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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer there on WNYC. Now with everyone agonizing over whether and how to open schools, we'll get a report from Europe, which is a few weeks ahead of us on this. To set the scene a little bit, I'm going to take a minute first to layout where New York and New Jersey, the US as a whole, and Western Europe are on the virus in general. In the simplest terms, New York, New Jersey, and Western Europe have followed one pattern, the rest of the United States has followed another. Here are some numbers, and bear with me, I'll make these numbers clear and I think they tell a fascinating story of success and failure, so I think you'll appreciate this little mathematical ride.

The US has about 325 million people, so do the five core Western Europe countries we generally see as Western democracies most like us; the UK, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. According to the website Statista, Spain is the smallest of the five with about 47 million people. Italy has 60 million, France 65 million, the UK 67 million people, Germany is the biggest with about 83 million people. Total, around the same as the US, around 325 million. Now, here are the numbers of COVID deaths reported in each country for Friday, which is the last day I have stats for, so I spent part of my weekend, I hope you had an enjoyable weekend too.

I was looking through death stats for Friday from COVID. These come from the website Worldometer which tracks every country every day. Italy, with its 60 million people, had one reported COVID death on Friday, Germany had three reported COVID deaths on Friday, France had six, the UK had 12, and Spain had 15 COVID deaths. Add them up, and the Friday total of all five countries was 37 reported COVID deaths, 37. The United States had 924. Now, this is not just cases, which can be mild or tests, which people can decide to do at different rates. Trump always talks about, "Oh, test cases.

Oh, just tests," this is actual reported deaths from the coronavirus, and these are pretty typical numbers relative to each other for the month of August. The five Western European allies together with the same population roughly as the United States, 37 reported COVID deaths on Friday, the United States 924, and it's been more or less like that all summer. As for New York, well, we're very much like Europe and very unlike much of the United States. New York reported just five COVID deaths on Friday. By contrast, Arizona, for example, with lots fewer people than New York had 49 COVID deaths on Friday as New York recorded its five.

The thing is, we've kind of switched places. Back in April, New York was having 600, 700, 800 COVID deaths a day. On April 20th when New York was having like 800 COVID deaths, Arizona had three. Thank goodness, they haven't gotten into the hundreds over there, but we are going in different directions. Similarly, let's compare the US and the five European allies. Back at the worst points in April, the US was having over 2,000 deaths a day, that was bad, and the European allies taken as a whole were doing even worse than us back then, 3,000, 4,000 deaths a day, but boy have we switched places since then.

On Friday, again, they had just 37 reported COVID deaths, and the US had 924 for about the same size populations. Or another way of saying all this, New York, New Jersey, and Europe have traveled through COVID as a group way up and then way down. The rest of the US has a whole other story, very few COVID deaths at first but followed by a spike this summer to about a thousand deaths a day as they reopened faster than the New York area did. With all that is prelude and I hope you found it illuminating, we get to our actual topic, what to do about schools. Most big cities in America as they struggle with the virus around the country are starting out all remote.

Mayor de Blasio with New York's low case numbers wants to start out with schools open. The teachers may strike over this, but that's just the politics of it. Our question for this segment is since New York's trajectory has been more like Europe's, what can we learn from their experience with schools which they have more experience with than us. Joining us now is Wall Street Journal Germany reporter, Bojan Pancevski. His article on this is called Schools in Europe Reopen With Little Debate, but More Masks and Distancing. Bojan, thank you so much for joining us today. Hello from New York.

Bojan Pancevski: Hey Brian. Thanks for having me, glad to be here.

Brian: Let me start on one little phrase from your headline, little debate. They're having little debate while we're all inflamed with debate about whether to reopen schools?

Bojan: That was a reference to the political nature of the debate. Of course, there's plenty of debate in Europe, plenty of debate in Germany where I am based, but the debate is more technical, the debate is more about the modalities of how to open the schools of how to keep them open, but it's not severely polarized and politicized in the sense that there are two big camps, if you will, fighting each other off and shouting from the sidelines. I think there's a widespread consensus. There's a very broad consensus across the board that schools and kindergartens need to open.

