A friend asked me about school this fall--someone told her it would be perfectly safe because hospitals were safe. We are cautious because we have a high-risk family member. These were my thoughts. Glad to hear where I've missed something.
we're doing online only.
the evidence suggests that universal masking makes hospitals mostly pretty safe. The rates of mask compliance are >90% at hospitals, people don't hang out in crowded environments, and very few people engage in communal eating.
The spread within hospitals, which is rare) happens when people take their masks off and/or eat together.
It would take high masking compliance, actual physical distancing of kids, and no communal eating to make schools simulate a hospital environment.
My guess is that the probability of all that happening in a school is about 10%. I anticipate that most schools that try to run in-person classes will have to give up within a couple months when they get hit with an outbreak.
And I should have mentioned that the primary risk of disease spread in schools is of infecting staff and spreading disease back into multi-generational homes. Most kids will do fine. But schools are not free of adults and connections back to very vulnerable adults.
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