Coronavirus: Will Schools Open Next Year?

What are the chances that Georgian schools will operate normally next year?

I don’t mean in January 2021 – I mean the next school year, September 2021. I think a lot of people are taking for granted that schools will definitely be open.

However, here’s where we are now:

– There does appear to be at least some seasonal component to the virus, as colder weather means more time indoors

– Georgians are going to demand a tourist season this summer – a bigger one than last summer, if they get their way – and this is going to lead to another wave, and probably an earlier wave (starting… well, as early as May or June if we’re unlucky)

– Georgia has shown an unwillingness to be proactive about preventing subsequent waves, for economic reasons

– The rate of infection does not appear to be fast enough for the population to achieve herd immunity through mass infection (if such a thing is even possible)

– Georgia currently says they’ll have vaccines for 700,000 people by May. That’s less than a quarter of Georgia’s population. We don’t know how many people need to be vaccinated to create herd immunity but it’s probably more than 25%. Estimate’s I’ve seen are 60 to 72%, which means vaccinating up to 2,700,000 people. Will Georgia get access to vaccines for an additional 2 million people in time for September?

– We don’t know what vaccine compliance will be like or if it will be an issue. We don’t know about distribution especially given Georgia’s infrastructure. I think there’s a very small chance that either of these will pose a significant problem but it’s worth mentioning.

– Successful vaccination requires two doses, spaced weeks apart. This could negatively impact compliance/efficacy.

– We don’t know how long vaccine protection lasts. If it’s short – say, six months – people who get vaccinated in March would have to get re-vaccinated by September. This could be a problem. If it’s a year, it’s less of a problem. I’m troubled, though, by reports of covid reinfection because it suggests that immunity might fade quickly.

– The Washington Post is reporting that the vaccines have not been tested in children yet, and trials in children probably won’t be done in time for the next school year – so there’s a strong chance that even if we get vaccines, we won’t be able to vaccinate children yet.
So my assessment is that UNLESS Georgia obtains vaccines for at least 2 million people (but possibly as many as 3 million) by August 2021, we will probably already be experiencing an additional coronavirus wave when school is scheduled to start up again in September, and the government may be reluctant to push schools to open since a) schools were the first thing to close in both waves so far and b) children will be the most vulnerable population in the country next year between the time that vaccines become available to adults and the time that they become available for children. Therefore, I would not *necessarily* expect schools to open if Georgia doesn’t get 2-3 million people vaccinated by August.

So then the question becomes, how likely is Georgia to get enough vaccines for herd immunity?

If we assume that Georgian officials’ rosiest prediction is true – they’ll have vaccines for 700,000 people by March – that means it took about 4 months to get vaccines for the first 700,000 people. At that pace, we’d have vaccines for a total of 1.4 million people in July – which is not quite enough for herd immunity. We wouldn’t surpass 2 million until 4 months later – November – at which point we’d already have missed months of school. In that scenario I’d expect schools to maybe open after winter holidays – so, in January 2022.
So in order for schools to open safely by September 2021, the pace of vaccine allocation to Georgia would have to increase – significantly. It would have to more than double.

Unfortunately, that’s where my crystal ball gets cloudy: I don’t know how to predict how many vaccines can be manufactured, how many new viable vaccines will pass trials, how vaccines will be allocated to various countries once they become ready, whether and how quickly companies will ramp up production after this first big push, how vaccines past the first 700,000 will be financed, etc. It’s all a bunch of unknowns. And the experts aren’t saying anything past the initial 700,000, so I’m guessing they don’t know either.

I have to say, I’m not *super* optimistic about this – there are other, richer countries in line for these vaccines, and it’s not clear to me how these negotiations work internationally even though international politics is one of my areas of expertise; this is all sort of new and ad hoc and there isn’t really a precedent for it that I can look to. On the other hand everything about this vaccine development has been shockingly fast and ahead of schedule, so maybe we’ve got a shot. I’d give it about a 30% chance that Georgia successfully obtains and deploys enough vaccines to stop coronavirus through herd immunity by September.

Of course, it’s possible that Georgian parents will be so fed up with online schooling that they ignore the coronavirus situation entirely – much like restauranteurs and certain gym owners have been doing this year – and demand that the government reopen schools regardless of whether or not we’re in a wave. And it’s possible the government will even listen, at least until the hospitals start overflowing again.

Final assessment:
30% chance it will be safe to reopen schools, fully in person, with minimal restrictions, in September
50% chance government reopens schools despite it not being safe, and we live with fear, disruptions, “hybrid” schooling, trying to get kids to wear masks, opening and closing whenever someone’s parent sneezes, etc.
20% chance schools work online only from September.

I’ll update this prediction as more data comes in, especially about vaccine numbers, distribution, and compliance.

Bottom line: the school situation next year is more likely than not to still suck. Sorry!

Addendum:

This Lancet article paints a rather bleak picture of our prospects of getting enough vaccines: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32472-7/fulltext

Specifically, as to vaccine numbers, there’s this: “Pfizer and Moderna together project that there will be enough vaccine for 35 million individuals in 2020, and perhaps up to 1 billion in 2021” – so that’s about 1 in 7 people globally. 700,000 vaccines for Georgia is already more than 1 in 7 Georgians, and I can think of no reason why Georgia should get a disproportionately high number of vaccines. There’s also a mention that the Covax program that’s going to supply Georgia’s vaccines is underfunded and hasn’t officially signed with Moderna or Pfizer yet, although maybe that’s changed since the article was published two weeks ago.