Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Since July, President Trump has been calling
Speaker 1: for schools to open this fall for in person learning.
Speaker 1: Some schools that have already opened, though had to close
Speaker 1: after coronavirus cases were detected, like a district in Georgia.
Speaker 1: How should schools be making good decisions about whether to open,
Speaker 1: what criteria are relevant to that decision making? If they
Speaker 1: do open, how do they make sure things are safe?
Speaker 1: And what do they do if cases break out? To
Speaker 1: discuss these complicated, difficult questions questions without easy answers, were
Speaker 1: joined by doctor Sean O'Leary. He's Professor of Pediatric actious
Speaker 1: Diseases at the University of Colorado, of practicing pediatrician, and
Speaker 1: he's the vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics
Speaker 1: Committee on Infectious Disease. Sean, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us. Let's just start with basics. What is your
Speaker 1: view about the criteria that school districts should be using
Speaker 1: to decide whether they should open in person and if so,
Speaker 1: just how open they ought to be? So, Folks who
Speaker 1: are using various metrics to decide how to reopen. I
Speaker 1: think all of us all along have been saying we
Speaker 1: would really love to see community transmission as low as
Speaker 1: possible before we safely reopen schools. The metric that is
Speaker 1: used most commonly is the percent positivity. So of all
Speaker 1: the tests that are done, what percentage are positive? Because
Speaker 1: that is a little bit better measure than just pure
Speaker 1: number of cases. Pure number of cases reflects your testing capacity.
Speaker 1: The percent positivity is less sensitive to that. So the
Speaker 1: numbers I've seen thrown around. Some places are using ten percent,
Speaker 1: which I think is clearly too high. Others are using
Speaker 1: five percent. That's probably the most common metric I've seen.
Speaker 1: That's also saw the Harvard School of Public Health is
Speaker 1: recommending three percent. Ideally, I'd love to see it under
Speaker 1: one percent. Honestly, I think there are states in the
Speaker 1: US that are under one percent positivity, and I think
Speaker 1: the fact that they have been able to get there
Speaker 1: says we can all get there, and so the lower
Speaker 1: the better, basically, because the higher you go, the more
Speaker 1: likely you're just going to have to immediately shut down.
Speaker 1: That's striking to me because if we were to aim
Speaker 1: for something, I mean of course it's great to go
Speaker 1: as low as one percent, but if we did only
Speaker 1: reopen schools physically in places where the rate was that low,
Speaker 1: we would really be having many fewer in person reopenings
Speaker 1: than it looks like we're about to have. So am
Speaker 1: I right in hearing you as saying that we're about
Speaker 1: to reopen too many schools physically. I think if someone
Speaker 1: tells you that they can answer that question accurately, they're wrong.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody knows what's going to happen here.
Speaker 1: We've never done this before, and the US has done
Speaker 1: an abysmal job controlling this pandemic as a nation. There
Speaker 1: are some places that have done it well. So I
Speaker 1: think what we need to do right now is look
Speaker 1: to the places where they are reopening where they do
Speaker 1: have low rates of transmission, and see how that goes,
Speaker 1: and be ready to adjust as we see that happening
Speaker 1: over the next weeks to even months. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the dynamics within a school, and to do that, I
Speaker 1: want to start with the question that again has been
Speaker 1: widely discussed, which is the question of probability of transmission
Speaker 1: as between children and teenagers, and probability of them then
Speaker 1: bringing COVID home to other family members. What do we
Speaker 1: actually know about the odds of young people both getting
Speaker 1: and spreading COVID relative to adults. Yeah, so we're talking
Speaker 1: on what is at August seventeenth today, So what I
Speaker 1: tell you today may not be true tomorrow. But at
Speaker 1: this point, probably the best study I can tell you
Speaker 1: about in terms of older children, meaning over ten, is
Speaker 1: the South Korea study, And in that study, it appeared
Speaker 1: that adolescence between I believe ten and nineteen was the
Speaker 1: ages they used in that particular study, were as likely
Speaker 1: to pass the infection to a household member as older adults. Now,
Speaker 1: if you look closely at the numbers in that study, though,
Speaker 1: there were far fewer adolescence in that age group than
Speaker 1: there were in the older adults, and so that raises
Speaker 1: the possibility that they were also less likely to get infected.
