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'Certain conditions have to be met' to safely reopen schools: Expert

Epidemiologist and Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Jennifer Nuzzo joins Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers discuss the outlook for safely reopening schools, along with Moderna reveal positive COVID-19 vaccine progress.

Video Transcript

KRISTIN MYERS: And all eyes continue to be on the potential for a coronavirus vaccine, Moderna, as I had mentioned earlier, reporting that their vaccines are promising results in humans, that stock actually popping a little bit more now up nearly 6 and 1/2%.

For more on this we're joined now by epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo, Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us today. I want to start on that vaccine news. Any positive news we seem to be getting on a vaccine, everyone gets excited. I'm not entirely sure if they should be, so I'm asking this question to you as the expert. I mean, should everyone be as excited as they are, or is a vaccine a little bit further off than we'd all like to admit?

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JENNIFER NUZZO: Yeah, I think, unfortunately, that's the case. I mean, obviously it's great news that the science is going well so far. There are still many additional hurdles in the road to scientific development and figuring out which vaccine may work.

And then we have to make it, and we have to be able to make it at a scale for it to have an impact and to be able to get it to the people who need it. So unfortunately, that's going to take time. Things are already moving along at a faster clip than we've ever seen before. But there are so many important steps along the road that we can't circumvent.

And so I personally look forward to being proven wrong on this front, but I do think it's going to be quite some time before we have sufficient quantities of vaccine for us to be able to maybe relax our concerns about this virus.

KRISTIN MYERS: So as a country, or even globally, is a vaccine necessary in order for this pandemic to end, or is it just necessary for us to feel safe again about going out to work, traveling, or even just going outside?

JENNIFER NUZZO: If we were able to get a safe and effective vaccine in a reasonable amount of time, I think it would have an enormous impact. As you can see, across the globe, we very much are still battling this virus, whether we want to admit it or not. And our need to be worried about the virus will persist until we have some other tool to fight it, either a vaccine or, in some cases, maybe, a medicine that could prevent us from becoming severely ill.

Until we have that, really, our only tool is social distancing and case-based interventions, trying to test people and figure out who's sick and make sure they stay home so they don't transmit it, tracing their contacts. As we've seen, that's been slow to go in the United States. And we still don't have enough capacity to test, trace, or isolate infected individuals. So there's a lot of hard work that still lies before us. And having another tool to combat this disease, I think, would greatly ease worries.

KRISTIN MYERS: So to that point about social distancing, school closure seems to be the big debate that everyone has been having lately. Obviously, as an epidemiologist, your job is to study and help control the spread of disease. So as you're listening to that debate on school reopenings, or even state reopenings, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that debate. Should we reopen schools, or is it something that we can perhaps do on a case by case basis?

JENNIFER NUZZO: Well, so I think it is possible to safely reopen schools and to bring kids back to in-classroom education, which is so vitally important to their growth and development. But it will not be easy, and certain conditions have to be met. So unfortunately, one of those conditions is that we can't have disease transmission occurring in the surrounding community in an increasing or, in some cases, out of control fashion.

So that really is going to make it hard for many states right now who are seeing case growth. Today there are about 80% of US states are seeing a rise in case numbers, and that makes it much more difficult to think about safely reopening schools. But even taking that, kind of putting that aside, how much illness is surrounding the schools, there will still be steps necessary to reduce the likelihood that if the virus were introduced to the school, that it would spread, or even, preferably, that we could reduce the chances that the virus could be introduced to the school.

There'll have to be additional measures that are put into place, safety protocols. It will probably require a restructuring of class sizes and distancing between students. All hard work, in my view, not out of the realm of possibility, but it will take effort and planning, and frankly, more resources given to schools. Unfortunately, we're in a situation right now where this whole thing has become a political fight. And in my view, that political fight is completely distracting from engaging on those really tough questions about to what extent is it possible, and in what circumstances, and where can we safely reopen schools? Now it seems like people are either in camp open or camp closed. And reality is I think we may need a much more nuanced conversation.

So I'm really glad you commented on that political fight going on right now. We actually just got some news right now about Dr. Fauci. We've seen a couple of efforts lately to undermine him, essentially. He said quote, you know, it's a bit bizarre. I don't fully understand it. I think if you talk to reasonable people in the White House, they realize that was a major mistake on their part because it doesn't do anything but reflect poorly on them. And I don't think that was their intention.

What have you made of this move, it seems, to discredit our nation's top scientists and doctors on this?

JENNIFER NUZZO: I don't think a viable path out of this pandemic will be to deny its existence. I also don't think a viable path to reopening schools is simply to declare that they must open. There are steps that we have to take, and we can take them, and we can have success. Looking at the experience of other countries, it is possible to come back from the brink, to have spiraling case numbers, but to slow them to the point where you can begin to relax restrictions, reopen the economy, and enjoy that safely without worrying that you're putting yourself or your family at risk.

But we're not going to get there if we just choose to create battles where battles don't need to be created. We need to pitch in, work together, roll up our sleeves, and let data drive the decisions that we're supposed to be making.

KRISTIN MYERS: So paint a picture for everyone very clearly at home if they haven't already gotten it already. What scenario are you looking at across the country in terms of case counts, in terms of hospitalizations, if we just continue to reopen as we have been, especially in some states where we've seen these case counts surge. If people continue to have these pandemic parties that we've now been hearing about, if people continue to refuse to wear their mask, exactly where are we going to be?

JENNIFER NUZZO: Right. So this virus is going to be with us, as I said, until we have a vaccine or some other tool to stop it from spreading. The shutdowns that we went through in the spring were effective at slowing the spread, but they were not a cure. They didn't get rid of the virus. They were a pause button. If we press play and allow ourselves to go back to life, if we don't do anything else, there will once again be an acceleration of cases. And that's, frankly, what we're seeing now, where daily case numbers are higher than they have ever been.

The vast majority of us have not gotten this virus, and that means the vast majority of us remain susceptible to this virus. So the only thing that we have to do right now to protect ourselves is to maintain a distance between others and take precautions like wearing masks and not going to crowded indoor spaces. Certainly don't go to parties to actively become infected because we have no idea which one of us is going to become hospitalized and die, frankly.

We know at a societal level what categories of people tend to fall into those situations. But no one person can know whether those tendencies applies to you. Similarly, we don't know, if we become infected, who we will give it to, and who could die as a result of our transmitting our infection to others.

So unfortunately, as much as I think nobody wants to hear this, we have to remain vigilant and take precautions so that we don't contribute to the spread of this virus, It's my hope that states can do this through targeted public health interventions, testing, isolating anybody who tests positive, figuring out who those positive cases may have exposed-- that's called contact tracing-- finding those people and having them stay home until we know they're not contagious.

If we can do more of that, I think it can hopefully reduce the likelihood that we have to see future shutdowns. But if people take no precautions, and if states don't have the ability to do those targeted interventions, then unfortunately that leaves little option besides shutting down. And I think that would be a very deeply troubling situation for most people.

KRISTIN MYERS: All right. Great. Well, everyone at home is going to heed the advice of you because you are the expert. Again, for everyone at home, that's Jennifer Nuzzo, epidemiologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Thanks so much for joining us.

JENNIFER NUZZO: Thanks for having me.