The First Day of School, Believing the Science, and Anecdotal Evidence

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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34 Responses

  1. This is not a pressing issue for me, since my kids are past school age, but I recall the number of bugs they brought home when they were in school, and I’m glad not to repeat that with a deadly one.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    Back at the very beginning of the lockdown, back when the consensus started shifting to the point where people agreed that there were mixed messages as to whether masks worked or not, there were a handful of policies issued.

    The grocery store that had two entrances? One at the produce end of the store, one at the deli end of the store? Well, the deli entrance was locked off. Only one entrance!

    I don’t know why they had that policy. Contact tracing, maybe? I don’t know. Anyway, as we learned more and more and learned more and more about ventilation, those doors remained locked. When you go to my supermarket, there is only one door that you can enter in and out of.

    You know the plastic wrap that they use on pallets to keep all of the boxes from falling off during transit? Well, they wrapped up the little picnic tables outside that the grocery store workers used to take breaks. No congregating! Was the rule, I guess. So they blocked off all of the picnic tables instead of telling the workers to distance. So the workers all sat on the bike rack when they went out smoking. The bike rack was smaller than the picnic tables were.

    The local Sonic, when they heard about the lockdown, flipped over half of their picnic tables on top of the other half and locked them up with bike chains. You couldn’t eat outside at the Sonic anymore. Next door were sit-down restaurants. You could go into the sit-down restaurants and get a booth, socially distanced, from other people who were eating. You couldn’t eat outside at the Sonic. You could eat inside, socially distanced.

    What the hell. How are these still policies. What the hell.Report

  3. Philip H says:

    Schools are not grocery stores, of course, and housing the 2K students of a high school eight hours a day plus transportation to and from is a different beast than running commerce at a grocery store, or Starbucks, or yoga studio across the road. But folks don’t just follow science and experts, and when their anecdotal evidence raises questions of how the same people can do the one and not the other, frustration builds. How the same folks whom now are educators and they see in the grocery store, or McDonald’s, or Starbucks everyday are saying there is no way they can safely be across the road in any way, shape, or form.

    Frankly if the response is “why can’t they . . . “ then no, folks don’t actually understand the virus, or ventilation or any of the other things we’ve learned in the last year. Especially about how educators are in statistically more susceptible groups and how kids can be vectors of transmission.

    Those feelings have their own blast radius as well, and parents and students who have a lost year of education are adapting and overcoming. It would be wise for those who use “the science” not only as a tool but a sword and shield to realize that and deal with things as they are, instead of just waving numbers and stats at real folks with real concerns about their real lives.

    As I’ve noted elsewhere, it’s at a minimum an unfair demand of science. Even Dr. Fauci – who IMHO is very good at science communication – tries to be honest about uncertainty and change (which is the only constant in science). But when he does he’s wishy washy and no one should listen to him. When he’s definitive and then changes his narrative because information changes he’s called an unknowing quack.

    And science isn’t the reason those folks have unaddressed concerns – it’s a political process that, under the President and Party where this reared its demented head, was used to in-group and out-group not to call for national unified action. If the president at the time had actually given a damn about liberals or people of color and instructed his government accordingly, not only would very few of the 534,000 dead Americans be dead, but he would have coasted to an easy and possibly popular reelection. That’s not the fault of the scientists.

    This district is still only operating for a “hybrid” two days a week, but it’s still better than no in-person at all we’ve been doing for over a year.

    Who says this is better? Because we can go back to the factory approach of testing? Because we can keep forcing our economy to hum along being driven by ever growing desires to consume? Because some of us couldn’t stand having our kids at home while others of us really want them to be?

    Now comes the hard work for students, teachers, and parents alike of adjusting once again to yet another “new normal.” At least, until we change again. It will be interesting to watch the reactions to the schools finally being re-opened in this community. As I told my own children today, try not to worry about it too much, after the first day, and the first night of online reaction, it will probably change some again before settling into whatever this new normal will be between now and summer.

