Disclaimer that I am an RTA/MTA member, building rep, and paid summer member organizer. If anything, those connections make what I have to say even more true and less biased since I am hearing from teachers across my district and the state
Educators are getting organized to ensure we can safely reopen our schools without incurring unjust risks to our health, the health of our families, and most importantly the health of our students. Responding to the DESE reopening plan, and in part to this organic and unaffiliated effort, the MTA, AFT, and BTU in consultation with the presidents of over 300 locals has come up with a phased in reopening plan of its own.
Some key differences between the two plans:
DESE:
-3 ft of social distancing citing a recently recalled American Pediatrics Association guideline
-Younger children do not have to wear masks
-Protocols for sick leave, PPE procurement, and the style of reopening are left up to the district
-Reopening is left up to the districts but expected after Labor Day
-No stated position on waiving MCAS for 2020-2021
-No stated position on waiving teacher evaluation for 2020-2021
-No stated position on securing previously enacted Student Opportunity Act funding
-No stated position on preventing teacher layoffs
-$200-300 million statewide pool allocated for PPE and other Covid related expenses, unclear how districts will be prioritized
MTA/AFT/BTU
-6 ft of social distancing in accordance with CDC guidelines that have not changed since the Covid crisis
-Everyone has to wear masks
-We want paid sick leave for teachers who get Covid bargained in good faith with the state
-PPE is a district obligation to teachers, staff, and families and funds must be procured for them
-Phased reopening mirroring the states successful 4 phased approach depending on health guidelines and giving districts time to deep clean buildings before staff arrives, staff time to adeqetely set up classrooms and plan lessons with colleagues, staff time to close digital divide and opportunity gaps, and time to address social emotional trauma of students, relationship building prior to remote learning or academic expectations
-Waive MCAS through 2023-2024 year for any class affected by shutdowns and remote learning
-Waive teacher evaluations or negotiate new evaluations in light of evolving nature of the role
-Fully restore SOA funding
-No teacher layoffs
-$1.8 billion* including restored SOA funding to our most high need districts
*statewide total coming from average estimated per pupil cost of Covid resiliency taken from CDC’s own numbers
This is what collective bargaining looks like. Write your school committees and state reps asking them to agree to these demands and stand with the teachers. It is not enough to say we are essential, appreciated, or superheroes. Treat us like human beings and protect our safety and dignity in the workplace.
Good luck getting kids to keep their masks on and stay 6 feet from each other. I for one am not looking forward to returning with such restrictions.
Neither are we. And right now it’s 3ft until DESE says otherwise.
I doubt these restrictions will be enough anywhere in eastern MA — Essex, Middlesex, Suffolk, or Norfolk counties.
I think we’re going to see an immediate upturn in daily infection rates about two weeks after the opening. That will get worse when flu season kicks in as the weather cools. We’ll see daily death rates increase about three weeks after that, although probably not as sharply (this population is younger and therefore has lower mortality rates).
It is absolutely unconscionable that ANY teacher or student does not have ALL their health expenses covered at no out-of-pocket cost to them. For the students, especially students under 16, attendance is compulsory.
I’m not sure what the right answer is — I suspect somewhere between the approaches of Christopher and of James Conway.
It appears to me as though the most immediate impact we’ll see is that students, especially younger students, will be vectors carrying the disease to their parents and from there to local workplaces. This will be especially so in communities like Revere and Brockton with more people in each household. I think this student population is less vulnerable to the effects of the disease itself than their teachers and parents.
I think teachers, especially older teachers, are very much at risk — as are parents and grandparents of students.
We’ve had months to talk about and prepare for this, and I’m not sure how much progress we’ve made.
My impression so far as that the school opening schedules, like the other schedules (restaurants, bars, hotels, etc) are being set arbitrarily with more attention paid to politics than to science and data.
I think we need to start having some very difficult discussions about how to balance our desire to avoid loss of life with our desire for an educated populace.
I think we have some similarly difficult discussions to have about balancing health risks and personal liberties. I have to say that the suggestion that we emulate China is absolute anathema to me, especially given the current US government.
I think we should be talking about drastically curtailing — not expanding — coercive government measures for ANY reason.
