Should Schools and Universities Be Closed for 14 Days?

What are your thoughts on this?

" Scott Morrison says Australian schools should remain open for the time being, despite growing calls for them to shut to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Speaking after a special national cabinet meeting today to decide what course of action the nation should take to slow the spread of the disease, Mr Morrison said shutting schools down would do more harm than good.
"People are naturally anxious about the issues of schools," he said.
"As the British chief medical officer observed over the last couple of days, the issue of wide scale closure of schools, and it may seem counter-intuitive, but the advice is this could be a very negative thing in terms of impacting on how these (epidemic) curves operate, for two reasons.
"When you take children out of school and put them back in the broader community, the ability for them to potentially engage with others increases that risk. That's the understanding we had.
"Also issues of herd immunity which relate to children. The other is the disruption impact that could have and put at great risk the availability of critical workers such as nurses, doctors and others who are essential in the community because they would have to remain home and look after their children.
"So while it may seem counterintuitive, there (are) very good reasons why you would not be moving to broadscale closures of schools. That could make the situation worse, not better.
"The states and territories are not moving in that direction."
The PM said the matter would be reassessed on Friday."

Poll Options

  • 588
    YES.. Let's stop the spread of COVID19
  • 243
    NO.. I agree with Scomo
  • 16
    I don't care

Comments

  • +1

    VIC school holidays starts Tuesday..NSW we will know tomorrow.

    Anyway my kids/family already started self quarantine since last Thursday.

    Hope this is good news for VIC and others
    Lets all work together to starve the virus to death! Hope we are not too late…

    • +1

      It's more than just schools. We're going into lock down.

  • +1

    NSW and Victoria move to comprehensive shutdown of non-essential services amid coronavirus pandemic.Looks like it is going to happen on Tuesday or perhaps wednesday.

    • +1

      Well overdue. It's just a shame the bureaucracy means they have to send them for a couple of days to sort it out. We already wasted over a week pissfarting about.

      I just hope it's done sensibly. There needs to be a way to allow the children of health care workers and other workers vital to keeping things going to be looked after on site. All the learning needs to go online, but for those kids it'll be from a school or similar I hope.

      I believe Victoria has the length of the school holidays to sort out online learning as their holidays start the following week. NSW doesn't have that luxury unfortunately.

      Even if learning goes to crap for a few weeks this is absolutely necessary.

      • There needs to be a way to allow the children of health care workers and other workers vital to keeping things going to be looked after on site.

        And use my TPs and eat all my supplies? Dunno about that. I prefer the option that was suggested above where they close schools WITH the kids still inside ;)

      • -2

        Well overdue.

        This is what happens when they close schools.

        • +2

          Health orders need to be enforced. This is what happens when you don't enforce. When the police show up and start charging parents with their crimes, you shut that down too. Up to 6 months jail for violating a community health order.

          NSW has the right idea, it's just overdue. Keep the schools open for those who we need to support for essential work only.

          Regardless you will always have outliers behaving badly and dangerously stupidly. That doesn't mean it's not worth setting up the right rules.

          • @syousef:

            NSW has the right idea, it's just overdue. Keep the schools open for those who we need to support for essential work only.

            It's a half measure idea..
            Now you have a heap of parents having to keep paying daycare and oosh fees while keeping their kids home because they didn't force them to close.

            Either shut, or don't shut…these constantly changing goal posts and half measures are more annoying to the public than just making a definitive decision and sticking with it.

          • @syousef:

            Keep the schools open for those who we need to support for essential work only.

            This is it.

            Best case scenario is to use skeleton staff of those in the lowest risk group (ie, keep the vulnerable teachers home!)..

            Other countries have done just this - sounds sane to me.

  • +2

    I made a quick game to help prepare teachers for social-distancing themselves 1.5m from students. Fairly certain Scomo is going to roll it out as compulsory teacher training:

    http://www.socialdistancing.wtf/

    • -2

      I don't know appropriate this piss take is. But if you're going to make a game I have some suggestions.

      Game should end when any student touches any other student. Or perhaps you can turn anyone that's been in contact with an infected student a different colour and the game ends when everyone is infected.

      Also infection distance should be larger.

      Final suggestion: Sick kids don't run faster and faster as time goes on.

      Game wouldn't last too long.

      • It's obvious satire to show how ridiculous "keeping a distance" is in a school setting.

        • Speaking of obvious, what part of "piss take" did you find confusing?

    • Thanks but I still prefer pacman.

    • I got 57 seconds - I'm pretty sure I did better than some school kids this week!

  • +1

    Now it is not a matter of if, but when. They should be closed for at least a month.

    • I think we have the technology and infrastructure to do distance learning 'en masse.

      Sure it's not as good and there's significant social learning loss, but it'll fill the gap while we sort things out.

      It's not a mutually exclusive proposition, we can close schools and continue some level of education.

      Now the issue of essential services parents needs to be filled by schools remaining open exclusively for their children with skeleton staff in low risk groups.

      We can work this out - I'm sure there's lots of practical solutions, we've just got to accept change or lot more death for a while

      Discounting a revolution in treatment or vaccine!

  • Gee big credit to NSW for allowing everyone on Bondi and not checking a cruise ship with 2700 people

    • You know, that thing with Bondi is just laughable. Even if they respected the decision to stay away from others, a breeze and a sneeze is enough to affect others even if you were 10 meters apart.

      But like town in Italy did and what I said was needed to do some time ago and we would already be as if nothing ever happened. Total lockdown is the only way.

      https://au.news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-italian-town-vo-health…

    • +1

      Bondi crackdown was because it made international headlines and therefore embarassed the government. This is the same government insisting on leaving schools open (for all not just children of critical workers) and letting sick cruise ship passengers loose.

  • Well after tonight is clear he is using other people’s kids and the teachers to create heard immunity. He is keeping his kids home!!!!!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8128255/Coronavirus…

    https://themorningsquire.com.au/morrisons-children-not-going…

    • +1

      It just shows the caveman mentality. And when this is all over, that is if, it will go back to the old same. People will forget and continue with capitalism until nature decides it had enough. I only wish for the nature to make humanity extinct and maybe some day another species will rise and be wiser than humans

  • +1

    That Idiocracy movie isn't a fiction after all.

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