Parents Cant Wait Around Forever – The Atlantic

Read: What happens when kids dont see their peers for months

If kids are probably low-risk (in terms of both getting sick and transmitting), that doesnt necessarily mean states should go ahead and reopen schools. Thats because schools do not contain only children. This is not Lord of the Flies. The adults at schools may be at risk from interacting with kids, but also from interacting with one another, and with parents, and with other adults as they travel to and from work.

We have some information from abroad. France, Germany, Denmark, and other countries have reopened schools. Sweden has had schools open the whole time. Oddly, one of the most compelling pieces of evidence is provided by what we havent seen: much in the way of large-scale outbreaks linked to schools. Some cases, yesbut not super-spreader events like the ones documented all over the world at bars and meatpacking plants.

Beyond what we havent seen, some early information on adults at school is encouraging. In Denmark, some preliminary data suggest that teachers are not an especially high-risk group. A recent report out of Sweden looks at risks of exposure to COVID-19 by occupational group, and notes that school staff are not more likely than other occupations to contract the disease. Preschool and high-school teachers are actually less likely to get COVID-19. The highest-risk group here is driversof taxis and buses in particular.

An exception is Israel, where the school-reopening process has been up and down. Israel opened schools in May, but subsequently closed a number of them temporarily after detecting cases. The country had one large outbreak tied to a school. Perhaps Israel is faring less well than European countries because it opened with fewer social-distancing measures. But even in Israel, the total count of cases tied to schools since they reopened stands at about 300a very small share of the countrys students, teachers, and staff.

Read: The school reopeners think America is forgetting about kids

The above does not amount to airtight evidenceIve gleaned this information from a close reading of news reports, which is not how data gathering should work. I should not be trying to answer the question What is going on in schools that reopened? by Googling around; I resorted to that method because of the absence of a publicly available data set derived from a universal school-based testing regime. Some countries are collecting good data: In Germany, at least some schools are testing kids and teachers twice a week. This is great, but whatever Germany has found, it hasnt yet shared with the public.

If countries with open schools simply reported the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases per school each weekif anythat would do wonders. In the U.S., schools are closed but some child-care centers and camps are open. Local governments should be collecting data from these sources. I started doing thisin an unscientific and nonrandom waysimply out of frustration that no one else was. This lack of information-gathering perhaps shouldnt be surprising, as the overall pandemic response in the U.S. has been worse than elsewhere; we have fallen down on testing, contact tracing, and everything else.

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Parents Cant Wait Around Forever - The Atlantic