Yet another excellent post from Effect Measure about what we should be doing in our schools to get ready for a panflu. Schools are a frequent topic of discussion among people concerned about a panflu because, as Revere writes, "school age children might be the drivers of seasonal influenza epidemics." So closing them to stop or ameliorate a panflu makes sense. Revere looks at some of the obvious implications:
If "social distancing" (a euphemism for artificially making it difficult for people to be near each other) is going to be a prominent tactic during a pandemic, school closings will be one application. Federal and state officials are already discussing plans for this. And they should. But schools serve purposes besides education: childcare for working parents, nutrition via school lunches for poor children, ways to disseminate information to parents and much more. If you close them you also have to make provisions for the consequences, as the modeling suggests. Closing wouldn't be for a day or a week, but probably for weeks or a month or more. The consequences would ripple throughout the community. There is not good time for a pandemic, but this is an especially bad time in the US. The tax cut craze at home and the export of hundreds of billions abroad for the Iraq War has left us defenseless. If irony weren't already dead . . . .
So what to do about schools? Parent Teacher groups and local school officials should designate a committee to start meeting on a regular basis to review developments, hold public meetings of the school community and consult with other agencies and voluntary organizations. There are a number of immediate problems to solve. Who is going to make the decision to close and on what basis? When a closure occurs, what will be the various consequences? Taking them one at a time and dividing the labor, what are some ways we can think of ahead of time to work around those consequences?
This year my school district went through a seven-week teachers' strike. It was painful for parents, financially and emotionally, and that was without the fear and inevitable hassles of dealing with a deadly virus spreading through the community. We should all be active in our local communities looking ahead at how a panflu will affect schools and a dozen other necessary institutions now when we have the luxury of relative calm to do it.
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