The Washington Post - USA (2020-12-02)

A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 , 2020

the coronavirus pandemic

BY ADAM TAYLOR

What is a Scotch egg?
In simpler times, the question
had a simple answer: a hard-
boiled or soft-boiled egg, shroud-
ed in sausage and breadcrumbs,
deep-fried or baked.
But as bars and restaurants re-
open across England after a four-
week coronavirus lockdown, pub-
goers face a more fundamental
question about the nature of the
popular savory treat: Is it a snack
or a whole meal?
The official answer, it appears,
depends on who in the govern-
ment you ask — and when you ask
them.
The quintessential menu item
has become the unlikely focal
point of a debate around corona-
virus restrictions in England —
and of the British government’s
inconsistent messaging amid the
pandemic. Under the measures,
which go into force on Wednes-

day, pubs that serve food will be allowed to stay open, and to serve alcohol, but only alongside a “substantial meal.” So: What is a substantial meal? A Sunday roast and fish and chips seem to fit the bill without question. A packet of prawn cocktail crisps? Though many young Brit- ons might disagree, the government is unlikely to say that makes the cut. But a Scotch egg, a common treat in pubs up and down the land? That’s where the question gets tricky. Environment Secre- tary George Eustice told LBC ra- dio on Monday that yes, Scotch eggs were a meal, “if there were table service” in the pub. The following day, however, the answer became murkier. Michael Gove, Cabinet Office minister, told LBC that he disagreed. “A couple of Scotch eggs is a starter, as far as I’m concerned,” he said. Less than an hour later, under

intense questioning from televi- sion host Piers Morgan, his hard- boiled approach appeared to have softened. “My own preference when it comes to a substantial meal might be more than just a Scotch egg but that’s because I’m a hearty tren- cherman,” Gove said during a later appearance on ITV’s “Good Morning Britain.” “The government is relying on people’s common sense,” he said. But minutes later, he flipped. “A Scotch egg is a substantial meal,” he told ITV News. “I myself would definitely scoff a couple of Scotch eggs if I had the chance, but I do recognize that it is a substantial meal.” The confusion over the humble food drew howls from British commentators. One dubbed it the case of “Schrodinger’s Scotch egg.” The Daily Telegraph quizzed nutrition experts about whether they thought a Scotch egg was a

worthy repast. “One month to Brexit and the government is trying to work out if a Scotch egg is a starter or a main meal,” tweeted journalist Ian Dunt. The egg question is hardly a matter of life or death, but following new restrictions to the letter is no laughing matter for small busi- nesses. If they break the rules, they can be fined more than $13,000 or even face closure. British pubs have already been decimated by the pandemic. There are roughly 37,500 across England, employing hundreds of thousands of workers, and many were surviving on thin margins before the pandemic. Lockdowns and new rules — early closures, restrictions on group sizes — have hit them hard. There are well over 700 British pubs for sale on one website. Rules could tighten once again. In Wales, which has its own set of

rules, pubs have been banned from serving alcohol from Friday onward. The Scotch egg debate shows the gray area that exists in the English system of restrictions. Scotch eggs vary in size, price and caloric content, but in some pubs they can be had for as little as 2 pounds (about $2.67). There appears to be little in the rules that can stop someone ordering one but not eating it. One newspaper in Oxford on Wednesday published a list of pubs that sold Scotch eggs for thirsty readers. “The Scotch egg thing is ridiculous — but if the government says we need Scotch eggs, we will get Scotch eggs,” the owner of one pub told the Oxford Mail. Britain’s government, led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has struggled with its messaging throughout the pandemic. De- spite expensive efforts to dampen

the impact of the virus, the country is among the worst hit in the world, both in terms of confirmed deaths and the toll on the econo- my. One attempt to protect Britain’s lucrative hospitality business, a summer plan that saw the government split the check with diners, was found in a study to have acci- dentally helped spread the virus. The pandemic pressure may have expanded Britons’ waist- bands. A study released Tuesday by Aarhus University in Denmark and funded in part by EIT Food found that people in Britain con- sumed more convenience food and alcohol than those living any- where else in Europe during the coronavirus lockdowns. It was not clear how many Scotch eggs they ate. [email protected]

Jennifer Hassan in London contributed to this report.

