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Schools have to reopen by fall


RoseGoesToYale

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RoseGoesToYale

No matter the risks, and society's got all of summer vacation to figure out how to do it as safely as possible. In fact, I'd go as far as to say they shouldn't have closed to begin with, but lack of proper protocol was a driving issue. This has been an interesting social experiment, but a failed one. The reality is that schools are an essential service, and certainly more damned essential than the gyms and hair salons some states are opening up.

 

If you do a quick search of "is online education effective?", you'll get even split yeses and nos. But it depends on what you're looking for, education outcomes (i.e. did students acquire the material) or learning outcomes (did students actively engage with the material on a deep level). It's easy enough to stick some students in a classroom and some online and have them study the same subject over different mediums and see who does better on a standardized test. The results will likely be similar, because that's just simple memorization and regurgitation. There are so many impediments to learning in an online setting. If the student and teacher are at home, both are subject to the distractions of the home environment. Pets, unruly children, noisy neighbors, not to mention pleasurable distractions like zoning out on the couch, checking facebook or twitter in the middle of a Zoom lecture, computer games, etc. The benefit of a physical classroom is that it's a contained environment focused on learning, with much fewer distractions. Then there's the social aspect of learning. Getting to know one's peers and teacher in person can help foster interest in the subject, especially if everyone there wants to be there. There's much more chance for spontaneous and open discussion, which lends to increasing critical thinking skills and deeper knowledge outside of what's just in the textbook. In Zoom School, everything's canned, because you've got bandwidth and the ability to switch camera frames to worry about, you might not even be able to see the person who's speaking, artifacts and lag, and the sensory overload of looking at too many faces at once.

 

Effective learning in an online setting requires the ability to self-teach, and not every student has the motivation or skills necessary to do that. If the majority of people could, why have teachers or schools to begin with? Students could just teach themselves everything. Certain fields also require hands-on experience with equipment that a school could afford, but individual students cannot. Simulations may not lead to practical application of skills and can't be programmed for all the variables of real life.

 

So yes, we could feasibly continue to educate students outside of school, but they wouldn't learn, or would barely learn, and that's dangerous, because what happens when in-person classes finally do resume and students have forgotten or failed to grasp material necessary to advance? What happens when graduates get to the job world and lack learned skills? In the US especially, we're only concerned with the quantitative education and not the qualitative learning, which is how we got so tangled up in the Standardized Testing Era (don'tcha just love it when profit-making companies make profit off selling testing materials to schools?), and it's already killing the souls of students and teachers.

 

Outside of just learning, schools perform other vital functions to society... childcare (so parents can work in peace and not have nervous breakdowns trying to do five things at once), keeping kids temporarily out of abusive households, giving students their only meals of the day, access to books to read for fun, and keeping teens off the street away from drugs and fights and whatsuch.

 

Yeah, we might see some increases in cases. But by and large, COVID is still effecting retirees. Though with the emergence of the Kawasaki-like disease, I could foresee elementary schools remaining closed. It's not ideal, but also given that young children will have more trouble with social distancing and hygiene than older children, it may be the safer option. For everyone else though, desks can be spaced apart, everyone can wear masks, and schools can be outfitted with testing equipment and facilities. We gotta go back.

 

(I could actually see schools helping by providing comprehensive testing to students and being able to track them more easily. At lot will depend on politicians and funding allocation.)

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HopefullySomething

You make a lot of points that I completely agree with here. The only part I'm not so sure about is your proposed method to open up schools again after the summer. I think that the unfortunate truth is that we wouldn't really be able to manage to keep everyone in school following the proper social distancing protocols along with putting them in PPE. I come from the united states (so this is where I'm mostly concerned about) but the hospital staff already don't have enough equipment for themselves. Trying to put every kid in PPE as well would be an extreme stretch of resources- especially because there will need to be many different sizes to fit everyone.  

 

As much as I would love for the schools to open again I feel it just isn't possible currently. Hopefully I'm wrong.

