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So it’s here. Schools close across the state beginning Monday, staying closed at least ten days, some longer (checking you district or school website for details).
This will cause hardships, no doubt. Working parents will have to figure out how to see that their suddenly home children will be tended, particularly younger children.
There is the issue of meals for students from poorer families who receive free school lunches under the federal program. Gov.Tom Wolf announced an arrangement is being made to get those lunches to eligible students in a “non-congregate” setting, such as driving up in a car, but no system will be as efficient as the classic school lunch time, and children almost certainly will slip through the cracks.
There will almost certainly be mixed results in the efforts to prevent a backward slide in academic success. And while most districts had enough time to devise some sort of system for instruction to continue at home (mostly via the internet), this is not yet a strength of brick and mortar schools (Colleges, by comparison, had a considerable head start in remote learning, having been pushed by growing competition to offer more coursework online. All local colleges and universities switched to remote-only learning earlier this in the week).
Add the school closings to all the other “not now” decisions — no sports, no broadway plays, no St. Patrick’s Day parades, no other large gatherings previously planned — and it’s easy to see how some people view it all as overkill.
Be assured, it is not.
We need look no further than Italy to see the need to contain this virus. An article in The Atlantic Wednesday gave grim numbers from that nation.
Two weeks ago, Italy had 322 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. … One week ago, Italy had 2,502 cases of the virus …Today, Italy has 10,149 cases of the coronavirus.
The article goes on to explain the real problem: It’s not that Italy couldn’t handle that many cases, it’s that it couldn’t handle them happening in so short a time. They ran out of doctors, respirators, beds and more. They also started running out of time, and had to make triage decisions similar to hospital near a combat zone: Deciding who gets treated and who waits, rather than helping all equally.
Curbing the spread of Covid-19 is only part of the reason for all these closings. A bigger reason is what experts call “flattening the curve.” Italy’s problems arose because the curve was steep. Think of a climbing a hill in the middle of a flat stretch. If the hill rises steeply and drops as fast, it’s more work to walk over. If it rises more slowly and not as high, you may be climbing longer but you won’t be breathing as hard.
We need to make the curve less steep, the grade on the hill more gentle. If 1,000 people all require hospitalization in a week or two, the system is overwhelmed. If the same number need hospitalization across a month or three, each at different times, hospitals and the medical system can handle it.
The “social distance” these closures creates should flatten the curve. Viruses need crowds. As Yascha Mounk, the author of The Atlantic piece, put it, “The obligation facing the United States is very clear: To arrest the crisis before the impossible becomes necessary.“
Robbed of the many things you would have done, you need to remember that you may find yourself alone as we fight this, but you are not fighting it alone.