My youngest (1st grader) is set to return this week to hybrid learning, in person twice per week. My oldest (7th grader) will return in two weeks. We're in Michigan, and most districts have been open at least partially for most of the school year. Our district has been cautiously closed all this time, and had been holding tightly to metrics around case and hospital numbers in the area.

The started this plan for returning around 6 weeks ago, while numbers had been consistently low, but the last few weeks has been an un deniable upward trend in both cases and hospitalizations. It feels like once they set in motion the plans to return to in person, they stopped looking at any data and are pushing through regardless.

We do have the option to keep our kids fully remote. They are REALLY looking forward to getting back and seeing some of their friends at this point so it would be hard to reverse course when the school is opening. But then I see news reports like this about current strains impacting younger people, along with news stories about outbreaks in schools, and I just don't know...


(Partial swipe):
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/05/health/us-coronavirus-monday/index.html

Another US Covid-19 surge may look different, experts say, particularly for younger people. Here's how

"We have to think about the B.1.1.7 variant as almost a brand new virus," said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. "It's acting differently from anything we've seen before, in terms of transmissibility, in terms of affecting young people, so we have to take this very seriously."

"I understand that people are tired and that they are ready for this pandemic to be over, as am I," Walensky said. "Please, continue to hang in there, and to continue to do things that we know prevent the spread of the virus."
The difference between previous surges and another possible surge now is "the people most affected now are the younger individuals," emergency physician Dr. Leana Wen told CNN on Sunday.

"We're seeing in places like Michigan that the people who are now getting hospitalized by large numbers are people in their 30s and 40s," Wen said. "And now we're even seeing children getting infected in larger numbers, too."
It's not just Michigan.
"What we're seeing is pockets of infection around the country, particularly in younger people who haven't been vaccinated, and also in school-aged children," former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
"If you look what's happening in Michigan, in Minnesota, in Massachusetts, for example, you're seeing outbreaks in schools and infections in social cohorts that haven't been exposed to the virus before."