Back To School

Posted on by
Mt Yale, Collegiate Peaks Wilderness – it’s snowing up high as I write this so we could be done with the high peaks for 2020. Huge year for hiking. We took the COVID-lemon and made lemonade, weekly.

Our kids are heading back on October 20th.

The return to in-person learning will have a different impact on our community than the college kids.

I’ll illustrate with a little math…

me => my household => my close circle => my circle’s cohorts => ????

1 => 5 => 15 => 300 => ????

Within my household (5), we have two families that we have a lot of contact with.

These families have three kids each (3×5).

The kids are in different classes, one family has a surgeon and the other an international IP lawyer. So, when we open the schools back up, my three-step network is going to increase => say 30 to 300.

Four-step network? I have no idea => 5,000? It’s invisible to me.

Against the network jump, there are mitigating factors:

  • A hyper-vigilant, vocal minority => we have an active citizenry and teachers who want to stay healthy
  • Masks => decent usage in business and educational settings => our state remains under a masking order
  • Free, easily available testing
  • Existing action template from shutting down the College Outbreak => I’ll post the chart below => the bottom fell out => on the way down, testing went up and positivity fell => I never would have predicted that outcome

We’ve gone from being scared to open our mail (March) to the start of therapeutics coming online (October).

I feel like we dodged a bullet in September. This Atlantic article might explain why, perhaps kids and young adults make lousy spreaders (even at birthday and frat parties).

Collectively, the best way to keep the schools open is opting-out of group activities.

The highest value opt-outs are gatherings with the Three Cs (Close Crowds in Closed Spaces).

We’re going to opt-out of low-benefit connection and stay well away from CCC-connections.

Keep grinding.

Summit sushi for my wingman.