Speaker 1: It also may be that they were not out and
Speaker 1: about and so we're not getting infected to be eligible
Speaker 1: to the index case. So there are still some unanswered
Speaker 1: questions for sure in that age group. For the younger children,
Speaker 1: you may have seen a study that was published a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago showing that the younger children particularly children
Speaker 1: under five had higher viral loads when they tested the
Speaker 1: amount of virus based on a PCR test in their nose. Now,
Speaker 1: we had seen a similar study in Germany in April
Speaker 1: where they estimated that the viral loads were similar across
Speaker 1: age groups, it didn't matter what age you were. We've
Speaker 1: not seen that the epidemiology follows that though, based on
Speaker 1: most of the studies we've seen, younger children appear to
Speaker 1: be less likely to get infected and less likely to
Speaker 1: spread the infection to others. I'll give as an example
Speaker 1: the childcare centers in the US. So if you look
Speaker 1: at the places where the states published their outbreak data,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the outbreaks are in places where
Speaker 1: adults congregate. If you look at the childcare center outbreaks,
Speaker 1: in the vast majority of cases, the number of adults
Speaker 1: in the childcare center outbreaks outnumber the number of children
Speaker 1: in those same outbreaks. And so what that tells me
Speaker 1: is that, for whatever reason, reasons we don't understand, those
Speaker 1: younger children seem to be less likely to get infected
Speaker 1: because remember, those are in settings where they're being investigated,
Speaker 1: they're being tested, and they're not finding the infections, and
Speaker 1: those younger kids. So you again, i'd say all of
Speaker 1: this today, it may change very soon as we learn more.
Speaker 1: Speaking of changes over time, in June, you were the
Speaker 1: lead author of a series of recommendations for school reopenings
Speaker 1: produced by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and at the
Speaker 1: time you were arguing to characterize your view that we
Speaker 1: actually ought to be able to do a reasonable amount
Speaker 1: of school reopening in person, more than some skeptics were
Speaker 1: saying at the time. But that was a couple of
Speaker 1: months ago. How are you thinking now about the guideline
Speaker 1: that you wrote them? Yeah, just to be clear, those
Speaker 1: guidelines were absolutely a team effort, and I did write
Speaker 1: a lot of it, but there were a number of
Speaker 1: us that worked on it, and it's not one of
Speaker 1: those things that we claimed individual authorship on. It really
Speaker 1: really was a team effort from the entire academy. But
Speaker 1: in terms of that, I think, you know, in some
Speaker 1: ways a lot has changed since then. In some ways
Speaker 1: things have changed not at all. Right, So, I think
Speaker 1: many of us who work in the fields of caring
Speaker 1: for children, whether that's pediatricians or teachers, really recognize that
Speaker 1: children really need to be in school. The impact that
Speaker 1: children being at home is going to have It's going
Speaker 1: to impact all children, but it's going to disproportionately impact
Speaker 1: our most vulnerable. This pandemic has laid bare the just
Speaker 1: mind boggling disparities that we have here in the US
Speaker 1: in terms of how we take care of our poor,
Speaker 1: how we take care of our elderly, and kids being
Speaker 1: home from school is just going to widen those disparities
Speaker 1: even further than they already are. So I still do
Speaker 1: feel strongly that we somehow need to get kids back
Speaker 1: in school. One of the things that happened shortly after
Speaker 1: we released that guidance was that, in a sense, became weaponized.