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Skycaptain

Cambridge University in Britain have already said that all lectures for the 2020-2021 academic year will be online. 

 

 

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Lonemathsytoothbrushthief
24 minutes ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

No matter the risks, and society's got all of summer vacation to figure out how to do it as safely as possible. In fact, I'd go as far as to say they shouldn't have closed to begin with, but lack of proper protocol was a driving issue. This has been an interesting social experiment, but a failed one. The reality is that schools are an essential service, and certainly more damned essential than the gyms and hair salons some states are opening up.

 

If you do a quick search of "is online education effective?", you'll get even split yeses and nos. But it depends on what you're looking for, education outcomes (i.e. did students acquire the material) or learning outcomes (did students actively engage with the material on a deep level). It's easy enough to stick some students in a classroom and some online and have them study the same subject over different mediums and see who does better on a standardized test. The results will likely be similar, because that's just simple memorization and regurgitation. There are so many impediments to learning in an online setting. If the student and teacher are at home, both are subject to the distractions of the home environment. Pets, unruly children, noisy neighbors, not to mention pleasurable distractions like zoning out on the couch, checking facebook or twitter in the middle of a Zoom lecture, computer games, etc. The benefit of a physical classroom is that it's a contained environment focused on learning, with much fewer distractions. Then there's the social aspect of learning. Getting to know one's peers and teacher in person can help foster interest in the subject, especially if everyone there wants to be there. There's much more chance for spontaneous and open discussion, which lends to increasing critical thinking skills and deeper knowledge outside of what's just in the textbook. In Zoom School, everything's canned, because you've got bandwidth and the ability to switch camera frames to worry about, you might not even be able to see the person who's speaking, artifacts and lag, and the sensory overload of looking at too many faces at once.

 

Effective learning in an online setting requires the ability to self-teach, and not every student has the motivation or skills necessary to do that. If the majority of people could, why have teachers or schools to begin with? Students could just teach themselves everything. Certain fields also require hands-on experience with equipment that a school could afford, but individual students cannot. Simulations may not lead to practical application of skills and can't be programmed for all the variables of real life.

 

So yes, we could feasibly continue to educate students outside of school, but they wouldn't learn, or would barely learn, and that's dangerous, because what happens when in-person classes finally do resume and students have forgotten or failed to grasp material necessary to advance? What happens when graduates get to the job world and lack learned skills? In the US especially, we're only concerned with the quantitative education and not the qualitative learning, which is how we got so tangled up in the Standardized Testing Era (don'tcha just love it when profit-making companies make profit off selling testing materials to schools?), and it's already killing the souls of students and teachers.

 

Outside of just learning, schools perform other vital functions to society... childcare (so parents can work in peace and not have nervous breakdowns trying to do five things at once), keeping kids temporarily out of abusive households, giving students their only meals of the day, access to books to read for fun, and keeping teens off the street away from drugs and fights and whatsuch.

 

Yeah, we might see some increases in cases. But by and large, COVID is still effecting retirees. Though with the emergence of the Kawasaki-like disease, I could foresee elementary schools remaining closed. It's not ideal, but also given that young children will have more trouble with social distancing and hygiene than older children, it may be the safer option. For everyone else though, desks can be spaced apart, everyone can wear masks, and schools can be outfitted with testing equipment and facilities. We gotta go back.

 

(I could actually see schools helping by providing comprehensive testing to students and being able to track them more easily. At lot will depend on politicians and funding allocation.)

This is very very wrong. COVID 19 affects many people differently, it can cause damage to lungs, kidneys and several other organs, the group of immunosuppressed people who could be critically ill from it is large, inadequate PPE is being provided to essential workers such as delivery drivers, social workers and janitors, the effect of the virus is based on the dose transmitted as well and so some people will be at much higher risk of critical illness based simply on the level of exposure(hence the greater worries about doctors, among others), as someone with asthma choosing to isolate despite being excluded from the uk government's extremely vulnerable list of people I can also tell you that air pollution will cause greater problems for people too...you CAN'T attribute this simply to age that is hugely ignorant, ableist...there are also high risks among diabetics...the number of people who could be critically ill from this is huge and the point is, once the numbers grow greater than hospitals can handle, the deadliness of this disease can sky rocket. Because any of those numbers not getting into the hospital, getting beds, getting tested etc are at much greater risk.