    If the last year has taught us anything – and I’m betting we will refuse to retain what we’ve learned – it’s that we are and adaptable species and society. That adaptation came at the price of 534,000 lives and a nearly cratered economy. Going back to the “Old” normal is a hugely tragic mistake.Report

    • If you wish to write a point-by-point rebuttal you are welcome to write it up and submit itReport

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Philip H says:

      Because some of us couldn’t stand having our kids at home while others of us really want them to be?

      how about some of us love having our kids at home, but mom & dad both have to work, and can’t pay much attention to a 9 year old, who would much rather be at school playing with his friends, than stuck at home on a laptop. Also, he does a whole lot better with his school work when he’s in class, than at home online.

      This whole constant thrum of black & white choices and motivations is so fecking tired.Report

      • Philip H in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        Trying to ram everything back to the way it was is a black and white choice. And yes, its fecking tiring that its what everyone wants. and yet here we are.

        And for the record – I have three at home until tomorrow. 11,10 and 6. They have all learned a lot, they have all been openly welcomed into my Google hang outs for work, and they have done and amazing job of growing and learning the last year. Perhaps we are the real statistical anomaly around here, but I can’t imagine there have been no good moments for you. Moments you would not otherwise have. Moments that point to there being different and perhaps better ways.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Philip H says:

          Have there been good moments? Sure. But it’s been a constant struggle. He started back at hybrid school a few weeks ago and his mood has been leaps and bounds better ever since. He is very much a social animal and he needs to interact with other kids. Maybe if we had more than one kid, it’d be different, but one is all we can have, so one is all we got.

          PS By no means do I think we should go back to ‘normal’, but neither do I think it should be all home school, all the time.Report

          • fillyjonk in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            on the other side of the desk: as a professor, I HATED teaching from home. HATED it. I didn’t have the right tools to do it right, my living room (which became my office) felt cramped and miserable, I couldn’t stand and pace, I only had a “virtual” whiteboard.

            And in spring 2020, when we were told to be all asynchronous-virtual, I had almost NO feedback from students other than “hey can you reopen the quiz I forgot to take it” or “I don’t have enough bandwidth to watch your lectures can you make them a lot shorter” and I just wanted to give up.

            I suppose some things need to change? but forcing me to wfh forever with no real chance to just casually talk with students (I did over-Zoom office hours; I had two people show up in the past two semesters) I would not last much longer.

            I could also feel my skills and cognition atrophying. I am glad to be back in the classroom even if I am also carrying the added work of recording and posting the lectures as Zoom lectures (the students this fall were sternly warned to be sure they had access to enough bandwidth). Even at that there are things that are very suboptimal with how we are doing it now and I am praying this fall we can open up more, especially since the faculty should be fully vaccinated (and I presume many if not all the students will be)

            I thought I was a loner but holy Hell this pandemic taught me how I depend on the many small daily interactions not to totally lose my stuff. I came VERY close to the edge several times between March and August 2020.Report

            • Philip H in reply to fillyjonk says:

              I feel for you. I am also more the mildly upset at employers who put people in these positions without support – especially universities who have people to help with both the technical and the emotional pieces.

              I’m not advocating for 100% WFH or school from home.

              I am advocating for taking the long hard look at our systems that we got to see with COVID and doing things differently – which in many cases will be better.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Philip H says:

      ” Especially about how educators are in statistically more susceptible groups and how kids can be vectors of transmission.”

      Except all the data points towards minimal school transmission with basic protocols in place.Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Kazzy says:

        We’re in this weird spot where the children are effectively immune and could benefit from school a lot… but everyone around the children isn’t immune and their risk would go up a lot if we have schools.

        Children generate emotions pretty easily, thus how every local tax increase is “for the children”. The teacher’s union is large, politically powerful and needs to virtue signal that it’s “doing something to support” it’s members.

        I’m not sure if “science” tells us anything useful about this situation because one community’s political priorities (and power of the groups involved, and emotions) will be different from anothers as will their ability to deal with the virus.

        Thankfully the political powers that be have mostly let local communities decide what to do.Report

        • Kazzy in reply to Dark Matter says:

          Are we in that spot? Do we have evidence of lots of cases emanating from asymptomatic spread among children in schools who then expose adults outside of school? Because I haven’t seen squat to support that theory.

