Horizontal vs. Vertical

Honesty is beginning to creep into the education debate. As the Virus pressures all areas of social contact, the practicalities of subways, classrooms, athletic events and all are beginning to become valid topics of discussion. And, as with most practicalities, the results are harsh. While some are dependent upon mass transit, we may find the contagion risk too great. Alternatives--and more likely bikes and not carpools--may be the result. So, too, the scrutiny of education may be revolutionary--not because of the changes we may want to affect but rather the clarity it might bring. Technology can substitute well in teaching, for classrooms and dorms. But that may not be the real definition of education, as we are beginning to see. What could easily be applied to college learning--online classes, living at home, virtual classrooms--would not substitute for college as seen by the student. For the student sees the university as more and less than education. The student sees university as an "experience," a netherworld between childhood and the working adult world. A summer camp with periodic exams. Goldilocks, in every way.

                                    Horizontal vs. Vertical

Dr. David L. Katz is the founding director of Yale University’s C.D.C.-funded Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center and an expert in public health and preventive medicine.

Katz wrote an Op-Ed in The Times recently. He argued that we have three goals right now: saving as many lives as we can, making sure that our medical system does not get overwhelmed — but also making sure that in the process of achieving the first two goals we don’t destroy our economy, and as a result of that, even more lives.

For all these reasons, he argued, we need to pivot from the “horizontal interdiction” strategy we’re now deploying — restricting the movement and commerce of the entire population, without consideration of varying risks for severe infection — to a more “surgical’’ or “vertical interdiction’’ strategy.

A surgical-vertical approach would focus on protecting and sequestering those among us most likely to be killed or suffer long-term damage by exposure to coronavirus infection — that is, the elderly, people with chronic diseases and the immunologically compromised — while basically treating the rest of society the way we have always dealt with familiar threats like the flu. That means we would tell them to be respectful of others when coughing or sneezing, wash their hands regularly and if they feel sick to stay home and get over it — or to seek medical attention if they are not recuperating as expected.

Because, as with the flu, the vast majority will get over it in days, a small number will require hospitalization and a very small percentage of the most vulnerable will, tragically, die. (That said, coronavirus is more dangerous than the typical flu we are familiar with.) As Katz argued, governors and mayors, by choosing the horizontal approach of basically sending everyone home for an unspecified period, might have actually increased the dangers of infection for those most vulnerable.