
CDC director: Keeping schools closed greater health threat to children reopening - mrfusion
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/506640-cdc-director-keeping-schools-closed-poses-greater-health-threat-to-children
======
fabian2k
Keeping the schools closed has a high cost, and it is likely to exacerbate
many problems for weaker students, or students that don't have an ideal
situation at home with strong support from their parents and easy access to
all the stuff you need for remote learning.

But there isn't really a choice in many parts in the US unless you're willing
to let the pandemic run its course and kill as many people as it takes to get
to herd immunity. The only way to safely reopen schools is to suppress the
virus enough that you can contain it with contact tracing. If you can't do
that, there's no way to safely reopen schools in full. You can try
alternatives like e.g. teaching outside, using masks, but they're not entirely
safe, difficult to do and can't really work at 100% capacity.

~~~
nradov
Safety is not a binary condition. The risk will be higher than it was last
year no matter what we do. Keeping schools closed indefinitely is obviously
untenable. Since they have to reopen eventually, there's nothing to be gained
by waiting.

~~~
xref
I don’t think anyone is advocating keeping schools closed until the heat death
of the universe, and there is a lot to be gained by waiting when you’re
somewhere in the middle of a pandemic.

Hence the ongoing conversation about striking the right balance which is very
much going to be regional and fluid.

~~~
nradov
How will we know when we're in the middle, and how long will that take?

~~~
xref
Welcome to the ongoing conversation!

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thih9
> "I think really people underestimate the public health consequences of
> having the schools closed on the kids," Redfield said

Did he name these consequences?

I couldn’t spot that in the article. Did someone find that or does anyone have
a quote from elsewhere?

Preferably no speculation; a direct quote or a summary of his statement would
be ideal.

~~~
verdverm
One example I know of is school meals for low income students.

My brother, a teacher, was telling me about socialization and brain
development in adolescents. There is a definite impact that we have very
little understanding of.

~~~
piotrkaminski
Why does it seem like everyone assumes you can only socialize in school? I
don't think homeschooled kids are particularly deficient in this regard
either.

~~~
dx87
That's highly dependent on the parents. A lot of homeschooled kids end up
normal, but the stereotype of homeshooled kids not knowing how to behave in a
social setting exists for a reason. It'll be even worse in the current
situation where you have parents that are working full time and don't have
time to also organize social activities like the parents who intentionally did
homeschooling.

------
jshaqaw
Keeping schools closed is horrific for my children. That said all of these
brave warriors demanding schools reopen from behind the keyboards of their
socially distanced houses should have to spend a day to two a week working in
the schools and expose themselves as adults to that environment. Our teachers
and other educational workers are not disposable. Moreover our school is
facing a 20 percent budget cut while being tasked with converting to hospital
grade PPE/distancing. Utterly unrealistic.

~~~
mercer
That's a good point. Over here (NL) things have been slowly opening up, to the
point where to many of us it feels like things are 'back to normal'.
Nonetheless, when it comes to schools reopening, as I understand it, one of
the big problems is that many teachers aren't quite as comfortable going 'back
to normal'.

~~~
jshaqaw
I'm writing from NYC. My wife is the Principal of a school here. Schools are
being given almost no support or guidance at any level from local to federal.
Educational administrators are being told to open schools ensuring student and
staff safety without a shred of fiscal support or health science guidance. The
physical infrastructure of the schools can't possibly handle the distancing
requirements being imposed. My wife is being presented with a Kobayashi Maru
here but with the real lives of children, staff, and extended families on the
line. I am 110% sympathetic to the importance of getting kids back in school.
My kids are suffering from social and educational withdrawal. When schools
even partially reopen I'll be solo with the kids on their home days as my wife
is back running her school. Not exactly an environment conducive to productive
work or my kids' mental health. But the idea that we can just ram through re-
openings prematurely is insane. It is double insane that at this time the
Federal government is bailing out every private sector millionaire in creation
via PPP while schools are being forced to cut budgets by catastrophic amounts.

------
xyst
We have already seen what happened when the bars and restaurants re-opened
(increase in infections and deaths). I imagine we won't see anything different
when the schools re-open. So this seems incredibly shortsighted to me.

It's sad that the administration is willing to sacrifice the teachers, misc
school staff, parents and children for short term gains.

Not only are we endangering human lives, but we are risking prolonging this
disease which will continue to ravage the economy. If you think it's bad now,
imagine what it will be like in 2021 if we continue at this rate.

Why can't we continue with e-learning for the first half of school and
reassess the situation as we approach 2021?

