Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes - in some imaginary world it might be easier to close schools without adverse consequences. But we don't live in that world. We live in one where closing schools has lots of bad short and long term consequences. So acknowledging that we must decide between existing alternatives - not between fictitious ones - what do people want? Adverse affects of closing schools for a year on 56 million elementary, middle, and…
How many kids need to die from attending school and catching covid? For me, 1 is enough and we are already there. How many children will bring it home to adults? For me, 1 is enough and we are already there. On the other hand, not all 56 million kids will end up ruined if education is delayed a bit or parents need to come up with new and creative ways to educate their children safely. You're basically arguing to 'sta…
This is equally as irrational as people who just want to fling the floodgates open.
~5 children per year die on playground equipment in the US. Are you actually proposing that we sit around until we've neutered a lethal virus enough that it's less dangerous than playground equipment?
The IFR for school age children is astonishingly low. Low enough that we don't even really have a good sample size. CAs data right now is showing 1 death out of ~50k infections. My first Google hit with IFR estimates for those age ranges puts them at 0.0016% for 5-9, and 0.00032% for 10-17.
Assuming every single one of those kids is in the higher risk 5-9 bracket and that every single one gets infected, we would end up with less than a thousand fatalities. That's about 10% lower than children that die from drowning (or congenital birth abnormalities, or drug overdose/poisoning, they all hover around 980 per year). It's slightly higher than the number of children who die from heart disease.
On the other hand, it's less than a quarter the number of children who die in car crashes per year, and less than a third the number who die from firearm accidents.
I don't suppose that you're going to stop putting your kids in the car, despite it being 4 times more likely to kill them than the worst case scenario of Covid in schools.