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I completely agree with you that most people (most, but not all) learn better with in-person instruction, and there's heavy costs with forcing everyone on-line.  All my classes have gone on-line and I hate it.  They've already made the call that all my classes will be on-line until at least next winter, and I'm upset about that.

 

I also have concern about loosening restrictions too early overwhelming the system.  My mom is a retiree, so it's not easy to dismiss that it's largely killing retirees.  It can also affect younger people quite strongly and especially those with medical issues (I'm in my 30s but have high cholesterol and some asthma - it could conceivably affect me hard).  I'm willing to suffer online classes if it will save some people from death, though I understand not everyone is willing to make that sacrifice.  Obviously everyone would like to reopen schools once there's adequate testing and treatment facilities, but we can't make the call on whether we will by fall, and a lot of people are hesitant to say it doesn't matter whether we will or not.

 

There's massive suffering from the restrictions, and there will be massive suffering without them.  There's valid points on each side.  If you are venting your frustration and expressing a hope that schools can reopen by fall, I think most people are on-board with that.  I think this could very easily turn combative though when you say "no matter the risks" - it comes off as dismissive of those risks and other people's concerns.  I don't think that was your intention - I think you're aiming for validation that your thoughts and concerns matter - but I wanted to point that out before it turns heated.

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Yes, I'm sure there are kids that need an actual school setting to be able to learn effectively.  Still not sure how that translates to schools "needing" to reopen.  The current situation isn't ideal for a lot of classes of people, not just kids, but we're all having to adjust.

 

Quote

This has been an interesting social experiment, but a failed one.

There isn't anything "experimental" about this.  This is an actual disease affecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands (and the latter figure will surely reach the millions too, it's just a matter of time)

 

I would have figured given what I've seen you post about covid before, you ought to have known that was really a very poor choice of phrasing on your part.

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17 minutes ago, Arodash said:

Okay I'm confused what is ableist? Is that like an insult?

It's bias towards people who don't have disabilities (like sexist is bias towards a preferred gender).  Like if I dismissed concerns that there's no ramp into the library, it would be "ableist" - putting the concerns of those who aren't disabled over the concerns of those that are.

 

Though I do think the word is more likely to raise hackles and disagreement rather than invite constructive conversation - it can be used as an insult, or come off as one.

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RoseGoesToYale

@Lonemathsytoothbrushthief No one is being forced back to school at gunpoint. Any person who deems it safer to continue their education online, whether immunocompromised or not, can have to option to do so, as before the pandemic. Parents can still choose to homeschool, as before. And I don't see how it's ableist to point out age, because it already positively correlates with multiple chronic diseases and medical doctors have established an increased likelihood of older individuals experiencing complications due to this.

 

Say schools start up in September. That gives the rest of May, June, July, and August to flatten curves enough* and give hospitals enough time to adjust to capacity and gain needed resources, which the whole of point of quarantines right now, because societies will have to reopen eventually, hopefully later than sooner so we can implement safety features and protocol to limit spread, test more potential drugs and develop a vaccine.

 

25 minutes ago, Lonemathsytoothbrushthief said:

I can also tell you that air pollution will cause greater problems for people too

This has nothing to do with the pandemic. It was already a problem for sensitive individuals before, because governments failed to strictly regulate industries that produce huge amounts of (toxic) particulate matter as waste. Schools are not major generators of air pollution, but airplanes, factories, and power plants are.

 

4 minutes ago, Philip027 said:

There isn't anything "experimental" about this.  This is an actual disease affecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands (and the latter figure will surely reach the millions too, it's just a matter of time)

 

I would have figured given what I've seen you post about covid before, you ought to have known that was really a very poor choice of phrasing on your part.