          And local “political priorities” dictating policy sure as heck ain’t “following the science.”Report

          • Dark Matter in reply to Kazzy says:

            Do we have evidence of lots of cases emanating from asymptomatic spread among children in schools who then expose adults outside of school?

            While fewer children have been sick with COVID-19 compared to adults, children can be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19, can get sick from COVID-19, and can spread the virus that causes COVID-19 to others. Children, like adults, who have COVID-19 but have no symptoms (“asymptomatic”) can still spread the virus to others.

            https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/children/symptoms.html

            And that’s ignoring that a lot of the pushback has happened from adults inside the school.

            That’s where the science is at, if you want to argue they’re less prone to spread it than adults in the same situation I’d agree, but we’d ban adults from doing this. I.e. 25 random people in one close group for an hour followed by them all changing groups and repeating 6 times a day.

            This isn’t a science decision, this is a political priorities and risk decision.Report

  4. Kazzy says:

    What “can” happen isn’t “science”. Not in a meaningful way for this discussion.

    Might I remind you that I’m both a teacher and a parent. So I’m seeing this from both inside the building and outside.

    Yes, there is the potential that a sick kid is in the school building, makes other kids sick, and those kids go home and make their parents sick. Absolutely. No one has EVER doubted that.

    But how LIKELY is that? And how likely is that when basic mitigation strategies are put in place (e.g., mask wearing, social distancing, increased ventilation and airflow… strategies that most schools can put in place if they have students in-person on at least a limited basis)? The data shows it is very, very, VERY unlikely. All of the recent research shows that schools being open has had no impact on community-wide spread.

    So, again, if we want to “follow the science” it would show that schools can safely re-open with smart mitigation plans in place. And we know this because many, many, many, many schools have. Hell, even schools with not-so-smart mitigation plans in place have been open without causing mass outbreaks. Which DOES NOT MEAN we shouldn’t aim to be smart. But it does mean that the risk children pose as “vectors of transmission” is very small and even smaller with appropriate mitigation strategies.

    Meanwhile, the risk TO children of extended school closures or limited in-person time is immense.

    If you want links, I’ll get you links. They’re plentiful.

    “I.e. 25 random people in one close group for an hour followed by them all changing groups and repeating 6 times a day.”

    The scenario you’re describing seems to be high schools opening as usual. Who here is advocating for that? For starters, high school-aged students would be above the age that most scientists and doctors would use to divide “kids” from “adults” as far as this disease is concerned (age 12 is about when children begin “behaving” like adults in this regard). So, yes, additional steps would need to be taken with that cohort and perhaps a different school model is needed until things improve. If our disagreement here is definitional, so be it.

    I will say it once more, as clearly as I can: The data and science right now shows that children under 12 can attend school with minimal risk of spread with basic mitigation strategies in place (e.g., mask wearing, distancing of 3-6 feet, and increased ventilation/airflow as afforded by opening windows).Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Kazzy says:

      Misthreaded… argh!

      “This isn’t a science decision, this is a political priorities and risk decision.”
      To this point, we are in 100% agreement.

      The problem is… teachers have a powerful advocacy group (e.g., the union), adults have multiple powerful advocacy groups (e.g., chambers of commerce, political parties), while children and students have squat. Parents in many areas are attempting to organize but they’re basically starting from scratch and they do not have a guaranteed seat at the table.

      So, yes, these decision are political and they are based on risk assessment but that doesn’t mean they are doing *good* risk analysis or making the right political decisions. They’re making expedient ones.

      The CDC has recommended opening schools. The APA — since last summer — has been advocating opening schools. The best thing for children is schools opening. And recent data shows minimal impact on the broader community. And yet… schools remain closed. Who is benefitting from schools remaining closed? And to what end? Who is being harmed from schools remaining closed? And to what end? It seems pretty evident that the answers to the first set of questions is “A small set of educators with real health risks who may be having their lives saved” and the answers to the latter set is “Millions of school children are being given a substandard education, families are being stretched to the maximum, many school employees are without work (i.e., bus drivers, janitorial staff).” But one of those groups has a powerful lobbying arm and the others do not. So, here we are.Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Kazzy says:

        I think that’s a good summation.

