Coronavirus: The latest on how the pandemic is reshaping education.

How New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, backed himself into a corner on closing schools.
Mutual aid networks created by college students have raised tens of thousands of dollars.
College football traditions are changing during the pandemic.
After a “covid semester,” the University of Michigan is drastically shifting its approach to virus control.

“If people are going to meet up, doing so outdoors is probably the lowest-risk way to do it,” she said. “Telling people they can’t spend time safely outdoors isn’t a rational approach. People are going to recognize that and push back.”

(On Friday, following public complaints, Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont said people from different households could walk together as long as they wore masks and stayed more than six feet apart.)

Dissonant policies also run the risk of fueling mistrust and resentment in a public already beset with fatigue from the pandemic and politics, Dr. Tuite warned.

“If you’re an average person looking at what’s allowed and what’s not allowed, it may not make a lot of sense,” she said. “I can get together with nine of my best friends and sit around a table at a restaurant. So why can’t I do that in my house?”

Cracking down on social gatherings suggests that there is clear evidence regarding where people are exposed and that they are meeting more often now than earlier in the pandemic. But the data are not clear: For example, the percentage of Californians who visited friends or had guests over at their homes has hovered around 50 percent since June, according to weekly surveys conducted by the University of Southern California.

In most places, the virus is too widespread to claim with any confidence where someone became infected. Where once clusters were obvious — in nursing homes and meatpacking plants, for example — now there are thousands of small outbreaks in restaurants, bars, bowling alleys, colleges and gyms.

“It really feels like there’s just little fires all over the place,” said Dr. K.J. Seung, chief of strategy and policy for Covid-19 response in Massachusetts. “There’s more of these social gathering clusters, there’s more workplace clusters, there’s more church clusters, there’s more youth sports clusters — more everything.”

In this sort of conflagration, it’s impossible to estimate how much social gatherings contribute to community transmission.
Image
Local governments could do more to provide safer spaces for people to gather, providing open-air tents, fire pits and heat lamps, one scientist said.
Local governments could do more to provide safer spaces for people to gather, providing open-air tents, fire pits and heat lamps, one scientist said. Credit…Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

“More and more, our exposures are due to community spread and are not traceable to a single event,” said Nicole Peske, chief communications officer for the North Dakota Department of Health. “Many individuals are reporting more than one exposure.”

Maryland’s public health department has reported that 13 percent of people who were infected said they had attended at least one gathering of more than 10 people. “As an epidemiologist, I don’t know what to do with that information,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “I don’t know just because they went there that they got it there.”

In Minnesota, up to the week ending Nov. 12, there were about 202,000 coronavirus infections. Nearly 12,000 were attributed to restaurants, bars and sports sites, and about 17,000 to congregate care settings.

Yet more than 115,000 of the cases could not be traced back to a known setting. “Identifying any one activity as the driver of the surge misses the fact that all activities become riskier as local case levels rise,” Dr. Murray said.

“Household gatherings would be much safer if officials put stricter limits on commercial and nonresidential activities. They are choosing not to, and then saying the fault lies with individuals.”

Local governments could also provide safer gathering spaces for people, with open-air tents, firepits and heat lamps as temperatures drop, Dr. Marcus said: “Then the message becomes a more realistic one. Instead of ‘don’t gather,’ it’s ‘gather here instead.’”

A disproportionate emphasis on private gatherings does not make sense, Dr. Marcus added: “We need to be putting our attention where it’s most needed, and I’m not convinced that this is where it’s most needed.”
The New York Times