"if kids aren't in school, they will just go someplace else"

Yeah no. That is not how parents behave in 2020.

Common Sense will get us through this crisis.
Common.
Sense.

@1 kids are vectors for the virus - if they aren't going to close down schools, better to have them go to school than not. then at least they are all in one place, where they are supposed to be. they may still infect school employees and/or their parents, but if those adults are only going between the schools and their homes, perhaps they won't infect others. It would be better for everyone, adults and children, have to stay in their homes, but people here will never do that (unlike in china where they have been forced to - nearly 800 million people). money matters more than lives here.

oh and for those who missed it, the virus has already mutated.

@3 Fuck sake, xina, let it go. It's the schools, not the kids.

We went through this, at length, in the last thread. If you're going to keep mulishly shouting out your original, undefensible position over and over again, without caveats, then please take that tiresome bad-faith wheeze somewhere else.

@6 FFS even scientists, infectious disease specialists are saying kids are vectors. you may disagree, but it really doesn't matter science doesn't care what you believe!!!

The number of diagnosed coronavirus cases in children may be an underestimate — in case studies from China, children seemed less likely to develop severe disease, Live Science previously reported. Thus, it's possible that many children could be infected and passing the disease along, without showing many, or any, symptoms.

It's likely that at least some school closures will occur. If we later learn that children are not the primary vectors for disease, that strategy may change, Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, previously told Live Science. Either way, you should prepare for the possibility of school closures and figure out backup care if needed.

https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-myths.html

Though the evidence to date suggests this virus doesn’t inflict severe disease on children, there’s reason to think kids may be helping to amplify transmission.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/27/coronavirus-kids-what-role-transmission/

A former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention hypothesizes that children, who are rarely being diagnosed with the illness -- perhaps because they don't exhibit as intense symptoms as adults -- may be the secret caries of the disease, according to an article in The New York Post.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/03/03/kids-may-be-the-hidden-carriers-of-covid-19.aspx

Ex-CDC head Tom Frieden says kids may be secret coronavirus carriers
https://nypost.com/2020/03/02/ex-cdc-head-tom-frieden-says-kids-may-be-secret-coronavirus-carriers/

That is not what arguing in good faith looks like, xina. Trying to shout down what you do not want to hear, spamming comment after comment, isn't going to change reality, let alone help anyone learn anything or make effective decisions.

I've made my case, and I'm not going to be baited into rearguing it. Not a single link you have posted contradicts the simple assertion that children are effective spreaders of diseases in our society primarily because we send them all to school, where they are in close, prolonged contact with hundreds of children, teachers, and staff every day.

Stigmatizing children as filthy disease bombs is beneath you. You're better than this. Cut it out already, for heaven's sake.

@3: "money matters more than lives here."

I suppose one could make such a jaded argument, however it's quite accurate that autocratic power matters more than lives in China.

@11 then why aren't we closing down the schools? if schools are the problem and kids are disease carriers for this virus, why send them to school? the virus isn't transmitted via air and it's not transmitted via surfaces. it is transmitted via bodily fluids (droplets from sneezing and coughing).

@ china locked down 780 billion people to prevent their entire country from getting the disease and the death toll being far larger than it could have been (though it is probably far larger than we have been told given their response). their primary motive is not money and in jaded terms is not even be human life, but it is, to be blunt, for survival (of the country as a whole). and they had to do it to contain a problem they knew about and did not contain earlier.

this country, too, knew about the problem long before it reached it's current status, still hasn't done what needs to done (on a national level the response is next to non-existent) and it won't do any kind of long term lock down, not for life, not even for survival of the country (which to be clear i don't believe is something that needs to be done here, we are not china), not as long as there is money to be made. those who will suffer the most financially are those this country has chosen to already sacrifice on a daily basis. as long as the stock market rallies and the rich stay rich (and sequestered in their bunkers), there will be no national response of any significance.

@11 i am not stigmatizing children as filthy disease bombs. i am stating a fact that due to their not showing any symptoms (or mild symptoms not being interpreted as covid-19), they are primary vectors in spreading the disease. if you want to debate in good faith, stop putting words in my mouth.

*not disease, virus

Too bad a good chunk of us don't have sick pay and can't miss work ¯(ツ)/¯

Dow Constantine said to stay home if you're over 60 and have underlying health issues, not just everyone over 60 stay home.

I watched the tape.

"Italy is shutting down its schools for two weeks, as the government works to contain the novel coronavirus outbreak that has hit the European country particularly hard.

Officials said the new coronavirus has infected more than 3,000 people and killed at least 107 in the country as of Tuesday. As a result, all schools, universities, and day cares will be shut starting Thursday and will remain closed until at least March 15.

'It is a prudent decision to contain the virus because we have a health-care system at risk of being overloaded,' Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in a statement Wednesday."

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/4/21164938/coronavirus-italy-schools-closed

"'Children could amplify the epidemic and carry the disease to their grandparents. Paradoxically, school closures help protect the elderly' Giovanni Rezza, who leads the infectious-disease department at Italy’s National Health Institute, told the Wall Street Journal. 'We need to avoid a big wave of cases.'

The question with all these school closings is what the ripple effects will be, particularly for parents who work, and what that might do to the economy if the workforce is upended.

'It’s right to close schools, but that has a cost,' Cristina Tagliabue, a mother of a 2-year-old and communications entrepreneur from Milan, told the New York Times. 'The government could have done something for mothers — we are also in quarantine.'"

Looks like ol' trumpfy's REALLY gonna hafta cut interest rates now"

Finally -- they're gonna hafta pay ME to borrow my next Billion, or so.