71 Comments - Common Sense - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:10 am: If the State closes schools indefinitely, Illinois’ “home alone” law might need to be amended during this crisis so as to not harshly penalize working families. https://www2.illinois.gov/dcfs/safekids/safety/Pages/Preparing-Your-Children-to-Stay-Home-Alone.aspx “When is it legal to leave children alone? Illinois law defines a neglected minor, in part, as “any minor under the age of 14 years whose parent or other person responsible for the minor’s welfare leaves the minor without supervision for an unreasonable period of time without regard for the mental or physical health, safety or welfare of that minor.” When thinking about leaving your children alone, whether for a short or long time, it is important for you to consider all the risks involved. What is appropriate under certain circumstances may be considered child neglect in other circumstances. You are legally responsible for your child’s welfare until she reaches adulthood. Part of caring for your children is providing adequate supervision. Under some circumstances you can be charged with neglect for leaving children unattended.” - Rutro - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:13 am: Close them, keep some open for those w/out daycare and to provide meals, etc. - Rich Hill - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:13 am: ==New York City has 95 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 42 of them reported since Wednesday.== …and when the mayor declared a state of emergency, he focused on how this models for the immediate future: “We’re on the verge of 100 cases. I believe we’ll be at 1,000 cases next week.” New York City updates its case count a couple times a day (so far) here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/coronavirus.page#cases - SIU Prof - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:17 am: This crisis will be with us for months… We have to have a plan for normal life while still dealing with this issue. I think we should keep k-12 open. If you can’t afford to stay home, how can you afford daycare? Thank god that children seem to be at low risk… - Pot calling kettle - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:20 am: #1 stop pretending that moving classes online is an acceptable alternative. (This includes for higher ed.). It’s not the same, it won’t be anywhere near as good. #2 if staying at home is best for kids, it’s best for most adults as well. #3 that means providing direct economic support to allow most people to stay home Overall, we should be willing to take a two week national holiday where almost everyone stays home and minimizes contact. - Merica - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:22 am: If you think public schools pass contagion wait till you see what the viral sanitation of a daycare looks like. There’s no point to wait. The schools will close. If you wait until people begin testing positive, it’s too late Close K-12 schools and all daycares NOW. Close them to prevent the virus, not as an ineffective and late reaction to the situation - Lefty Lefty - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:25 am: My hunch is that many districts including mine are buying time to connect an extended break to the end of spring break (for us 3/23-3/27). It’s probably not a great idea but as Marshall says in the first post, they are trying to find a balance. - Michael Feltes - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:26 am: I think SIU Prof has it right. The logic of flattening the curve implies that everyone is going to be exposed to the virus eventually. The point is to slow the transmission enough so that hospitals & clinics don’t get overwhelmed, but we’re going to have roughly the same number of serious cases, just spread out over a longer period of time. Some closures right now might be justified while we’re hitting the take-off point on the curve; spring break might have come at a particularly fortuitous time. The key to me right now seems to be trying to isolate nursing homes and I’m not sure how much closing schools buys with regard to that. - SWIL_Voter - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:27 am: Moving classes online as quickly as they’re talking will destroy any hope for learning objectives, and if I were a college student, I’d expect a refund if they just plopped all the course material online and asked me to fend for myself. Agreed, they need to just close and give direct cash to float us through this thing. The guidance I’m getting from my employer is mind boggling. They’re quarantining people who have visited countries with outbreaks, but we probably have the biggest one. We just can’t know because we aren’t testing. Madness - Seats - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:30 am: Close high schools because high schoolers don’t require day cares and babysitters and can learn on laptops. Keep elementary schools open but use classrooms in disinfected unused highschools in addition to their normal schools to keep the kids more spread out. - IL student - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:30 am: Speaking as a student in an IL high school, we are accomplishing nothing by staying in school. Tons of kids are coughing, the teachers all expect to get it, and no one can focus because we don’t know when we’ll be in school next. Kids who have immunocompromised parents/grandparents are all freaking