By Emily Oster, The Washington Post, November 20, 2020
As covid-19 surges nationwide, the debate over school reopening has intensified. On one side are arguments that schools are not major sources of spread. On the other, we hear of schools with significant rates of infection. In response, many districts are delaying plans to bring back their students. On Wednesday, New York City announced that the nation’s largest district — one of the first to open for in-person instruction — would join the ranks of cities closing their public schools.
But as the country grapples with how to educate kids while also curbing the coronavirus, the emphasis on transmission in schools may be misplaced. The best available data suggests that infection rates in schools simply mirror the prevalence of covid-19 in the surrounding community — and that addressing community spread is where our efforts should be focused.
At one level, this finding is intuitive. But its implications have been largely overlooked. Part of the challenge is a seeming disconnect between the claim that “schools aren’t superspreaders” and the objective fact that some people tested at schools are found to have covid-19. Understanding why these two realities can coexist first requires understanding how we measure cases in schools.
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