Why worry about ventilation and masking - particularly in schools - when one could spend that time looking at data showing who is actually at risk, and how to protect them.
Spoiler: for this pandemic at least, the risk group simply isn't healthy children. Or indeed healthy young adults. Or maybe even anyone healthy under say 45[0]
Our 8 year old had a PCR-confirmed Covid infection three weeks ago, as far as we know that's the first case in our immediate family. He's not vaccinated.
For him, it represented a four-hour headache. No fever, no sore throat, no cough. He's finally been allowed to go back to school this week.
Isn't this why we developed vaccines? To reduce the risk of serious illness?
"Every year around 600,000 people die in the UK. The Imperial College team estimates that if the virus went completely unchallenged, around 80% of people would be infected and there would be around 510,000 deaths.
So, roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year’s worth of risk into a week or two. Which is why it’s important to spread out the infections to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed."[0]
Once we've vaccinated a large proportion of the at-risk groups, then the risk of overwhelming the hospitals drops. Then life can, and should, get back to normal.
[0] https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/news/how-much-normal-ri...
On the other hand I was also considering what our politicians did to the society keeping them locked up in their rooms and not training their immune systems on a regular basis which usually happens with normal interaction.
This would seriously hamper COVID / airborne viruses.