Re:Google to keep employees home until summer 2021
by 9nGQluzmnq3M on Monday July 27, 2020 @11:22PM
(#23971970)
Which is why your numbers look wrong, because if there's 1 teacher for every 30 students and also 1 teacher dying for every 30 student deaths, that implies the risk of death for the two groups is equivalent.
My broader point, though, is that life requires calculated risk and tradeoffs. If the standard is "no child should ever experience a teacher dying from corona", and we WFH until that risk becomes <1/adult/year, then we're disregarding things like kids committing suicide due to isolation, health issues left untreated due to the pandemic, domestic violence etc. School is a literal lifeline for many children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Many fewer, especially given that for students it usually involves walking or short drives through residential neighborhoods.
> Should we WFH forever and wrap the kids in bubble wrap to avoid that trauma too?
Obviously not. There is clearly a point where it makes sense to go back. But now isn't that time.
> Also, where did you get those numbers from? I would have expected teachers to be at far higher risk of death than students.
It's based on the CDC mortality data combined with the number of school kids.
The teacher estimate is harder because we don't know exactly the age breakdown of the teachers, but it's based on the assumption that 30% of teachers are over 50 and putting the rest in the 20-30 risk group, which is probably too low.
The actual number of teachers is lower just because there are only about 1 teacher per 30 students.