The problem is you cannot say something nationally for K-12. The schools in NJ and Texas and Idaho have different resources, case loads and COVID rates. Trump wanted no part of at least allowing CDC to provide national guidance because all he cared about was the election NOT the people. Governor's took the lead of the President instead of making their own decisions.
No, it wasn't. At least not at first. You showed up in the thread and began, what appeared to me, to be a statement about how dangerous it was to go to school because COVID was worse than the flu. If that is not your statement, then fine. But again, I don't know what the point was of your original post. And if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle. Ok, first US has 4 time zones, not counting Alaska/Hawaii. The rollout of back to school would be just fine if we would let it be fine. As I keep saying, this is a risk/reward issue. Is there risk? Negligible. Not zero, though. No, it's not. Not materially, at least. That's the whole point. COVID is not deadlier than the flu to kids by any material measure. Saying COVID is more deadlier than the flu because 100 kids died to 11 million cases forgets that there are probably many, many more cases not counted (asymptomatic, etc). Still, saying it is a higher fatality rate than the flu is like saying more kids die from wasp stings every year than spider bites. So what? Almost no one dies - and that is the most important factor when suggesting we keep tens of millions of kids out of school. For the purposes of this discussion, virtual school is a shut down school. Yeah, you have students learning. But it is a shadow of what they get when they go to school, not to mention all of the other issues I brought up (mental health, depression, anxiety, lack of socialization, poor education quality and on and on).
UNICEF: Schools are not 'main drivers' of Covid among kids Data from 191 countries shows no consistent link between reopening schools and increased rates of coronavirus infection, UNICEF reported in an analysis Thursday. In releasing its first comprehensive assessment of the pandemic's effects on children, the United Nations agency said "there is strong evidence that, with basic safety measures in place, the net benefits of keeping schools open outweigh the costs of closing them." "Schools are not a main driver of community transmission, and children are more likely to get the virus outside of school settings," UNICEF said. The numbers: As of November, 572 million students — about 33 percent of all students — are being affected by 30 nationwide school closures, the report found. At their peak, school closures affected almost 90 percent of students around the world. Kids accounted for one in nine reported Covid-19 infections worldwide, the report found. “While children can get sick and can spread the disease, this is just the tip of the pandemic iceberg,” said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF executive director. “Disruptions to key services and soaring poverty rates pose the biggest threat to children. The longer the crisis persists, the deeper its impact on children’s education, health, nutrition and well-being. The future of an entire generation is at risk.” Dropoff in services: From surveys across 140 countries, UNICEF estimates that 70 percent of mental health services for children and adolescents have been disrupted during the pandemic, with 65 percent of countries reporting a decrease in home visits by social workers in September compared to last year. Nearly one-third of the countries saw a drop of at least 10 percent in coverage for health services. That includes routine vaccinations, outpatient care for childhood infectious diseases and maternal health services. Across 135 countries, there has been a 40 percent decline in the coverage of nutrition services for women and children. The number of children hurt by multidimensional poverty — characterized by poor health, education and living standards, in addition to the traditional monetary standards — is estimated to have increased by 15 percent globally by mid-2020. Transmission findings: Child-to-child transmission of the coronavirus in schools was “uncommon and not the primary cause” of infections among children who caught the virus while attending school, according to a July assessment of 31 countries conducted by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Children were more likely to get infected outside of school settings. But the report also concluded that colleges and universities ”have played a role in community transmission in many countries.” What’s next: The group emphasized that the long-term health effects of becoming infected with the coronavirus as a child are still unclear. UNICEF is calling on governments to collect “more reliable, age-disaggregated data on infection, deaths and testing” to “better understand how the crisis impacts the most vulnerable children.” The agency is also calling on governments and partners to commit to ensuring access to essential services, making vaccines affordable and available to all kids, and supporting mental health for children, among other priorities. “As we all re-imagine the future and look ahead toward a post-pandemic world, children must come first," Fore said.
