COVID: BACK TO SCHOOL

We are at the stage were various countries are considering “opening up the economy”. This can take several forms.

In the US, the response to the outbreak has been fragmented at best. As such the plans to reopening are also fragmented. With the states with Republican Governors more likely to ease stay at home orders and owning up economies despite the guidelines from the WH’s CDC advising against it. The coronavirus model often referenced by the White House predicting deaths due to COVID-19 nearly doubled (from 72,500 deaths to 134,000) due to easing of stay at home orders. States such as Georgia decided to open up barbershops, hair salons and gyms. Many others such as Alabama, Colorado, Indiana etc, are using a “Safer at home approach”, which will allow for business to open with a 50% capacity. For an overview of what States are doing have a look here.

Denmark become the first country in the western world to reopen its elementary schools. Images on this site gives us a look of how they decided to approach this.

In The Netherlands the plan is to open up elementary schools next week, however it is puzzling why the decision was made before the study on children transmitting the virus is not complete.

I initially thought it was strange that universities and colleges remain closed while certain countries open up elementary schools. After all college students can take care of themselves a lot better than younger children (most of them at least). But after some thought I figured that as usual it was financially based. With parents staying at home to juggle working from home (those that can do that at least) and taking care of young children. So it is about getting parents back to work rather than about the education of young children.

I am not sure that I would let my child go back to school. Let’s do a little thought experiment. Let’s say that children can absolutely not be infected by the coronavirus (of course this is not the case). They can’t be carriers and thus they can’t be transmitters right? But have you ever observed a young child (age 1 to 12)? Hygienically they are rarely ever mindful. They touch their faces many times a day, girls especially brushing hair from their faces, they don’t feel the compulsion to wash their hands, and they pretty much touch things around themselves all the time. If any parent has the virus, and that gets transferred over to their children (contract transfer) who is to say that another child doesn’t get contaminated with the virus and then passed it on to their teachers, or their parents when they get picked up? The virus has been soon to live on surfaces such as plastics and stainless steel for up to 3 days.

As the pictures of how Denmark went about it shows, the implementation is important. However when it comes to small children things can go wrong really quickly. And outside of the classroom, in the hall ways, bathroom and such they are not always being supervised by a grown up to ensure that they are behaving accordingly.

How about all of you? Will you risk sending your children to school if your state/country decided to open up elementary schools tomorrow?