How is it not experimental? I can't recall another point in history when society has engaged in mass digital education. Up to this point, distance education was optional, and the body of knowledge surrounding its effectiveness not fully formed. Many teachers have not received comprehensive training on how to conduct their entire job online. We don't yet know the long-term effects of keeping so many students out of physical schools for this period of time. We don't know if parents can pick up the slack of having to partially or fully homeschool their children with no such training, and potentially for multiple children in different grades. Teachers have been scrambling to rewrite curriculums and deliver help to struggling students from afar. Some students don't even have access to a stable internet connection. Do we hold them back or advance them, but potentially unprepared? Nobody quite knows what they're doing. I never said COVID was a social experiment. Trying to conduct education on a large scale from afar without hindering student progress is.

 

*Of course, this hinges on uncaring politicians not trying to open up too soon and unsafely, or there will way more deaths anyway regardless of whether schools are part of it.

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My University is planning on online education this fall, I am deferring. I will take a couple of courses but I cannot do this whole online thing I am trying this semester.  

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AspieAlly613

Counterargument:  Maybe we could just not have school for a year?

 

Yes, education is important.  However, the marginal difference between "education this year" and "education next year" isn't such a major one.

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RoseGoesToYale
25 minutes ago, AspieAlly613 said:

Counterargument:  Maybe we could just not have school for a year?

An interesting idea. Again, it would be an experiment, because there's no data from any other point in time where a such a mass number of students were kept physically (or completely) out of school for a year.

 

I could see it having negative impacts on social development, since school is a major site where kids learn how to interact with each other and with adults. It comes down to the argument of whether digital human interaction is as good as in-person human interaction. For some kids, going to school might be the one barrier between them and gangs or drugs, especially if both parents are essential workers and there's nobody there to watch them.

 

Some higher ed programs would have to continue regardless, such as certain research fields and medical studies, because the workforce needs as many of these people as it can get right now.

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Lonemathsytoothbrushthief
1 hour ago, AspieAlly613 said:

Counterargument:  Maybe we could just not have school for a year?

 

Yes, education is important.  However, the marginal difference between "education this year" and "education next year" isn't such a major one.

Especially considering the huge mental health crisis affecting those kids! As someone whose degrees are in maths starting to do maths tutoring, when I looked at the uk's recent gcse syllabus I found it pretty shocking how quickly the government is trying to advance the curriculum. No wonder so many students are depressed, anxious and suicidal.

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Lonemathsytoothbrushthief
3 hours ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

@Lonemathsytoothbrushthief No one is being forced back to school at gunpoint. Any person who deems it safer to continue their education online, whether immunocompromised or not, can have to option to do so, as before the pandemic. Parents can still choose to homeschool, as before. And I don't see how it's ableist to point out age, because it already positively correlates with multiple chronic diseases and medical doctors have established an increased likelihood of older individuals experiencing complications due to this.

If there isn't an official lockdown then parents who don't have the money to hire sitters who choose to keep their kids at home can easily lose their jobs - think of all the single parents who employers will just say, well send them to school since it's safe now! to. Therefore there is clearly no actual choice in the matter for poorer parents - and disabled people are disproportionately more likely to be in poverty, so among those parents there will be a disproportionate number having to lose their jobs over their kids, who use ventilators, have cystic fibrosis or cancer or diabetes or heart problems etc etc. Kids who actually would die if they got this virus.

 

Also the thing that was ableist was saying this is "a young person's issue" hence schools are fine, when young disabled kids in schools exist and are, as explained above, disproportionately in need of extra government help to maintain income. I pretty obviously never said older people aren't a category of at risk people, I was speaking about the people who you excluded.

 

The air pollution thing was pointing out how many people with asthma could have a more difficult time with the virus -_- a lot of government advice minimises the risk for that but knowledge of this particular virus is still developing. It was literally all illustrating to you that this clearly isn't an exclusively old person's issue. Average age may be high but so is the death rate and rate of critical illness among all people! Ditto with my explanation of viral load affecting matters - that means that a young person in a job say in customer service would have a potentially worse illness than an old person who's retired.

