Opening schools

[DSeid]

@nelliebly

Oh, it’s clear, all right. You haven’t cited “thousands” of experts, but you do you. If you think these people and many others (maybe “thousands”) are outweighed by the “thousands” of experts you believe support your view, you should set them straight. They have access to the same data you do. I’m sure they’d appreciate you pointing out how wrong they are. …

There’s no need. The position that the entire country needs to completely lock down one size fits all no matter what current local rates or trends, certainly no school, is a fringe one. U.S. PIRG is a political advocacy group (founded by Ralph Nader) devoted to grassroots organizing, not an expert scientific or expert medical or policy making body. Maybe they should tell the CDC, the AAP, the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine, and heck throw this one in too, Harvard’s Global Health Institute “how wrong they are”? Surely those pillars of the field will be grateful to be so taught.

In the U.S., we should differentiate school reopening policy by case incidence levels in the relevant
jurisdiction (counties and districts) at the time of reopening. Some states—for instance, Maine, Montana, Alaska, and Hawaii— currently have sufficiently low case incidence levels across counties/districts to plan for full re-openings of the K-12 system, with adaptations to teaching and learning spaces for pandemic resilience. Other states—for instance, Arizona, California, Minnesota, Texas, and Florida currently have such high case incidence in many counties/districts that those counties/districts should plan to begin the fall semester with online learning.

Entertainingly enough (surprising to some here I am sure) they come to similar conclusions that I have. @MandaJo you may be especially interested in the link as they actually give some numbers, choosing to focus on case incidence as their prime criteria but …

While this guide to risk levels uses daily new confirmed cases, it is important that this metric be triangulated with others for full confidence in its reasonableness as a guide. The most important other measures are: case trend as an estimate from the new deaths trend, new COVID hospitalizations, in each case with a seven day rolling average, and test positivity (percentages of tests that come back positive). Death and hospitalization data points will reveal where case counts are low only because testing is low; where such undercounting is apparent, jurisdictions should not rely on case incidence to assess risk but only on death and hospitalization metrics. Increases in test positivity above 10% are also an indicator of a strong likelihood of undercounting. (For a full picture of how these metrics can be used, please see “Key Metrics for Suppression Framework.”)

These COVID levels help decision-makers and community members know where they are in terms of community spread, and therefore underlying population risk. The green level aligns with the CDC’s low incidence plateau threshold. The levels also communicate the intensity of effort needed for control of COVID at varying levels of community spread.

To determine the levels, incidence numbers can be used at county, MSA, or other local health district jurisdiction level, and at the state level. Policy decisions about which strategies of disease response are best for a jurisdiction should be made by looking at both the local level and the state picture and considering the dynamic relationship between them. For schools, the first reference point should be district and county, and decision-makers should consider both the rates in their own districts and counties and the rates in the districts and counties with which they share a border. … decision-makers should pay close attention to direction of trend and rate of change …

There are some details that are still fuzzy in that document but it is the most specific in its guidance of what I’ve seen.

Also @MandaJo “no proven” is not “proven none”. My position is to start from a position of good control and then to release methodically, in order starting with those with the most evidence of the most potential benefits over least evidence for significant harms. Opening schools for in person education, especially the younger grades, is high on that list.