Speaker 1: It became a political tool to say we have to
Speaker 1: open schools, and then it was being used in ways
Speaker 1: that we're perhaps not for the betterment of children, but
Speaker 1: for other reasons. We have to have schools open so
Speaker 1: we can reopen the economy. You know, as you've seen
Speaker 1: all along, where decisions about this pandemic are made for
Speaker 1: political reasons. That's when things go the wrong direction. When
Speaker 1: the decision makers are listening to the public health professionals
Speaker 1: and the medical professionals regarding how to handle the pandemic,
Speaker 1: that's where things have gone better. And so that's where
Speaker 1: I say, you know, things have changed in some ways,
Speaker 1: they're the same. I do really want to see all
Speaker 1: kids back in school. I want to see my own
Speaker 1: kids back in school. It's just not safe in many
Speaker 1: many places. What you're describing is incredibly complicated. You know,
Speaker 1: you said, and I completely agree with you, kids need
Speaker 1: to be in school. On the other hand, you don't
Speaker 1: want kids to be in school if it's going to
Speaker 1: mean jump starting the pandemic and we're operating, you're operating
Speaker 1: under tremendous uncertainty. How do you translate the quantifiable risk
Speaker 1: on the one hand and then the more difficult to
Speaker 1: quantify benefits of kids being in school on the other hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the million dollar question, right. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we are stuck here between two unacceptable choices. So with
Speaker 1: that in mind, I think what we have to do
Speaker 1: is make decisions based on what we know and the
Speaker 1: best evidence at the time. And so, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that we haven't talked about that I
Speaker 1: think is worth consider is looking to other countries. There
Speaker 1: have been plenty of other countries who have been able
Speaker 1: to successfully reopen schools not with zero transmission, but very
Speaker 1: very minimal transmission. Now, the US as a whole is
Speaker 1: certainly not in the same place as any of those
Speaker 1: countries Denmark, Norway, South Korea, you all across the world.
Speaker 1: There are places that have gotten a pandemic under control,
Speaker 1: But there are places in the US that are Denmark.
Speaker 1: So there are places that do have rates of transmission
Speaker 1: similar to what they're seeing in those countries. And so
Speaker 1: I think in those places, if we can use the
Speaker 1: mitigation measures that we know work, then I think in
Speaker 1: those places we can safely reopen schools. By safe, I
Speaker 1: think we have to be clear we don't mean zero risk,
Speaker 1: because there's nothing in our society right now that is
Speaker 1: zero risk. And I should mention that just because schools
Speaker 1: are closed doesn't mean that none of the students are
Speaker 1: none of the teachers, or none of the staff are
Speaker 1: not at risk for getting the infection. Right if it's
Speaker 1: circulating the community, they're still at risk. And so it's
Speaker 1: not as simple as a binary calculation. Open schools there
Speaker 1: at risks, keep them closed, they're not. It's not that simple.
Speaker 1: So I think in the places where the virus, when
Speaker 1: it's under some degree of manageable control. Then you start
Speaker 1: with the younger kids, so the childcare centers, the pre K.
Speaker 1: Then you start with K through five, and as you
Speaker 1: achieve success with those students and in those settings, then
Speaker 1: you slowly reintroduce the older children and will also be
Speaker 1: learning best practices along the way in terms of how
Speaker 1: to manage the virus when it gets into school, etc.
