Thread by @SarahDRasmussen

Schools and personally-acceptable risk (THREAD)

This thread is an attempt to address questions certain UK parents and school staff have raised to me.

I’m not an epidemiologist, but as a mathematician I’m weighing in on certain general notions of probability and risk. 1/12

No one knows how bad this 2nd wave will get. It depends on what hard and soft measures are implemented and when, and how they are supported.

But I think it is ethically and scientifically unjustified to trivialise the concerns of parents and school staff about school risk. 2/12

Yes, there’s now good evidence that the covid mortality rate for healthy under-19-year-olds is likely no worse than flu *for*that*demographic.*

But that is only one type of risk. 3/12

There’s the risk of transmission to higher-mortality-rate school staff members.

There’s the risk of transmission to higher-mortality-rate family or household members of staff or students. 4/12

There’s the risk that a staff or household member (or concevably even an adolescent) will suffer long-term lung or heart damage, or acquire “long-covid.”

Many such non-fatal risks are still poorly understood and poorly quantified. 5/12

There’s the risk of feeling responsible for participating in an otherwise avoidable transmission chain that ends up leading to increased covid spread,

adding not only to direct covid deaths, but also to burdens on the health system that harm non covid patients. 6/12

In the absence of any remote-school infrastructure or support, there’s the risk of repeated disruption to education when outbreaks send “bubbles” home to self-isolate.

There’s similar risk of education disruption during self-isolation due to symptomatic household members. 7/12

** No one can dictate to a person how much a particular risk ought to mean to them. **

Researchers can try to estimate the *probabilities* of events,

but even with known probability, the actual negative *cost* you associate to a particular risk is a very personal choice. 8/12

Of course, on the other hand, there are *also* risks to job-insecure or otherwise-vulnerable families forced into remote schooling.

But this doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing thing. 9/12

The US school district where I’m currently on sabbatical is creating remote schools out of students and school staff who don’t want to attend school in person.

In fact, many US school districts are doing this, and I don’t see why this can’t happen in the UK. 10/12

There’s enough demand for remote school here that a substantial fraction of the school population is participating in these new remote schools,

which means that the remaining school population has much more space to spread out and socially distance in physical schools. 11/12

School staff, students, and parents deserve to have government and local authorities to treat these concerns with respect.

And all sides could potentially benefit from flexible solutions that attempt to serve both remote-school and in-person school needs and preferences. 12/12

⬇️ Cued to an excellent question by a clinically vulnerable parent:

“I’d like the choice to temporarily educate my child at home. ..I can’t shield from my child if she goes to school, because I think that would affect the mental health of both of us.”