Most of my posts in this series are about “my” choices, things that are mostly within my span of control. Things I do with my computer, for instance. I don’t have to consult anyone, it’s not a “joint” decision, it is just me.

But with schools in Ottawa re-opening, the question comes from the school board as to whether we intend to send our son back in September or not and that is not a decision that “I” can make on my own, it’s a joint decision of mainly Andrea and I, but Jacob is involved too. We wanted to know what he is comfortable with, what his concerns are, etc. And it helps that all three of us independently came to the same decision in this case. Jacob will do remote learning in September rather than return to school.

During a broader discussion with family during our vacation, when we were still mildly “on the fence” while hanging very firmly to the “stay home” side, I was asked, “What would I need to see to feel comfortable sending Jacob back?”.

A great question, and perhaps not a fair one to answer, as I’m not sure even with all of the best scenarios in place that I would choose to send him back. But I want to work through it, even just as a mental exercise.

I had thought about looking at the variables more holistically in terms of what makes sense for safety for teachers too, but I haven’t. I don’t need to, that’s not my responsibility to decide. I don’t mean that harshly, I just mean that I don’t have to imagine a full solution, just my part of it. And my part is just my kid. School boards and teachers are in far better places to gauge what they need to do for their own safety. I don’t need to figure out their risks for their families, budgeting for the school board, rules around opening and closing with individuals, or even if they need to check for a kid’s temperature every morning. I could, but that really doesn’t affect much of my own decision, and since the local schools aren’t doing it anyway, it’s kind of all been decided.

I didn’t need to frame the decision for EVERYONE, just for us. And here’s how I saw it for my part of the joint decision.

Understanding risk

I confess that I have a bit different understanding of risk than most people, partly as I have managed corporate planning in government for a number of years, including risk. This means that my view of risk is a bit more nuanced.

Most people fall into one of two categories for understanding risk:

• Those that think risk is primarily about probability i.e. what are the chances of something happening?
• Those that think risk is primarily about outcome i.e. if something does happen, what impact will it have?

So for COVID-19, the first group wants to talk about low infection rates, incident rates, flattening the curve. The second group wants to talk about the potential for death if they do get it and the differentiated impact on various groups such as by age.

But, to me, the risk around COVID-19 is a lot more complicated when applied to an individual situation like my household, and more specifically, my son returning to school, than a general population risk.

For us, there are a number of specific variables:

1. P/E: This is the probability of being exposed to the virus. If you’re in quarantine, the risk is low, since you’re not coming into contact with anyone. If you’re hanging out at a bar with all your friends, the chance of coming into contact with someone with the virus goes to high. In a school environment, I think we can safely say that the appropriate rating is probably medium (possibly high for SOMEONE in the school to be exposed, not necessarily high for an INDIVIDUAL in the school to be exposed directly). Not guaranteed, but not zero either. There is no way to keep it to zero, you’re dealing with other people. Of course, if you take into account the number of families involved, and that many of them have younger kids who will not social distance (variable 4), the likelihood of spread is almost guaranteed, but that doesn’t mean a higher grade like Jacob’s (Gr. 6) will see definite exposure. On the other hand, if the schools were checking temperatures every morning, that would be a pretty big way to reduce the P/E from the population rate to a specific school rate.
2. SoG: The next variable is the size of the group. Obviously, the scale is linear. If you are exposed to 0 people, you’d be low, just like P/E. But whereas P/E is more about macro indicators, this one is more about cohort size. If you have 0 kids in your classroom, you are low; if you have 15 (a common recommended size by medical people), you would be medium; and if you have 30 kids, it goes to high.
3. T: T is for time. The duration of possible exposure increases the risk. Coming in contact with someone briefly is unlikely to result in infection, it isn’t airborne in the normal sense. So, let’s say minimal contact is low, sustained exposure is high, and anything over probably 20 minutes up to an hour is probably a medium.
4. SD: This is the social distancing variable, but because it is a mitigating technique, the scale seems almost reversed. If you are fully socially distanced, the rating would be high (fully mitigated); if you’re not socially distancing, it would be low (no mitigation); and in the middle is medium mitigation. For a school environment, I think this completely varies by grade. Up to grade 3, I think most teachers, parents, social media, everyone except the die-hard “school must open!” fanatics would agree that kids up to grade 3 are unlikely to fully respect social distancing. They’ll do their best, both the kids and the teachers, and inside of a week or two, it will be a complete failure. They just don’t have the mental discipline or judgement to overcome basic social instincts. But how kindergarten kids handle social distancing is not particularly relevant to my decision, as Jacob is going into Grade 6. There’s still the contagion effect from members of his cohort having family members in other grades, but that in and of itself is not directly relevant. Within Gr. 6, I think there will be enough peer pressure to relatively enforce social distancing. I have less confidence when the kids are in the bathroom or at recess, but Jacob is not a highly social animal.
5. M: M is for the masks. Any barrier to the transmission is part of mitigation, same as SD, and I think we’re talking the same scale…no masks / no mitigation = low; full PPEs / full mitigation = high; anything else is in the middle at medium, even using non-medical masks. For Grade 6, I think we’re in the middle.
6. S: In addition to social distance, and masks, your other mitigation is regular sanitization of not only the space but also simply washing your hands. If you can wash regularly, HIGH mitigation; if not, LOW mitigation.
7. RII: This is the risk of individual infection. There are lots of macro details about how likely a kid is to get sick, blah blah blah, but that is a population estimate. I don’t need to know that, I need to know what the risk is of my son getting sick. Is he more prone to illness? Are there behaviours or conditions that increase his individual risk of infection? Since we’re back to the main variables, not mitigations, this scale is normal (low for low, medium for medium, high for high risk, completely straightforward).
8. ROI: This is the risk of specific outcomes for the individual. Separate from the risk of infection, if the person is in frail health or has a compromised immune system that might let the disease run rampant quickly through their system, then they have a much higher risk. Another way to think about it is directly related to long-term care facilities with the elderly. They might not individually be at higher risk of infection, even with some of their health concerns, BUT they are at much higher risk of experiencing the worst outcomes of the disease i.e. death, if they do get sick. They won’t simply get bad flu, they’ll die. And so it makes no difference if there is a macro indicator that says the survival rate is blah; the only thing that matters is whether that specific individual will be at risk. Obviously, low/medium/high is the simple scale again.
9. RIG: This is one of two variables that gets closest to “high-risk” households, separate from any risk to Jacob himself. In short, what is the risk of infection within the group i.e. our family unit? If Jacob is perfectly healthy, but I’m really prone to infection, then the contagion effect for him to me is really high. If we’re all super healthy, it’s low.
10. ROG: The second part of that “high-risk” household is what is the risk of specific outcomes for the group Jacob is part of…even if we can generally fight off infections, BUT once infected, if we’re prone to things going through our body fast, then we’re high risk.

A formula for comprehension

While I’m not talking about doing any real math here, there is a way to quantify those risks:

Risk of school = [Probability of Infection {P/E, SoG, T} – Mitigation {SD, M, S}] X Impact {RII,ROI,RIG,ROG}

So what does that mean for the option to send Jacob back, taking into account what they have in place?

On the probability of infection, we start with the probability of exposure, and I think we’re talking MEDIUM risk of direct exposure. It won’t be 100%, won’t be zero, and there’s not much you’re going to do on it outside of macro indicators for the neighbourhood or city. It is, in short, what it will be. Unless, again, they were to test temperatures at the door every morning. In effect, screening out high risk cases on a daily basis before they even enter the classrooms. Without it, it’s just the population estimates.