We’re in 100% agreement on that issue and every other issue you brought up. I don’t see a daylight of difference, the only thing I might be more restrictive then you on is mandating and enforcing quarantines for the infected and using contact and tracing technology to find out who they are. Rhode Island already did this with an app people could sign up for and had a phenomenal response rate using cell phone tracking. Masks make me uncomfortable too, so does allowing the government to track me. Depending on a respirator to live is more uncomfortable for me or for my more vulnerable family and colleagues I might get sick.
Maybe I should not have used China as an example since it’s become a bipartisan punching bag, but S. Korea, Taiwan, and New Zealand are democracies that did similar things with better results. New Zealand proactively banned travel and isolated every single person who had the virus on their island until they got better. They have zero cases today and schools and restaurants an theaters and sprite can remain open safely. Taiwan is in a similar situation, my friend and her husband never had to sacrifice eating out and she was able to have her baby in a hospital without any special protocols or visitor restrictions.
Trump, Republican lawmakers, and sadly Christopher are presenting us with a false choice between taking precautions to combat the spread of the virus and returning to normal. Combating the virus is how we return to normal. We do not have a choice in the matter. It’s the only way. We can’t just ignore it or pretend it’s someone else’s problem or insist that the 1% who are infected either do not matter or cannot possibly affect us. Had we listened to Christopher five weeks ago when he first insisted on reopening everything we would be like Florida today. We will probably be like Florida anyway since a 50 state response to this crisis won’t work as Terry argued up thread. Several more weeks of a real national lockdown worked for Italy, for Taiwan, for New Zealand, and will work here.
I’m not the one presenting the false choice. My position all along has been we should not have been forced to choose between our livelihoods and our lives (and in reality most of us would not have to anyway). As for politics playing a role, of course it does and it should. I know I’m generally Burkean when it comes to representation, but even Burke said give your constituents a hearing. If we assume that just powers derive from the consent of the governed then at some level the governed do have to consent to all these restrictions. You have no idea whether we’d be Florida or not, but there’s still the difference in the risks we are willing to take that we might be.
The vast majority of voters across the country agree with me and disagree with you and Donald Trump. The minority protesting masks is exactly that-a minority. Locally if we had a vote on phased reopening most people would vote to move back a phase or two. Every single person I associate with (besides you and another friend in Chicago) have agreed on continuing these restrictions. Even Porcupine, and she’s gone full MAGA these days, is taking this more seriously. She even mailed my wife PPE!
“ My position all along has been we should not have been forced to choose between our livelihoods and our lives (and in reality most of us would not have to anyway). ”
That is a choice thousands of essential workers are making every day to make our stay at home time possible and comfortable. Including many of my students and their families. It’s a choice people like you will continue to force on them by failing to take the virus seriously and follow the science that shows us the only way to stop it. I also wish we had better choices, but we do not. Blame the guy who defunded the CDC and NIH, not Fauci.
Oh, I do blame Trump first and foremost. We never had to make these Hobbesian choices with other pandemics. I’ve seen the polls suggesting people support these measures, but that contradicts the idea that politics would play a role in reopening. Also, with my historical background I’m leery of people being too quick to sacrifice liberties because they are scared.
My thread and the MTA’s proposal have nothing to do with China or government coercion. The MTA’s requests are in complete alignment with your own stated school reopening goals. Support is by urging your state legislators and school committee members to agree to them.
As I said, I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. I agree that we are on the same page.
Here’s the scenario I see playing out:
The question is, given this scenario, what we do next.
I think the problem is that I don’t see a way to both open our schools (under the contemplated restrictions) and keep the case and death counts under control.
I think some sort of virtual schooling is the only approach that will work, and all the indications I see are that the educational outcomes will be discouraging — especially for minority and immigrant children.
At what point can we stop assuming that cases and deaths will rise just because people are near each other again?
When cases and deaths go down sufficiently to indicate community spread is no longer a problem?
Deaths are down to a handful a day in MA and last week we had a day with zero. I’m not sure there will ever be NO community spread either.
As has already been noted here multiple times, deaths lag cases by 18 days.
If you look at the population-adjusted daily case count (turn off the area adjustment) in Massachusetts in the COVID browser I support (http://covid.zeetix.com) and turn on the log scale, you’ll see that in fact several Massachusetts counties are red.