This thread is shortly going to be focused on "Closing schools in the era of COVID" unfortunately. Gov. Beshear orders public, private schools to close classrooms starting Monday https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/gov-b...cle_fe471d18-29d7-11eb-84bb-63a255e9cc90.html Gov. Andy Beshear has ordered Kentucky's public and private schools to close classrooms starting Monday as COVID-19 cases continue to soar throughout the state. Beshear announced the sweeping edict during a news conference Wednesday detailing steps his administration will take to curb the spread of COVID-19. It's the first time Beshear has ordered, rather than recommended, schools to cease in-person instruction in response to the pandemic. "If we are going to be able to provide meaningful educational experiences, in-person especially, at the beginning of the next semester, we have to take action now," he said. "We will make every effort to make sure that in January we have the opportunity to return to in-person instruction," Beshear said. The governor said elementary schools can resume classroom instruction Dec. 7 if their counties drop from "red" and districts adhere to public health guidance. Middle and high schools can reopen classrooms on Jan. 4, he said. Beshear estimated that nearly 10,000 students will ultimately be quarantined this week if current trends hold. About 2,000 staff members could similarly be isolated this week, he said. As of Tuesday, 2,823 students and 448 school employees are in quarantine, according to state data. More than 400 students and nearly 240 staff members had newly reported COVID-19 diagnoses as of Tuesday. Last week, districts self-reported 1,067 COVID-19 cases among students and 568 among staff with 6,601 students and 1,152 employees quarantined. Many Kentucky school districts have already transitioned to remote learning as COVID-19 cases increase in their communities. All but 13 counties are in the state's "red zone" for COVID-19 transmission Wednesday with incidence rates topping 25 new daily cases per 100,000 residents based on a seven-day rolling average. Beshear and state health officials had recommended schools in such counties transition to virtual instruction until local COVID-19 caseloads drop. Both Kentucky Education Commissioner Jason Glass and Lu Young, chairwoman of the Kentucky Board of Education, agreed with the decision to temporarily close schools, Beshear said. "The governor's executive orders provide clarity that's much needed across the state, and it's time," Glass told WDRB News. "We've seen the increasing numbers in positivity rates, in hospitalization rates and in death rates. It's just time that we took action on this." Glass said he had not had time to discuss Beshear's executive order with local school leaders, but he expected districts would follow the governor's directive and halt in-person instruction temporarily. Schools will still be allowed to provide targeted, in-person services to students who need them, he said. While opinions on managing COVID-19 vary, Glass said current coronavirus spread throughout the state "creates incredible pressures" on mitigation steps taken by districts. "We're seeing a great deal of disruption at schools because of all the quarantining, so it's really becoming impossible to operate schools normally," he said. "... We may see some people who disagree with it. Really, that is immaterial because the governor's executive order has the force of law." Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, is among critics of Beshear's latest steps. Top lawmakers were not provided data to support "a blanket policy" to temporarily stop classroom instruction when Beshear briefed them before his Wednesday announcement, Stivers said in a news release. "We are seeing the loss of a year of educational opportunities and destructive effects to the mental health of our youth," he said in a statement. "Kentucky is in a crisis, this is real, and the Governor needs to start consulting with us for the sake of the Commonwealth." The Kentucky Education Association praised the governor's executive action to close classrooms, saying the "dramatic" move is necessary because COVID-19 "presents a clear and present danger to the entire state." "Turning this situation around will take each of us – all of us – working together for the collective good," KEA said in a statement. "It is a test of our spirits, but it is also a test of our empathy and our humanity." Many school districts had already transitioned to nontraditional instruction as COVID-19 cases spiked in their communities before Beshear's sweeping executive order. Toni Konz Tatman, chief communications officer for the Kentucky Department of Education, said of the 140 school districts currently in "red zone" counties, at least 91 have already transitioned to distance learning. At least 98 school districts are currently providing remote instruction only, she said. Districts that defy Beshear's executive order can expect consequences since it "has the force of law," Glass said. "We need to treat it as such." If efforts to convince districts into compliance fail, Glass said school officials and board members could be removed from their positions. Professional licenses for teachers could also be at stake, he said. "We hope we don't get to that point," Glass said. "... We need to get this virus under control." Like bars and restaurants, Glass said schools will continue to operate "with some pretty significant restrictions." "Once we get on the other side of the new year, we'll have to reassess and see where things are," he said. Beshear initially recommended schools close at the onset of the pandemic in March, with public and private systems throughout the state transitioning to remote learning through the end of the 2019-20 school year.
