The Wall Street Journal reports on the experience of Florida, which reopened schools last September:
In the seven months since, Florida schools have avoided major outbreaks of Covid-19 and maintained case rates lower than those in the wider community. Mr. Corcoran said 80% of students in Florida are now attending schools in-person full- or part-time.
....In the last two weeks of February, the daily case rate per 100,000 people was 22 among students and 15 among school staff, compared with 27 in the community, according to the data. In earlier periods going back to October, the student and staff rates were almost always less than half the community rate.
....School reopenings ended up being safer than many feared, said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, a teachers union that unsuccessfully sued Florida to try to stop the executive order. But he criticized the state for failing to enforce federal guidelines on mask mandates and air ventilation, and not giving priority to school employees for Covid-19 vaccines.
I'm not sure how much more evidence we need. Both academic research and real-world experience now says the same thing: schools can be reopened with minimal risk and without massive mitigation efforts. Three-foot spacing, masks, and regular testing seem to be enough.
A few exceptions need to be made for teachers and staff who are at high risk and haven't yet been vaccinated, but otherwise there's little reason for teachers unions or anyone else to object to reopening schools. It's time to get kids back in real classrooms, where they belong.
In Florida, where they can probably have open windows and/or somewhat reasonable HVAC systems for all schools near significant population centers, right?
Open windows? Nope. Too humid.
True, but in a subtropical state air conditioning will be everywhere. So ventilation is there.
Schools should be open no matter what. This is where a strong Federal Government forcing this issue is needed. Much like I would have stopped lockdowns spring 2020.
Pour Shootie another -- one's too many and a hundred's obviously not enough.
Vodka, of course.
Stopping lockdowns last year killed thousands of people for no good reason. You're a bad person.
So let's translate that:
"In a state where covid is running rampant, and where many, many people are taking no precautions whatsoever, we're going to expect teachers to eschew serious precautions and basically jump into the pool with the rest of the imbeciles"
Right.
It's not enough to ask for schools to be merely "as safe as" the community, because remote teaching can be SAFER -- it can be as safe as the teacher wants to make it. And while that might be overkill in a place where covid is under-control, that isn't Florida.
This also goes against what are, after all, extremely common sense guidelines, the guidelines promulgated by the CDC itself.
Was I ever a teacher. Why yes, yes I was (and still am.) Whyever do you ask?
Teachers can get vaccinated in FL, and they should be prioritized across the country. There's no reason why all teachers could not be vaccinated by the middle of April.
And those cracking on FL, for whatever reason CNN ran a prominent puff piece on Governor DeSantis and how great Covid has been handled in FL. Don't ask me to explain. I tried to read the article but couldn't get far because I kept tasting throwup in the back of my throat.
whatever "success" florida has had dealing with covid is due to the efforts of county and municipal leaders, who have mandated social distancing, mask-wearing etc., not desantis.
Probably true. I live in FL and have certainly been WAAAYYY more careful than state rules mandate. And my county had a mask rule months before the rest of the state and it is still in force.
“It’s Time to Reopen Schools Everywhere”? I’m not convinced. Reading between the lines, what I see is the typical human desire for a simple answer to a complex problem. We have a bunch of rationalizations for why the schools should be open during a global pandemic, but mostly we just want them open because that’s what we want, and we figure any downside risks will fall on a small minority — teachers and their families — leaving the rest of us unscathed.
Funny thing that -- the people in my family who most want the schools to reopen are _exactly_ those who are most apt to deride education in general and teachers in particular.
My only worry is if the variants, which seem to be more communicable in young people than the original virus, will get a toehold in some of these states and the past experience in schools may not reflect the current or future situation. I guess they can close back down if that happens. Vaccinated teachers and staff will go a long way to helping.
Lets just think about this "evidence": school kids who have a higher asymptomatic rate are 20% less likely to catch it than the broader community. School staff, probably at least 1/2 of which are vaccinated, got it about 1/2 as often as the broader community.
We can discuss whether keeping schools open increases the overall #infections. We can talk about whether causing permanent damage to a significant fraction of kids (and our society) is worth the increased death rate.