The per-capita daily case count is high (in comparison to the rest of the US) for 7 of 14 MA counties. The daily rates are significantly higher than they were at this time last month:
Name: 14-Jul-2020, 14-Jun-2020: delta %
(per capita/absolute)
Norfolk: (6.4/45),(0.9/6): +611%
Bristol: (6.4/36)(4.8/27): +33%
Essex: (5.7/45)(3.9/31): +45%
Suffolk: (5.5/44)(4.5/36): +22%
Hampden: (4.3/20)(4.5/21): -4.8%
Middlesex: (4.0/64)(2.4/39): +64%
Worcester: (3.7/31)(1.7/14): +121%
I’ve left off Nantucket because although it is the highest per-capita rate (at 8.8), that’s because it has so few people — that was for one person.
Notice that the daily case count is increased by a double-digit percentage in 6 out of these 7 counties. Norfolk is so extreme that it may be some sort of anomaly.
Closer to home, Middlesex County increased by 64% over a month ago.
That’s no “handful”, and the direction is bad news.
We’re worse now than at this time last month? That’s contrary to everything I had heard!
I encourage to check what you’ve heard.
The data is available from multiple sources.
Then why does this document show most trendlines headed in the positive direction?
Because that document is showing statewide data.
It is perfectly possible for statewide daily cases to go down while daily cases in, for example, Brockton or Lowell go up (at least for awhile).
Averages are used to reduce detail. They do that effectively burying individual changes in a larger picture.
I would think that the election of 2016 would have hammered home this point. Our nominee had a comfortable lead in NATIONAL polls (which effectively sample a nationwide average). That comforting national average obscured her weakness in the key battleground states.
All politics is local. Similarly, infections and deaths are local.
OK, but at least at first you did claim to be talking about the entire state. If you want to get hyperlocal in my case then Lowell General Hospital is currently hosting 3 COVID patients, none of whom are in the ICU.
@OK, but at least at first you did claim to be talking about the entire state:
I’m not sure where you mean. I’ve talked about “the eastern part of the state”.
Ever since this pandemic began, I’ve been challenging the premise that statewide mandates and directives make sense.
Similarly I think schools need to make flexible district to district decisions. Affluent districts with better resources can handle remote a lot better and are likelier to have parents who can work from home. Districts like mine will need additional funding beyond the SOA and emergency funds to truly close the tech/time gap and give students from working families a fair shot.
There’s also a bit of a catch-22 there since the affluent districts I suspect are also in better shape pandemic-wise anyway.
In general our caseload is quite low in Massachusetts right now, we also reopened later than the places where the huge surges have occurred. Our new caseload went down to less than one hundred cases in a day two weeks ago and our daily average this week is closed to 200 new cases. Deaths are down, but new cases are rising.
So we are talking trade offs. John Barry who literally wrote the book on the Spanish Flu is advocating for a stricter 4-6 week national lockdown to flatten the curve. We never flattened it and then we reopened, even here. Our curve is comparatively flatter compared to other states, but it is not flat compared to Asian or European caseloads. WA has also seen a recent uptick in cases despite being the first state to ‘recover’ (having been the first to really get ‘infected’).
Even the reopening hasn’t spared some of my favorite restaurants in Boston and Cambridge, the economic argument should be secondary to health. We should just provide aid to every affected business and payroll until it’s safe to reopen. The 600/week is about to expire and probably propped up the overall macroeconomic numbers. The new hires will likely go down again once shutdowns and restrictions are reimposed. The economy and the public health crisis are linked. No way of getting around that.
I still can’t get over my shock that we ever deliberately shut down the economy. I still say the US is too big for a one-size-fits-all mandate on something like a lockdown and continue to be OK with Swedish results. Besides there’s more to life than $600 magically appearing in a bank account without having to work for it. We need to LIVE and more than just physically!
Covid shut down the economy, not the government, since shutting down the economy to prevent community spread is the only way to do it. We also never really fully shut it down, too many exemptions for essential services. I think it’s part of the bigger problem with our country is we always think of the individual and never the collective.
You entire framing around this issue has consistently been how it affects you personally and never about the wider affect it has on society and the various low income workers putting themselves at risk for your comfort or the various health care (many also underpaid without unions) putting themselves at risk to save every life.