out - no one really cares if they get it, but we’re all scared of spreading it to vulnerable populations. - The Dude Abides - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:30 am: I was a little surprised when the Governor said that the schools would stay open, I think that’s a mistake and he should reconsider. I am still hopeful that this virus is seasonal and will be in decline soon and that the schools won’t have to be closed for a long period of time. - Michael Feltes - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:32 am: @Pot calling kettle - You know that there are entire degree programs taught online, yes? You can’t do everything on a computer but you can do a heck of a lot and for certain subjects, I’d say that online learning is actually superior to traditional formats. One of the silver linings that I hope comes out of this is that people will start to understand how much can be done online, that working from home will get better support for jobs where it makes sense, and that corporate travel will get cut drastically in favor of teleconferencing, because we know that we can’t keep flying this much and avoid a worst-case climate change scenario. - SWIL_Voter - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:36 am: Michael, online courses **designed** for online instruction, and online courses **designed** for face-to-face will have very different outcomes. The way our brains process the information, the course needs to be specifically tailored to the mode of instruction if you actually want people to learn. That’s why we don’t just google our way to a degree - JBFan - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:38 am: =I was a little surprised when the Governor said that the schools would stay open= I don’t think the governor actually said that. He said that decision would remain with the local districts. I’m pretty sure it was implicit that the local districts think long and hard before they decide to stay open - SWIL_Voter - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:38 am: Does anybody know anything about policies surrounding the food and vendor contracts that feed the school kids? I’m working with a local company that provides meals for fed funded daycares that may soon be closed, and he’s trying to figure out who he needs to talk to about whether he can get reimbursed to continue to feed the kids - Last Bull Moose - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:40 am: Does the social distancing reduce the total number of cases or just spread them out over time? I understand that a spike could overwhelm the health system with really sick people. If we could isolate those at risk of complications, should we just let the virus run through the healthy population? To the post, I would keep schools open, isolate the at risk individuals, and keep track of hospital utilization. If hospital utilization rises too high, then shut everything down. - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:40 am: === One of the silver linings that I hope comes out of this is that people will start to understand how much can be done online, that working from home will get better support for jobs where it makes sense, and that corporate travel will get cut drastically in favor of teleconferencing, because we know that we can’t keep flying this much and avoid a worst-case climate change scenario.=== Let’s slow your roll on the marrying “climate change” to a global pandemic. The hijacking of a serious global crisis isn’t a vehicle for a pairing of another agenda, no matter what Rahm Emanuel suggests. So let’s stop that thinking for a moment. To the rest, Human beings need interaction. The reason this is do difficult is, generally, humans need to interact, to be with other humans. If we lived as hermits, saying no meetings, mass gatherings, those things would be “no problem”. The reason it’s a new normal is because what’s being asked isn’t normal to how lives are lived. “… because we know that we can’t keep flying this much and avoid a worst-case climate change scenario.” Yeah, right now, folks are looking for hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Let’s focus on the health, including the mental health of isolation first, and hope we can move forward with this new normal in the short term before we decide this pandemic is a great way to curtail air travel. - Joe Bidenopolous - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:42 am: We should close the (banned word) schools, of course Either way, my kids aren’t in school today and probably won’t be until after the now-inevitable school closures are over - Candy Dogood - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:44 am: What’s the number of patients that haven’t been tested that should be? - WH Mess - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:46 am: I will be very surprised if any kid in Illinois attends school in April. And a little surprised if they go back before mid-May. It may take a week for our ridiculous cluster of independent school board municipalities to get a clue, but it’s going to get MUCH worse before it gets better. - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:50 am: Now, to the post, I wrote this yesterday, stand by every word; === It’s a great question, I stated I lean yes, but I don’t have all the info the Governor has, including the medical information and stats. If the governor decides not to close schools, I’m going to take that as he, and his administration, have been far more thoughtful than the federal government response.