But those numbers aren't any evidence of anything. Kevin used to be more skeptical of his data--guess any stats will do if he can twist them to his preconceived argument.
Skeptical of what, again? We're at the point that all teachers can be vaccinated.
Agreed! I always thought staff was the weakest link for in-person schooling: their average fatality rate if they catch it is probably close to .1 - .8% (depending on age), while for the kids it's nil. But there is no doubt that kids pass it to the rest of their family fairly effectively (well, maybe not HS students who seem to self-isolate in their rooms all the time on FB and youtube---er, I mean homework). and 9 school kids HAVE died since the fall (https://feaweb.org/covid19/fea-safe-schools-report/).
I think now that staff can be protected, the rewards outweigh the risks, as long as sensible testing, easy staff vaccination, testing, masking, allowance for remote attendance for high risk families, ventilation. Oh [snark], that is mostly what the CDC recommends (now). How much of that being done in Florida? Not sure why pooled testing STILL isn't done, especially when classrooms are such a nice segmented population. Guess schools don't rate like pro sports.
Well, that the vaccines are available does not (so far as we know now) mean that no one needs to be concerned about the virus. I think it is still the case that there has been very little testing of the vaccines in children, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems. There’s also the question of the emerging variants. All said, there’s too much uncertainty to justify the flat message to open up all the schools immediately.
Mr. Drum, it is not like you to draw sweeping conclusions from non-evidence, but this one is a whopper.
The figures you quote tell us nothing either way about whether opening the schools was safe or harmful. Let me point out that Florida's second wave took off (and exploded) right at the end of September--just a few weeks after schools re-opened. I'm not going to claim that the reopening caused the second wave--but you can't claim it didn't either. Certainly the timing is what one would expect in that event. And the fact that school rates paralleled community rates throughout that second wave, again, says nothing about the question at hand.
While the question of school re-opening has been highly politicized and the discussion focuses primarily about the risk posed to teachers, the more important, but largely undiscussed issue is the impact of school re-opening on the community as a whole. After all, neither students nor teachers remain in the school building after the workday ends. They go back to their residential areas, and can spread anything they've picked up in school.
Looking at the experiences of various countries that are small enough to be comparable to US states, the results are quite mixed. Some have been followed by explosive growth in COVID cases, and others have seen nothing happen at all, and shades in between. At the college level, reopenings here in the US have been disastrous almost across the board, with severe outbreaks on campus that then ignite outbreaks in the surrounding communities. Of course, college students are much more socially promiscuous than K-6 students, and probably even than 7-12. A similar comparison might be drawn between school teachers and college faculty in their peregrinations.
Now, schools play a particularly important role in societal functioning, both in terms of the development and formation of our children, and in enabling their parents to work. So figuring out how to safely reopen them deserves to be a top priority. Should have been from day one. But just because we really want it to happen doesn't mean it can happen safely. It requires thoughtful planning, something we have clearly proven ourselves incapable of in this pandemic, and careful execution, another domain we have miserably failed at. We ought to be carefully studying the experiences of other countries that have and have not reopened various levels of schools (it may be safe to reopen K-6 but not higher grades, or it may only be safe under more stringent conditions), to see what has worked and what has failed.
This shouldn't be a political issue. Politics destroys rational discourse and behavior.
Well said, and bonus point for peregrinations.
From EdWeek last summer: "The Taiwanese government provides all adults nine masks every two weeks, and all children 10 masks every two weeks. During the school year, the private school gives staff members an additional five masks every two weeks so they can have a new mask every day."
MASKS
Again, yes, I'm a bit oversimplifying.
They did, after all, implement sensible social distancing, physical barriers, and of course they have exceptional contact tracing.
Nonetheless, FREE MASKS is what it takes to really open up, not just schools, but the economy.
D_Ohrk
We used to laugh at TV news clips showing Oriental cultures wearing masks. After wearing one for a year I've noticed a couple of things
First they need to put stronger yet pliable strips in the nose piece of cloth face masks to allow for fog free glasses
Second - FORGET COVID. the seasonal flu season came and went this year with nary an outbreak anywhere. IIRC NC had 6 flu deaths this year. 6!!!