Speaker 1: You know success stories about how to encourage younger children
Speaker 1: to wear their masks. You I'm sure seeing the picture
Speaker 1: of that went viral from Georgia, I'm sure that's not
Speaker 1: the only school where you know, kids were congregating and
Speaker 1: not wearing masks. But you know you're not seeing the
Speaker 1: pictures of the success stories, because there are there are
Speaker 1: success stories already. A lot of schools are talking about
Speaker 1: hybrid models, where they say, well, we can't necessarily accommodate
Speaker 1: all of the students who are enrolled in our school
Speaker 1: with social distancing, so we'll bring people in for a
Speaker 1: couple days a week or three days a week in
Speaker 1: a rotated fashion so that we have some in person
Speaker 1: experience and then we switch back to the online. What's
Speaker 1: your instinct about that? I mean, it sounds like a
Speaker 1: good kind of Goldilock solution. You know, it's not too much,
Speaker 1: not too little, but it also obviously will only work
Speaker 1: decently in places where all the kids have reasonable access
Speaker 1: to online learning possibilities. I agree it has some appeal,
Speaker 1: but you know, when you really think about it, what
Speaker 1: problems is it's solving. You know, yes, it does get
Speaker 1: some face times, some socialization for students, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: solve the problem of the disparities in internet access. It
Speaker 1: doesn't solve the problems of trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: a family handles a child in the home, particularly for
Speaker 1: the younger children. And so I think it does offer
Speaker 1: some potential solutions, but I think it's a short term solution.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you can probably speak to this
Speaker 1: as well as I can having Zoom meetings. It doesn't
Speaker 1: work as well as having an in person meeting. People
Speaker 1: are easily distracted. I can't imagine how easily distracted I
Speaker 1: would have been as a high school student. I'm distracted
Speaker 1: enough when I try to have Zoom meetings, right, So
Speaker 1: I think trying to show that that that's going to
Speaker 1: be a good educational model I think doesn't really make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. I mean, is it going to
Speaker 1: work for some students, sure, but for the majority of students,
Speaker 1: I think it's less than optimal relative to in person learning.
Speaker 1: I know you actually got COVID early in this process,
Speaker 1: and I think from what I read that your wife
Speaker 1: did too. So first, I hope you guys are feeling
Speaker 1: better now. Yeah, so we both got pretty sick. We
Speaker 1: weren't hospitalized, but I was sick for about two weeks.
Speaker 1: She was sick for about three weeks. She was a
Speaker 1: little sicker than I was, and it was, you know,
Speaker 1: as advertise, it was pretty miserable. It is one of
Speaker 1: the many frustrating and but fascinating aspects of this virus
Speaker 1: that you know forty percent of people are asymptomatic, because
Speaker 1: we sure weren't. But I actually have ended up being
Speaker 1: one of those long haulers. So I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've heard much about that. But I was well for
Speaker 1: about two weeks and then was you know, had gotten back.
Speaker 1: I'm a runner and I'd gotten back into running, and
Speaker 1: I guess I just pushed it a little bit too much.
Speaker 1: Then after a long run one day, I said, WHOA,
Speaker 1: that feels like when I was sick. And that's pretty
Speaker 1: much happened since then, so you know, I'm functioning. I'm okay,
Speaker 1: you know. And some of the people that have these
Speaker 1: long term symptoms are most it sounds like, are much
Speaker 1: worse off than me. They're having ongoing fevers and severe headaches.
Speaker 1: I just have some some chest tightness and sort of
Speaker 1: occasional malaise. I would call it just feeling kind of
Speaker 1: lousy that kind of comes and goes in a in
Speaker 1: a fairly unpredictable fashion. But it's a very, very strange virus.
Speaker 1: It's like nothing I've ever felt before. And through this,
Speaker 1: your kids manage not to get it. Yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: another thing, right, there's my n of two, my two kids.
Speaker 1: We initially had thought that perhaps we got it from
Speaker 1: them because we got sick around the same time, which
Speaker 1: suggested a common exposure, rather than say you bring it
Speaker 1: home from the hospital. Right. So, No, I was not
Speaker 1: doing any clinical time at that point. My wife was,
Speaker 1: and so it's possible that she picked it up at clinic.