        This situation showcases some of the issues with having powerful unions, i.e. that power comes at the expense of other groups. Be interesting to map out open vs closed schools, I’d bet its a map of union vs parent power.

        Local schools are open but mixed. Some kids are all virtual, some all in person, their choice (and the in person kids can stay home and be virtual but not vise versa).Report

        • Kazzy in reply to Dark Matter says:

          Our district has opened less than most surrounding ones. We have a district-based union. Coincidence? Probably not.

          Privates have been “more open.” That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re doing it better. But they have been more open. And there are but a handful of private schools with unions.

          I will just again say that I could drop my kid off at Chuck E. Cheese and he could spend the entire day there, including taking his mask off to eat, but he can only spend 4 hours at school every-other-day and he cannot have lunch because it is too dangerous for him to take his mask off to eat.

          I don’t see any way of describing that other than as a complete FUBAR of priorities.Report

    • PHilip H in reply to Kazzy says:

      The scenario you’re describing seems to be high schools opening as usual. Who here is advocating for that? For starters, high school-aged students would be above the age that most scientists and doctors would use to divide “kids” from “adults” as far as this disease is concerned (age 12 is about when children begin “behaving” like adults in this regard). So, yes, additional steps would need to be taken with that cohort and perhaps a different school model is needed until things improve. If our disagreement here is definitional, so be it.

      ALL Mississippi public schools reopened nearly fully last fall. ALL. The high schools have suffered a two weeks on two weeks off cadence since then. Which has been really disruptive but still continues. Our state opened vaccines to teachers two weeks ago and everyone today, so there is hope.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to PHilip H says:

        I would not support that re-opening plan or consider it one that was anything approaching “smart” or “safe”.

        Even that said… is there evidence that the school re-opening plan has contributed to community spread?

        Here in NJ, the rules were clear: 2 or more cases within the same school of unknown origin automatically trigger a 2 week closure. The thinking was that multiple cases you can’t trace means the school COULD be the source and to mitigate further potential spread, shut it down. While I haven’t seen it officially announced, it seems like that has been relaxed a bit given that that scenario has arisen a few times recently without triggering a closure (though pretty much every school in our district endured at least one closure, some multiple; my sons were fortunate to have just one). I offer this to say that it is possible that the closures weren’t because of documented school-spread but because of the potential of it. But I really have no idea how Mississippi is doing it.Report

        • Philip H in reply to Kazzy says:

          The first time our town’s high school shut down for two weeks they were over 50 cases in three days. The town next to use shut down for two weeks at over 20 in a single day. And two weeks later they were back, and two weeks after that they were shut down again. This has been going on all year. Mississippi refuses to have state mandates on this because while the governor is happy to throw the doors open, he doesn’t actually control the districts. So they all set their own lower limits. Folks down here take it as a point of pride – owning the libs if you will – that we reopened sooner and stayed open in the face of adversity.Report

          • Oscar Gordon in reply to Philip H says:

            The fact that your state is being stupid about it doesn’t mean other states can’t be smart about it.Report

          • Kazzy in reply to Philip H says:

            Did they do contract tracing to determine the source of those cases?Report

            • Philip H in reply to Kazzy says:

              Not that has been publicly reported. The state has not hired massive numbers of contact tracers.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Philip H says:

                On the flips side, our district has had 50% capacity (and, really, less than that due to families opting into full-remote) for 4 hours a day. No lunch. Snack outdoors or very briefly indoors. Otherwise, full masking and consistent distancing of 6 feet. Students go every other day, so 8-12 hours/week.

                In a district of approximately 6K students, I believe we’ve had fewer than 100 total cases among students, faculty, staff, and admin since September. And based on contact tracing (which I’ll concede is not 100% reliable) there have been no documented cases of in-school spread.

                Now, my district is currently under heavy fire for being TOO conservative. But compare that to Mississippi. Are we doing it right? We probably ARE being too conservative given the risks and rewards. Is Mississippi doing it right? Almost certainly not given what you describe. But there is a whole lot of real estate between what you describe and what I describe.Report