Sweden is worse off than we are, we’ve been over it with data Tom and I put forward that you have refused or are unable to refute.
NO! The virus on its own probably would have contracted the economy some, but many businesses were ORDERED closed, by, you know – the GOVERNMENT (overreaching IMO especially when done by executive fiat rather than by law). Why do you so often not seem to even recall my arguments correctly? I HAVE been speaking for people way beyond myself – kids who can’t go to school, those who are out of work, domestic abuse victims who have to live even more with their abusers, those for whom isolation is not mentally healthy, etc. I’m not denying that Sweden is technically a bit worse off than we are, but I am saying their situation is plenty tolerable. I also wish you would stop calling an abrogation of liberties an inconvenience.
The virus on its own would have taken out NYC, LA, Chicago. It is now taking out pretty much the entire southeast.
When I say “taken out”, I mean that hospitals would have been overflowing, so that routine ER visits would have been impossible. The death toll would have been MUCH higher in the absence of the steps that were taken.
When the only tool available is a hammer, then everything is a nail. Yes, the brute-force sledgehammer approach was much more devastating than needed.
The answer is to provide better tools — it most assuredly is NOT to do nothing.
Actually you ARE denying it, even by your language (“a bit worse off than we are”?). Sweden is a tiny homogeneous country with a single major city. Your stubborn insistence that things are “OK” in Sweden is both incorrect and irresponsible. The only sources who join you in this stance are outfits like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and Rand Paul.
I am NOT willing die because you or anyone else decides that it will be “mentally unhealthy” for them to wear masks, stay home as much as possible, and stay six feet away from others.
You are repeating talking points of MAGA-hat wearing loonies in Georgia. The idea of letting the virus run its course is not only cruel, irresponsible, and dreadfully callous, but it exemplifies white privilege.
When the theater is on fire, your freedom to assemble is NOT being abridged by being removed from the auditorium — forcibly if needed.
One more time — when you make irresponsible decisions, it is the people around you who you put at risk. You do not have the right to dump toxic chemicals down your toilet. You do not have the right to give whiskey shots to neighborhood children.
Your right to freedom of expression stops when your fist meets my nose.
This is exactly the hyped up rhetoric that forestalls reasoned discussions about what we may need to sacrifice. A theater fire won’t require a mandate because that is a clear and present danger from which people will flee out of instinct. Besides, one theater for one moment in time pales in comparison to a general order not to assemble. The problem with all these mandates is they are asking our species to act contrary to instinct. We are not designed to hibernate or live in 6-foot bubbles. As for swinging your fist within range of my nose, I’d much rather you stand that close to me and have COVID. I may or may not catch it and even if I did there’s an excellent chance it won’t be that bad, but if you punch me it WILL be at least painful and possibly damaging. I ran the numbers on Sweden the other day and I stand by my opinion that they are acceptable.
It isn’t possible to have a “reasoned discussion about sacrifice” while simultaneously asserting that “the numbers on Sweden” are acceptable.
Every scientist who looks at the COVID-19 numbers knows that it is a clear and present danger.
In this case, you are the one swinging your fist towards my nose. Your naive belief that “even if I did, there’s a good chance it won’t be that bad” echoes Mr. Trump’s preposterous — and dangerously incorrect — claim that “99% of [COVID-19] cases are totally harmless” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/08/trumps-claim-that-99-percent-covid-9-cases-are-totally-harmless/).
We desperately need to begin the difficult discussion about how many lives we are willing to lose in exchange for continuing the way of life we hold dear.
That difficult discussion absolutely requires reliable data and participants willing to pay attention to that reliable data.
It’s not 99%, more like 80% from what I have read that are asymptomatic or mild. It’s impossible for me to put an exact number of acceptable deaths. I just wish we could prevent as many as possible while leaving the rest of us alone.
It just doesn’t work that way.
What does “leaving the rest of us alone” mean? You’re a regular churchgoer, how many people in your congregation are you willing to let die in order to make sure that you’re left alone?
What does it mean to “prevent as many as possible”?
So far as I’m concerned, you’re going to HAVE to at least name specific criteria.
I invite you to look at the numbers about common US causes of death (https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-19-compared-to-other-common-us-causes-of-death-2020-5).
