Is re-opening schools without suppressing the virus viable?
By 
In the heated debate over reopening schools, one burning question has been whether and how efficiently children can spread the virus to others.
A large new study from South Korea offers an answer: Children younger than 10 transmit to others much less often than adults do, but the risk is not zero. And those between the ages of 10 and 19 can spread the virus at least as well as adults do.
The findings suggest that as schools reopen, communities will see clusters of infection take root that include children of all ages, several experts cautioned.
“I fear that there has been this sense that kids just won’t get infected or don’t get infected in the same way as adults and that, therefore, they’re almost like a bubbled population,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.
School re-opening also led to a wave of infections in Israel, and most of the US is in much worse shape. More and more teachers are therefore going to make this choice even if schools open:
Every day when I walk into work as a public-school teacher, I am prepared to take a bullet to save a child. In the age of school shootings, that’s what the job requires. But asking me to return to the classroom amid a pandemic and expose myself and my family to Covid-19 is like asking me to take that bullet home to my own family.
I won’t do it, and you shouldn’t want me to.
The fact that the jurisdictions where political leaders are doing the least to control the virus are the most likely to force schools open should make the results extra-catastrophic.