When our health authorities and the politicians acting in the name of health and science make proclamations that prove to be wrong and take actions that prove to be erroneous, and they persist, never admitting or explaining their error, that can’t be good for gaining and retaining the public’s trust, which, in turn, won’t be good for public health.
So, when do we get an apology and an explanation from the officials who tried over the summer to close our Catholic schools, Jewish schools, and other private schools, claiming it was not possible to open for in-person instruction safely?
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Claiming they had science on its side, Montgomery County’s government tried last summer to shut down all nonpublic schools (after the public schools decided not to open). County officials asserted it was impossible to “reopen schools, even with the best-laid plans” safely. But now that the county has begun opening its public schools, we can assess the private schools’ performance and the county officials’ proclamations and predictions.
The schools were safe, and the county was wrong.
Over the six months when private schools were open while public schools were closed, the private schools, among thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and staff, had exactly one reported COVID-19 hospitalization. And there were zero reported deaths.
At most, then, the closures the county government fiercely fought for would have saved one person in a county of 1 million from being hospitalized for COVID-19 between September and March.
But even that is a stretch because there is no reason to believe that being in school was more dangerous for these private school teachers, staff, or students than being out of school. The numbers suggest the opposite:
Data from the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services indicate that the average student attending in-person school in the county was less likely to get COVID-19 than the average remote student.
If the county had succeeded in keeping our schools closed, that wouldn’t have made our children or teachers any safer. So, where’s the accountability?
The whole fight started after business hours on July 31. County health officer Dr. Travis Gayles dropped an atomic news dump on thousands of families: The county was barring all nonpublic schools from opening at the start of the new school year.
“The data does not suggest that in-person instruction is safe for students, teachers, and others who work in a school building,” County Executive Marc Elrich stated on Twitter.
Gayles would declare, in a county council meeting, that case counts in the county were too high to “reopen schools, even with the best-laid plans.”
After a weekend of outcry by parents, administrators, teachers, and officials at the Archdiocese of Washington, Gov. Larry Hogan intervened. Hogan amended his statewide emergency declaration, stripping the county health office of the power to close schools. Public schools were allowed to decide for themselves, and private schools would have the same right.
Gayles persisted, issuing a second order, again closing all nonpublic schools until Oct. 1. Hogan’s health director returned this volley, declaring that blanket school closures violated state health policy. The schools won. Gayles and Elrich lost.
Elrich and allies were furious. “I didn’t think it was appropriate,” Elrich said of Hogan’s actions. “I don’t think it’s supported by data. It makes no sense.”
“One might think there’s been sufficient evidence that science should trump politics during a pandemic. Apparently not,” sniped Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson.
Gayles said that the private school leaders didn’t know what they were talking about or doing. “From that conversation, it was very clear that there were significant gaps in terms of understanding COVID, understanding the principles of transmission.”
Even at the time, the county’s assessment seemed at odds with the science. Gayles repeatedly cited rising case numbers in the county, but that was entirely an artifact of increased testing. Yes, the three-day average in new Montgomery County cases doubled from a low of 58 on June 18 to 113 on July 31, but testing had more than doubled in that time. Hospitalizations halved.
We didn’t have more COVID-19 spread in late July. We were just catching more cases. The three-day positivity rate had dropped by two-thirds from 6.9% to 2.3%.
That 2.3% was less than half the 5.0% threshold prescribed for reopening by the CDC. The Washington Post published a special feature of Trump-free guidance that recommended localities only open if they’ve had “a downward trend of at least a few weeks.”
That 2.3% on the day Gayles issued his first order was the lowest positivity ever recorded in the county and represented the 12th consecutive week of falling positivity.
The county’s other policies were incoherent with a blanket school closure. The same week they were trying to close our schools, they opened tattoo parlors. If private school classrooms were too unsafe, why was the county partnering with day camps to run “learning hubs” for public school children inside public school classrooms? As Joe Richardson, CEO of one of the companies running these learning hubs put it, “MCPS was a great partner throughout because teachers need day care.”
Saved by Hogan, some private and religious schools opened in late August, but many stayed shut. The ones that opened required masks and social distancing. Many took temperatures in the parking lot. Water fountains were shut off, plexiglass was erected, lunch was eaten at desks, and school social events were canceled.
And it all worked.
Gayles admitted in a Nov. 19 letter that “current data shows that COVID-19 cases attributed to exposure in schools have been low.” Still, he recommended schools close at that point.
None did. Should we be surprised that every single open school ignored the county order? He hadn’t explained why an explosion of cases never appeared despite what he claimed were unsafe conditions for reopening.
Many schools held brief remote-only periods before or after Thanksgiving or Christmas, but throughout the winter, the chasm persisted: Parochial school students, Yeshiva students, and many other private school students got to see their friends and teachers every day, while the county’s public school students got to log on to Zoom calls.
About 16,000 students are enrolled in nonpublic schools in Montgomery County. The best guess of school heads is that about half of those students were in person for all or most of the year.
The county reported 159 cases of COVID-19 since school openings among those approximately 8,000 students. At the same time, more than 7,500 cases appeared among the 240,000 Montgomery County residents age 18 or under.
These rough numbers suggest that students out of school got the virus at three times the rate of students in school. Now, there are caveats here. Public school students are more likely to belong to demographics harder hit by the virus. Also, we cannot precisely count cases or know the total number of students in school and out of school.
We can, however, safely say that students going to school didn’t get sick more than students at home. As far as the staff, the county reported 105 cases, and, again, exactly one hospitalization.
A vast majority of these cases were not acquired in school. The county reported “outbreaks” to the state, and only about 70 cases between September and March fit under the broad definition of “outbreak.” In almost none of those cases was in-school transmission confirmed.
So, the county health officer and county council were wrong. They were repeatedly and emphatically wrong, and they repeatedly fought to impose their incorrect judgment on others. County councilman Craig Rice even asserted that schools only believed they could open safely because of “white privilege.”
Rice owes those private school teachers, parents, and principals an apology, of course. But Gayles and Elrich owe at least an explanation. What was the error they made in July and August? How have they learned from that error?
Because if they don’t have an answer to those questions, it will be hard to convince the rest of us to listen to them the next time they tell us something isn’t safe.
