Last spring and summer, we read many articles about Europe’s success in keeping its schools open, based on the belief that young children are less likely to get sick with COVID-19 and less likely to spread it.
Ruth Bender reports in The Wall Street Journal that European nations are closing their schools because new studies show that children do get the disease and are likely to spread it.
As U.S. authorities debate whether to keep schools open, a consensus is emerging in Europe that children are a considerable factor in the spread of Covid-19—and more countries are shutting schools for the first time since the spring.
Closures have been announced recently in the U.K., Germany, Ireland, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands on concerns about a more infectious variant of the virus first detected in the U.K. and rising case counts despite lockdowns.
While the debate continues, recent studies and outbreaks show that schoolchildren, even younger ones, can play a significant role in spreading infections.
“In the second wave we acquired much more evidence that schoolchildren are almost equally, if not more infected by SARS-CoV-2 than others,“ said Antoine Flahault, director of the University of Geneva’s Institute of Global Health.
Schools have represented one of the most contentious issues of the pandemic given the possible long-term impact of closures on children and the economic fallout from parents being forced to stay home.
The recent shutdown of schools was especially dramatic in England. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson initially planned to keep elementary schools there open after the Christmas break, but changed course amid soaring infections. After one day back, schools were closed until further notice. Plans to gradually reopen high schools through January were also scrapped.
“The problem is not that schools are unsafe for children,” Mr. Johnson said last week. “The problem is schools may nonetheless act as vectors for transmission, causing the virus to spread between households.”
As recently as November, European policy makers were adamant that schools would generally remain open through the current wave of infections, with short-term closures limited to single schools or classes whenever new cases were identified.
Many school districts have remained open or tried to open during the battle over whether opening was safe.
Yet scientists in Europe say that the latest research suggests otherwise. Mr. Flahault said an antibody survey conducted by researchers in Geneva in May and December, using thousands of random samples, found that children of age 6 to 18 were getting infected as often as young adults. The study has yet to be peer reviewed….
In Austria, a nationwide survey by universities and medical institutes found that children under 10 showed a similar rate of infection to those between 11 and 14, and that the children in general were getting infected as often as teachers, said Michael Wagner, a microbiologist at the University of Vienna who oversees the study.
Not surprising. Utah’s schools have been open this whole time, save the Salt Lake City School District. In the district in which I teach, north of Salt Lake, we started on hybrid, but the school board, under threats of lawsuits from parents, quickly reopened full time, full student, and all of the other districts started full time, full student.
The results have been a disaster. Schools opening and closing constantly. All 9 high schools in the district in which I teach have closed at some point. Some have closed multiple times because of too many cases, and one has closed FOUR TIMES. Several junior highs and even a couple of elementaries have closed, too. Hospitalization rates for people 15 and younger have raised 5,000% (that’s not a type-o), and teachers are 42% more likely to get Covid than other adults.
Further, Utah’s positivity rate has been between 20-30%, meaning not nearly enough are being tested.
But the state legislature, in its infinite wisdom, is threatening the one district that is fully remote, Salt Lake City, into reopening by the end of this month, and the state’s mask mandate expires on Thursday, and kids are no longer quarantined if they are near someone who gets sick. It’s a disaster.
“Schools opening and closing constantly. All 9 high schools in the district in which I teach have closed at some point. Some have closed multiple times because of too many cases, and one has closed FOUR TIMES.”
Same here and our schools are “open”.
Also- the quarantined kids and staff. It’s really disruptive. We have kids who have been quarantined five times.
“Open schools!” was presented as an on/off switch and it just isn’t true.
Well Utah “solved” that problem by not quarantining at all. Kids who sit 6 inches from someone who got Covid, even if masks were not worn or were worn improperly, don’t quarantine anymore.
Another piece on this topic: https://www.wired.com/story/everything-we-know-now-about-schools-kids-and-covid-19/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Is this good news?
“Biden announces San Diego schools superintendent Cindy Marten will be the deputy secretary of education”
I’m not familiar with her name so she probably isn’t part of the ed reform echo chamber we had for the Bush/Obama/Trump years, right?
