any business giving them.
Do our elected officials actually care all that much about us or our children, or do they just mouth soothing words? Do they just make promises no one can keep?
Like it or not we are literally strangers to the people who rule over us. Therefore, our elected officials often worry most about getting reelected. Our elected officials buy our votes. Our elected officials reward their donors. Our elected officials maneuver to position themselves ambiguously so that they seem to be on both sides of every issue. Our…
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Citizen Tom 
Tom,
No one will know the consequences of opening schools in relation to the potential infection rates of schoolchildren until the schools open.
I frankly cannot understand the medical statistics to determine potential risks of fatalities of school children age groups.
I do understand that if everyone wears masks and practices preventative hygiene the risks will be reduced.
I just returned from Florida and witnessed firsthand how in different areas I visited, people either wear or do not wear masks and practice safe distancing.
in my opinion, a lot of people need to wise up to the fact when the wear a mask they help reduce the risk to both themselves and other community members.
Frankly, thought, in my opinion, a lot of people don’t care about themselves or their community members.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
I think it is very state-dependent.
I just returned from Florida also (the person I know with covid lives here in Colorado, but a neighbor of my mom’s in Florida has been hospitalized with the virus. He is 94 years old).
There should be no one-size-fits all states policy, IMO.
New York shaped up after cleaning public transportation. They waited until May but when they finally did it, this seemed to turn the numbers around.
Florida has been a ticking time bomb with the elderly and so many folks in nursing homes they were going to have a spike when everything opened up.
Much like C Diff and MRSA, or any other respiratory infection, it is insanely difficult to keep something like that from spreading in a nursing home.
Masks aren’t going to help when a good portion of patients spend the day removing them from their faces (lots of demential patients).
I suspect the carbon dioxide levels aren’t good for them either. Several medical studies (before the pandemic…which is important as it is difficult to believe anything written after with a high degree of confidence) linked high carbon dioxide concentrations indoors to cognitive decline. Social activity is very important for the health of geriatric patients also.
Liz.
Thanks for your comment. I agree Nursing Homes is a challenge for everyone involved.
We need to make wise decisions based on sound discernment to protect ourselves and our loved ones. We do not live in China, a communist country where government mandates make decisions instead of free choice.
Sadly not everyone in USA makes wise decisions in the USA based on the news I read and hear everyday.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
@Scatterwisdom
I am almost 70. Never worn a mask. Now we all have to wear one? For a disease not much more dangerous than the flu?
I wear a mask because I have better things to do than argue about it, but I don’t see the point in twisting arms. Most of the people wearing them don’t we are them properly anyway.
FWIW, From the association of american physicians and surgeons.
Everything anyone wanted to know on the subject of masks of different types, locations, efficacy rates, yada yada.
https://aapsonline.org/mask-facts/
“We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”
Excuse me, that quote above was on the site, but originated in the New England Journal of Medicine. The gist of the whole writeup supports it, however.
The authors of that article have a letter to the editor that has been appended to the article. The rest of this comment is the letter in full:
“We understand that some people are citing our Perspective article (published on April 1 at NEJM.org)1 as support for discrediting widespread masking. In truth, the intent of our article was to push for more masking, not less. It is apparent that many people with SARS-CoV-2 infection are asymptomatic or presymptomatic yet highly contagious and that these people account for a substantial fraction of all transmissions.2,3 Universal masking helps to prevent such people from spreading virus-laden secretions, whether they recognize that they are infected or not.4
We did state in the article that “wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection,” but as the rest of the paragraph makes clear, we intended this statement to apply to passing encounters in public spaces, not sustained interactions within closed environments. A growing body of research shows that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is strongly correlated with the duration and intensity of contact: the risk of transmission among household members can be as high as 40%, whereas the risk of transmission from less intense and less sustained encounters is below 5%.5-7 This finding is also borne out by recent research associating mask wearing with less transmission of SARS-CoV-2, particularly in closed settings.8 We therefore strongly support the calls of public health agencies for all people to wear masks when circumstances compel them to be within 6 ft of others for sustained periods.”
@bluegrue
There are at least three things required to make a law work.
1. The law has to be understood by the people required to obey it. That is not the case now with respect to this issue.
2. The law has to be widely supported. Wearing masks has lots of people infuriated.
3. The law has to be enforceable. Wearing masks? Nuts!
Wearing masks is one of those things that requires enforcement by custom. People don’t defecate on the street because it is less embarrassing and less hassle to use a toilet, not because of the science or law enforcement. Yet the science for using using a toilet is much more convincing than the science for using a mask.
So, what are Liberal Democrats worried about, the homeless defecating on the street or the people who don’t want to wear masks?
Tom.
We live in a free nation and are allowed for the most part to make wise individual decisions for ourselves.
In China, a communist nation, the government mandates mask wearing and the community polices each other and report anyone not wearing a mask.
In the USA, even though governors mandate masks be worn, I rather doubt the police are enforcing the mandates.
My belief is we are all free to make our own decisions whether to choose to wear a mask or not.
At the same time private businesses have the right to set rules to mandate masks be worn on their premises to protect both their employees and customers.
I always wear a mask being 80 years old when I enter any public building because of my health conditions which frankly are a very high risk of death if I contract the virus.