Speaker 1: It was before that people were being really careful because
Speaker 1: this was in March, so it's possible. Although I got
Speaker 1: sick only twelve hours after she did, but our kids
Speaker 1: never got sick. We actually had their antibodies tested and
Speaker 1: they were negative. So you know, there's my n of
Speaker 1: two that kids are less likely to get infected. I
Speaker 1: don't know. You know, we were both sick enough that
Speaker 1: we were not being particularly good about distancing with our
Speaker 1: kids in the house. When you think about the broader
Speaker 1: cultural implications of this period of time for kids, how
Speaker 1: do you imagine they're going to come to make sense
Speaker 1: of this over the long run. And obviously that's going
Speaker 1: to be different if a year from now we have
Speaker 1: evidence of vaccines working and we have distribution of vaccines
Speaker 1: and things go back to normal, then it will be
Speaker 1: if a year from now we instead think that the
Speaker 1: vaccines don't work that well, or perhaps you know, heaven forbid,
Speaker 1: don't work at all, and we start to reintegrate our
Speaker 1: lives sort of accepting a high probability of getting the virus.
Speaker 1: But when you think just right now about what life
Speaker 1: is like for kids, how do you think they're going
Speaker 1: to make sense of this over the course of their lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really interesting question. I actually when this all started,
Speaker 1: even you know, in February, I was trying to encourage
Speaker 1: my kids to write a journal this is a historic time.
Speaker 1: There's probably hopefully that could be another time like this
Speaker 1: in our lifetimes. How'd that work out for you? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have not. I encouraged it, but they haven't, So
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I think it's fascinating. I
Speaker 1: don't think I have a thing I can look back
Speaker 1: on in my lifetime and say, oh, they're going to
Speaker 1: remember it that because we really have not experienced this.
Speaker 1: You know, kids are fairly resilient, and I do think,
Speaker 1: you know, the majority of kids are going to be
Speaker 1: able to bounce back from this when we get into
Speaker 1: a new time. But boy, I can't wait to get
Speaker 1: to the other side of this and see. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have to say, I'm astonished by how well my
Speaker 1: kids have dealt with it. And I can't make out
Speaker 1: whether it's because of the famous resilience of kids, which
Speaker 1: I would like to be the answer, or because so
Speaker 1: much of their social experience was already online that they're
Speaker 1: able to have much more continuity in terms of it
Speaker 1: being a percentage of what their social life is like
Speaker 1: than it was true for me or for other adults
Speaker 1: who aren't digital natives. That's a really good point. I mean,
Speaker 1: my kids have sort of been the same. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a whole other conversation, but what
Speaker 1: is the impact of all this digital time on our kids?
Speaker 1: All this screen time. It's I've certainly watched my fair
Speaker 1: share TV when I was growing up. I also was,
Speaker 1: like many other kids, out playing, probably at least as much,
Speaker 1: you know, with the kids in the neighborhood as I
Speaker 1: was watching TV, if not more. Whereas you know, nowadays,
Speaker 1: I think of many many kids are spending much much
Speaker 1: more time on screens, and I think that, in reality,
Speaker 1: you know, may have a bigger impact on our kids
Speaker 1: than this pandemic. But I don't think any of us
Speaker 1: really knows what that means in the longer term. Let
Speaker 1: me close by asking you a kind of what if question.
Speaker 1: As we get these reopenings, and as some districts, even
Speaker 1: districts with low prevalence numbers, reopen and then get salient
Speaker 1: cases transmitted in schools, there's going to be some reaction,
Speaker 1: and it could be in the line of panic reaction,
Speaker 1: Oh no, we have cases, let's shut everything down, or
Speaker 1: it could be a more moderated reaction in the form of, well, statistically,
Speaker 1: if we do this in lots of places. Inevitably, they're
Speaker 1: going to be some places where the numbers are going
Speaker 1: to go up. So let's all, you know, keep our
Speaker 1: clothes on and try to be rational and move slowly.
Speaker 1: This My questions are too, First, which should be the reaction.