A culinary kerfu±e in Britain: Are Scotch eggs s nack or supper?

voice lessons next month to proj- ect better. Because students can’t leave books in their classroom overnight anymore — that would get in the way of the thorough disinfection — their load has been lightened by doing work on Chromebooks that the school purchased for the pandemic. Keeping the virus in check is “easier in school,” Trujillo said. “Here, the environment is under control.” Bassat said he worried less about the risk from in-person education and more about what happens when the country’s 8 million students get a break from it. Spain has three-week winter holidays, and children will stay at home or mix with family and friends. The transi- tion from a controlled to an uncontrolled environment could be perilous, he said. Policymakers across Europe say students can and do infect one another. Sometimes they bring cases home and infect their families. But even in societies where cases have been off-the- charts, as was the case for Bel- gium in October, public health officials say they believe cases in schools reflected viral growth in society at large but weren’t a driver of it. One indicator: Inci- dence of the virus among teachers and students never exceeded that of the country at large. When Belgium buckled under a second wave in which daily cases peaked at 1,536 per million people — more than three times the level in the United States right now — it doubled a pre- planned post-Halloween school vacation to two weeks, creating a 14-day circuit breaker that built on a broad, nationwide lockdown. Afterward, schools re- sumed, and infections have dropped for weeks. “It is very clear to everyone what the downsides are to having school closures,” Helve said. “The downside to closing would need to be compensated by an ex- tremely good outcome in terms of disease control, and it doesn’t seem to do that.” [email protected]

Birnbaum reported from Riga, Latvia. Quentin Ariès in Brussels, Luisa Beck in Berlin, Chico Harlan in Rome and Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.

BY MICHAEL BIRNBAUM

When European schools re-
opened their classrooms in the
spring, after the first wave of the
coronavirus had crested, some
parents expressed concern their
children were being used as
“guinea pigs” in a dangerous
experiment.
But to the extent that Euro-
pean schools have acted as labo-
ratories for the world, the find-
ings eight months later are large-
ly positive. Most of Europe kept
schools open even during a
worst-on-the-planet second wave
of infections this fall. And still,
schools appear to be relatively
safe environments, public health
officials say. As long as they
adhered to a now-established set
of precautions — mask-wearing,
hand-washing, ventilation —
schools are thought to have
played only a limited role in
accelerating coronavirus trans-
mission in Europe.
Those conclusions contrast
sharply with the prevailing wis-
dom in the United States, where
public health officials have fo-
cused on low rates of positive
coronavirus tests in the broader
community as a prerequisite for
in-person schooling. Some U.S.
school districts recently an-
nounced that they are going re-
mote again, as coronavirus cases
rise, and other districts have yet
to reopen their classrooms at all.
“It is still difficult for me to
understand why schools are
closed in the United States,” said
Otto Helve, a specialist in pediat-
ric infectious diseases at the
Finnish Institute for Health and
Welfare who has studied corona-
virus transmission in schools.
“Schools are not driving the epi-
demic.”
Though cases among students
and teachers have risen along
with overall viral levels in their
communities, the rate at which
the virus has been passed on
within classrooms has stayed low
and constant.
In Finland, 20,000 of about
1.2 million students and teachers
this school year have been asked
to quarantine because of possible
in-school exposure, Helve said.
But just 1 percent of that group —
about 200 people — has gone on
to exhibit any coronavirus symp-
toms and then tested positive.
Not everyone without symptoms
gets tested, but based on those
who have, another 1 percent of
these people probably have
a symptomatic cases of the virus,
Helve said.
Skeptics say schools aren’t
d oing enough testing to have a
true sense of how much the virus
is spreading. But communities
with enough resources to con-
duct broader testing after possi-
ble exposure haven’t typically
found many asymptomatic cases
hiding among teachers and stu-
dents. And because most Euro-
pean schools have embraced bub-
bles, where students and teach-
ers mix only with their class and
no one else, thorough contact
tracing can be done in schools
even when it falters in wider
society.
“We are not seeing the tip of
the iceberg; we are seeing the
whole iceberg because of our