Nearly all the universities in North Carolina are closed for on-campus learning. When they tried to open at the beginning of fall COVID spread quickly across campus as students partied and the universities had to switch to virtual learning. The exception has been Duke University. How did they manage this? By testing students constantly. The university implemented a rigorous testing, tracking and surveillance program for more than 10,000 students. Also having severe penalties for ignoring COVID distancing guidelines (Mommy & Daddy aren't going to like it when you get expelled permanently for attending a large party at a $74K per year university.). Duke University schools the country on how to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic https://www.latimes.com/science/sto...ed-helped-duke-university-keep-its-doors-open Duke University is sometimes referred to as a pretty good knock-off of fancier schools farther north. But while those ivy-clad universities with smart students, prestigious medical schools and big endowments stayed closed this fall, Duke invited its freshmen, sophomores, some upperclassmen and all of its graduate students to its Durham, N.C., campus for largely in-person classes. Now, it’s schooling those sniffier schools on how to reopen safely. Starting Aug. 2 and continuing up to this week, when the Duke campus made a pre-planned reversion to online classes for the remainder of the semester, the university implemented a rigorous testing, tracking and surveillance program for more than 10,000 students. And it has carried out, on a grand scale, an innovative scheme — called pooled testing— that can stretch limited testing resources without forfeiting accuracy or resolution. For Duke’s returning students, the result has been a relatively safe and almost normal return to learning, at a time when other colleges and universities either shuttered their campuses or ignited community outbreaks as they reopened with scant measures in place to detect or isolate infected students. At Duke, students lived together on-campus and off, mingled in dorms and attended classes and labs. There were football games (Duke athletes were tested and monitored in a separate program). Fraternities and sororities continued to operate. And on a few occasions, students partied like it was 1999. When there were outbreaks, they were nipped in the bud. The surrounding community of Raleigh-Durham, N.C., was protected from 17 infected students — nine of them entirely free of symptoms— who arrived in their midst from far-flung homes. And extensive contact tracing found that class attendance was not linked to even a single case of coronavirus transmission. “Duke has done an exceptional job compared to other institutions, and has been very quiet about it,” said Christopher Marsicano, director of the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College, in Davidson, N.C. “It’s one of the few institutions in what we call the Ivy Plus that decided to have in-person classes. It deserves credit for stepping up and being an innovator here, and keeping its cases down.” As the United States enters a new and deadly phase of the pandemic, colleges and universities are caught up in whirlwind. Even as they approach decisions about whether and how to reopen for spring semester, many are responding to the pandemic’s new spike by closing campuses and sending students home earlier than anticipated. Just as students turned many college towns into coronavirus hot spots in the fall, there is concern that students sent home without being tested first will accelerate outbreaks as they’re summarily sent home to their families. If the nation’s universities want to learn what Duke did right, they can turn to a detailed report published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The university developed and fielded a smartphone app that monitored students for symptoms and communicated their test schedules and results. It organized teams of contact tracers and trackers who got infected students into quarantine, found exposed students and instructed them to self-isolate, investigated worrisome clusters, and identified certain students for extra monitoring and testing. There was “the Duke Compact,” a pandemic version of an honor code entered into by every student who came to campus. Students promised to wear a mask when in public, wash hands frequently and socially distance, of course. They also agreed to avoid large gatherings, to self-isolate for the prescribed period of time if instructed, to get a flu shot, and to allow the use of some personal data for purposes of finding and testing potentially exposed contacts. “We are, more than ever before, individually and collectively responsible for the health and safety of our fellow students, faculty, staff, families and neighbors,” the compact read. Testing was a crucial element of the school’s success. Duke established 15 on-campus test sites and a central laboratory based in its medical school’s Human Vaccine Institute. It implemented the pooled testing program, which relayed highly accurate results in 18 to 30 hours. By pooling samples, Duke’s program extended the reach of its testing effort without sacrificing speed or accuracy. By mid-September, Duke’s lab was working three shifts a day and processing 11,390 samples a week. Students who didn’t feel well had their samples tested immediately and got their results in less than a day. But with or without symptoms, every Duke student who was living on campus was being tested at least twice a week. Off-campus students were tested once or twice weekly. And graduate students averaged one test a week. The pooling scheme was first devised to test U.S. soldiers for syphilisduring World War II, when the numbers of servicemen deployed to Europe and exposed to the sexually transmitted disease threatened to overwhelm available labs. At Duke, lab technicians first consolidated a portion of five