Speaker 1: Should we say, oh, this isn't working broader shutdowns or
Speaker 1: should we be a little more cautious about it? And second,
Speaker 1: what do you think will actually happen in the real world. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the reality is happening already in some of
Speaker 1: the places where schools have opened, and unfortunately, the examples
Speaker 1: are getting in the news media are in the places where,
Speaker 1: you know, where there's widespread community transmission, where it's completely
Speaker 1: not a surprise that they've had those problems. I do
Speaker 1: think we need to have rational conversations about how to
Speaker 1: handle it. We also need to recognize that it's going
Speaker 1: to happen. I mean, it's it's inevitable that there will
Speaker 1: be cases in schools, just as it's inevitable that there
Speaker 1: will be cases in the community. So we have to
Speaker 1: prepare for that. We have to plan for that, and
Speaker 1: you know, the districts and public health departments around the
Speaker 1: country are are already doing that. They're making those plans
Speaker 1: for what happens when a student gets sick, what happens
Speaker 1: when a teacher gets sick, you know, as you put it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we need to have a measured response to that
Speaker 1: and not close at the first sign of an infection
Speaker 1: has been transmitted in school. Now, if we do see
Speaker 1: I think this is not going to be the case.
Speaker 1: But for example, if we do see that in places
Speaker 1: where there is low community transmission, that all of a
Speaker 1: sudden the schools become sort of these super spreader events,
Speaker 1: then we have to take a big step back. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's going to happen, though, because if you
Speaker 1: look at the countries where they've done it right, that's
Speaker 1: not been the case. To me. The hard part is
Speaker 1: going to be we are a big country. Lots of
Speaker 1: places are going to reopen, and it's going to happen somewhere.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you say it's not going to happen,
Speaker 1: I agree with you that on the whole. Statistically, the
Speaker 1: best reading of the statistics is that probabilistically it won't
Speaker 1: happen in many, many, many places. But it's just in
Speaker 1: the nature of an experiment with a large n that
Speaker 1: some outlying events will occur, and then in our media world,
Speaker 1: it's guaranteed that those will be the ones that get
Speaker 1: the salient news coverage. And that to me is where
Speaker 1: the rubber meets the road. You know, when there's one
Speaker 1: school district or two school districts or even five around
Speaker 1: the country that do have super spreader events and those
Speaker 1: are being splashed all over the television, then what does
Speaker 1: everybody else do? That is a moment where people will
Speaker 1: come to you and say, okay, doctor Larry, tell us
Speaker 1: what to do, and how will you try to differentiate
Speaker 1: in that moment between outlying cases and a trend that
Speaker 1: does look like, boy, we need to reevaluate in light
Speaker 1: of the new data. You know, my approach. I think
Speaker 1: for many of us, our approach has been all along
Speaker 1: to just keep a very open mind and recognize that
Speaker 1: there's a lot we don't understand right now about this
Speaker 1: virus and that we're learning more every day. And I
Speaker 1: think we have to take that approach going forward and
Speaker 1: be ready to change course and not have our heels
Speaker 1: dug in that our course of action is correct. So
Speaker 1: I think that's the first thing. The other thing, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm Sarmont Colorado. And one of the things that we
Speaker 1: are trying to do is set up you know, somewhat
Speaker 1: of a buddy system for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: between physicians, pediatricians, internists, family docs, and school districts and
Speaker 1: teachers so that we can all be in these conversations together,
Speaker 1: you know, the folks that are on the ground making
Speaker 1: these decisions, to be able to have a dialogue so
Speaker 1: that everyone is on the same page. Okay, we've got
Speaker 1: too many cases. Now we need to stop. Let's reevaluate
Speaker 1: and work together to figure out how we're going to
Speaker 1: reopen schools. Because when you have these factions of you know, say,
Speaker 1: a group of teachers and a group of you know,
Speaker 1: medical professionals, and a group of public health folks and
Speaker 1: a group of politicians all saying different things, obviously it's
Speaker 1: that's not going to work. I want to thank you
Speaker 1: for your time today, but also for the work you're
Speaker 1: doing to try to bring reason and logic to some
Speaker 1: very very difficult decisions under really really challenging conditions. Thank
Speaker 1: you for that. And I also hope that your symptoms
Speaker 1: ease and you can get back to running. I know
Speaker 1: that to lose the endorphin rush is pretty devastating in
Speaker 1: its own right. Yeah, thank you very much. I really
Speaker 1: really enjoyed talking to me. Listening to doctor O'Leary really
Speaker 1: brought home to me the almost impossibility of making well
Speaker 1: thought through choices about questions as difficult and as fraught
Speaker 1: as reopening schools. First, there's the business of trying to
Speaker 1: balance two things that aren't obviously comparable to each other.
