| Comment | Every individual thing that we have open contributes to whether or not R<1. If R<1 then we can manage this disease. We now know that full lockdown takes us to something around R=0.6, so we can have some stuff open and still stay with R<1.
So the question is which of our 'normal' practices are most deserving of being allowed to operate, because we have to choose what we do with that small amount of latitude we have,
To my mind, because of the long-term impact on mental health and life prospects of children, schools should be the highest priority after essential services. If we subsequently discover that having schools open with every mitigating tactic still keeps R>1, while everything else is closed down, then fair enough it isn't safe to keep them open.
But to me, schools being closed while pubs are open would be completely unacceptable as an order of priority. |
|---|