For the size of the group, the province has done nothing to cap class sizes. Which means up to 30 kids. That is a HIGH risk by my evaluation. It isn’t entirely clear to me if they will be truly cohorted either, and by that, I mean with a single teacher. Or if instead, the teachers will still rotate. If it does, it’s kind of like the warnings about sexually transmitted diseases…you are having sex with every person that your partner has ever had sex with before. So, your kid might be in a class of 15 (great!) but if their teacher is rotating to other classes, the exposure vector isn’t really for a 15-person class anymore. They are exposed to every kid that your teacher has taught in the last two weeks. Lots of comments were received in the consultations where parents were concerned about options for “family cohorting” i.e., if they had a kid in grade 2, 4, and 6, could they all be in one class (like a one-room schoolhouse of old) so that they would only be exposed to the same kids, not three classes. Nope, no such mitigation. But since it is already HIGH, and family cohorting only exacerbates the problem overall, I don’t have to worry about “extra” risk.

Time is a crapshoot. Literally, anything over an hour is problematic, and probably 20 minutes. There is virtually (no pun intended) no way to avoid that risk, and so it has to be HIGH in my view.

So our PoI = MEDIUM, MEDIUM, HIGH. Of course, that is assuming no mitigation in place. If you send the kids back with no mitigation, large numbers of people in close contact for long periods of time, yep, you’re going to get infections. You don’t need math to understand that situation, you just have to watch the news.

But the main thing that allows people to send their kids back to school is mitigation.

For social distancing, this is going to be related to a bunch of things. If there was a cap at 15 kids, you’d be able to space out in a classroom. At Grade 6, I think J would be able to show enough discipline to be able to maintain that space. Would it be pleasant? Nope. But he could do it. Except that is NOT what they gave for mitigation in the schools. No cap on sizes, so social distancing can’t be done in the classroom. There just isn’t the space for it. If it was 15 kids, great. But without that ability, the mitigation is LOW.

On a related note, the options for buses are a giant mess. Great that they are on the bus for, on average, less than 20 minutes. So exposure is limited. But the buses have multiple age groups so not all will be wearing masks, social distancing will be impossible without extra busing being available, and enforcement may be non-existent since the driver has to actually drive the bus. There was NEVER a chance I would let Jacob take the bus, I don’t think. I just couldn’t see ANY mitigation that would compensate for the intense risk of exposure during the commute. It’s the same thing for my wife…she doesn’t drive, but she will NOT be taking public transit, I will drive her wherever she needs to go. If she isn’t taking public transit, Jacob is not taking a school bus full of kids.

Of course, the second option in the mitigation is about masks. And their intent is for the students to wear masks. Generally speaking. Great. Except Jacob is struggling with his mask. As most informed people know, “Just Do It” is great for a Nike slogan, not so good when you’re dealing with anxiety-based disorders or asthma-like symptoms. It isn’t just a question of mind over matter if you can’t control your mind. He feels like he can’t breathe in the double-layer cloth masks; he’s relatively okay in the disposable surgical-style masks. But Andrea and I can go about an hour before we’re dying. And Jacob is going to wear it for most of 6 hours? Yeah, that ain’t likely. So while masks are great, when it comes to Jacob individually, I would say that the mitigation will be LOW for him.

Sanitizing everything sounds awesome. Even with the likelihood of it being done the way most schools are done now which is as cheaply as possible. And I read a stupid math attempt by a teacher who thought all her kids would line up to go to the bathroom at the same time six times per day and wait while each one washed their hands so it would take literally hours per day. Except that is the stupid math that prevented people from doing assembly lines. You don’t have everyone go at once, you have one person go and do it while everyone else keeps working. They don’t spend 15 minutes in line each time while other people are washing their hands and they don’t wait until everyone is done to go back to their studies. Maybe in younger grades you have no choice. But I can trust my son to go wash his hands and come back. But more importantly? Why would that be the model anyway?

When I go to my local computer store, and I walk in the door, they have a portable sink right there. It has water in it, I can wash my hands, good to go. Portable toilets have options for sinks with water in them. I don’t need my kid going down the hall to a common washroom for 300 kids and touching everything in there. If he has to go to the washroom, sure, there’s not much choice. I don’t see them coming up with mitigation where every classroom has its own portable toilet somewhere (although, if you were in a portable classroom only used by that cohort). But washing your hands regularly? You don’t need to leave the classroom to make that possible.

Would Jacob’s classroom have that? Nope. So I have to again give it a LOW mitigation rating.