~~~
ryandrake
The sad and frustrating thing is we know how to beat this disease: STAY HOME,
wear a mask when you absolutely have to go out, contact tracing. But Americans
just won’t do these simple things. They’ve got to go get their nails done, and
eat at their restaurants, and walk around flexing their freedom, and by
whatever means possible _own the libs_. Then they wonder why we have so many
cases and deaths and can’t open schools without the apocalypse happening. I’m
pretty much out of empathy at this point. We are missing out on an entire year
because people won’t put a piece of cloth over their face.

------
sjg007
I don’t get it, kids have 3 months off in summer. Do we just ignore them
during those times. They still have meal requirements and issues at home.
Delay school start at a minimum until we can get our positivity rates down.
The Feds could feed kids who need it.. it seems like a false narrative to
focus on kids here. Am I wrong? Congress could do a lot more and save the day.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Do we just ignore them during those times.

Working parents tend to send them to summer camp... which have also been
closed.

~~~
tzs
Even accounting for children sent to camp, there are a lot of children left to
deal with.

In the US, about ~20% of children attend summer camp in a given year (that
includes both day camps and overnight camps). For children from poor families
it's down around 7%. 38% for children from affluent families.

Also, of those who do go to camp many of them go to camps that do not last the
entire summer.

------
Blackthorn
What about the threat to all the adults?

Lots of teachers. Janitors. Chefs. Administrators. Support staff.

~~~
vvanders
Yeah, the push to re-open schools just seems like a bad idea on multiple
fronts, this part included.

A few teachers I follow are being asked to name someone who can "replace" them
if they contract covid. I can't wrap my head around putting people in harm's
way like that willingly when we don't have any control over the outbreak.

~~~
claudeganon
School districts are already preparing form letters for when kids and teachers
die. It’s the height of nihilism when compared to what countries in SE Asia
have accomplished in stopping the disease.

~~~
Blackthorn
Amazing that they pay them like crap and then expect them to put their lives
on the line. I have no idea why anyone would ever bother becoming a teacher in
2020.

~~~
baldfat
This goes back 25 years. It is even more so if you are the first in your
family to go to college. There will be a huge shortage of teachers and there
already is a HUGE diversity problem with most minority groups do not go to
school for teaching as a profession.

------
ceejayoz
> The American Academy of Pediatrics has also called for students to return to
> classrooms, citing the educational and social harms to children of being
> away from school for a prolonged period of time.

They walked this back on Friday.

[https://www.wbur.org/npr/889848834/nations-pediatricians-
wal...](https://www.wbur.org/npr/889848834/nations-pediatricians-walk-back-
support-for-in-person-school)

~~~
dx87
It doesn't sound like they walked it back, but clarified their statement. They
still think the goal should be to get kids physically in schools, they just
emphasized that it shouldn't be done based only on political reasons.

------
claudeganon
> "I don't think we should go overboard in trying to develop a system that
> doesn't recognize the reality that this virus really is relatively benign to
> those of us that are under the age of 20”

Great. How about their teachers and school staff, parents and extended family?
What are the consequences of watching you’re teachers get seriously ill or
die, losing a grandparent, or your mom or dad? Also, novel disease so we don’t
actually know the long term consequences for children or anyone else.

