Two views on reopening schools

The papers I read in the morning (and throughout the day, truth be told) offered two differing views on Trump’s push to reopen the schools in the fall – and not partially, but with all kids in school five days a week. Of course, that can’t be done if the schools follow the CDC guidance, but no problem – Trump’s going to get the CDC to rewrite the guidance! Doesn’t that make you feel better?

First view: Leana Wen, an epidemiologist and former Baltimore health commissioner, has another great column on the pandemic in the Washington Post. She has some very sensible advice about testing, etc. But she leads by saying this: “The single most important requirement for resuming in-person instruction is suppressing the level of covid-19 infections in the community.” And she notes “the White House’s own guidelines prohibit schools from reopening until the community has reached Phase 2 — defined, at minimum, as recording a consistent decline in new infections.”

She follows that by pointing out that infections are rising in 40 states. Does that sound like a good environment to be opening schools in? But she also points out that this could be turned around in many cases by one thing: universal mask wearing. So if Trump is so concerned about opening schools in the fall, the best way to promote that – rather than threatening to withhold funds for districts that don’t do his bidding, which is a sure-fire loser in the courts and in public opinion – is for him to do a complete 180 on masks: wear them all the time in public and aggressively advocate that everyone else wear them.

But there is another view, which I saw in Rex Huppke’s column in today’s Chicago Tribune, and in Alexandra Petri’s column in today’s Post: We should force kids to return to school, with or without safety precautions in place, because this will promote toughness and resilience. After all, it’s a cruel world out there, and only the tough survive. It’s about time your 7-year-old learned this!

The numbers

These numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my numbers all along). No other variables go into the projected numbers – they are all projections based on yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 deaths, which was 3%.

Note that the “accuracy” of the projected numbers diminishes greatly after 3-4 weeks. This is because, up until 3-4 weeks, deaths could in theory be predicted very accurately, if one knew the real number of cases. In other words, the people who are going to die in the next 3-4 weeks of Covid-19 are already sick with the disease, even though they may not know it yet. But this means that the trend in deaths should be some indicator of the level of infection 3-4 weeks previous.

However, once we get beyond 3-4 weeks, deaths become more and more dependent on policies and practices that are put in place – or removed, as is more the case nowadays - after today (as well as other factors like the widespread availability of an effective treatment, if not a real “cure”). Yet I still think there’s value in just trending out the current rate of increase in deaths, since it gives some indication of what will happen in the near term if there are no significant intervening changes.

Week ending	Deaths reported during week/month	Avg. deaths per day during week/month	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
March 7	18	3
March 14	38	5
March 21	244	35
March 28	1,928	275
Month of March	4,058	131
April 4	6,225	889
April 11	12,126	1,732
April 18	18,434	2,633
April 25	15,251	2,179
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
May 2	13,183	1,883
May 9	12,592	1,799
May 16	10,073	1,439
May 23	8,570	1,224
May 30	6,874	982
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
June 6	6,544	935
June 13	5,427	775
June 20	4,457	637
June 27	6,167	881
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
July 4	4,166	595
July 11	4,132	590
July 18	4,262	609
July 25	4,395	628
Month of July	19,277	622	81%
Total March – July	149,399

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 133,991

Increase in deaths since previous day: 705

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 3% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 3% yesterday. There is a 7-day cycle in the reported deaths numbers, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the three-day percent increase I used to focus on, and certainly not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases: 3,097,538

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 56,409

Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 2%

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 14%

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 1,355,524

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 133,991

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 9%

For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post. Short answer: If this percentage declines, that’s good. It’s been steadily declining since a high of 41% at the end of March. But a good number would be 2%, like South Korea’s. An OK number would be 4%, like China’s.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com