Between February and May of this year, COVID-19 killed 103,815. For comparison, transport accidents (including cars) killed 12,384. That’s a factor of EIGHT.
Flu and pneumonia killed about 21,106 — COVID-19 killed about FIVE times that much.
How many of your fellow congregants from your church have to die before you’ll agree that maybe society has an obligation to do more than leave you alone?
To use the church example (and I’m a Deacon so I’ve been involved in discussions about how my own church should respond) I say we can and must serve both those ready, willing, and able to return and those who are not. We must be prepared to minister to more than the usual number of shut-ins for the time being while offering both in-person and remote worship. Just within the past couple of decades we have prevented pandemics from getting out of control while most of us went about our business. I’ve been composing a diary of my own in my head about how I would respond which I hope to post soon.
@We can and must serve both those ready …:
You haven’t answered my question, though.
When you write of “serving those ready, willing and able to return”, how many in your congregation are you willing to let die?
We know, from the biology, that singing (like shouting) is particularly dangerous because the COVID-19 virus is spread in an aerosol.
How many deaths among those “ready, willing and able to return” is ok with you and your fellow deacons? How many new infections in your community (and subsequent deaths) is OK with you, since each newly-infected congregant takes their infection back home to their community?
Was it OK for Roman Catholic leadership to place sex abusers in community parishes knowing full well that they would prey on vulnerable young people in those communities? For DECADES?
Is it better or worse for any church, including yours, to similarly and knowingly infect its community with a deadly virus?
What in the world does any of this have to do with abusive priests? Ultimately individuals need to make a decision about whether they should return. I believe we should offer that option to those who are. I still think you are rating death as a higher probability than warranted. I refuse to play your “how many deaths” game. There is no good answer to that question.
The similarity is the steadfast refusal to acknowledge a responsibility to the surrounding community.
The Roman Catholic hierarchy had a responsibility to protect young people in the community where each parish was located. They explicitly failed to meet that responsibility.
Similarly, you continue to talk about individuals making their own decision, and you continue to refuse to acknowledge that those individuals subsequently expose everyone in the community to the consequences of their choice.
You flatly ignore or explicitly reject the assertion that you and your church have a responsibility to protect the surrounding community.
Some of those people who choose to attend your gathering (if you resume it as you propose) will be infected. Those infected people will continue to buy groceries, ride public transportation, and send their children to school (if that also happens as you propose).
The result is that the pandemic spreads — exponentially when unchecked.
You’ve agreed yourself that until now at least 2-4% of confirmed cases — many sources say the number is closer to 5% — will die from the disease.
With an exponential spread, it takes only a few weeks before a single new case turns into a thousand new cases. Of that thousand new cases, about 20% will have severe consequences — about 200 new hospitalizations. Of that 200, something between 2 and 5% will die. That’s 4-10 new deaths as a result of your proposed approach.
What part of that calculation chain do you assert is incorrect?
What part of that is a “game”? On what basis do you claim the right to impose your own deadly game on the rest of us (including me)?
The bishops knew who their abusive priests were and could easily remove them from circulation and report them to authorities. Nobody is suggesting they should have cancelled all Masses in their respective dioceses on the theory that every priest was a potential abuser. Your numbers sound about right, but I’ve never really questioned that. My difference all along has been a higher tolerance for risk in part because I don’t think it’s that high anyway. I feel like I’m being asked to assume I’ll win the lottery or be struck by lightening, neither of which is statistically very likely either.
This comment replaces a version that included supporting links. Because of those links, it is in the moderation queue.
The deacons of your church know the statistics of COVID infection rates and mortality. While I think RC parishes should stay closed, the state has chosen to allow them to reopen under very strict limitations.
Will you and your fellow deacons issue and follow similar policies? In contrast, I note that Episcopal parishes in MA remain closed following the guidance of the bishops until after July 2.
It appears to me that the Roman Catholic church is being just as arrogantly irresponsible about this as they were about the clergy sex scandal.
The likelihood of winning the MegaMillions jackpot is 1 in 302.6 million and Powerball 1 in 202.2 million. In 2019, 270 people were struck and killed by lightning.
So far this year, 137,864 people have been killed by COVID-19.