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I don't think they have to open, but I think they should. There are just a bunch of other problems that make it not a good idea if Covid is still terrifying. Some kids live with their elderly family members and would be putting them at risk if they are breaking social distancing by going to school with a thousand other kids who have their own risk factors and different levels of precaution. 

 

I agree that online schooling isn't very effecting for many. It certainly doesn't work for me. But that doesn't mean we should dismiss online schooling entirely. Sometimes it's the best option, and I'm sorry that it's not a perfect one.

 

My school is resuming June 1. But we're in Japan and in a prefecture that wasn't hit super hard. I also teach at a school with only 300 students spread across 3 grades, meaning less than 30 students to a class where kids aren't all pushed right next to each other to make room. This is completely different from the middle school I was at in CA that had about 1,200 students spread across two grades and classes of above 40 weren't unheard of (most were around 40, but some were over 40). There are also precautions that would be mandated here that wouldn't be enforcable in the States. 

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RoseGoesToYale

Obviously, once schools do reopen, students with a medical reason to not physically be in school can't just be up and denied their education. If a doctor signs a note saying "my patient has a condition that makes it necessary for them to remain outside of school at this time", the school can't force them to attend class and has to provide alternative method of instruction, whether that's other material or video recordings of classes etc. It may be a case in colleges at least, to aid social distancing too, that only part of a class roster be in physical attendance and properly spaced out, wearing masks, and having the option to not physically attend but live stream or view recorded lectures, or some other hybrid situation.

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MoraDollie

Hi there,

I work in healthcare and have a master's in public health. Here's the issue: schools historicaly have been known as a heaven/living petri dish for viruses and illnesses to spread. Have you ever seen lice outbreaks that happens in school? It spreads SO FAST on unexpecting kids. There have been years when viruses of whatever kind have been so bad that school gave us 4 day weekend (friday, sat, sun, monday) because they were scared of the virus making kids go abscent.

 

Who benefits from online schooling really depends on the student. Some students do great with online learning (regardless of age), others don't. Unemployment rate is also spiking in the USA because of the virus (many of those unemployed will NOT regain their employment status post virus is the grim reality). Not all parents make good teachers. Many will tell their kid "just google it". Online video sources are being overwhelmed by the sudden demand for them (Zoom, Google Duo, Skype, etc.). 

 

Many kids (college, high school, whatever age) for online school will just look up whatever information they need to know for the quiz/test/assignment but then not retain it at all. This is the reality for online school. "Anti cheating methods" are horse shit because there's always a work around (and many invade privacy by demanding to take some kind of video/live feed of your living quarters while you test). 

 

From a medical perspective - 

It really IS NOT safe to reopen until at least 2021 for in person classes (even then, it depends on what the data shows). People in their 20s are getting strokes because of COVID19. People who survive this (young people too) are ending up with permanent, life altering negative consequences because of COVID19. I'm not wanting to risk our youth's lives because of greedy CEOs.

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Skycaptain

Here in England (for once not Britain as a whole) the plan is to have a phased return, starting in June for three year groups. Whilst those who want to get to work, but can't because of childcare issues are in favour, those who work in education are generally against. One of the biggest points of concern is how do you get younger children in particular to maintain social distancing in class. 

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RoseGoesToYale
10 minutes ago, Skycaptain said:

One of the biggest points of concern is how do you get younger children in particular to maintain social distancing in class.

This is a problem even outside of schools. I've seen young children brought together out in the parking lot in my complex for playdates. I don't know the exact situation, could be anything... children begging and begging to see their friends and parents buckling thinking "just this once, then I'll have peace again"? There's this one group of boys, probably 8ish, that meets up daily and plays in the parking lot, riding bikes and rough housing. I doubt they're from the same household because they're all different races. If their parents are working and not watching them, who's to stop them from going outdoors? Kids just weren't built to social distance, nor stay away from their other homo sapiens peers.