Is Biden a real break from the echo chamber? Dare we hope? Are we going to start seeing and hearing from new people who are outside the TFA/Gates/Walton/charter lobby group?
It was obvious from the beginning that there was not information sufficient to conclude that children didn’t get the disease and transmit it at dangerous, alarming rates, and that confining people to small rooms in the middle of a deadly, airborne pandemic in which the survivors suffered serious long-term consequences was hunky-dory. Yes, remote learning stinks. But having enormous numbers of people die unnecessarily stinks a lot more. I won’t repeat the arguments that I have been making here about this for many, many months now.
Trump completely politicized the CDC, and it capitulated, backing the reopenings, falsifying the science and ignoring the OBVIOUS problems with the supposed evidence that kids didn’t get the disease and didn’t transmit it at alarming rates. The result? A lot of people got the confirmation that they needed for their uncritical wishful thinking.
And it’s not just the CDC. I have lost all respect for the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has pushed for schools to open and keeps insisting that, “children don’t get COVID.” It’s the AAP, more than the CDC, that policy makers in Utah have quoted when they have “justified” opening all schools.
Remember that Utah has the largest class sizes in the nation and the lowest per pupil expenditure, so classes are routinely 35 or more and we teachers have to buy much of our own PPE and cleaning supplies.
Yup. Horrific.
There are the AAP and APA and they frequently contradict each other on many issues. Yes, both have true medical Dr’s, but one of them has the more “Rand Paul, Andy Harris” thinking type of physicians…. kind of like the crazy ones spouting the Covid nonsense on the steps of the Capitol (in their white lab coats) back in the spring.
damned actual science keeps acting just like actual science
It’s been known to do that!
The whole idea of schools being safe to open never made sense in the first place. All humans are disease vectors, whether symptoms appear or not. What made sense was Wall Street greedily wanting schools to open and not caring who got hurt. It’s what happens when one sees people as mere data.
Sick teachers aren’t very effective teachers and dead teachers can’t do the job from the grave. Online learning really sucks, but it is much more traumatic for ALL involved when schools open and then have to close due to exposure, sickness or death. But, we live under the rule of the almighty free market and Wall Street….so what do we expect?
And we have lived under the appalling disregard of other humans lives of Donald Trump, who was concerned only with there being nothing to prevent him from arguing that he should be reelected because of “his” great economy (the recovering economy that the inherited from Obama). This was, of course, why Trump first called the virus a hoax, then downplayed it, and refused to do anything substantive, such as imposing a federal mask mandate, using the Defense Production Act to speed up production of masks and other PPE, setting up a national tracking database, closing schools, etc. Instead, this callous moron held massive rallies and maskless superspreader events at his Whiter House, called himself a “wartime president,” swaggered around, promoted injecting disinfectants and taking hydroxychloroquine, and then took credit for the work of others–the speedy development of vaccines by various companies. Shameful and disgusting.
This alone was grounds for impeaching him–for utter incompetence–inability and unwillingness to discharge his duty as president to protect the people.
Is this the worst president in history? Well, a strong argument can be made for that.
In Florida where the governor insists that the economy stay open, most older people are not going out except for essential items despite DeSantis’ denial of a problem. Some of the younger people refuse to change their behavior so we still have a lot of spread. We are not going to have a healthy economy until we get the virus under control.
In today’s news, the report shows that more children are being hospitalized, particularly if they have a history of asthma. Even children that may be asymptomatic can take it home to older members of the family.https://weartv.com/news/local/new-study-shows-child-covid-19-hospitalization-increasing-in-florida
[…] at best. So much so that Europe, long pointed to as an example of what’s possible, is now rethinking earlier assumptions. Per the Wall Street Journal, closures have been announced recently in the U.K., Germany, Ireland, […]
I’ve been working as a sub during a colleague’s maternity leave. Remote work. I developed a digital scrapbook and have been seeing success in terms of focus (and fun).
Such a tough situation. There really is no substitute for the physical classroom. Socially and academically. But we need to be realistic. And patient. The concept of a “lost generation” is self defeating, imo. We’d be well served by a reassessment of the meaning and worth of “education”.