students’ specimens into a single sample and tested it. If the pooled sample came up negative, all five students were pronounced well — on the strength of a single test. In the rare cases where a trace of coronavirus was found, lab technicians immediately returned to the five students’ specimens and tested each individually to find out which of the five belonged to an infected donor. In populations in which infections remain rare, pooling can help economize on tests and reagents and stretch limited supplies further. But keeping some backup specimen from each student on ice also sped the process of follow-up testing. Students didn’t need to be called back to provide another sample. For most, the fall semester was healthy, though not exactly normal. Dorm living did not include roommates. Meals were delivered to students in their dorms. Between Aug. 2 and Oct. 11, 68,913 specimens from 10,265 students were tested. In that period, just 84 students were found to have a coronavirus infection. Slightly more than half of them — 43 students — were identified before any COVID-19 symptoms developed. Had those asymptomatic students been left to mix freely with other students, college employees and community members, they would almost certainly have seeded outbreaks: Further testing revealed that “a good number” of asymptomatic students had very viral high loads, a measure that is widely viewed as a good stand-in for infectiousness, said Thomas Denny, a Duke vaccinologist and a key architect of the school’s program. There’s no reason a program like the one at Duke couldn’t be exported to other universities, said Denny, the lead author of the report, which appeared in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. “I think a lot of other places could do it,” he said. “They just have to make a commitment and mobilize their faculty to use some innovative approaches.” Depending on their resources and the capabilities of the labs they partner with, colleges and universities could take a wide range of approaches to surveillance testing. But he said Duke’s experience, in which more than half of all positive tests came from asymptomatic students, makes clear that holding off on testing until a student is visibly ill is not good enough. College administrators “just have to make the commitment that they think it’s important” for students and professors to be together on campus, said Denny. “A lot of programs have talent and innovative ideas. It’s leadership that makes this happen.” It’s faith, too, in the real-world applications of the models and experiments that are the lifeblood of higher learning, said Peter Frazier of Cornell University. A data scientist and professor of operations research, Frazier helped design a program that allowed students to return to the Ivy League campus in Ithaca, N.Y., by keeping a tight lid on infections with comprehensive testing and tracking. Over the summer, Cornell administrators began to recognize that students would come back whether the university opened or not, and that abandoning them and the community of Ithaca was not an option, Frazier said. So the school turned to faculty experts, “and we developed mathematical models that helped us to predict it would work,” he said. Those models fleshed out the contours of an effective pooled testing program, and showed that Cornell’s veterinary labs — which were skilled in the testing of herds of dairy cows — could carry it out. “There was a lot of uncertainty, and that was just fundamental,” said Frazier. “But we did this because we thought it would work. At the end of the day, you have to have some courage.”
An in-depth article which is a good read... Why Reopening Schools Has Become the Most Fraught Debate of the Pandemic Popular writers and academics have dismissed words of caution from epidemiologists about coronavirus transmission among children https://prospect.org/coronavirus/wh...come-the-most-fraught-debate-of-the-pandemic/
Schools struggle to stay open as quarantines sideline staff Contact tracing and isolation protocols meant to contain the spread of the coronavirus are sidelining school employees and frustrating efforts to continue in-person learning https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireS...stay-open-quarantines-sideline-staff-74418077
GWB-Trading please stop. You are wrong on EVERYTHING. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/13/9341...e-where-cases-are-rising-but-schools-are-open Lessons From Europe, Where Cases Are Rising But Schools Are Open Mahua Barve lives in Frankfurt, Germany, with her husband, a son in first grade and twin daughters in kindergarten. All three children are currently attending school full time and in person. That's despite a coronavirus surge that has led Germany to shut down restaurants, bars, theaters, gyms, tattoo parlors and brothels (which are legal in the country) for November. Schools were allowed to remain open. Despite the resurgence of the virus, Barve says, her children's school's careful safety strategies give her confidence. Each "pod" of kids goes to recess at 10 minute intervals, for example, so they don't mix in the hallways. "When I see all the parents who are coming to pick up and drop off, they're wearing masks. The teachers are always wearing masks. They're doing their best to minimize risk. And as soon as something is detected, they are quarantining." Barve says everyone is doing their part: "It's a little bit of choppy water, but if people are swimming in their own lanes, there's less likelihood of a disturbance." Across Europe, schools and child care centers are staying open even as much of the continent reports rising coronavirus cases, and even as many businesses and gathering places are shut or restricted. Countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy appear to be following the emerging evidence that schools have not been major centers of transmission of the virus, especially for young