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From an exclusively epidemiological perspective, it's crystal clear - full lockdown until there are no more cases, a specific targeted treatment, or a vaccine. Or all of it. BUT this is a multi-factorial situation, there are other medical fields to consider (psychology, child development), not to mention the whole economy part and all that jazz.

Children, especially small ones, can't be kept apart for months without causing long-lasting mental damage. (Not even going to start on dysfunctional families and neglect, just normal child development.) The main problem is that there are no studies (yet) as to how children spread covid-19 - most actual cases in children are very mild or asymptomatic, what little studies there are yield next to no symptomatic cases in children from families with several infected members - so nobody really knows how big a risk there is. We do know that we need to reopen, for various reasons.

We don't know anything long-term yet because this thing hasn't been around for long enough. Researchers are only now figuring out why these stroke things happen (it's not only hypercoagulation but damage to blood vessels - not that anyone had any clue why it happens in some patients) and they're still not sure about the percentage of cases that go asymptomatic. A new law has just been passed over here that obligates insurance to cover testing even if the person is asymptomatic, and antibody studies in hot spots were started this week to gain a better idea of how many people are already immune. Basically we're trying to figure it all out as we go, but we can't wait until we know everything and keep the world at a standstill for goodness knows how long. can we?

 

My school is already reopening, the older students are back already, in half class groups, spaced far apart in the classroom. So far, in the states that have reopened before us, there have not been more reported cases on the whole; my municipality has been on single-digit new cases for weeks now and that hasn't changed either. There have been statements issued from pediatricians and child / youth psychologists, along with the measures we need to take anyway. We'll just need to see how it goes. We still have falling numbers, we'll just need to keep an eye on it and react very quickly if anything happens.

 

There have been outbreaks in places where people live in bad conditions, but - so far - wherever a case appeared in schools (there have been a few in other states), as we need to document everything anyway they were able to get in touch with everyone in the affected class / group, place them in quarantine, and stop the chain of infection. There have been no actual outbreak in schools yet, and some states are on week 3 or 4 of reopening. We'll just see how it goes.

 

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Lonemathsytoothbrushthief
7 hours ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

Obviously, once schools do reopen, students with a medical reason to not physically be in school can't just be up and denied their education. If a doctor signs a note saying "my patient has a condition that makes it necessary for them to remain outside of school at this time", the school can't force them to attend class and has to provide alternative method of instruction, whether that's other material or video recordings of classes etc. It may be a case in colleges at least, to aid social distancing too, that only part of a class roster be in physical attendance and properly spaced out, wearing masks, and having the option to not physically attend but live stream or view recorded lectures, or some other hybrid situation.

Again, there are plenty of parents who may lose their jobs if they do that and continue to look after their kids at home after the government reopens schools.

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RoseGoesToYale

So college students may speak for themselves on this one. The more I talk to, the more I've found that many are going to defer enrollment in classes this fall if they're online, they say because their learning outcomes are poorer online than face-to-face. That could be significant tuition lost. Colleges need that money to keep facilities running and pay the faculty and staff, if they fear enough students are going to defer, they may reopen physical classes regardless of where we stand by September.

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10 minutes ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

So college students may speak for themselves on this one. The more I talk to, the more I've found that many are going to defer enrollment in classes this fall if they're online, they say because their learning outcomes are poorer online than face-to-face. 

As a college student this. I am on the fence about deferring but online learning is a struggle-especially with no libraries and I don't want my GPA to tank and my transcripts to be messed up because of this. I understand why my campus is closing, I really do but I need to think about my future. I would rather graduation take 3-6 months longer than mess everything I have worked for up.

