I'm sorry, too, but I think that's just nonsense. The newer article you linked is at least 5 weeks old; the other from April. A great deal more has been learned since then and much has changed.
If Trump really wants kids to get back to school for their own good, then he should be mobilizing every resource that can be mustered throughout every agency in the federal government (with his key officials coordinating with state officials), to make sure that every community has more than sufficient PPE, test kits, and the lab resources to process tests quickly. Medical personnel and essential hospital equipment should be logistically optimized as much as possible so that US states and communities are supporting each other instead of competing with each other for supplies - and we are producing sufficient quantities for there to be enough to meet all the needs everywhere in the country.
It's probably too late to try to do effective contact tracing, but the only way to safely get teachers and students back into the classroom is to get the upper hand on the spread of the virus and get the curve going way down. That's what's been done in most other countries that have been opening up classrooms again. They didn't just decide that it was time, they got the numbers trending down for a significant enough time to indicate that it was now safe to open. And then they followed cases closely to proactively stop further spread.
Just saying that schools must be open doesn't make it OK to do it. If it's so important, then why isn't the Administration focused like a laser on doing every single thing possible to get a grip on this. And just because Trump says he's doing a great job doesn't make that so, either.
I agree with Linda on this. And BTW, the theory behind a group of 5 students being safer than a group of 20 students is because if someone brings the virus into that group, only a fourth as many are likely to get exposed right away. But that's only true if it gets detected quickly. I wonder what the chances are of that happening...
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