=== The mitigating factor(s) of schools and the entire function, like feeding, or a safe place for kids, if weighed, ok, I’m with the Governor. I also see Kentucky, Oregon, Maryland, Ohio… locals… i understand that too. With the open schools in Illinois, this morning, Oswego and Oswego East have 2,500 - 3,000 people in ONE building, interacting for 5-7 hours. I have no idea how families, students, and staff will face the outside world differently then how they must interact in a school day. At some point, will the necessity of raw health and well being outweigh the need of some schools, even Oswego schools, to be that place to aid in helping kids find a normalcy, with adults there too helping with that? That’s the governor’s call. Online learning, it’s called alternative learning for a reason. Again, the social interaction and learning with others, there’s value to being with others as humans are social, even with learning. The temporary learning online is just that, temporary, and a way to move forward, but this new normal is what we need to move forward, and then the after will be a new normal too. Let’s see how the governor and the administration sees things going forward. - Joe Bidenopolous - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:51 am: ===If hospital utilization rises too high, then shut everything down.== That will be much too late. There will be too many infections at that point that will progress to severe and we’ll be rationing ventilators. ===Does the social distancing reduce the total number of cases or just spread them out over time?=== Spreads them out over time. Total number of cases may be reduced but not in a significant way. That’s why we have to take action now to slow the spread so that we don’t end up rationing ventilators and having doctors decide who gets one and who doesn’t (and therefore, dies) - Kyle Hillman - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:52 am: RE:Common Sense “… without supervision for an unreasonable period of time without regard for the mental or physical health, safety or welfare of that minor.” Illinois has one of the more liberal laws regarding home alone despite blogs posts from a conservative think tank. You can leave your child (at any age) home alone as long as it is a resonable amount of time and you have taken into consideration their health and well being. Would love to hear what law people would propose we change this too? In what scenario would people be ok with a kid being left alone for an UNREASONABLE amount of time where the parent disregards the mental or physical health, safety or welfare of their child. You can leave your 13 year old child with normal needs home alone while you are at work during the day in a house that is safe. You can’t leave your 13 year old with high medical needs home alone while you go on a weekend gambling bender. - Rutro - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:54 am: Catholic schools closed as of monday - Stuff Happens - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:56 am: Close the schools. It’s always better to be proactive than reactive. - Michael Feltes - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:57 am: @SWIL_Voter - Sure, that’s absolutely true. In the short-term, what alternative to going online would you propose? The U of I might be able to survive refunding everyone’s tuition and saying “Let’s try this again in the fall” but I doubt many of the directional public universities or private colleges could do so. In the long-term, large institutions often need exogenous shocks to change behavior, particularly in universities where tenured faculty have to be persuaded to change their habits, so I hope that they can make the best of this crisis. @Oswego Willy - If you’re in the thought police, then I’m going to ask for your badge number. - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 9:59 am: Masters Week (Kids “Drive, Chip, and Putt… women’s amateur… the Masters itself) is postponed. Things and events are closing not staying open more and more. - Chi Sox - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:00 am: Our district moves to remote learning next week. Cook county has no remote work policy in place; informed to take sick, vactn then FMLA. - Moe Berg - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:05 am: Saying kids are “low-risk” misses the point. They get infected as easily as adults. Even if they don’t succumb, they can transmit to parents, grandparents and kids/adults who are immune-compromised or have other co-morbidities. As Rich has pointed out a couple of times, Japan closed schools EARLY and it seems to have made a massive difference in “flattening the curve” there. - Pot calling kettle - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:08 am: - Michael Feltes - I will second everything SWIL_Voter wrote. Yes, on-line learning works well…for some content, for some students, for some faculty. It takes time to craft good online content (more than one or two weeks). I teach in higher ed. I teach on line and F2F. I have created extensive on-line content. It does not work for many students, especially when they are not trained to use it. It does not work for a lot of subjects. It does not work for some faculty, especially when there has been minimal training. You cannot simply move content on-line and expect it to work. Bottom line: A “holiday” would be