children. And experts say these nations are also demonstrating a commitment to avoiding the worst impacts of the pandemic on children. The U.S. has taken a different approach. As new cases climb above 100,000 per day, there are very few places in the U.S. where classrooms have remained full even as restaurants and bars are empty. In cities such as Boston and Washington, D.C., schools are remote, but indoor dining is allowed. This week, Detroit announced it was closing its schools through January, while indoor dining and bars there remain open at 50% capacity. Meanwhile, in states like Florida and Texas, schools — along with most businesses — have stayed open, even with very high and rising case rates. Andreas Schleicher has a global view on education from his position in Paris overseeing the PISA international assessment program at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. He says that while schools in Europe were initially closed out of an abundance of caution, "Research has shown that if you put social distancing protocols in place, school is actually quite a safe environment, certainly safer than having children running around outside school." At the same time, he says that in Europe, "I do think people have understood fairly quickly how much damage the school closures have done, particularly to disadvantaged learners." He says the science especially favors opening elementary schools, with young children both less likely to spread the disease and less able to benefit from remote learning. Randa Grob-Zakhary of the group Insights for Education recently analyzed school reopening patterns across the world. When it comes to European countries, she says for the most part, "They have ... localized closures based on numbers of cases." For example, at Barve's children's school in Germany, sometimes just a single "pod" of about 20 children and teachers will be sent home to quarantine because of a case. Johannes Huebner, the head of the pediatric infectious disease department at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Hospital in Munich, recently told NPR correspondent Rob Schmitz that scientific studies have not detected high rates of transmission in schools. "Most of the infections are brought into the schools by adults, by teachers, and then spread among kids. But most of the time, it's only single cases. It's two, three kids, five maybe that get positive." Grob-Zakhary says, "I think five, six months ago there was a view that we don't know what the heck we're dealing with and we better keep our kids safe no matter what. And now there's a view that, yes, it's dangerous, but we know so much more about how to handle it." Even where schools are open, it doesn't mean everyone feels safe. In the U.K., teachers unions have raised safety concerns. And in Switzerland, one of the worst coronavirus hot spots in Europe, parent Anindita Basu Sempere is keeping her 6-year-old son home from school. It worries her that local health authorities don't require children under 12 to wear a mask. She is seeking a doctor's authorization to keep her son out of school as long as the current surge continues. She says her son is sad to be away from his friends, but he's told her "it feels weird to not change what we're doing when everything else is changing." President-elect Joe Biden has called school closures "a national emergency." Some members of his newly appointed COVID-19 task force — including former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, epidemiologist Michael Osterholm and oncologist and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel — have spoken cautiously in favor of reopening schools, but only with proper mitigation measures in place such as testing, contact tracing, social distancing and masking, which not all schools or locations have the resources to do currently. Murthy and Emanuel have written that schools should be open only where the virus is controlled. Other American observers are adamant that the United States ought to make a different calculation of the societywide impact of school closures, even when virus spread is high. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital and editor of the journal JAMA Pediatrics, has just published a paper that estimates 5.53 million years of life could be lost as a result of school closures in the United States. The calculation is based on research showing that missing months of school lowers a child's chances of graduating from high school. Lower educational attainment, in turn, is well established to lower life expectancy because people with less education are more likely to smoke, more likely to drink heavily, more likely to suffer from heart disease, and more likely to perform more hazardous work, among other reasons. "When you frame it in terms of school versus lives, it becomes a no-brainer," says Christakis. "And everybody says, 'Well, we can't send kids to school if it's going to cost lives.' But in fact, not sending kids to school also costs lives." Lala Tanmoy Das, an M.D.-Ph.D. student at Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Memorial Sloan Kettering, is familiar with the kind of modeling Christakis used, and calls the paper "fairly robust." But Das also points out that the virus is more dangerous for Black children, Latino children and those with preexisting conditions, and that we don't know enough about its long-term effects on children or adults to capture the full impacts on health. He also notes that many school districts in the U.S. have faced budget cuts that make it hard to do mitigation measures, like regular disinfection, or put proper social distancing protocols in place. Still, Das agrees with Christakis that schools shouldn't be closed preferentially over other restrictions, particularly for younger children. "In New York somehow restaurants and bars are open but we're talking about closing schools. That just doesn't make a lot of sense."
