Schools beat earlier plagues with outdoor classes

[Poiuyt]

?quality=90&auto=webp

In the early years of the 20th century, tuberculosis ravaged American cities, taking a particular and often fatal toll on the poor and the young. In 1907, two Rhode Island doctors, Mary Packard and Ellen Stone, had an idea for mitigating transmission among children. Following education trends in Germany, they proposed the creation of an open-air schoolroom. Within a matter of months, the floor of an empty brick building in Providence was converted into a space with ceiling-height windows on every side, kept open at nearly all times.

The subsequent New England winter was especially unforgiving, but children stayed warm in wearable blankets known as “Eskimo sitting bags” and with heated soapstones placed at their feet. The experiment was a success by nearly every measure — none of the children got sick. Within two years there were 65 open-air schools around the country either set up along the lines of the Providence model or simply held outside. In New York, the private school Horace Mann conducted classes on the roof; another school in the city took shape on an abandoned ferry.

Distressingly, little of this sort of ingenuity has greeted the effort to reopen schools amid the current public-health crisis. The Trump administration has insisted that schools fully open this fall, with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos proposing no plan for how to do that safely.

more--

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-schools-reopening-outdoors.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200731&instance_id=20861&nl=the-morning®i_id=91674380&segment_id=34885&te=1&user_id=dd4e1b8c8c2d23219632b801cd263130

Interesting article with some great old photos. I live in Wisconsin where the winters can be brutal. Still, these photos showed that it can be done.

[FBaggins]

1. Different diseases... different solutions

TB is definitely airborne. COVID is not thought to be (despite recent claims by a few). Early 20th century schools didn’t have the option of spending large amounts on better HvAC systems.

[crickets]

2. Not a bad idea. It certainly deserves more thought and attention.

When protests didn't spike community infection rates, it's thought that this was not only because of the high rate of mask wearing but also that the activity was outside where droplets could disperse much more readily.

The best solution is to keep kids at home, but if they have to go to school, outside classes might be beneficial.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Please don't call any outbreak of disease plague.

Plague is a specific disease caused by a bacteria, Yersinia pestis.

It would be more accurate to say "Schools fought earlier epidemics (or pandemics) with outdoor classes."

[Poiuyt]

4. Don't yell at me -- that was the title of the article

[Takket]

5. Plague is also a generic term for any epidemic of disease