better than suddenly moving things on-line for a few weeks or a month. Adding to that, a two week paid holiday for just about everyone would be even better. To the post: If you are looking to stop spread, in a large city, most adults are in contact with more, different people (and in an untraceable way) than kids in school. So, the adults should be sequestered before the school kids. It’s just easier to close schools and feel like we are doing something. - Moe Berg - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:09 am: Also, a lot of CPS kids live with grandparents. Protecting kids is also protecting their older guardians. - Jibba - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:10 am: The geniuses at my local public schools said this in their official guidance: “Healthy children are not known to get seriously ill from COVID-19.” Yes, but they are vectors as said above. Then they followed up with this tidbit that conflicts with the above: “If schools close, some children might have to stay home with alternate caregivers, such as seniors, who are more vulnerable.” So they recognize the vector but don’t want to do anything about it? Pick a lane, and close the schools. - Anyone Remember - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:11 am: IF we’re going to close schools, the IL National Guard should do what the NY National Guard is in New Rochelle - handing out food. On a statewide basis, the IL National Guard may not be large enough. Hand out the food at the closed schools? - Ducky LaMoore - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:11 am: Let’s all wait until the kids become carriers of the virus, then close the schools and send the kids to the elderly grandparents’ house. Is this the new pension reform strategy we are considering at this point? I don’t mean to be over the top, but I really don’t care. They are making a monumental mistake not closing the schools. - Responsa - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:18 am: I had a conversation about this last night with a recently retired public school teacher. She’s attuned to the problem with day care and nourishment and how smaller age children will need to be cared for if they are not in school during the hours their parents need to be at work. She also reminded that many k-12 students are not little kids, and having these older kids out of school supervision (and not necessarily sitting at home in rapt attention of their online studies) likely roving the streets, presents its own set of problems that must be considered. This issue of how and when to close schools is not the simple one some make it out to be. - Merica - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:24 am: what do you think Springfield would do? they were ready to have the only St Patties Day parade in the country until the Governor called and begged them to reconsider. They’ll do whatever they think achieves CYA - Pundent - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:26 am: A few days ago people were up in arms because parades hadn’t been cancelled - yet. Then the parades were cancelled. All schools will close. I suspect that issues in lower income areas have complicated some of the planning. But in the same way that CPS has closed for strikes but kept buildings open for safety and social service reasons I would expect the same to occur here. And for those that are knocking virtual learning as a viable alternative, get over it. It’s 2020 and there’s no reason why we can’t leverage technology more efficiently. Sometimes a crisis is what it takes to get people to focus on solving problems in new ways. If we come out of this realizing that there’s a more efficient model of delivering education in certain instances, that would actually be a good thing. You want to make college (or education in general) more affordable, change your mindset on the value of virtual learning. - Michael Feltes - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:32 am: @Pot calling kettle - Everything you say is absolutely true. It has taken about three months for infection rates to calm down in Hubei province, if you believe the Chinese government’s statistics. That does not necessarily imply that social restrictions can be lifted without provoking a flare-up. When do you think it would be safe to resume a regular level of face-to-face interaction at colleges & universities? My point is that we’re facing Hobson’s choice here. We can either do online learning for the remainder of the spring semester or we can cancel classes entirely. There’s every reason to believe that COVID-19 will join influenza as an endemic, recurring infection unless and until an effective treatment or vaccine is discovered. I don’t think there’s any reason to think that we’ll be able to resume large public gatherings like concerts and games until the fall at the earliest. That means we can afford to take the measures that can be sustained over months or years, not days or weeks. If K-12 schools are closed, what would be the case for reopening in two weeks? How will we replace the social support provided by the schools that poor families rely on to feed their children and allow them to work? To me, elementary & secondary schools are the very last things you close. It would be better if the public schools were not such central pillars supporting households that live paycheck to paycheck, but they are. - Jibba - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:37 am: “This