Speaker 1: Kids need to be in school and the benefits of
Speaker 1: their exposure to education and to other kids on the
Speaker 1: one hand, and the risk of the transmission of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus on the other hand. Then there's the problem of
Speaker 1: how school districts, run usually by elected public officials who
Speaker 1: operate in interaction with teachers and teachers unions can make
Speaker 1: good decisions in the light of the advice they're getting
Speaker 1: from the scientific and medical community, without being unduly influenced
Speaker 1: by the pressures of the outside world, but positively taking
Speaker 1: into account the preferences of the public. That's an even
Speaker 1: harder problem. Finally, take this entire mess and throw it
Speaker 1: into an election year cycle, and it becomes almost impossible
Speaker 1: to imagine this decision making process proceeding in a way
Speaker 1: that's satisfactory. Add to that the fact that this is
Speaker 1: the United States and we have thousands upon thousands of
Speaker 1: school districts all over the country that will have to
Speaker 1: make independent, decentralized decisions, all under very different local conditions.
Speaker 1: Given all this complexity, what Sean has done is to
Speaker 1: lay out for us what he thinks we should be
Speaker 1: thinking about. We should be thinking about the rate of
Speaker 1: community transmission. We should be thinking about the value to
Speaker 1: kids of being in a social situation and of getting
Speaker 1: an education. We should be thinking about the vast, morally
Speaker 1: troubling disparities in wealth and in background, and in socioeconomic
Speaker 1: status and in race that have inflected the entire COVID process,
Speaker 1: and which are very very present when it comes to
Speaker 1: figuring out who goes to school and who can learn
Speaker 1: at home, and what conditions obtain in both of those situations.
Speaker 1: We are, after all, talking about an educational system in
Speaker 1: the United States that itself is plagued by disparities associated
Speaker 1: with wealth, even when there's no pandemic going on. Last,
Speaker 1: but not least, Sean is urging us and officials in
Speaker 1: schools to use some common sense to be rational in
Speaker 1: updating in the light of new information, but simultaneously not
Speaker 1: to treat outlying cases as though they're a sign that
Speaker 1: we should absolutely reverse course. Probably for me, that's the
Speaker 1: most powerful lesson here. We should not be jumping to conclusions.
Speaker 1: We should be acting cautiously and carefully, weighing and balancing
Speaker 1: different values, and understanding that the choices that we face
Speaker 1: are in some way unacceptable choice. Nevertheless, they are the
Speaker 1: choices that we are being forced to make. I won't
Speaker 1: say that I walked away from my conversation with Sean
Speaker 1: feeling more optimistic about our ability to make these decisions well,
Speaker 1: but it was a reminder that they have to be made,
Speaker 1: whether we like it or not. Until the next time
Speaker 1: we speak. Be careful, be safe, and be well. Deep
Speaker 1: Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer
Speaker 1: is Lydia Jane Cott, with mastering by Jason Gambrell and
Speaker 1: Martin Gonzalez. Our showrunner is Sophia mckibbon. Our theme music
Speaker 1: is composed by Luis GERA special thanks to the Pushkin
Speaker 1: Brass Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman.
Speaker 1: I also write a regular column for Bloomberg Opinion, which
Speaker 1: you can find at Bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To
Speaker 1: discover of Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts, go to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com slash Podcasts. And one last thing. I just
Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Arab Winter, A Tragedy. I
Speaker 1: would be delighted if you check it out. If you
Speaker 1: liked what you heard today, please write a review or
Speaker 1: tell a friend. You can always let me know what
Speaker 1: you think on Twitter. My handle is Noah r Felt.
Speaker 1: This is deep background