The hero of the narrative begins to backtrack. Dr. Flip Flop: A timeline of Fauci's school reopening positions Dr. Anthony Fauci has held many positions when it comes to whether to keep schools open in America. Over the past several months, he has made an incredible transformation from a man who viciously attacked school reopening proponents, to quietly now siding with them. Schools have been open throughout most of the world during the entirety of the pandemic, but thanks to U.S. “experts” like Dr. Fauci, millions of schoolchildren in America have not been able to access in-person education for many months. Today, Fauci falsely claims that he was for keeping schools open all along. The data has always been very clear during the pandemic that keeping schools open is both incredibly safe and prudent, and finally, the esteemed Dr. Fauci has caught up with the overwhelming data supporting open schools. Here’s a timeline on all of the positions Fauci has taken on schools: 3/12/20: Dr. Fauci calls for nationwide school closures and says he supports states that decide to follow his advice. “The one thing I do advise and I said this in multiple hearings and multiple briefings, that right now we have to start implementing both containment and mitigation. And what was done when you close the schools is mitigation,” Fauci told reporters in the White House driveway. “We have to try as best as we can to distance ourselves from each other.” 4/12/20: The New York Times reported that Fauci “gave his blessing” to Mayor Bill DeBlasio to shut down the entirety of the New York City public school system for the rest of the school year. 4/13/20: Fauci slams Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who announced at the time that he wanted to get schools open as soon as possible. Fauci claimed that opening the schools will get children infected with the coronavirus. “If you have a situation where you don’t have a real good control over an outbreak and you allow children together, they will likely get infected,” Fauci proclaimed. 5/12/20: Without evidence, Fauci claims COVID-19 is dangerous to children, citing “Kawasaki syndrome” as a potential outcome in schoolchildren. In a tense and memorable back and forth with Sen. Rand Paul (who argued that schools must remain open), Fauci dismissed the idea that schools should be opened back up fully because “we don’t know everything about the virus.” CNBC reports: Fauci then turned Paul’s own phrasing on him. “You used the word we should be ‘humble’ about what we don’t know. I think that falls under the fact that we don’t know everything about this virus, and we really had better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children,” Fauci said. “Because the more and more we learn, we’re seeing things about what this virus can do that we didn’t see from the studies in China or in Europe. For example, right now children presenting with Covid-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory syndrome, very similar to Kawasaki syndrome,” Fauci said. 5/14/20: President Trump openly expresses his disagreement with Fauci on school reopening policies: 6/30/20: Testifying on Capitol Hill, Fauci says school reopenings depend on the “dynamics of the outbreak.” He explains: "One of the things we want to emphasize and have been emphasizing is to take a look at where you are in the area of the so-called opening America again. Are you at the gateway phase one, phase two, phase three?" Fauci asked. "The CDC has guidelines about the opening of schools at various stages of those checkpoints. The basic fundamental goal would be as soon as you possibly can to get the children back to school and to use the public health as a tool to help get children back to school." 7/15/20: The NIAID chief supports looking at schools on a case by case basis. 7/24/20: Fauci continues to advance his vague ideas about school reopenings, but again makes clear that he opposes having schools open in areas where the coronavirus is spreading. He tells The Washington Post: “It depends on where you are. We live in a very large country that is geographically and demographically diverse and certainly different in the extent to which there is different COVID activity. So, If you live in a county or a place where there is very little activity, then there might be very little you have to do [to] send the children back to school. If you are in an area where there is viral activity, you want to look at what the schools can do and their planning." 8/4/20: Dr. Fauci calls for the continuing closure of schools in areas with high transmission, and a hybrid learning system in areas with moderate transmission, in elaborating on a scaled approach that allows for schools to remain open based on unspecified area transmission numbers. (continued in next post)
8/4/20: ABC reports that Fauci is still concerned that schools could be vectors for transmission of COVID-19. 8/4/20: Open up the schools if transmission is low, Fauci advises. 8/13/20: Fauci agrees that the future entails “many months” of virtual learning, in supporting keeping schools physically closed. 9/3/20: Schools can only open back up once the virus is “under control,” Fauci tells CNN. 9/20/20: Fauci declares that “some” schools may be able to open safely, but that places with high COVID-19 transmission levels “may want to pause before they start sending the kids back to school for a variety of reasons.” 11/29/20: Fauci discovers the almost year-old data showing that schools are not vectors for COVID-19 transmission. He continues to call for bars being shut down as a trade off, although bars are not vectors of transmission. He says in an ABC interview: "We get asked it all the time. You know, we say it -- not being facetiously, as a sound bite or anything -- but, you know, close the bars and keep the schools open is what we really say … Obviously, you don't have one size fits all. But as I said in the past … the default position should be to try as best as possib