
An Arizona superintendent on safely reopening schools: 'It's a fantasy' - dankohn1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/01/schools-reopening-coronavirus-arizona-superintendent/
======
DuskStar
And yet, Sweden never closed their schools - and as far as I'm aware didn't
have increased incidence in teachers relative to the rest of the population.
This article is about a teacher who got sick _despite not having students
there_ , and who seems to have been in _increased_ contact with other adults
relative to pre-COVID times. (Since she shared a classroom with two others
while doing remote learning, which is presumably not normally the case) At
least to me, that doesn't seem directly applicable to "can we bring back
students safely".

------
dredmorbius
Much as with _Princess Bride_ , every line is quotable.

Unlike the film, most definitely not light comedy.

There are no good choices, no easy decisions, no Pareto-optimal solutions.

~~~
crooked-v
There was an obvious optimal solution at the start of all of this, which is
the same thing many other countries did: have a national lockdown for 1-2
months or so with everyone paid to stay home so that total number of new cases
drops very low, then remove the lockdown and use comprehensive contact tracing
and testing to quickly respond to new outbreaks.

Instead the federal executive branch acted in a worse than useless manner by
being actively counterproductive, while various state governors refused to do
anything because acting sensibly contradicted their political beliefs.

~~~
DuskStar
> while various state governors refused to do anything because acting sensibly
> contradicted their political beliefs.

Aaand yet all the worst outbreaks early on were in the bluest parts of blue-
or-purple states, and were under the control of Democrat mayors and governors.
Who are also the ones with real authority, incidentally.

Now, the red parts of the map aren't exactly doing well right now either - but
let's not pretend that only the Republicans fucked up on this one.

> have a national lockdown for 1-2 months or so with everyone paid to stay
> home so that total number of new cases drops very low, then remove the
> lockdown and use comprehensive contact tracing and testing to quickly
> respond to new outbreaks.

I honestly think that Trump _could not have done this_. If he had tried -
which would have taken a _large_ expansion of executive power - at a time that
this would have helped, I wouldn't be surprised if he was impeached. You might
remember what happened when Trump banned (a lot of) travel from China - it
wasn't people saying that this was insufficient, it was people saying that it
was _racist and unconstitutional_. Do you _really_ think that a response a
thousand times as intense would have gotten a positive response?

~~~
foogazi
Why do you come here to peddle that BS? What is the point?

Here is a clear example of the federal government siding against state’s
lockdown mandates

[https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-us-response-
trump/2...](https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-us-response-
trump/2020/5/23/21268394/justice-department-lockdown-coronaviruslos-angeles-
illinois)

“ The Justice Department is pressuring state and local officials over lockdown
orders The DOJ is questioning the legal authority of top officials in
California and Illinois to extend stay-at-home orders.”

~~~
DuskStar
Well, when someone seems to be claiming that "everything would be fine if
Trump wasn't a fuckup", I try to push back with "even if Trump wasn't a
fuckup, there's enough other breakage in the way to prevent things from going
perfectly". Trump messed up - that's kind of what he does. But with current US
politics, there genuinely may not have been any set of actions Trump could
have taken that would have both limited US cases to the levels Taiwan or South
Korea encountered and not be impeached for it. (Because it would have meant
doing things like "somehow convincing NYC to implement a no-seriously-you-
stay-home order" and "implement a travel ban from _everywhere_ ", both of
which would become a partisan issue and thus gridlocked)

A vox article about how the feds fucked up has no bearing on a counterfactual
where the feds treated COVID like an existential threat back in February or
early March. In that situation, you'd instead have an article saying that this
was a major infringement on the rights of Americans, or that it
disproportionately impacted a minority group. Which would have been true! But
everything is a trade-off.

And as we can all see, it's not like the American Left has any real commitment
to fighting COVID. Just look at how fast "stay the fuck home" turned into
"protests are fine".

EDIT: you said "Why do you come here to peddle that BS?". I responded as if
you thought my "I'm not sure anything Trump could have done would have turned
out well" statement was BS, but you might have meant something else. Let me
know!

~~~
foogazi
To your edit: yes that’s what I meant

You keep bringing politics into this - I think it’s ridiculous that you
consider impeachment a threat while Republicans control the Senate

The federal government has taken unscientific actions during a pandemic
risking people’s lives

~~~
DuskStar
And I continue to _not deny that the federal government has continually
failed_. Instead, I've been saying that they're not the only ones to have
failed, and that they're not always the ones with the most control.
(Federalism is still a thing)

Further, impeachment only requires the House - conviction takes the Senate.
And honestly, if Trump was enacting martial law, or anything similar, I don't
think it would be too hard to get a few Republican senators to flip.

Really though, I brought up "what could he do without being impeached again"
as a decent metric for "how much could he do before some cities and states
told him to fuck off and stopped enforcing things". Incidentally, this would
have almost certainly have gotten him reelected. Can you imagine the optics of
"the states that followed Trump's lockdown orders were fine, while the ones
that told him to fuck off have hundreds of thousands of dead"? (But this still
wouldn't satisfy the hypothetical of "as good as Taiwan/SK", despite being
better for the country and better for Trump personally)

------
RickJWagner
Bill Gates disagrees.

[https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/bill-gates-says-
school...](https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/bill-gates-says-schools-
should-reopen-despite-covid-19)

~~~
DuskStar
But Bill Gates is only a good person to listen to when he agrees with the
current political zeitgeist - otherwise he's a billionaire monopolist who
should thus be ignored.

Honestly, I'd love to hear what circumstances people would _accept_ opening
schools in. Would "COVID is 10x less deadly than chicken pox for children
under 15" be enough, if there was some way to protect teachers? What about
"less deadly than driving to school for a year"?

~~~
crooked-v
How about 'after successfully reducing new infections to almost zero', like
many other countries? There are many solutions here other than 'shrug and give
up' as the current federal government and many state governments have done.

~~~
DuskStar
And if that's the minimum you're willing to accept, that's fine! I'd also be
ok with evidence showing kids don't die at more than 1 per million and also
don't spread the disease to others. (This implicitly values a year of in-
person education at a millionth of the life of a child. Arguably this is far
too low, considering that we pay thousands of dollars for a year of education
and almost every statistical measure of the value of life is under $10
million. If the difference in education is worth more than $100, that would
put the acceptable deaths at at least 1 per 100,000)

If you're looking for case studies... Well, Sweden is the one everyone seems
to be eyeing.

