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Science suggests that study rooms can remain open safely, but canteens pose another problem.
By Sharon Otterman and Eliza Shapiro
In much of Europe, even when coronavirus cases are back, governments keep study rooms open and force restaurants and bars to close, but in some US cities it is not the only country to have a problem. Customers.
Faced with a wave of virus, New York is about to close its study rooms again, but as restaurants continue to serve consumers in the city, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s management faces a now-familiar riddle: as the virus gains ground, restaurants will the rooms close without study?
The factor reflects the confusing calculation that the pandemic has imposed on cities around the world, calling on the government to balance livelihoods and lives, and to balance the survival of today’s economy with the schooling of a generation of children.
There are no undeniable concessions, and schools and indoor restaurants may close with each other in the coming days or weeks. However, for now, the city seems to be heading towards a new quo of discordant prestige, asking for lots of thousands of young people should be informed in front of their laptops, even when New Yorkers still make reservations for dinner inside.
New York City children face weeks or months without any education in person if the city’s positivity rate is 3% successful on a seven-day moving average. The city can succeed on this threshold in just a few days.
But while the education of young people is obviously more than dining indoors, the sacrifice related to closing places to eat is not suffered mainly through diners. yield without federal stimulus funds. There are thousands of jobs at stake, as well as an important component of the city.
While M. de Blasio said it’s time to re-think about the food inside, only Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has the strength to avoid it. The state began cutting food this week and asked restaurants and bars to close at 10 p. m. starting Friday. It also weighs more restrictions.
In the case of New York, closed decisions occur just six weeks after the reopening of dining rooms and study rooms on the same day in September, and considerations on canopy science and politics, affecting millions of New Yorkers in an apparent and incalculable way. .
There is growing evidence from around the world that specific elementary schools are not the most widespread sites they once feared, science is most confusing for older children.
Schools have been so positive for New York. Only 0. 17% of tests in more than 2,800 schools last month tested positive.
Several leading public fitness experts have come forward in recent weeks to say that they are now safer that schools can reopen safely, as long as they put in place strict protection measures and network transmission remains low.
“I would put schools at the most sensitive points on the list that advertise network transmission and want to be the most sensitive now,” said Denis Nash, professor of epidemiology at CUNY School of Public Health.
Meanwhile, evidence that dining indoors is a high-risk activity continues to grow: restaurants, gyms, cafes, and other crowded indoors accounted for 8 out of 10 new infections in the first months of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, according to new research using knowledge of cell phone mobility in 10 U. S. cities. UU. de March to May.
“Restaurants were by far the riskiesn places, about 4 times risky than gyms and cafes, followed by hotels,” said Jure Leskovec, a computer scientist at Stanford University and director of the new report. .
This is consistent with a September report from the Centers for Disease Control that found that other people who tested positive for the virus were twice as likely to say they ate in a place to eat than others with negative results. similar to so many cases.
“I think there’s a clinical and medical agreement that the priority will have to be the opening of schools,” said Lindsey Leininger, a public fitness researcher at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. “Eating in enclosed places is risky. I can’t say, more forcefully.
Tom Bené, general manager of the National Restaurant Association, disagreed and said restaurants that adhere scrupulously to public fitness rules can be safe. “We don’t think it can be done safely, but yes,” he said.
There’s a lot at stake for New York and its 1. 1 million public schoolchildren as the number of viruses increases.
During the summer, M. de Blasio said the entire school formula would be closed if the average positivity rate reached 3%, a sign for nervous parents, educators and the teachers’ union that the city takes school protection seriously.
At the time, the average positivity rate of about 1% and the threshold of 3% seemed a long way off, but on Thursday, the average positivity rate reached 2. 6%.
M. de Blasio also said during the summer that the city would re-evaluate indoor food if the positivity rate reaches 2%. The city has already exceeded this threshold, but it has still taken action.
The mayor also reiterated Thursday that food be re-evaluated inside, but said he was primarily involved in other people induing his habit in reaction to the virus.
“Whether there’s domestic food or not, that’s not the central issue,” Blasio said. “The central question: is everyone doing everything they can to fight this disease?”
If schools close, all academics would be informed remotely indefinitely, although Mr. de Blasio said Thursday that he thought closures would be transient and brief.
Updated November 13, 2020
On how the pandemic is reshaping education
This would be a major replacement for the approximately 300,000 students who have taken at least some face-to-face courses, especially kindergarten students and young people with disabilities, some of whom are elegantly five days a week. petition asking the mayor to keep the schools open.
But the vast majority of the city’s students, about 700,000, have been learning at home full-time since March, as their parents have so far not sent them back to school.
Massive school closures would be a transparent sign that the city is in the midst of a wave of viruses at a harmful time and that New Yorkers replace their behavior, but this would perhaps be the biggest setback to date for the city’s resurgence and can save you thousands of people. parents to return to work.
Research indicates that prolonged closures have serious implications for the educational progress and intellectual health of young people. A recent study in Britain showed that young people had lost their fundamental intellectual skills and had gone back to school because of the pandemic.
Public schools in many U. S. primary cities in the U. S. But it’s not the first time They have been kept online only, even though restaurants have been allowed to operate with capacity restrictions. food altogether, even if schools remain closed. Cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, DC closed the study rooms and allowed restaurants to accommodate customers
In many European countries, keeping schools open, with safety precautions, has been a political and social priority, even though governments have recently limited public life, especially through restaurants and final bars in France and Germany, and enforcing nightly closures in Italy. Spain.
New blockade measures in the UK have also closed pubs and restaurants, but allow young people to go to school. There, as in much of Europe, public administrations are helping to pay the wages of the industries they have to close.
Teachers’ and administrators’ unions in Europe have expressed their fear of protection in Array, but in general the government’s decisions to prioritize openness have delayed the day.
The food venue industry before the pandemic hired 12 million other people nationwide, and about two million of them still do not hire, according to the National Restaurant Association, an industry group.
Even after they were allowed to reopen places to eat, capacity restrictions left it very difficult to survive. Without a physically powerful federal bailout, many owners of places to eat and bars have warned that they will have to close permanently, especially if they have to further restrict their operations. .
A federal backup plan, such as the Restaurants Act, would help restaurants and bars stay afloat by building a $120 billion subsidy program, but has stagnated in Congress and the states, adding to New York, say they are running out of cash to provide restaurants with what they would like to get through prolonged closure.
The collapse of the industry would have ramifications for everything from employment to tax revenue.
“Any call to restrict dining operations has to be accompanied by a call to offer an incentive or they may not be there when they can reopen,” said Andrew Rigie, chief executive of the New York City Hospitality Alliance.
Kate Taylor, Melissa Eddy, Michael Gold and Benedict Carey contributed to the report.
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