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Old-school solutions won’t fix headaches we face today

On Twitter, you may be able to close schools to help contain COVID-19. But in real life, those kids will still need care, writes Christine Jackman

Mar 18, 2020, updated Mar 18, 2020
Closing down our schools may create more problems than it solves. (Photo: AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

Closing down our schools may create more problems than it solves. (Photo: AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

The symptoms hit with a vengeance yesterday afternoon, after I’d spent several hours working on my computer.

Headache? Yes, the space behind my eyes was pounding as if the next season of The Block was being filmed there.

Fatigue? Absolutely. I felt like retreating to bed and pulling the Doona over my head.

General aches and pains? My shoulders, my neck and my back throbbed angrily.

I wasn’t running a temperature, but I definitely felt lightheaded.

Had I succumbed to COVID-19? Should I report for testing for the deadly virus?

Fortunately, my symptoms were transitory. I had been overcome not by coronavirus itself, but a nasty side-effect currently sweeping the planet almost as quickly.

I had come down with a bad case of FIDO – or Fear-Induced Data Overload – and I only had myself to blame.

I knew I was indulging in risky behaviour from the moment I opened my laptop, just minutes after waving my teenaged boys off to school this morning.

Of course, my intentions were good. Victims of FIDO will almost always tell you they were only trying to learn more, to accumulate more information and answer questions for themselves.

In my case, I was desperate to find out whether I should be keeping my boys home from school, to help “flatten the curve”. According to that theory, if we limit our public and social activities, we may put a brake on the spread of the virus and prevent our hospitals from being overwhelmed by a tidal wave of acute COVID-19 cases.

And it’s not just a theory anymore. As of Monday, governments in 85 countries had announced the closure of all schools and other educational facilities in a bid to contain COVID-19. Another 15 countries have begun localised closures. In total, UNESCO estimates that an unprecedented number of children and young people – more than 776 million, as of Monday – have had their education disrupted.

Should we be trying the same approach here?

The further I searched, the more overwhelmed I became.

Pretty soon, everyone was sharing charts showing versions of the same thing: that the virus increased slowly at first in a new population, before rocketing upwards like a firecracker. And then there were the animations with a little red and obviously infected ball bumping through a box of white balls, turning them red as it did. Pretty soon, the whole box was full of angry red spheres. The video then showed what happened if the balls were placed further apart to begin with. The infection still spread, but more slowly, giving some of the balls time to recover.

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It was all very compelling viewing. Frankly, it made me want to join the #shutdownaustralia movement and hunker down with my family behind closed doors until winter has passed.

If only it was that easy.

My dear departed dad used to say that if a problem was simple, someone would have fixed it by now.

In principle, I might agree with a total shutdown; it’s hard to argue that this form of extreme social isolation wouldn’t contain the spread of the virus dramatically. But principle is a destination that can only be reached once you’ve negotiated the speedbump known as real life.

On social media, it might seem possible to send every child home for months on end with no ramifications. But in the real world, those children still need adult supervision: some because they are simply too small to look after themselves and others because they are unlikely to sit tight and home-school themselves. Anyone who has raised a teenager knows their magnetic attraction to their peers and to any outlet that sells chips and frozen soft drinks.

Who do the cowboy commentators on Twitter think will do all of this extra caring? At a time when we urgently need all our healthcare workers available for duty, keep in mind that roughly one in three of them have children of school age or younger. Then there are all the other parents who work in essential services: the people you might take for granted, who empty your bins, restock supermarket shelves, keep our water, electricity and other essential services running.

Right now, none of us can assume Granny and Grandpa are available for babysitting duties. If anyone needs to be isolated right now, it is the elderly and those whose immune systems are already compromised.

In short, it’s a wicked problem. School closures might help contain the virus in the short term – but the costs would be enormous and long-lasting.

For now, I’m happy to let our state and federal leaders, as advised by their chief medical officers, to take the lead. Meanwhile, I recommend we all practise more social distancing – from social media. This challenge won’t be solved in 280 characters or less.

 

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