good tracing,” said Quique Bas- sat, a Spanish pediatrician and epidemiologist who was the coor- dinator of the Spanish Pediatrics Association’s working group for school reopenings. In Spain, coronavirus cases were already rising sharply across the country in early Sep- tember, as classrooms prepared to reopen for the first time since the pandemic hit. “There were legitimate concerns that perhaps we were fuel- ing the epidemic, and perhaps we were adding more fuel to the fire, and this was going to be the apocalypse,” Bassat said. “To the surprise of many, reopening the schools, applying all these measures in a strict way, controlled transmission, and there were no big outbreaks.” In Bassat’s region, Catalonia, 87 percent of initial cases in classrooms did not spread to another person. And among the 13 percent that did, the “vast majority” spread to only two or three other people in the school, he said. The virus’s onward spread was limited even though Spain’s positive coronavirus test rate — 13 percent at its peak in early November, and 10 percent now — is far higher than the level that many U.S. school districts have said is acceptable for in-person schooling. New York City closed its schools last month after 3 percent of city tests came back positive, then reversed itself and made plans to resume classes for the youngest grades. Most Spanish schools have continued without interruption for the youngest age groups, up to about 12. In Spain and elsewhere, high schools have been more likely than younger grades to switch to part-time or full-time remote education, since risks of infection and transmission appear higher among teenagers than among younger children. Rising infection levels among German children have sparked nervousness there, but public health experts say that partly reflects a more relaxed approach to safety measures. People be- tween the ages of 15 and 19 have been among the most-infected in Germany in recent weeks, and cases among them tripled be- tween mid-October and their peak in mid-November — faster than those among the population at large, which doubled. Chancel- lor Angela Merkel has called for stricter mask-wearing and small- er class sizes, but those decisions are left up to individual states. Overall, while some parents and teachers unions continue to have concerns, many European societies are broadly behind efforts to keep students in their classrooms. Advocates of in- person school say the cost of virtual classrooms for vulnerable students is steep, as is the eco- nomic toll of taking parents out of the workforce because their young children are at home. “It’s not that we think schools are no danger, that there’s no effect,” said Steven Van Gucht, the head of viral diseases at the Belgian public health agency. “Schools are the last thing to close; they’re really the last thing

Schools open, safe

as second wave

hits Europe

Health officials say that with precautions in place, classrooms play only limited role in transmission

ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES Students watch as a doctor explains preventive measures to curb the coronavirus in an elementary school in Paris last month. European health officials say schools rarely contribute to transmission.

on the list. There is political pressure and societal pressure. We consider schooling an abso- lute priority.” Austria, the Czech Republic and Italy have been exceptions within Europe, opting for wide- spread school shutdowns or re- stricted reopenings amid outbreaks. In Italy, that decision sparked protests from students, who in several cities donned hats and gloves and sat with their laptops outside their school buildings, saying they have a right to in-person education. Pandemic measures are signif- icantly less polarized in Europe than they are in the United States, where President Trump has contradicted his own scien- tific advisers and made reopening society a political loyalty test, sparking backlash among his op- ponents. Teachers unions, which have emerged as a powerful force of opposition to school reopenings in the United States, have generally been more acquiescent in Europe, pushing for safety measures rather than closures. And European societies have generally been willing to make sacrifices to keep schools open,

such as banning indoor dining or channeling money for safety measures that in some countries are estimated to cost about $12,000 a month for a school of 1,000 students. Cristina Trujillo’s English- instruction classroom in the southern Spanish city of Seville now has a carbon dioxide moni-

tor to keep watch over how much exhaled air is building up. Some rooms have had new windows cut into them so that air can flow in from two sides. The school, Colegio Santo Ángel de la Guar- da, bought N95 masks for its teachers. Then, when their voices became too muffled, it bought them microphones. They’ll get

INA FASSBENDER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES Students at the Petri primary school in Dortmund, Germany, work in November with jackets on and windows open because of the pandemic. Across Europe, schools have largely reopened since the spring, with safety measures such as mask-wearing and ventilation.

MARCO ALPOZZI/ASSOCIATED PRESS Anita Iacovelli, left, and Lisa Rogliatti, both 12, in front of a school in Turin, Italy, as part of a protest supporting in-person education.

The Washington Post - USA (2020-12-02)

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