If the school shuts down the kids will just go back to the street. We do not send kids back into school when we observe transmission from kids being out of school. The evidence from Emily Oster suggest that there isn’t much difference in transmission.
Also, I would argue that a small amount of transmission is worth educating our children, especially with 70-80% of the vulnerable vaccinated. Overall dividing life years lost by transmissions comes to 2 weeks per confirmed infections, so call that the base cost. Reduce it by 75% for targeted vaccination and each case is costing ~3 days of a persons life. And the student infections are the least dangerous kind. I could go either way on it if the alternative were no transmission. Since the alternative is about the same transmission rate but somewhere else, I say keep the schools open.
OTOH, the incentive argument is much stronger. Maybe the collective punishment forces the school to internalize the cost of transmission, leading to a pareto improving safe-school equilibrium.
If the school shuts down the kids will just go back to the street. We do not send kids back into school when we observe transmission from kids being out of school. The evidence from Emily Oster suggest that there isn’t much difference in transmission.
Also, I would argue that a small amount of transmission is worth educating our children, especially with 70-80% of the vulnerable vaccinated. Overall dividing life years lost by transmissions comes to 2 weeks per confirmed infections, so call that the base cost. Reduce it by 75% for targeted vaccination and each case is costing ~3 days of a persons life. And the student infections are the least dangerous kind. I could go either way on it if the alternative were no transmission. Since the alternative is about the same transmission rate but somewhere else, I say keep the schools open.
OTOH, the incentive argument is much stronger. Maybe the collective punishment forces the school to internalize the cost of transmission, leading to a pareto improving safe-school equilibrium.