Speaker 1: It's Friday, January. I'm Oscar Emrrors from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America. CDC
Speaker 1: officials have said that it might be time to reopen schools.
Speaker 1: The most available evidence says that in person instruction can
Speaker 1: be safely carried out if proper precautions like mask wearing
Speaker 1: is followed and a community willing to impose restrictions on
Speaker 1: other settings like bars and indoor dining. Ronnie Rabin, health
Speaker 1: writer at The New York Times, joins us for white
Speaker 1: schools maybe on the path to opening back up. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us, Ronnie, Hi, thank you. Nice to be here.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's been plaguing the country really
Speaker 1: when it comes to the pandemic and reopening has really
Speaker 1: been schools. How do we get our children back into schools?
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of discussion. We had to
Speaker 1: close all the schools at the beginning of the pandemic.
Speaker 1: No one knew what really what was going on. We
Speaker 1: found out that younger people, children are spared some of
Speaker 1: the worst effects of coronavirus, and there was lots of
Speaker 1: calls to open schools. They opened and they closed. It
Speaker 1: was it was really like a roller coaster going on
Speaker 1: with it. But now CDC officials are weighing in and
Speaker 1: saying that the available evidence we have say that we
Speaker 1: can open schools safely if the proper precautions are taken.
Speaker 1: There are some caveats though, we need to deal with
Speaker 1: community spread. For the most part, school should be the
Speaker 1: last places to close and the first places to open
Speaker 1: when we're doing shutdown. So Ronnie, tell us what we're learning.
Speaker 1: I think what's really going on if it were as
Speaker 1: we come in and we're entering the second year of
Speaker 1: this in which all of our lives have been altered,
Speaker 1: but certainly for children who aren't in regular school, these
Speaker 1: are huge developmental, very important, critically important periods in their lives.
Speaker 1: I mean a year in the life of a child
Speaker 1: is is huge, huge changes go on, and I think
Speaker 1: there's increasing concern about the deficits that aren't just educational,
Speaker 1: but are also kind of just holistic in a child's life.
Speaker 1: You know, it's their social life and their peers and
Speaker 1: all the services schools provide, and they are most physical
Speaker 1: health and so many developmental milestones that people are concerned
Speaker 1: about them not making just the basic thing of getting
Speaker 1: up in the morning and having a routine and getting
Speaker 1: yourself organized and getting out of the house. I mean,
Speaker 1: just that basic kind of structure, as well as the
Speaker 1: services that are really vital for kids who are abused.
Speaker 1: You don't get food at home. So I think there's
Speaker 1: increasing concern and there's a lot of push. A lot
Speaker 1: of parents really want the kids back in school and
Speaker 1: see what it's doing to their kids. And there are
Speaker 1: studies showing that it can be done safely, but in
Speaker 1: a very different way. The schools are different, they look
Speaker 1: different than they used to. And what the CDC, these
Speaker 1: CDC officials and it's not the official policy, but these
Speaker 1: are CDC top officials and researchers are saying is that
Speaker 1: we have some studies now that show that it can
Speaker 1: be done safely in the sense of schools aren't nursing homes.
Speaker 1: Schools are are not going to have to spark these
Speaker 1: enormous outbreaks and conflagrations that spread through the community. One
Speaker 1: specific study that they looked at seventeen elementary and secondary
Speaker 1: schools in Wisconsin and where mask wearing was routine. That
Speaker 1: seems to be one of the main components to all this.
Speaker 1: But during thirteen weeks in the fall of there was
Speaker 1: only a hundred and ninety one infections among staff and students,
Speaker 1: and only seven of those were from in school transmission,
Speaker 1: so very very low numbers. But these were also schools
Speaker 1: in rural Wisconsin that were smaller than a lot of
Speaker 1: schools in big cities. That's the newest study. They looked
Speaker 1: at a number of studies that have come out, and
Speaker 1: there was once in North Carolina in which they found
Speaker 1: infections within the school are very rare. There were infections,
Speaker 1: but there weren't any students of staff transmission. Remember one
Speaker 1: of the big concerns. As we know, the kids overall
Speaker 1: do fairly well with this disease, but teachers and staff
Speaker 1: are concerned. And that's where you're getting a lot of
Speaker 1: the pushbacks from the teachers and the unions who are
Speaker 1: worried about their health. They're older, they're more likely to suffer.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, on the other hand, I
Speaker 1: had to take back what I just said. In Israel,
Speaker 1: they started saying the schools of their new nursing homes
Speaker 1: because they were actually big outbreaks that did start in
Speaker 1: a high school that had very large class and the
Speaker 1: air condition was on kids weren't wearing masks with the CDC.
Speaker 1: I think is trying to say here is we need
Speaker 1: to prioritize schools and not just businesses. That we maybe
Speaker 1: we need to weigh things a little differently. We may
Speaker 1: need to cut back a little bit on what we're
Speaker 1: allowing in terms of businesses in order to let to
Speaker 1: keep the rates low and let the kids go to
Speaker 1: school and realize it as a social good that's incredibly important.
Speaker 1: That was one of the big caveats there. They said, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's reopen schools, and we're doing this as a community. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we need to impose those limits on other settings, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned your things like indoor dining bars, poorly ventilated areas.
Speaker 1: You know, it's that give and take, but that school
Speaker 1: should be a priority in that at least. And Emily Anser,
Speaker 1: who's a ground professor who has a project tracking infection
Speaker 1: rates in schools, said, you know, I can take my
Speaker 1: kid to an indoor quarter park, but a lot of
Speaker 1: schools and Massachusetts are closed. So that's kind of the
Speaker 1: balancing we're talking about. Again. The schools have to have
Speaker 1: certain things in place, will have to wear masks, kids
Speaker 1: have to wear masks, there has to be social distancing.
Speaker 1: They may need some way of the crowding schools of
Speaker 1: facing kids out, need good air ventilation in the school,
Speaker 1: need a lot of screening and testing so that if
Speaker 1: you pick up the case you can deal with it
Speaker 1: right away, and need to continue to have the option
Speaker 1: of highbred or online attendance for kids who have risky conditions.
Speaker 1: So it's not simple what have they learned in terms
Speaker 1: of testing? Because I noticed in your article you wrote
Speaker 1: a little bit about some of the people from the
Speaker 1: American Federation of Teachers and kind of what they were
Speaker 1: noticing when they saw testing among teachers that we're working remotely,
Speaker 1: working in class. What did they say about that? What
Speaker 1: they have found in one of the arguments is that
Speaker 1: you don't see higher rates among the staff and teachers
Speaker 1: than in the community case rates. Of course, we don't
Speaker 1: have the data. We don't have any national track and
Speaker 1: we have some voluntary data that's being put in a
Speaker 1: dashboard where we don't really have complete data by any means.
Speaker 1: But generally the rates have been similar, certainly not higher,
Speaker 1: but there has been an increase in the case right
Speaker 1: among keys and staff. Pagers have increased everywhere, but they've
Speaker 1: increased a little bit faster. But on the out hand,
Speaker 1: they've been increasing among teachers who are teaching remotely as well.
Speaker 1: So we don't know, we don't know exactly what's going on. Well,
Speaker 1: we know that reopening schools is a priority for President Biden.
Speaker 1: I know as you mentioned parents, teachers, they you know,
Speaker 1: they want to get back to normal on this. So
Speaker 1: maybe with some of these CDC officials speaking out, maybe
Speaker 1: we can get some proper guidance. And Ronnie Rabin health
Speaker 1: rider at the New York Times, thank you very much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thank you. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this
Speaker 1: has been reopening America. Don't forget after today's big news stories.
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