EDIT

looks like my university is already worried 

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Lonemathsytoothbrushthief
11 hours ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

Colleges need that money to keep facilities running and pay the faculty and staff

Chancellors' salaries would disagree. In the uk and us at least, universities are as bad as other large businesses in underpaying the most essential workers and overpaying incredibly clunky managerial staff(which most academics hate!). We could also fund all our facilities if journals gave us any money lmao. Oh and in general, universities never really had to charge students because many many countries have successful universities with no tuition fees, and public subsidies are only one way in which research etc is supported. Universities typically have many industrial partnerships, the research part of their work is being rejigged in many top universities to direct researchers' efforts towards the pandemic, and really they could perfectly well afford giving students a break given that most teaching staff would quite like to be able to focus on research. Of course there may need to be significant subsidies to teaching colleges, and staff without the ability to get a salary based on their research work(actually this would have a bigger impact on people like administrative staff, heads of department, managerial staff) might need changes to their contracts but I really doubt many universities as organisations struggle with money to that extent.

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According to a report from 2018 "The highest-paid public employee in most states is a college football or basketball coach".

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I guess some of those college sports bring in lots of money, too, but that just shows to me where the priorities might be and I find that kind of sad.

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Skycaptain

The USA is different though. College sports there are big business, and they get a lot of money in from television. If we compare Gridiron to soccer. College is the main feeder to the elite league for players - the NFL. In soccer, players either work their way through lower leagues or are recruited as a schoolkid. So College ball is equivalent of the second tier league in soccer, and it's not surprising sports coaches get paid big money. They may earn $1 million, but are bringing many times that into the faculty. 

 

Anyways, digression over. If the aim is to get schools open by the fall, there's three months to plan out a strategy to make this happen. Also a strategy for a back-up if its not going to work. Maybe each year group comes in one day a week for things like science practicals, but learn maths online? If we assume there will still be some form of social distancing, how do we get the children into school. In the town where I work 2500 children commute to school by rail alone, and a similar number by bus. Between the ages of 5 and 18 we have around 15000 children at school in a town with a population of 42000, because of the sheer numbers travelling in. 

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Fall/autumn openings may not be realistic, much less June for year-arounds. Schools are vectors for viruses and, as this article points out, little kids are not good at social distancing.

Scientists warn 1 June is too early for schools to open.

 

There are worries about a second wave of infections right at the same time flu and cold season starts up again later this year in the fall.

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Skycaptain

Second wave infections are why they want to ease things now. These figures are hypothetical, for, Britain, but looking at what's happened so far. Peak hospitalisations reached around 30 000, but are now under 10 000. Whilst there is spare capacity, we have a) a backlog in surgeries and b) overworked staff who need a break. Thus, given that a second wave, third wave and more, are inevitable, it's best to get a couple of secondary spikes through in the summer months. It's estimated that first week in April we had 2.1 million infected, now it's around 175 thousand. Two more spikes and a truly substantial percentage of the population will have been exposed 

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RoseGoesToYale
10 hours ago, Skycaptain said:

If the aim is to get schools open by the fall, there's three months to plan out a strategy to make this happen. Also a strategy for a back-up if its not going to work.

I'd love to see schools and educators confer directly with doctors and health organizations to put together three game plans: Best case scenario, most likely scenario, and worst case scenario, and work together to get the logistics sort it out. Because some governments in some places simply don't have their heads screwed on right, I feel like if it goes gov't+schools or gov't+doctors, all the politics will get in the way and we'll wind up with the solution the politicians want, whether it's in people's best interests or not.

 

3 hours ago, fuzzipueo said:

There are worries about a second wave of infections right at the same time flu and cold season starts up again later this year in the fall.

If enough people actually got flu shots, it would help. Not to prevent coronavirus, but the CDC estimates for influenza hospitalizations for two seasons ago were almost 500,000, and the season before that some 800,000. That's a huge amount of hospital bed space that could be freed up and a way lower strain on PPE availability if people could be bothered to help reach herd immunity.

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Flu shots aren't the most reliable shots though, because there's a new strain each year and the vaccines are developed in very little time with next to no testing capacity (moment the virus shows up the shots are needed large-scale, not much time to fine-tune things). Same thing will apply to a covid vaccine whenever we get one, it won't be anywhere near as reliable as, say, the polio or MMR ones - purely because those things take time.

That being said - YES, risk groups should absolutely get them. Even if every fifth shot fails, four will work.

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