There is a quantitative logic in reducing the risk of contracting the virus if all parties wear masks. If only one wears it and is wearing a 50 percent effective mask, even though he or she wears the mask, and comes in contact with someone not wearing the mask, his or her risk is quantitatively increased..
If I see someone without a mask, I stay away because of my health risk factors.
I seem to remember in my grammar school religious instruction that Christians believe we all have a personal responsibility to God, ourselves, family and community members.
This same instructions may not be taught in public secular schools. Or if it is, without a religious faith and belief in God, the message is really not the same in my opinion.
Just one more reason in my opinion we need school choice or school vouchers.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
Side note: The FAA is now requiring pilots who have “a known exposure” during a trip will have to either quarantine up in a hotel room for 14 days or rent a car and drive home (at company expense). A known exposure would be a passenger or flight attendant, or co-pilot who popped hot for covid. I think this will be far more expensive than the risk would warrant, particularly when they’re all wearing masks.
One problem is…I don’t know what to make of the numbers.
Are these PCR tests? Antibody tests? Or ILI (influenza like illnesses) that “count” as covid?
We finally know a person who has been diagnosed as covid positive.
He got it from his daughter. She is a teenager and was sick for one day.
We spoke to him on the phone on his 3rd day of illness and he said it seemed about like the flu. He’s in his 50s and in good shape.
I’m aware a portion of the population dies from the virus and/or experiences longterm effects. But it seems a very very small portion. Too small for the cost to gains equation to point to keeping the economy and schools shut down (if the schools remain shut down, the economy remains shut down there are too many working people who need childcare).
One big problem is that Americans seem to want to solve everything with a pill or shot.
If you’re of advanced years or fat as a house, wear an N95 mask.
Not opening the schools this fall will be absolutely disastrous for these areas in so many ways. It’s just plain idiotic. And it is totally politically-based, certainly not based in the data. Statistically, there are so few cases of children contracting the virus in the US that you can’t even put a percentage on it. The virus barely affects them, if at all. And, contrary to popular fear-mongering from the media, there is no scientific evidence that asymptomatic people spread the virus. None.
Meanwhile, children are suffering (child-abuse is up considerably) and parents are left trying to figure out what they will do with their kids because they have to work for a living.
@Mel
When the jackasses close playgrounds, that’s just mean. The politicians doing that are just sadistic.
Check out the link at the comment here => https://citizentom.com/2020/07/14/why-dont-our-schools-reopen/comment-page-1/#comment-94585
Sane people should vote all these people out.
Agreed. I’m just worried there aren’t enough sane people (who vote).
Doubling down on the “big dumb” doesn’t seem to impact their popularity as much as one would expect.
Other than the fact that this is an election year and the fact that some governors love their new dictatorlike powers there is no rational reason why the schools are closed.
Schools around the world have already reopened, some for more than a month.
The results are in. A study in Germany and similar studies in France and Ireland have found that the spread of the virus is very low among the students and the infection of adults by the students is also very low.
https://bongino.com/german-study-almost-no-coronavirus-spread-at-schools-that-reopened
@artaxes
For fun, read bluegrue’s comments.
For even more fun, keep in mind that the German infection numbers upon school opening are way lower than the US numbers.
I would have way more fun if you were telling us of which infection rates you speak.
The rates of the general population or the rate among the students?
general population
A few more details, to put the findings in context. Current daily new infections in Saxony, where the German study was conducted, is less than 1 per 100,000 inhabitants, at least 20 times lower than in the US. Schools are still under Corona regulations:
– children must only meet children of their own class
— Pupils enter the buildings clustered by class
— no joint break time, each class goes outside on its own
— toilets are to be used one pupil at a time
– keep up pyhsical distancing at all times
– corridors have been reorganized into one-way systems
– frequent and thorough ventilation of the class rooms
– Parents have to sign off that the child is sympton free every day
– washing hands upon arrival and further as neccessary
– one teacher per class
– no sports
The number of infections among the general population is irrelevant.
For our discussion only the infection rates in the age group concerned, say 6 to 17 years, is relevant.
What’s that number in the US?
In the meantime, I’ll dig up the corresponding numbers for Saxony. The study was carried out in May and June, so I’ll have to get the reports from back then.
In the meantime, in case you can read German, this week’s RKI report is here (the English version is incomplete)
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-07-14-de.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
and the news release of the Technical University of Dresden, that carried out the study
https://tu-dresden.de/tu-dresden/newsportal/news/immunisierungsgrad-geringer-als-erwartet-schulen-haben-sich-nicht-zu-hotspots-entwickelt
@bluegrue
@artaxes
I took German for a reading knowledge in the late 1970’s. Passed the course, and that was the end of it. Didn’t have much occasion to read German. Spanish speakers were kind of scarce in the USA back then too. If you guys plan on immigrating here too, please give me a heads up. I need to do a review.
Back to the topic. What is the end game? The “experts” sold physical distancing to the people of the USA as a way to keep our hospitals from being overloaded. That’s not a real problem anymore. The number of cases of Coronavirus infection is going up, but the average age is in the 20’s. Older folks are avoiding the infection. So we have an end game. Herd immunity. Ask the Swedes about it.
What’s your end game? How do you prevent harm from the virus?