issue of how and when to close schools is not the simple one some make it out to be.” Things never are, but when you weigh those things against death of 3% of our population, the choice becomes clear. And they will close at some point anyway. Let’s get ahead of the curve as did Japan. - SWIL_Voter - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:39 am: The point is not that courses can’t be taught online. The point is that migrating them there in such a short period of time is functionally the same as cancelling them anyway. At that point you’re just pretending to accomplish something, so you may as well just cancel them - Michael Feltes - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:49 am: Another way of looking at the problem. If you want a paid national holiday, how long would it have to be to be effective? The flattening the curve strategy works on the order of months; delaying a spike in serious cases with a two week holiday would be a little bit helpful, but if that number of cases ever crosses the threshold where ICUs, hospital beds and clinics are overwhelmed, then it’s failed. We should take the measures that can be sustained over months and, further, no more than are necessary to keep the infection rate below the critical threshold. That might have to include closing K-12 schools, but you don’t do it to keep the kids from being infected, you do it to keep the kids from being infected _all at once_. They should be FaceTiming with Grandma & Grandpa through the summer at the least. So if we’re talking a national paid holiday long enough to be effective according to the above definition, then how much money are we talking about? Chris Hayes’ back of the envelope math is that $1000/mo. for every household for 3 mos. would cost $1 trillion. You’re not going to get away with means-testing or cost of living adjustments by metro area, not when you’re constructing a temporary UBI on the fly. There’s a very good case for Keynesian fiscal stimulus right now, but it would be all debt on top of what the Trump administration and Congress have already done with tax cuts. https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1238185758214717442 - Michael Feltes - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:50 am: @SWIL_Voter - “Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.” - Joe Bidenopolous - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:57 am: ===“This issue of how and when to close schools is not the simple one some make it out to be.”=== As Jibba said, it actually is when you consider the alternative is a higher death rate. CTU went on strike for 2 weeks, schools stayed open for kids who needed shelter and meals. There is zero reason - ZERO - that can’t be done again. - SWIL_Voter - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 10:58 am: yea again, you aren’t actually trying is the point. Online instruction doesn’t involve just linking things online. That’s not how it works. It can take months to get a single course online in a way where students actually learn something. What you’re describing is just dumping all the course materials online. That’s no better than dumping the physical versions in a backpack and handing it to the student and saying “good luck” - Michael Feltes - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:03 am: @Joe Bidenopolous - “CTU went on strike for 2 weeks, schools stayed open for kids who needed shelter and meals. There is zero reason - ZERO - that can’t be done again.” If we’re talking about replacements efforts lasting for months relying on volunteer labor, then there are plenty of reasons. Again, a two or three week closure buys very little when dealing with an endemic disease. - 32nd Ward Roscoe Village - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:03 am: My son attends Lincoln Park High School which is a part magnet school that draws from 90 elementary schools from all over the city. He said that if some of his friends have to stay home, “they will get shot” because the school is safe haven for them; also they will not have breakfast and lunch. Despite the tony neighborhood, 42% of students are from families below the poverty line. Also, e-learning is not an option for many of these children do not have a safe place to e-learn or a computer to e-learn on. - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:04 am: === We can either do online learning for the remainder of the spring semester or we can cancel classes entirely.=== Both are being chosen. Both. Online is NOT the same. It can be “equivalent”, but it won’t be the same to the instructional aspects, especially and specifically to higher education. - Archpundit - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:08 am: ===At that point you’re just pretending to accomplish something, so you may as well just cancel them It is absolutely true this won’t be well done, but think of the options at this point. Cancel classes and what? Make students take the class again or continue sometime in the future? Give them the credit for work done already (assuming there is much to even evaluate yet)? For Harvard or other elite institutions they could pull a lot of this off. For the largest group of institutions who have students who aren’t wealthy and institutions without giant endowments these would be horrible choices. Many students don’t have the luxury of being able to take a class entirely over again–they work, have significant student loans, and are living on