[teejers1]

One life - let's say an 88 year old relative living with kids/grandkids - is not automatically "worth" more than the collective damage caused by hundreds of thousands of kids adrift in education for 1+ years.

Is that your sound bite?   
Let's memorialize that 88yo that someone who says that sound bite would choose to sacrifice for the education of hundreds of thousands of kids.  But I can't identify him/her in the list of 130,000+ (so far.... in 1/3 of a year)

Well how about this:  not one grocery store clerk should die so that people can buy their food at grocery stores, in-person.  All should be required to place an on-line order and pick up curbside?  Is that hypothetical grocery store worker any less valuable than the hypothetical grandma or hypothetical teacher?

The point is that everything we do - when we venture outside in any way, shape, or form - increases the risk and likelihood that somebody will die because of it.  So every activity should be judged based on incremental risk versus expected benefit.  If you don't engage in that analysis, then the lazy response is everybody stay home and do nothing until further notice.  What complicates everything is that both risk and benefit are hard (if not impossible) to quantify, so you end up making gut calls, without certainty that such calls are the right ones.  (Though I do think the vast majority of folks can agree that certain things should be required (masks . . . at least indoors) and prohibited (mass gatherings indoors; and any activity that compresses people in confined spaces - indoor bars come to mind).

[teejers1]

One life - let's say an 88 year old relative living with kids/grandkids - is not automatically "worth" more than the collective damage caused by hundreds of thousands of kids adrift in education for 1+ years.

Is that your sound bite?   
Let's memorialize that 88yo that someone who says that sound bite would choose to sacrifice for the education of hundreds of thousands of kids.  But I can't identify him/her in the list of 130,000+ (so far.... in 1/3 of a year)

Well how about this:  not one grocery store clerk should die so that people can buy their food at grocery stores, in-person.  All should be required to place an on-line order and pick up curbside?  Is that hypothetical grocery store worker any less valuable than the hypothetical grandma or hypothetical teacher?

The point is that everything we do - when we venture outside in any way, shape, or form - increases the risk and likelihood that somebody will die because of it.  So every activity should be judged based on incremental risk versus expected benefit.  If you don't engage in that analysis, then the lazy response is everybody stay home and do nothing until further notice.  What complicates everything is that both risk and benefit are hard (if not impossible) to quantify, so you end up making gut calls, without certainty that such calls are the right ones.  (Though I do think the vast majority of folks can agree that certain things should be required (masks . . . at least indoors) and prohibited (mass gatherings indoors; and any activity that compresses people in confined spaces - indoor bars come to mind).