From a Public Health Perspective, Deciding in April to Hold In-Person Classes in September was Irresponsible

It seems to me that this sets a really bad example for our public health students. Hopefully, what we're teaching them is that public health decisions should be evidence-based. That is, they should be based on the best available scientific evidence.

It also seems to me that public health experts agree that decisions regarding the opening of facilities during the pandemic should not be made based on the idea of setting a fixed schedule in advance, but should instead be real-time decisions that are made separately for each phase of opening at the appropriate time and based on actual parameters of the spread of disease, rate of change in new cases, trends in percentage of positive test results, hospital and ICU capacity, and so on.

However, we made a decision last April to commit to having in-person classes this fall. I view this to be an irresponsible decision because we did not have the necessary evidence available to be able to make such a decision. At the time the decision was made, we had no idea how widespread the pandemic would be in September and no idea what any of the actual parameters would be. Without that information, how in the world could we commit ourselves to holding in-person classes?

I am very critical of the governors who prematurely opened their states, resulting in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. But in a way, this decision is even worse. At least those governors based their decisions -- however bad -- on current data showing low levels of COVID-19 spread at the time. However, our decision to hold in-person classes in September was made without having any idea how bad the pandemic would be in September. In fact, it was made at a time when the pandemic was raging ferociously in Massachusetts.

Can you imagine if the president of the United States made an announcement last April that on July 1, all bars would be opening, regardless of the pandemic situation at that time? This is essentially what the School of Public Health did. We announced that on September 2, in-person classes would resume. The announcement did not even make reopening conditional upon the pandemic being under good control in late August. The decision was made: we will have hybrid classes this fall.

Now that the pandemic is indeed raging and is clearly out of control on a national level, it would be a terrible decision to hold in-person classes this fall. However, we are already committed to doing so.

This is why I believe that this was an example of irresponsible public health decision-making.

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