the margin to finish their degree. Either we figure out a way to let them finish or we are likely to lose a lot of students who don’t have the ability to extend their time in college. It’s not ideal, it’s not even good, but it’s what we have at this point (and many places are looking at online as part of the solution not the entire solution–obviously you can’t teach a student to weld fully online). - Pundent - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:09 am: =The point is that migrating them there in such a short period of time is functionally the same as cancelling them anyway. = According to who? You? Of course there will be differences but it is the most logical and viable alternative. Are you advocating that we simply cancel the semester and tell students, sorry you’ll have to start over? - Archpundit - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:10 am: === So, the adults should be sequestered before the school kids. It’s just easier to close schools and feel like we are doing something. Anyone who has had kids in school understand why this is dumb. The vast majority of sicknesses I’ve gotten over the last 17 years have been from the twin germinators we have been raising. - 32nd Ward Roscoe Village - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:10 am: ===Online is NOT the same. It can be “equivalent”, but it won’t be the same to the instructional aspects, especially and specifically to higher education.== Agreed. I have older siblings who are university professors. The one who teaches physical therapy says they are racing to complete laboratory classes because they cannot be done online. The brother-in-law who teaches ceramic arts said how do you throw pottery online? - SWIL_Voter - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:12 am: ==According to who?== My wife, an instructional designer currently being tasked with migrating hundreds of classes in the course of days when it took 10x that long to migrate single classes before. Not sure why they’d have to start over. You have the same kinds of logistical problems trying to figure out how to grade courses under such conditions, and how employers are supposed to view them - Archpundit - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:15 am: ===We can either do online learning for the remainder of the spring semester or we can cancel classes entirely. Michael is absolutely correct here. There will be some things done hybrid and some in person and that’s being figured out too–think technical programs that require hands on instruction and labs. But let’s focus on the non-flagship colleges and community and technical colleges. Many of the students don’t have the flexibility to start over and we’ll lose them if we try to make them take a class over and extend their time in classes. The students already work much of the time and have lives that make college just barely possible. Adding another barrier of repeating a semester just isn’t an option for them. We have to find a way to get them over the finish line and right now, online is going to be a very imperfect, but necessary option. - Archpundit - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:19 am: ==== The brother-in-law who teaches ceramic arts said how do you throw pottery online? Work with the mechatronics department. (That’s a joke people) - Last Bull Moose - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:26 am: Joe B. Thanks. Clearly if you wait till the hospitals are full to shut things down, that is too late. There may be some level of utilization that could be used as a target. But we may not know enough today to set that target. There must be ways to reduce other diseases that demand beds and ventilators. Maybe the flu vaccine should be mandatory (I think about half the people get it now ) If this becomes endemic, then we will also need an absolute increase in capacity. - Pot calling kettle - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 11:48 am: === So, the adults should be sequestered before the school kids. It’s just easier to close schools and feel like we are doing something.=== —Anyone who has had kids in school understand why this is dumb. The vast majority of sicknesses I’ve gotten over the last 17 years have been from the twin germinators we have been raising.— The school is where kids trade germs with other kids, but they are with the same kids and adults in the same closed environment every day. And how did the kids get the virus? From their parents. Their parents are interacting with different groups of adults every day. The adults are the roaming vectors. I realize sequestering the adults is not going to happen, but… - Archpundit - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 12:01 pm: ===I realize sequestering the adults is not going to happen, but… Sorry, I think I misunderstood you, but yeah, sequestering adults as much as we can is a good idea. - Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 12:03 pm: === If you’re in the thought police…== Oh, I’m not. You want to be utterly ridiculous and look foolish trying to make this about climate change and airlines, please, I especially don’t want to stop you looking silly. The eye on the ball is this pandemic. You wanna see how much people will take by adding your agenda, have at it. I also “don’t need no stinkin’ bad-jes” - Morty - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 12:07 pm: Denver closed schools and have opened food distribution points at several