One or two people win the lottery in a year. At most a few hundred people are killed by lightning. More than one hundred thirty THOUSAND Americans have already died from COVID-19.
Your last sentence exemplifies your denial of plain truth.
My Boston parish remains closed and on virtual mass only, every parish that has reopened is 40% capacity, has a timed reservation system, and mandated 6 ft of social distance between individual parishioners and families. They mandate masks at all time and communion in the hand taken when the congregant goes back to their seats.
I’m still not comfortable enough to go and unfortunately my guess (based on seeing lines at local parishes) is older parishioners are the ones going back since they do not like virtual mass and were raised on an older understanding of communion, but it’s been done as responsibly as possible.
Many have opted for outdoor masses or masses in parking lots where congregants stay in their cars. The Archdiocese has handled Covid far better than the abuse scandal and far better than the mega churches down south which have become superspreaders.
The probability is still relatively small as I think we have agreed in terms of percentages. The UCC has so far advised not reopening through the summer and they are basing their recommendations on the fact our parishioners tend to skew older (but of course keep in mind in our polity each church makes its own decisions). My church is studying how to reopen and will probably be doing masks, distancing, and no singing. As a Deacon I was invited to join the task force that will take care of this, but I declined. While I obviously have very strong views I felt that I’m just so hopping mad about the whole situation my participation would not be constructive. I’ve joked that one family per pew and no singing sounds like back to Puritanism (appropriate since I also sometimes feel witch trials levels of hysteria about this virus) and if we’re still having these discussions in December and scale back Christmas that will be the Puritan trifecta! Part of me is happy I’ll be starting a job soon that will preclude my coming to worship because frankly I don’t want to participate in something that feels unwelcoming or half-baked.
The point is that you continue to use examples in your comments that are hundreds of times less likely than dying of COVID-19.
You said “I feel like I’m being asked to assume I’ll win the lottery”. The measured death rate from COVID-19 was about 43.1 deaths per 100K population for this year. The comparable rate for winning a lottery is 0.0006 winners per 100K population.
You and I are about SEVENTY THOUSAND TIMES more likely to die of COVID-19 than to win the lottery.
Whatever it is that is driving your emotional response is blinding you to reality.
I would not want you influencing my children on this issue.
OK, maybe not the best examples, but it still pales in comparison to the Black Death of medieval Europe that it seems like we’re comparing it to.
I invite you to examine the data at usafacts.org (https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/state/massachusetts/county/middlesex-county). This is the provider that curates data for the CDC.
In particular, I call your attention to the chart on the left. The 14-July data for Middlesex county is 24,600. The 13-July data was 24,536. That’s a daily increase of 64 cases.
There were 23,195 cases on 14-June and 23,156 for a 14-Jun increase of 39 cases.
The 14-July daily case count is 64.1% larger than the 14-June daily case count.
You are getting your information from unreliable sources.
It is true that this is volatile data. A fair argument can be made that it makes more sense to look at smoothed data, such as a 10 day rolling average.
By that metric, 14 July vs 14 Jun is 48.5 vs 71.0.
At the same time, that means that the 14 July daily case count of 64 is 15.5% above the 10-day rolling average, while the 14 Jun daily case count of 39 is 32 below its 10-day rolling average.
If you examine the shape of the two charts on the left of the above link, you can see that cases are still climbing. The slope of the top of both green charts is still upwards, especially since mid-June.
Daily cases in Middlesex County are increasing again. They are definitely above where they were on 17-Mar when Mr. Baker ordered them closed (https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-coronavirus-and-school-closures.html).
Oh, come on. Seriously? You might as well ask when we can stop assuming that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
We are talking about a virus that is spread through aerosols.
The literal answer to your question is “NEVER”. Even after a vaccine is available and most people are vaccinated, SOME people will still get the virus (the annual flu vaccine varies in effectiveness, and is never 100%). People who are closer together will ALWAYS be more likely to be infected by ANY contagious virus.
For people in the same age group deaths will rise about 18 days after daily cases rise.
Increased proximity increases infection risk. Increased infection risk results in increased infection rates.
Period.
The goal isn’t 0 cases, it’s an end to community spread. So I think we can achieve that if we bunker down and put way more resources into finding a vaccine.