Thats after Dr Donald tried to call COVID just like the flu cause the flu kills 70,000 Americans each year. This year it killed far FAR fewer.
The major reason? MASKS. Yes increased hand washing and social distancing also played their parts in it. But MASKS are the key.
Yup. 👍
I'm with antiscience, who says: "In a state where covid is running rampant, and where many, many people are taking no precautions whatsoever, we're going to expect teachers to eschew serious precautions and basically jump into the pool with the rest of the imbeciles"
I am all for reopening schools, when teachers have been vaccinated, and when the level of virus in the community is down to a low enough level. Florida may qualify marginally on the first metric, but it certainly does not qualify on the second.
Kevin, have you given some thought to the fact that Covid cases might be lower in the schools than in the community (as least in part) because every single one of those asymptomatic kids are taking the virus home to their siblings, two parents and four grandparents? Some of whom will die.
Florida is our Sweden.
Coffee2gogo and Clyde made good points. 20 daily cases per 100k is a very high rate of infection. 15 is not much better. These would be considered large outbreaks almost anywhere.
The New York Times classifies counties with 15 cases/100,000 daily to be at 'very high risk'.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-risk-map.html
I am not surprised, but still dismayed, to see so many negative comments here. If the left is going to be the party of science that trusts the experts and relies on evidence, the left has to trust the science, the experts, and the evidence. Even when the science reaches conclusions that the left doesn't like.
The science, the experts, and the evidence says schools are perfectly safe. And the science, the experts, and the evidence says that keeping kids out of school is doing tremendous harm to their intellectual growth and mental health, particularly for the poor and the students of color.
"Keep the schools closed" is in "vaccines cause autism" territory now. We're not far from being as irrational as "stop the steal".
So you don't think the CDC does science, eh? You know, like the rest of us are going on? And since I've never seen the CDC say that the schools are perfectly safe, why don't you post your evidence that they have?
This one's toast.
References to scientific studies that say that schools do not significantly spread COVID:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-research/transmission_k_12_schools.html
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/01/scientists-highlight-low-risk-covid-19-spread-schools
Scientists and public health experts say schools should open:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/upshot/covid-opening-schools-experts.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/health/coronavirus-schools-reopening.html
Saying that COVID can spread through schools is a lot like denying global warming. No study is perfect and I'm sure there is a doctor or two who might want schools to remain closed. But the consensus of the scientific community and the medical community is clear.
There was an interesting study done in Baden Wurtenburg that looked at school transmission. They actually tested all the contacts surrounding cases and learned that it took about 25 infectious student days to get one in-school transmission.
Students, teachers, and staff come into schools with covid that they catch in their personal lives, but then only rarely do they transfer it to others within the school. That is the reason you so often see studies with lower rates in schools than the broader community - they are full of people who spend their days in a relatively safe place.
Now, US schools have a lot of team sports, and those are known to be risky for spread. But the crazy thing is, we have let the sports continue while we close the safer classrooms.
Funny, the CDC doesn't say what you claim. And the others are pretty much in the same vein ... though not as science-oriented, of course. You don't seem to parse English very well, BTW:
" ... this study demonstrated that, _with_precautions_in_place_, in-school transmission of SARS-CoV-2 appeared to be uncommon ..." Tell me, just what did you think "with precautions in place" meant?
Now post those studies without qualifications, equivocations or stipulations that say school openings are perfectly safe. You know, the ones you say exist 😉 And get some STEM training, since you've obviously never had any.
I'm not sure what you are looking for.
Do you want me to post a study that offers proof with scientific certainty that COVID does not spread in schools? You're right. They don't exist. Science doesn't work like that. It takes years to reach bulletproof scientific certainty. But science can offer good evidence for or against hypotheses.
Debating the merits of individual studies with you would be a fool's errand. You've made up your mind and, besides, you presume I lack the STEM training to match wits with you. 🙂
What we do is we listen to the experts about what the science says. (Or, at least that's what the left *claims* we should do on things like global warming and deference to Dr. Fauci). The experts say "open the schools".
The data that Kevin just showed about Florida schools is in support of my point? Where's the science in support of yours?
