Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close

Re:Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close by giarc on Thursday February 27, 2020 @10:08AM (#22433886)

There's a good discussion on today's episode of the Daily podcast (Feb 27). Basically the theory is that children often get the 4x regular coronavirus strains and this provides a bit of protection against the new coronavirus strain. Therefore they tend to get subacute cases of coronavirus but can still spread.

Here's an unintended consequence of closing schools though. Who often takes care of children when schools are unexpectedly closed? Grandparents. So in a way, they could be making this worse.

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Re:Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close by davidw on Thursday February 27, 2020 @11:16AM (#22434514)

Kids staying at home with grandparents means far smaller groups of people though.

When my daughter started preschool... boy did she ever bring home every type of disease known to science. We ended up pulling her out and just having her grandparents look after her, which worked out really well, because I kept getting sick and missing work myself.

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Re:Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close by giarc on Thursday February 27, 2020 @12:05PM (#22435153)

>Kids staying at home with grandparents means far smaller groups of people though.

No, it means smaller groups of kids, but not for those seniors. They still go about their day, visiting with friends etc.

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Re:Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close by davidw on Thursday February 27, 2020 @12:08PM (#22435193)

They can choose to not do that. Kids can't just take care of themselves on their own, they need an adult to take care of them. And seniors are a lot better about washing their hands and other things than young kids in big groups are.

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Re:Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close by zweep on Thursday February 27, 2020 @11:41AM (#22434851)

But those preschools build immunity.

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Re:Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close by sp332 on Thursday February 27, 2020 @11:51AM (#22434972)

Being "immune" just means your body can fight the infection effectively. It doesn't mean you don't get infected and can't spread the disease for a short amount of time.

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Re:Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close by ilamont on Thursday February 27, 2020 @11:02AM (#22434394)

I believe in Japan most married women stop working when they have children (https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a04601/japanese-women-fac...) but in other countries where both parents are working, closing schools would be very disruptive.

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Re:Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close by giarc on Thursday February 27, 2020 @12:06PM (#22435162)

You are correct, my view is very North American centric. I've never been to Japan so I don't know about childcare and parenting.

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Re:Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close by elihu on Thursday February 27, 2020 @04:22PM (#22438054)

> Basically the theory is that children often get the 4x regular coronavirus strains and this provides a bit of protection against the new coronavirus strain.

If that is true, that would seem to imply that one could improve one's resistance of COVID-19 by deliberately infecting themself with one or more non-COVID-19 coronaviruses. (Not that I suggest anyone try this.)

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