3 teachers in Arizona tried to be extra precautious and do in person
instruction over the summer. Now, one of them is dead from COVID:

[https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-
education...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-
education/2020/07/09/after-arizona-teacher-kim-byrd-dies-covid-questions-
raised-over-school-reopening/5405651002/)

------
codefreakxff
Why is this being posed as either closing the schools and kids get no
education or making kids go to school with expensive mitigations, and masks,
etc. Why hasn't there been a serious effort at converting to online learning
just like the transitions that happening around working remotely?

~~~
nradov
Online learning isn't effective for most small children.

~~~
treeman79
I have 2 ADD children. I’m ADD myself. Yea at home learn is a nightmare.
Someone had to sit with kid entire time. Even when video camera is on with
teacher

------
baldfat
Why are teachers never even entered into the equation? You have no teachers
you don't have school. Teachers getting sick is going to put a serious hurt on
the educational system.

Teachers have been demonized for decades now so hardly anyone is going into
the field.

~~~
avancemos
“Teachers have been demonized for decades” Lol

~~~
baldfat
Teachers have been the enemy for decades.

[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-america-demonizes-its-
tea...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-america-demonizes-its-
teachers_b_7463084)

------
cs702
There is ZERO mention of any data or research in this article providing any
evidence that this decision is a good one.

It _may_ be a good decision, BUT it hasn't been justified, as far as I can
tell.

Moreover, the article quotes school administrators, teachers, and their
representatives stating in no uncertain terms that schools in the US do _not_
yet have the resources necessary for reopening safely.

What the heck?

~~~
lostlogin
There is no mention of the risk to teachers health either. It likely varies a
lot country to country and region to region, but there are a significant
number of of old teachers. However a brief look at the average age of the US
teaching workforce shows a slightly younger teaching workforce than I'd have
expected which presumably helps a little. One upside of the distinct gender
bias in the teaching workforce is that females seem to fare better when they
get corona virus, so there is that.

[https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/state_2004_19.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/state_2004_19.asp)

[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.0015...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00152/full)

------
foogazi
Why not partial reopening?

Kids that don’t have caretakers during the day go to reduced attendance
classes

Kids that have someone to look after them can do online or go a couple of days
a week

Fortunately decisions like this are up to the local school districts and
parents - adjustments have to be made

------
pornel
This is a political opinion, not a scientific one. He's Trump's appointee, and
his credentials are in line with the rest of them:

> _Robert Redfield is a sloppy scientist with a long history of scientific
> misconduct and an extreme religious agenda._

[https://cspinet.org/news/cspi-urges-administration-not-
appoi...](https://cspinet.org/news/cspi-urges-administration-not-appoint-dr-
robert-redfield-history-scientific-misconduct-cdc)

------
moreorless
All I am hearing from this is, "We must reopen the economy."

------
mindslight
CDC director, _after_ being pushed by the grim reaper in chief. The federal
agency's initial advice can be taken as useful, but once there has been time
for the marching orders to come down, it's better seen as outright harmful.
Unfortunately that won't stop a lot of people in red states from dying, as
their corrupt leaders point to the harmful misinformation when implementing
their own backwards agendas.

~~~
mindslight
I wrote a reply to a comment that was deleted before I hit submit. It linked
[https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/06/29/884638999/u-s-pediatricians-call-for-in-person-school-this-
fall) . Given the downvotes my comment is receiving, I'll post it to clarify:

I'm not saying that the pediatricians are wrong, or even that the headline of
"Keeping schools closed greater health threat to children reopening" is false
_in a vacuum_. The problem is the narrow emphasis, ultimately to support a
counterproductive political agenda. The pediatricians' quote includes the
caveat "wherever and whenever they can do so safely", which will surely be
ignored, especially in underfunded school systems.

The fact is that the US is basically still at the _beginning_ of our dealing
with COVID-19, due a lack of societal and political will to confront the
challenge. I too hope that it does magically go away due to a vaccine,
silently-growing herd immunity, etc. But it's foolish to adopt hope as a plan
of action, as opposed to acknowledging the problem and doing the hard work to
address it.