What was that trollbait nonsense you initially posted? Oh yes:
"The science, the experts, and the evidence says schools are perfectly safe.",
Note that you did not say "perfectly safe with proper precautions," which is what people who are evidenced-based are talking about. The whole point is that many schools are not -- cannot -- take 'proper precautions'.
But you already knew that, troll.
I have heard the opinions that the lost year of schooling is doing 'tremendous' harm to mental health; I just haven't seen much evidence. I don't think that losing a year of in-person instruction is a good thing, but it is worth remembering that universal, formal classroom instruction is a fairly recent innovation in human history.
I might have overplayed my hand in saying that science has shown that children are hurt by COVID. I'm basing most of this from the constant reports that I read in the media like this one:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/when-covid-19-closed-schools-black-hispanic-poor-kids-took-n1249352
But I concede that the media is not always an oracle of truth in reporting scientific studies. I may have been too quick to believe this since it seemed so plausible to me.
In any case, you're right. I'll rephrase:
There is strong evidence demonstrating that schools do not lead to the spread of COVID-19. It seems likely that at home instruction can reduce learning and there are studies that suggest this is the case. Hence, there is no good reason not to open schools and there are good reasons to open the schools. Open them up.
Sigh. Would it hurt you to read for comprehension? Baldly stating someone's positions without stating how they qualify them is -- dare I say it? -- dishonest. But you knew that already 😉
I don't see the need to get personal with barbs about reading comprehension. But since I agreed with Ken Schultz' point and retracted the comment about science/experts showing that kids are getting screwed by in-home schooling, I am not sure what you are going on about.
Who said this?
"If the left is going to be the party of science that trusts the experts and relies on evidence, the left has to trust the science, the experts, and the evidence. Even when the science reaches conclusions that the left doesn't like."
Oh yes, _you_ did. Feel like maybe apologizing, hypocrite?
None of these papers claim "schools are perfectly safe." Drum and others claim "schools are safer than many other jobs" (ie, the background rate), but that is just not the same thing as saying they are actually safe -- in fact, 15/100,000 is still officially considered "high risk."
Furthermore, those of us who actually read the epidemiological literature know that a huge percentage of these "safe" papers are just small, statistically underpowered observational studies, all vexed by the same issue, the difficulty of measuring asymptomatic transmission. To think that the thousands of epidemiologists who argue this are all anti-science (search Twitter, they're there) is itself anti-science.
Finally, there are much bigger and better studies showing that school openings increase community rates. For instance, here are four studies, all much better and larger than the ones cited here, all in much more prestigious journals than the ones cited here. All show school openings increase R by a huge amount, around 0.2.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6531/eabd9338
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/9/e2020834118
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30785-4/fulltext
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0?s=09
I question the measures used. First, case rates are reported, but not testing rates or test-positivity rates. So we can't know how well the confirmed-case rate estimates the true case rate. Second, the measured case rates should at least be compared to case rates of similar cohorts outside of schools. That is, students in school should be compared to students learning remotely or home-schooling. Comparing students to the community as a whole is meaningless. Third, without an accurate method of contact tracing that may not even be technically possible today, we can't know to what degree in-person schooling is contributing to spreading of the virus to school families and the community..
I am not arguing that all schools should be closed; I am arguing against oversimplification of a complex problem.
A confusion matrix would help. As well as stating what 'proper precautions' mean. Funny how proponents of school reopenings fail to mention that 'taking proper precautions' is in many cases impossible.
Yes, I’m afraid that some of the kids who would benefit most from returning to the classroom*, would have some of the least-healthy classrooms** to which to return. Legacies of racial and social injustice.
*In poorer neighborhoods where parent(s) can’t give up work to home-school
**poorer ventilation, more crowding
Europe has prioritized keeping schools open, at least at the elementary and middle school level, and at least as far as they can tell schools have not been a major source of new cases.
In my region of the Marche (central Italy) there are typically about 20 cases a day relating to schools, compared to typical daily totals of 300-1,000. So, not zero, but not a significant factor.
The drivers of new cases here seems to be, as always, unauthorized (and illegal) groups of people getting together , often in undisclosed locations — a karaoke (!) party in a supposedly closed restaurant (90 people, 30 infected), a graduation party (30 people, 15 infected), parties held in private homes. It’s maddening.
