Would have been smarter not to close the Schools

Children are at exceedingly little risk. Adults under 50 are at very little risk. Adults 50-60 and older have a much higher risk.

A huge chunk of health care workers are not going to work, staying home to care for their children who are suddenly home from school all day, and likewise the rest of the work force, because day care businesses cannot possibly ramp up fast enough to handle the increased demand.

So allow or force teachers 50 and over to stay home, along with those who are younger with underlying health problems, and pay them some goodly portion or all of their salary.

Administrators 50 and over could administrate using online methods or teleconferencing. The rest of the over-fifty non-teaching staff could be temporarily replaced by young substitutes and paid a portion of their wages, or be placed on unemployment insurance. Everyone is guaranteed their jobs back when the coronavirus pandemic is over.

What you would then have is schools with nobody 50 and over in them, nobody but people who have very little risk. So what do you do for the classrooms without teachers?

Tap junior and senior and post-grad education major college students to substitute in the classrooms of older teachers until the coronavirus is over. Let their professors give them a first screening to get the more mature ones to an interview with local schools. Pay them and give them experience and something to put on their resume when they graduate. They are at exceedingly low risk in their twenties. imo there would be enough volunteers.

Yeah, it ain't perfect. But it would be better than closing the schools. imo it would result in far less total harm and deprivation to society in general.

I have no authoritative, supporting sources of any kind on this, just my own non-professional, uneducated hunches without any experience in teaching or school administration.

 

While kids are at a much lower risk of coming down with serious illnesses because of the virus, they can catch the virus and spread it to their family members. Especially since kids are going to be kids, and can hardly be expected to keep distances and such from other kids, allowing schools to remain open is to invite the virus to spread from kids to parents and grandparents.

 

It would have been smarter to keep the schools open, but mostly because now that they're closed, we're gonna have packs of bored teenagers running around the city. Talk about a REAL nationwide menace!

Come on - you think these kids are gonna be out exposing themselves to culture at the museum while school's out?

I've been told often enough that the main job of public education nowadays is to keep the kids contained for a brief time somewhere if only for the safety of the rest of the populace!

 

It's kind of rare for grandparents to live in the same home, and most parents with children in public schools will also be under fifty.

 

Now because most parents have jobs the one solution for the kids being home all day is to have the grand parents take care of the children. Yes children seem to have a good resistance to the disease but how about their grand parents being exposed to the children who could be carrying the virus?

 

Children are disease magnets!

They would ALL end up with Covid-19 and carry it home with them where it would infect the rest of their families who would then take it to their places of work where it would infect their colleagues who take it back to their homes and infect their families!

In essence you idea would only be "smart" if you are trying to kill off everyone who is either over 50 or has compromised health issues.

Are you aware that anyone with diabetes or heart problems is in the high risk category?

How certain are you that no adults under the age of 50 has diabetes or heart problems?

 

Yup, nothing's perfect and more stringency may be the better option, such as a total lockdown with the closing of all businesses except healthcare, with all travel prohibited and no crossing of state borders.

And we may yet get that.

 

If we still want to avoid the worst case scenario then extreme social distancing in the only viable option remaining.

Unfortunately there are both self centered fools who will still want to party and greed obsessed corporations that will still demand that their workers risk their lives to be their places of work.

The odds of this ending well are not good.

 

Canada just put it in a higher gear:

"Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a number of additional measures being taken at a federal level in Canada to prevent further spread of coronavirus within the country. The most extreme is that Canada is closing its borders to non-citizens and anyone not holding permanent residence status, with the exception of U.S. citizens, though this won’t apply to commercial freight and cargo transportation necessary for doing business.

In addition to this border closure, all travellers, including Canadian citizens, who are exhibiting symptoms will be denied access when boarding flights, Trudeau said during a press conference on Monday."

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/16/c...icans-will-block-even-citizens-with-symptoms/

 

Well, it's more like "uncommon" nowadays - right off the top of my head I could name four kids I have who do indeed live with their grandparents. Three of them - their parents are in jail, so that's why the grandparents are minding the store.

I'm there there are a lot more just at my own school that I DON'T know about.

 

Multiple problems with the shut-down approach. I have great-grandkids in school where they may close until April. That means two kids whose parents both work will need daycare, and of course hundreds of more from the same school will too. So we now don't have enough daycare, thus a parent has to quit working. income drops. Every move along those lines may reduce on problem, but it creates another.

I think for example it would be cheaper to give people masks and hand-sanitizers at the door of a business than to close it. That and proper instructions could be quite effective. I fear we will wind up doing so much damage protecting ourselves in fear-motivated steps that we will far exceed the damage the virus causes.

 

Masks protect you for one half hour. That's it. And when you take that mask off IT can infect you.

Masks are good to keep YOU from infecting others...that;s about it

 

I agree that masks are of limited value. Personally, I think the greatest value comes in reducing the contact transmission- what and who we touch, how we touch ourselves. Above all, common sense and rational self-control is of great value here.

Main point is- that while we have to take proper steps, we need to be aware that each thing we do is causing other damages, aggravating the overall impact. We need to be weighing the complete consequence of any action, not just the focal point of the moment.

 

Which is why closing schools is an absolute necessity

 

The virus has already begun mutating and the outbreak in Europe is not the same variant as the virus in China. More than half of the latest cases in intensive care in France have been with people under 60. Let's hope it doesn't mutate into one that targets children more.

 

But also requires you to think about where all those children will go, and how they will be kept separate. I'm not saying there is a painless solution- I'm saying we need more thought-out solutions and less knee-jerk thinking. I have seen on tonight's news, for the first time in years- statements backing self-reliance, self-control and positive thinking. Long overdue.

 

There is no perfect solution's here but they'll be a lot more "separate" than sitting in crowded classrooms and hallways

 

In your own mind, have it your way. Don't contribute better ideas or consider that others wish to do so; that way you can tell yourself you know everything.

 

What they need to do is go someplace like the area outside NYC and do a random sample to see if the little devils are carriers and just don't get sick.
Shame we don't have enough testing.

 

Two grandson's live two doors down, so they come over quite often. They tell me they were given a lot of school work to do over the next two weeks, so they will stay busy to a certain extent. The wife will be working from home starting Weds, she'll be around to keep an eye on them.

 

Massive mutations. It's no longer coronavirus, it's the death star virus and everybody is going to die.

 

Are schools now closed in every US state? And are they still open for the children of essential workers?

 

And how many of those parents under 50 have underlying health issues that put them at higher risk?

 

afaik no public schools or private schools are open in the USA. Those schools that are able are teaching online. The little ones in our extended family are all taking classes online.

 

So what happens to the kids of essential workers?