of the schools to accommodate the kids who need it. - Joe Bidenopolous - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 12:23 pm: == relying on volunteer labor== During the strike, they didn’t rely on volunteer labor. Schools were administered by principals/vices and admin staff, with some volunteers. For a long-term scenario like this, we could still utilize teachers in the schools on a rotating basis to augment that. - Michael Feltes - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 12:24 pm: Against my earlier arguments, this post makes a very good case that the full clampdown including K-12 schools over the case of two or three weeks does make an vital difference in the trajectory of infection over time. One of the things that’s important to remember about exponential growth is that it confounds our intuition developed by interacting with phenomena which grow at linear or polynomial rates, so I’m very happy to be corrected on that point. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca - walker - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 12:38 pm: see Michael Feltes: Now that’s a responsible commenter — Does more research, and is happy to revise his argument. Respect. - Lester Holt’s Mustache - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 12:46 pm: Does the governor have any power to direct private businesses NOT to fire people who are forced to stay home with their children? I honestly don’t know the answer, hoping someone could enlighten me. If not, the working poor might be in for a nightmare. Retail businesses (and some others) are not going to grant their workers a month of paid time off to stay home with their children while schools and daycares are closed. I can’t imagine being in a situation where you have nowhere to send your child during the workday, and your boss at Target or wherever saying you have to come in to work or you’ll be replaced. - JoanP - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 12:58 pm: =Does the governor have any power to direct private businesses NOT to fire people who are forced to stay home with their children= Nope. He can use moral suasion, but he has no legal authority to tell any business who they can fire or on what basis. - Lester Holt’s Mustache - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 1:34 pm: == Nope== Is what I figured, but I’m not a lawyer. A lot of people are urging the closure of both schools and daycare centers (which isn’t entirely unreasonable considering the circumstances), but that would put a lot of working class folks in a real tough situation. - Jibba - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 1:39 pm: “I’m very happy to be corrected on that point.” But you’re not wrong on the idea that “normal” won’t return in a few weeks. Schools should close now, and may not reopen after 2 weeks. They may stay closed for several months, and “normal’ might be a year or more away if this truly becomes endemic. But that shouldn’t stop us from doing what we can now, and making further decisions when the time comes and things are more clear. People need to focus on the decisions of today, which are meant to flatten the curve. - Kay - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 2:01 pm: Illinois has more cases than everyone but New York and King County so technically we should close because everyone else who has less than us have already closed but if that makes the workers lose jobs and money then maybe they are smarter. We have a crisis on our hands, we need to handle it calmly. We should close the school and at the same time close work that can’t be on online. - cc - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 2:46 pm: All 4 children in family are under 3 years old and luckily are cared for in family homes and are cared for by non working grandparents and great grandparents all younger than me. So they are all in safer situations. I’m 77,have history of respiratory and heart issues and live by myself. I don’t drive, family brings food etc. But 4 of 6 adults in family work in healthcare facilities including hospital ERs or walk-in promptcare type facilities and another family member has 2 heart stents and I am greatly worried about all of them. I think about all of the healthcare workers that have kids in school and/or have their own health issues making them vulnerable. I’m sure there are many more people in much worse situations and my heart goes out to them. We’ve heard stories about people that know that they have been exposed to regular flu or new virus and lie about it or just continue to not take precautions. Be well folks and do unto other and you would have them do unto you. - Fixer - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 4:08 pm: All schools closed starting Tuesday through March 30th. - Joe Bidenopolous - Friday, Mar 13, 20 @ 4:11 pm: ==But you’re not wrong on the idea that “normal” won’t return in a few weeks. Schools should close now, and may not reopen after 2 weeks. They may stay closed for several months, and “normal’ might be a year or more away=== Jibba gets it. I suspect most kids have seen their last in-person instructional day of the 2019-2020 academic year. “Normal” as in day-to-day normal might - emphasis might - start to return in the fall. The economy will take 12-24 months but eventually should roar back. It’s a transcendent time, unfortunate that many don’t realize it. They soon will. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.