A few thoughts on school reopening and the dilemma that the media finds itself in, but especially the New York Times.
The Times is both a local paper and a national one--not just a national paper, but the best national paper. It always has been both local and national, mostly happily, but with school reopening this has turned into a real problem, because the stories are so different.
The national story is that the psychos in the Trump Administration are trying to force schools open because they need a win. They go out + say that children are immune from Covid or that they stop its spread. Some Republican governors are playing along. This is deadly dangerous.
The local story, in New York, is that we now have a very low case count--"South Korea level," in the words of Harvard Public Health prof @ashishkjha. By just about every public health standard, we should be able to reopen schools.
The way the NYT works, national stories make the front page (in print and online) and local stories do not. The NYT's Eliza Shaprio and Dana Goldstein have been doing great education reporting, but their stories only make the front when they're national stories.
There is also a confounding factor, which is that the NYT science writer on coronavirus beat has taken a strong position--she believes studies showing small children have lower transmission rates are unreliable. She may be right! The consensus is weak. But she is outside of it.
The result is that you will occasionally see NYT writers mention the existing consensus in passing, and then the science writer will publish a very scary front page article about a new study on viral loads that seems to show kids are super-spreaders.
nytimes.com/2020/07/30/hea…
nytimes.com/2020/07/30/hea…
Also this: nytimes.com/2020/05/05/hea…
And of course normal people--which includes teachers--do not spend all their time looking at the latest studies. They just read the Times. If all you did was read the Times, you'd be confused, but overall think that children spread the virus a lot and opening schools is dangerous
Do children spread the virus >0? Yes. Is there risk to opening NYC schools? Yes. Is there risk to not opening schools? Yes! What does science say? Science says that with low +%, elementary schools should open w/ masks, social distancing, + windows open. nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
