Letter to the editor: Low risk to opening schools

I don’t understand the rationale for Gov. Tom Wolf’s decision to cancel the rest of the school year. The IMHE model from the University of Washington projected a peak of 773 ICU beds needed on April 13 (1,043 are available) for Pennsylvania, with only 371 needed on May 1. The model predicts 2,005 deaths by Aug. 4 in the state, in a population of 13 million (for comparison, around 1,200 people die every year in motor vehicle accidents).

It’s pretty clear that by May with the combination of intense economic loss and decreasing viral threat we will need to be removing the stay-at-home orders and letting people get back to work. So why not have the students go back to school? Children are the least at risk for dying from the virus. They can be carriers, yes, but there are ways to protect the most vulnerable around them without unnecessarily disrupting kids’ education and other activities.

There is a tremendous cost to shutting down the school year, but relatively low risk of opening it back up. So why close it down now, right when the virus outlook is starting to improve?

Michael Sierk

Hempfield