No one has said a drastic impact. But when you're talking a sample of 50,000,000 kids, a teeny-tiny % of them dying is still a bunch of kids.
So I guess the consensus here is that their deaths are acceptable, too. Add their bodies to the scores of teachers and support staff then. Multitudes more of their deaths - maybe it'll help minimalize the dead children. Maybe cover their bodies up with the larger teachers...you know, so the local pizza shop can stay open.
OAM, you have to understand that there is a reason for a balance.
Just as nobody is suggesting that we furlough all the police or fire departments, or that we tell doctors and nurses that we should close all the hospitals, because there is significant social value to having certain essential services. How many deaths of our doctors and nurses are acceptable?
What happens to those kids if we have a year entirely composed of distance learning? I can tell you as a father of three, their distance learning was nowhere near as complete as in-person education. For my 11 year old autistic child who needs more individualized instruction using specialized techniques? Distance learning was effing useless. That goes beyond all the negative social impacts from being out of school for the year.
You talk about the "masses" with derision [which I get; I do it too]. What's going to happen to the students across the country when their parents--the "masses" you speak so critically of--have to be their substitute teacher for a year?
Our youth won't be meaningfully hurt if the local pizza shop closes. They WILL be meaningfully hurt by a year without school.
Oh, and for those adults who absolutely must physically go to work? Guess what, those kids might get exposed to COVID in their day care or whatever child care situation their parents have to put them in, but won't get the benefit of actually having a teacher instruct them during the day.
The questions is how can we quantify the risk of school, and is that risk larger than the reward of being in school? So far, the limited evidence suggests that as it relates to their own health, children are an extremely low-risk group. You say "multitudes" of deaths... But can you quantify that? Will it be higher or lower than the number of kids who die in car accidents on their way to/from school every year? While every death is a tragedy, are they at high enough risk that we're going to shunt every child's intellectual development by giving them a year off school?