"Europe has prioritized keeping schools open, at least at the elementary and middle school level, and at least as far as they can tell schools have not been a major source of new cases."
This is not true. There have been numerous papers in most of the important journals, all of which show that school reopening in Europe (with precautions, of course) increased community R by around 0.2 -- the largest policy effect detected, apart from banning large indoor gatherings. Increasing R by 0.2 translates into twice as many cases after a month relative to schools closed. That's a huge effect, and again, these are not just one-off case studies, but huge, multi-country studies published in the most prestigious journals.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6531/eabd9338
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/9/e2020834118
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30785-4/fulltext
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0?s=09
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Florida's cumulative death rates since September 2020:
September 1, 2020: 530
October 1, 2020: 673
November 1, 2020: 781
December 1, 2020: 869
January 1, 2021: 1009
February 1, 2021: 1242
March 1, 2021: 1443
Comparison with other states' left as an exercise for the reader but just from those numbers alone, since the start of the school year, Florida's death rate has increased by ~2.72X. Over the same interval the US' overall has gone from to 561 to 1565 ~2.79X. Wave hands a bit and they've done basically the same as the nation as a whole.
For the "where are they now" through 3/16/2021 from Johns Hopkins' data going as far as needed to have Florida included in each metric:
Rank State Cumulative Deaths/million State Cumulative Deaths State 7-Day Trailing Deaths/Million/Day
1 New Jersey 2707 California 56987 West Virginia 18.73
2 New York 2528 New York 49171 California 7.58
3 Rhode Island 2443 Texas 46827 Arkansas 5.92
4 Massachusetts 2428 Florida 32504 Kentucky 5.50
5 Mississippi 2331 Pennsylvania 24698 Virginia 5.10
6 Arizona 2279 New Jersey 24045 Texas 5.08
7 Connecticut 2190 Illinois 23255 Massachusetts 4.62
8 South Dakota 2165 Georgia 18359 New Jersey 4.46
9 Louisiana 2141 Ohio 17991 Louisiana 4.39
10 Alabama 2114 Michigan 16809 New York 4.39
11 North Dakota 1955 Massachusetts 16732 Mississippi 4.37
12 Pennsylvania 1929 Arizona 16586 Georgia 4.35
13 Indiana 1915 Indiana 12893 South Carolina 4.22
14 New Mexico 1847 North Carolina 11757 Alabama 4.11
15 Illinois 1835 Tennessee 11658 Rhode Island 3.91
16 Arkansas 1825 Alabama 10363 Nevada 3.71
17 Iowa 1796 Virginia 10154 Florida 3.70
18 South Carolina 1735 Louisiana 9955 Arizona 3.57
19 Georgia 1729 South Caroe 3.52
20 Tennessee 1707 Missouri 8702 Oklahoma 3.14
21 Michigan 1683 Maryland 8099 Pennsylvania 3.02
22 Nevada 1671 Connecticut 7807 Iowa 2.94
23 Kansas 1645 Wisconsin 7201 Idaho 2.72
24 Texas 1615 Mississippi 6936 Indiana 2.50
25 Delaware 1557 Minnesota 6824 Maryland 2.29
26 Ohio 1539 Colorado 6049 New Mexico 2.25
27 Florida 1513 Iowa 5666 North Carolina 2.21
Is there one person here advocating for school openings who actually understands Modus Ponens? For that matter how many of them have even heard the term?
Undergraduate philosophy major w/ several semesters of Logic. Now only interested in deductions that apply to Form 1040. Heh.
But what if I consider 22/100,000 or 15/100,000 much too high a risk in absolute terms, regardless of whether it is lower than community prevalence?
The counter-factual on the table is remote teaching, which would result in a case rate much lower than community background. So the question isn't "are kids and teachers safer than everyone else" if everyone else is unsafe; the question "is the increased risk to kids worth it?" For that question, background rates are irrelevant, and 15/100,000 was up until recently considered a "very high" absolute level of risk.
Right!
Meanwhile, over at Kevin's former blogging-grounds, we are informed: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/03/why-black-parents-arent-joining-the-push-to-reopen-schools/