@NYCMayor says it's safe to open school. However, the modeling projections developed by Columbia's School of Public Health in order to advise NYC on school & Phase 4 reopening plans shows that he knows it is not. A thread (h/t @incindery1 who shared this with me): 1/

They modeled projections for 3 policies: a) open all biz (incl ph4) at 50% & schools at 100% capacity; b) open all biz (incl ph4) % schools at 50%; c) open ph1-3 biz 50%; ph4 biz 25%; schools 100%.

Notably, they did NOT model a policy of keeping schools & ph4 biz closed. 2/

Opening schools & biz at 50% means that, if transmission rates remain stable, they expect 14,456 deaths between 6/30/20 & 5/31/21. If contact tracing is successful in reducing transmission by 10%, it's 9,700 deaths. And if transmission increases by 10%, it's 18,774 deaths. 3/

All these scenarios will require a full lockdown "Re-PAUSE" like we had in March/April for 2-4 weeks in Dec/early Jan in order to avoid hospital capacity becoming overwhelmed again - ie., what we saw in the spring. So we can expect a full shutdown in less than 3 months. 4/

Critical limitation of the study is that they did not account for any potential increased transmission in schools!!! 5/

Interestingly, opening schools 100% but keeping ph4 biz at 25% shows a similar reduction in risk to keeping all at 50%. So opening non-essential businesses was deliberately chosen as a priority over opening schools 100% - even w/in their own chosen risk level. 6/

These are line graphs showing weekly # of infections under different policies & transmission levels. All show dramatic increases throughout the fall, peaking at the point we do a new lockdown & then falling again through spring. 7/

These graphs seem to indicate that the lockdown buys us about 5 months of falling infections, which aligns w/ our experience over the last 5 months. It also begs the question: how many of the 14k-22k deaths they project could be prevented by keeping schools & ph4 biz closed? 8/

tdlr, @NYCMayor knows a new surge is coming, opening schools+biz=more deaths, & we will have to lock down again at the holidays-yet he keeps emphasizing our low positivity rate & insists that it is safe to open schools & restaurants. Full report: 9/ https://github.com/wan-yang/re-opening_analysis/blob/master/report3_occupancy.pdf

addendum: the x factor here is that kids were quarantined during the 1st wave so we still know little re the virus' impact on them. We *do* know that the overwhelming majority of kids who have died are Black & Latinx. We *do* know infections in kids are rising. 10/