You kind of made my point then. At some point we have to accept what you are saying is true and move on anyway.
Yes, that is entirely right. I think that’s exactly what will happen, unfortunately. Our principal and my wife are already predicting an October shutdown due to the mix with the flu.
I do think that first six weeks the MTA is talking about should really be devoted to checking in with kids and families, especially from vulnerable populations, securing them the technology, and making the expectations around remote learning clear. Really communicate to parents that their kids shouldn’t be working during school hours, even under remote. The Mayor in Revere is already providing aid for families facing housing and food insecurity, so I hope it can happen.
Realistically there’s no way to do regular classroom instruction even following these guidelines. So much of teaching is tactile and comes down to group work and sharing materials with each other. All stuff that can’t happen now.
Even just having Comcast and Verizon combine to make Revere, Chelsea, and Boston temporary Free WiFi Hotspots would be a huge help. Gov. Raimondo went to industry in her state to make stuff that happen, Gov. Baker should do the same.
So I’m hoping we can use those six weeks to catch kids up rather than pretend it’s a normal start.
I think we may have to face some very tough questions, including:
I think we MUST do whatever is necessary to provide universal health care to each and every child and family.
School is compulsory. It is immoral to compel children to attend a school that WILL make some of them sick and WILL cause some of them or their families to die without also providing them the best health care America can provide at no out-of-pocket cost to them.
Even in the worst years of the compulsory draft, America never compelled its children to go to war and then forced them to pay for the medical care or funeral expenses resulting from that service.
This pandemic has definitely held up a mirror to the overall health situation and it isn’t pretty. One of the main reasons other countries did better is that they were healthier to start with and had better access to care. Add to that the demographic disparities and we have ourselves the perfect storm.
I think those are the right questions. In my view, economic questions must be considered in the same way.
Anything you do, from MAGA Open ‘Er Up! on one hand, to forced curfews and lockdowns on the other, is a tradeoff. The management of tradeoffs is as good a definition of politics as I can think of. The tradeoffs are all negative. Reality bites.
I also think that the detrimental effect on education if schools operate next year as they did last spring would be much, much worse than is generally acknowledged. Primary education would essentially cease for any child whose parent lacks any of (i) the time; (ii) the educational background; (iii) the temperament; and (iv) the skills to effectively educate their child. Post-primary was a little better, but mostly for private-school kids where everyone had access to the necessary technology. In public schools, because there might be some without that access, and because some special-needs kids absolutely require in-person instruction, new material stopped in March, and everything was voluntary.
Even if a vaccine is found, and works really well like the MMR vaccine, it will be many months before enough can be manufactured (maybe we stop vaccinating for every other thing to speed this up, but again– consequences there). And that isn’t even to mention the rather ominous (and preliminary, thank goodness) rumblings in Europe that people who have recovered from infection might be reinfected anew, which would render a vaccine useless.
We are in what is likely to be status quo for several years. Government, and thus politicians, are going to have to act accordingly, even if Trump tweets something outrageous.
We urgently need the disease-and-infection analog to weather reports and weather data.
The media seem to be mostly missing what is to me among the most disturbing moves of the government yet — the decision to seize control of real-time data away from the CDC so that the White House can suppress it (like they are attempting to suppress so much else).
You are suggesting all the things we should have done before we shut down the first time. This exactly my big frustration with that. We did not take the time to prepare the way you describe above.
I share that frustration, but also do not understand why you continue to pretend we did do it right. Obviously with the caseloads going up, your call to fully reopen back in May was grossly premature and your calls to emulate Sweden are premature today. They took even fewer precautions than the US.
I have NEVER said we did it right. My complaint all along has been the opposite.
But we cannot go back in time or pretend we did it right and move on, we have to move forward with the information we have now. That information indicates that mask mandates, social distancing, and putting the breaks on reopening is the smartest course of action.
In the South maybe, but it seems so far so good with reopening in New England. Also the more I think of it the more I wonder if I would have been more accepting of masks if we had tried that first while otherwise trying to keep things normal. Masks per se aren’t that big a deal in most cases I suppose, but now it just feels like an added sign of hysteria.
For anyone who can make it through this thread, the rest of the lockdown should be a piece of cake.
LOL!