It's Friday, January. I'm Oscar Emrrors from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America. CDC officials have said that it might be time to reopen schools. The most available evidence says that in person instruction can be safely carried out if proper precautions like mask wearing is followed and a community willing to impose restrictions on other settings like bars and indoor dining. Ronnie Rabin, health writer at The New York Times, joins us for white
schools maybe on the path to opening back up. Thanks for joining us, Ronnie, Hi, thank you. Nice to be here. One of the things that's been plaguing the country really when it comes to the pandemic and reopening has really been schools. How do we get our children back into schools? And there was a lot of discussion. We had to close all the schools at the beginning of the pandemic.
No one knew what really what was going on. We found out that younger people, children are spared some of the worst effects of coronavirus, and there was lots of calls to open schools. They opened and they closed. It was it was really like a roller coaster going on with it. But now CDC officials are weighing in and saying that the available evidence we have say that we can open schools safely if the proper precautions are taken. There are some caveats though, we need to deal with
community spread. For the most part, school should be the last places to close and the first places to open when we're doing shutdown. So Ronnie, tell us what we're learning. I think what's really going on if it were as we come in and we're entering the second year of this in which all of our lives have been altered, but certainly for children who aren't in regular school, these are huge developmental, very important, critically important periods in their lives.
I mean a year in the life of a child is is huge, huge changes go on, and I think there's increasing concern about the deficits that aren't just educational, but are also kind of just holistic in a child's life. You know, it's their social life and their peers and all the services schools provide, and they are most physical health and so many developmental milestones that people are concerned about them not making just the basic thing of getting up in the morning and having a routine and getting
yourself organized and getting out of the house. I mean, just that basic kind of structure, as well as the services that are really vital for kids who are abused. You don't get food at home. So I think there's increasing concern and there's a lot of push. A lot of parents really want the kids back in school and see what it's doing to their kids. And there are studies showing that it can be done safely, but in a very different way. The schools are different, they look
different than they used to. And what the CDC, these CDC officials and it's not the official policy, but these are CDC top officials and researchers are saying is that we have some studies now that show that it can be done safely in the sense of schools aren't nursing homes. Schools are are not going to have to spark these enormous outbreaks and conflagrations that spread through the community. One specific study that they looked at seventeen elementary and secondary
schools in Wisconsin and where mask wearing was routine. That seems to be one of the main components to all this. But during thirteen weeks in the fall of there was only a hundred and ninety one infections among staff and students, and only seven of those were from in school transmission, so very very low numbers. But these were also schools in rural Wisconsin that were smaller than a lot of
schools in big cities. That's the newest study. They looked at a number of studies that have come out, and there was once in North Carolina in which they found infections within the school are very rare. There were infections, but there weren't any students of staff transmission. Remember one of the big concerns. As we know, the kids overall do fairly well with this disease, but teachers and staff
are concerned. And that's where you're getting a lot of the pushbacks from the teachers and the unions who are worried about their health. They're older, they're more likely to suffer. And I have to say, on the other hand, I had to take back what I just said. In Israel, they started saying the schools of their new nursing homes because they were actually big outbreaks that did start in a high school that had very large class and the air condition was on kids weren't wearing masks with the CDC.
I think is trying to say here is we need to prioritize schools and not just businesses. That we maybe we need to weigh things a little differently. We may need to cut back a little bit on what we're allowing in terms of businesses in order to let to keep the rates low and let the kids go to school and realize it as a social good that's incredibly important. That was one of the big caveats there. They said, Okay,
let's reopen schools, and we're doing this as a community. Obviously, we need to impose those limits on other settings, as you mentioned your things like indoor dining bars, poorly ventilated areas. You know, it's that give and take, but that school should be a priority in that at least. And Emily Anser, who's a ground professor who has a project tracking infection rates in schools, said, you know, I can take my kid to an indoor quarter park, but a lot of
schools and Massachusetts are closed. So that's kind of the balancing we're talking about. Again. The schools have to have certain things in place, will have to wear masks, kids have to wear masks, there has to be social distancing.
They may need some way of the crowding schools of facing kids out, need good air ventilation in the school, need a lot of screening and testing so that if you pick up the case you can deal with it right away, and need to continue to have the option of highbred or online attendance for kids who have risky conditions. So it's not simple what have they learned in terms
of testing? Because I noticed in your article you wrote a little bit about some of the people from the American Federation of Teachers and kind of what they were noticing when they saw testing among teachers that we're working remotely, working in class. What did they say about that? What they have found in one of the arguments is that you don't see higher rates among the staff and teachers than in the community case rates. Of course, we don't
have the data. We don't have any national track and we have some voluntary data that's being put in a dashboard where we don't really have complete data by any means. But generally the rates have been similar, certainly not higher, but there has been an increase in the case right among keys and staff. Pagers have increased everywhere, but they've increased a little bit faster. But on the out hand, they've been increasing among teachers who are teaching remotely as well.
So we don't know, we don't know exactly what's going on. Well, we know that reopening schools is a priority for President Biden. I know as you mentioned parents, teachers, they you know, they want to get back to normal on this. So maybe with some of these CDC officials speaking out, maybe we can get some proper guidance. And Ronnie Rabin health rider at the New York Times, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this
has been reopening America. Don't forget after today's big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday to Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.