COVID-19 • School Closing Debate

March 05, 2020

When it comes to viral spread, schools are not so different than cruise. Eating, drinking, playing, socializing all done in close proximity to each other in a confined space.  Additionally, cruise lines mix folks from many different areas into one space, concentrate them, and finally release them into the wider world. Schools provide the same profile in a slightly different order. Students vacation throughout the country and world, bringing back whatever cornucopia of pathogens were in their vacation place. And with the possible silent, asymptomatic carries of COVID-19 kids are effective little movers of disease.

That is a pretty good environment for quick spread – and that spread moves into homes.

Closing schools, however, has its own set of issues.  Children will need care and often that falls to grandparents and group care settings.  At school kids stay in pretty predictable groups.  Kids at home often have a different social group.  Closing schools allows kids scatter to playgrounds, movies, and other social activities.

That would seem to put more elderly people at risk and move the virus to different cohorts of people thus increasing spread and likely deaths.

It is when all people in an impacted area do not move, that a containment strategy works best.

In many ways, closing a school may just be theater if we let the rest of town function ‘normally’.  I think we have to acknowledge that the better response, if containment is the strategy, is to close entire towns. 

Let me suggest a mitigation strategy that has both short and long term benefits; puts us in control of the situation, and keeps us from being holed up and scared in our homes.

Kids are vectors for disease and for information.  Let’s capitalize on the later to suppress the former.  Keep kids in school even if there are sick kids identified (those kids, of course, should stay home and isolate).  Acknowledge the disruption that COVID-19 is having and that we are going to loose some education time.  Spend the ‘snow days’ or add a couple days to the calendar and use that time to teach kids:

1. How social distancing works – and put it into practice.
2. How to sanitize different surfaces – and have them do it.
3. How to wash their hands – and put it into practice.
4. How to keep their hands off their faces (and butts while we’re at it) – and put into practice.
5. And how pandemic diseases spread, and how science tackles that problem.

Let’s bring into the schools a large group of nurses, nurses aids and housekeepers to set the standards; show them how it’s done.  Help the teachers put it all into practice as learning is ongoing.   All the while, the school will be sanitized daily by an army of kids.  Those kids will will have real information be able to suppress not only disease, but the conspiracy based fears that are going around.

And when the next pandemic arrives, those kids are locked-and-loaded with information and not fear.

We have all this great knowledge and human resources is in our community right now – lets benefit from it. 

To close or not to close.  That is the question.

      or

Too close or not too close.  That is the question.

Scared is not prepared.

Have a beer (if that’s your thing)

Enjoy each other.  Life is still good.