What Does the CDC Advise About School Closings Due to COVID-19?
Excerpts from the CDC regarding school closures (some restructuring and emphasis added by me to more fully illustrate the points):
There is a role for school closure in response to school-based cases of COVID-19 for:
- decontamination and contact tracing (few days of closure)
- in response to significant absenteeism of staff and students (short to medium length, i.e. 2–4 weeks of closure)
- as part of a larger community mitigation strategy for jurisdictions with substantial community spread (medium to long length, i.e. 4–8 weeks or more of closure).
Available modeling data indicate that early, short to medium closures do NOT impact the epi curve of COVID-19 or available health care measures (e.g., hospitalizations).
The text is followed by a flow chart to guide leaders and officials as to how and when to trigger certain procedures to maximize resident safety as well as to minimize disruption of people’s lives. These actions are aimed at the COMMUNITY level…not a STATE-WIDE level. One can reasonably glean from this that perhaps decisions should be made at the school or school district level and NOT at the state-wide level.
Remember that any parent is free to keep their kids home from school for any reason, both as a matter of exercising their own freedom and liberty AND as a matter of taking into account their child’s unique health requirements and needs.
I post this to illustrate that this publicly available information from the CDC is being ignored by Governors in at least 6 or 7 states. They are responding to panic, or else other motivators, instead of following the guidelines of the CDC.
To close schools for decontamination is probably understandable for all, but this only makes sense if there is a contamination in the first place, and would last for just a few days.
To close schools when there is SIGNIFICANT ABSENTEEISM of staff and students also makes sense. That is, if significant numbers of staff and students are “calling in sick,” this is also a good point to trigger a school shutdown. In Michigan this is not occurring at the present time.
Finally, if there is SUBSTANTIAL “community spread” in progress. The CDC defines “community spread” as follows: “Community spread means some people have been infected and it is not known how or where they became exposed.” Michigan currently has 33 confirmed cases (as of non-CDC reporting this morning). There has been no declaration by the CDC that Michigan is experiencing “community spread” at this time, let alone anything “substantial.”
And the money shot is the last paragraph. In layman’s terms, triggering school shutdowns prematurely or for an insufficient amount of time does NOT impact the load on hospitals or health care systems. It does not “flatten out the curve” as many producing charts and graphs are touting.
I’ve heard people go round and round about this. The CDC is clear. You are free to ignore it (as in the case of Michigan’s Governor), but from the #science of the matter, THIS is the official word from the CDC.
No amount of charts, graphs, and clever medium.com posts will change this information. It DOES seem to me that there will be a time when such measures will be warranted. However, we should look to the CDC for guidance on such matters rather than disrupting so many lives due to a state of panic.
As those in Michigan and other States where officials triggered state-wide shutdowns of schools prematurely deal with their kids being home from school for three weeks or more, remember to let your local leaders know that they failed to consider the CDC’s advice on the matter. They can do better.
Note: Some places, like California and Washington, might indeed qualify as being in the “community spread” mode. Michigan most definitely is not at this time.
Link to the document by the CDC on the matter:
CDC Considerations for School Closure.
