Keeping William Home from School

We decided to keep our eight year old son home from school this week. The immediate reason for this was the arrival in Porto of the Wuhan coronavirus. With both myself and my wife spending our days at home anyway, we saw no reason to risk anything when it comes to our health. As far as we are concerned, William's school is little more than a convenient place to drop him off so that he can be with friends while my wife and I concentrate on other things. It's not like William misses out on a lot of important stuff by staying home, so we decided to err on the side of caution. Better safe than sorry as they say.

A secondary reason for keeping William home is the fact that some parents have pressing matters they must attend to. They have little choice but to drop their children off at school, even if they would prefer to keep them at home. By keeping William home, we're helping these parents by reducing the number of people in the classroom. It reduces the density of individuals, and therefore the chances of any one individual becoming infected. By keeping William at home, we're denying the virus one of its possible transmission routes.

However, we're not keeping ourselves completely isolated from society. We cannot avoid going to the local grocery store, and staying indoors every day is quite intolerable. We need to go out and catch some sun and fresh air, or else we're going to go a little nuts. So we go for the occasional stroll. We also sit down for a coffee on our way. As long as the coffee shop isn't too crowded, the risk of catching the virus while we're there should be minimal.

Still, I suspect we'll end up getting the virus at some point. If it is as contagious as it appears, just about everybody will get it at some point. But that's no reason to relax our self imposed isolation. There's no point in trying to get this thing early.

By Studio Incendo - DSCF2199, CC BY 2.0, Link