So at this point, we have MEDIUM, MEDIUM, HIGH probability less LOW, LOW, LOW mitigation. If I was exceedingly generous, I could say that comes out to a MEDIUM risk overall. But when dealing with probability, you go to the highest rating and the lowest mitigation which is almost non-existent in some cases. I think, in all honesty, Jacob’s risk goes to MEDIUM-HIGH.

The impact on the household

This section is a bit more challenging to write as some of the details are not mine to share. So let’s sum it up as the risk of infection for the individual is probably LOW, risk of outcomes for the individual is MEDIUM, risk of infection for the group is MEDIUM, and the risk of outcomes for the group is HIGH. As an example, I have aspects of diabetes (I bop around the near-to diabetic group and pre-diabetic group, but not formally in the diabetic group), family history of heart disease, and blood pressure issues. There’s other stuff going on, but those are the main factors. That likely puts me in the MEDIUM-HIGH category just for me, before I even take into account some respiratory issues.

That means the overall impact on the household, if Jacob gets infected and likely infects us, comes out HIGH.

An almost no-brainer for our family

So HIGH risk and HIGH impact? Yeah, that was almost a no-brainer for us. But here’s the thing. It is also devastating for social interactions. And Jacob already has some isolation factors to deal with, with COVID exacerbating them. We WANT him to be back in school, but we simply can’t take the risk. And we are fortunate enough that we’re working from home, but that doesn’t mean it is easy by any stretch of the imagination, it is definitely added work to keep him on task, even as he enters grade 6.

Other parents will have different interpretations of risk, different factors, and truly “your mileage my vary”.

But today I choose not to send my son back to school in September and instead do virtual learning. It helps that both he and my wife were of the same view, I can’t imagine households where they differ and how you resolve something so fundamental. As one popular mean put it, there are no good options.

Will that be my decision until a vaccine? Possibly. Or maybe something will change. To go back to the earliest question, for me to even have considered it more actively now, I think I would have needed to see:

1. No busing. The risk of transmission is just way too high, and not just for those using it.
2. Temperature checks on every student entering the building. A parent saying “Oh, I’m sure they’re fine” as they drop them off is NOT sufficient. And to be honest, I think the parent should have to wait until the kid is “approved” to enter. The school can’t be responsible for tracking down a parent who has left for work and can’t come get the kid. And if the kid has a temperature, they should be gone for 3 days minimum before they return, assuming no other symptoms. If that’s not feasible for a family to manage that level of uncertainty, they need to find another solution rather than transfer their risk to everyone else.
3. True cohorting limited to 15 students with a single teacher for the day. The cap on the student size allows good social distancing and a single teacher protects everyone.
4. Sanitation solutions in the classroom. Ideally, this would be a portable sink, but barring that, some sort of formal hand sanitizer option could be sufficient, I suppose.
5. Mandatory masks. This would likely be a deal-breaker for Jacob, but I don’t see much way around it. Certainly, if they are out of their desks, the masks should be on…for going to a washroom, or a sanitation stand, travelling anywhere in the school, they need masks. If, while at their socially-distanced desk, they want to remove, I think that would have to be allowed.
6. Desk-based resources. If you are using equipment or reference materials, everyone needs their own copy somehow. You can’t be sharing resources.
7. Time-based outdoor breaks or vastly improved ventilation. I don’t know if it will help, but I think fresh air every 45 minutes would be helpful. No idea how that works when raining or when the snow comes. Maybe it’s a large covered area outside that stays dry and snow-free. Maybe it makes no difference. Maybe improved ventilation would be sufficient so they aren’t trapped in a bubble of exhalations, like getting off an airplane.

And yet, with all of that, it wouldn’t change our high-risk household. And that might be the only factor that matters in the end. Even if it is “low-risk” in the forefront, like going grocery shopping, it would still be an “optional” risk. I still need groceries, but Jacob has a perfectly safe virtual option to learn from home. It’s not a good choice, it’s just a safe choice.

As I said, today I choose to keep Jacob home.

What choices are you making today?