Sincerely, I don't know. Almost all of the at risk population here has had at least a first shot. But the situation in Ontario has been pretty bad the past few weeks.

But I don't follow the science closely enough. I hope they're making the right call, because it's really hard on the kids. I'm just glad my own little guy is not of school age yet, and in fact is young enough to be mostly oblivious to the whole thing.

Conveniently skipping over the occupied ICUs. How do you not know that our medical system was overwhelmed or that the rise in cases only reversed after we shut down schools both times in the last 4 months?

Surely that wasn’t the only tightened restriction or change in behavior during the case surge, though?

There are a lot of confounding variables in these analyses. It’s going to take years to tease them apart, and we may never truly know for certain in some cases.

Perhaps, but do you lock everything down mid-spike when you know the current rate will lead to extreme triage measures within two weeks, or do you wait two weeks to act and start rejecting patients as they continue to flood in?

"the rise in cases only reversed after we shut down schools both times" implies a causal relationship, though, while ignoring the other mitigations that went into effect.

The point is not "is it wise to take precautions"; that's obvious. The point is we don't necessarily have great data on which precautions work better than others because they're largely all being put into effect at the same time.

> point is we don't necessarily have great data on which precautions work better than others

We actually do, though, and it's preventing close contact of non-household members and preventing sharing enclosed spaces with non-household members for long periods of time.

People spread the virus before they even know they're sick, and a subset of sick people either need to go to work despite being sick, or they just don't care.

Again, all those restrictions were typically implemented at the same time - distancing, capacity limits, masking, etc.

It's going to take time and years of research to tease out things like "did closing schools specifically help".

I just haven't been following the news that closely, especially for Ontario (I'm not in ON). No intent to "conveniently" hide information, though thanks for clarifying.

I don’t know why no one is saying this, but Ontario’s ICU numbers skyrocketed to 900 at the peak just a few weeks ago. We’re only down to 700 occupied beds now and normal medical procedures are still paused because of the enormous ICU load.

It wasn’t until we closed schools that the trend reversed.

People are so quick to blame fear without actually looking at the data

> It wasn’t until we closed schools that the trend reversed.

The other way to think about it is that it wasn’t until things got bad that people got cautious.

Kind of how people take homeopathic drugs when they are sickest.

Is the data conclusive? I try to look at the data, but it seems like a mixed bag when it comes to school closures.

I don't know if we can conclusively say what specific action needs to be taken other than halt contact. We were on an extremely bad path, and I don't know what else could have been done since we had little vaccine supply at that time.

They have vaccine shortages. The issue is the teachers, not the kids.

Are schools a major source of transmission for teachers and staff?

Yes. Workplaces with lots of contact always are.

In Nov-Feb, I was losing 40-60 employees a week to infection or quarantine. Mostly people in essential IT support positions

My sons school was open most of the year, but shutdown for a month due to teacher quarantines.

Schools are different than a business setting. Young children have less chance of getting it and less of spreading it. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/pediatric-hcp....

You just contradicted the website you linked, I'm confused.

> Hospitalization rates in children are significantly lower than hospitalization rates in adults with COVID-19, suggesting that children may have less severe illness from COVID-19 compared to adults.

Less severe response to it, not "less chance of getting it." And then just two lines later:

> Recent evidence suggests that compared to adults, children likely have similar viral loads in their nasopharynx,7 similar secondary infections rates, and can spread the virus to others

I don't know how you arrived at your opinion here.

The population of humans in schools includes many adults.