It's been a long time and experts in children's health, pediatricians, and others are saying, child psychologists are saying that actually keeping kids at home is as doing them more damage than potentially COVID could do to them and to the community as a whole by proxy. I think there is a consensus that schools need to open and they have opened in many places, notably in Germany.

Brian: Your article says that the stance that you just described generally has the support of unions. Here in New York, as I just mentioned, we're on the verge of a teacher's strike because even with our very low, less than 1% case positivity rate or test positivity rate, the teachers feel unsafe and they're threatening a strike. Why hasn't that been the case in Germany or elsewhere in Europe where teachers would presumably face the same risks?

Bojan: Teachers indeed are anxious in Germany as they are in Europe, but like I said, there is a consensus across the boards in society that it's an untenable situation for the schools to remain closed for such a long period of time. I think teachers are aware of this and parents are aware of this. There in Germany we have parents associations which are pretty influential. They are well-organized, they can exercise influence on policymakers, on the school authorities, on the government, but they realize that they can't keep kids at home.

I think generally here in Europe, people divide school kids in two groups, basically elementary schools of children of up to 12 years and perhaps a bit older, and then high schools to teenagers and adolescents. The general impression is that the younger kids are less at risk from COVID and they are not spreading the disease as easily as adolescents are because basically it has been shown anecdotally and empirically through situations that older kids, teenagers behave just like adults in terms of spreading the disease. They spread it pretty quickly between each other and on to teachers and staff, whereas we don't really have records of major outbreaks in elementary schools with younger children.

We haven't seen that much. Although there are studies to show that kids do get sick, not with very severe symptoms but they do get sick and they're able to transmit the disease, but they don't seem to be causing major outbreaks. Why that is nobody really knows, but that's the situation. As for the teacher's unions threatening strikes and so on, I think it's just a very different political climate, Brian. Here in Germany, everything is much more consensual. There's much more trust in the central government, in the federal government, there's much more trust in the system.

I think decisions are being made together, all the stakeholders, the unions, the parent associations, the teaching staff, the authorities that govern the schools, the politicians, they're all trying to make decisions together. They deliberate and then they work out a consensus. I think that you really don't see the political polarization that you see in the United States and especially in some parts of the United States here in Europe and in Germany. I think that's the major difference. The anxiety is there like I said. Teachers, parents, they're all worried.

It's worth noting also that in Germany, teachers who have risk factors, if they have a severe case of diabetes or some other condition, some underlying condition that would put them at greater risk from COVID-19, then they are allowed not to go back to school. The government allows them to stay at home and there will be a solution found for them. They don't have to come back and teach.

Brian: That's true here too for teachers with certain medical conditions, but a teacher can opt-out just on the basis of perceived risk. Listeners, if we have anyone listening in Germany or any other European country, help us report this story what's happening with reopening schools where you are and fighting the virus generally, what can the US learn from your country's experience particularly with schools. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or if you just have ties to Germany or other European countries even though you don't actually live there, what are you hearing about reopening schools and containing new outbreaks in general there compared to here?

646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or any questions for Wall Street Journal Germany, Journal Germany that's not that easy to say, Wall Street Journal Germany correspondent Bojan Pancevski, 646-435-7280. I read in another article about a school in Germany that reopened with full attendance but then a girl in sixth grade tested positive, but then they went into major test and trace mode. That some experts in Germany were skeptical that the US has the testing and tracing and quarantining capacity to knock down the outbreaks as quick as Germany and some other countries in Europe.

So the relative success at containing the virus with schools open that you were just describing in the European context may not be as easy here. Do you have any sense of that?

Bojan: It's really difficult to say because I think it's quite patchy in the States. They've scaled up the testing capacities, but obviously, they vary greatly from state to state, perhaps from city to city or even from school to school, from school district to school district, so it's difficult for me to judge. What I can tell you certainly that in Germany, there's a huge diagnostic industry, there are a bunch of labs, hundreds of them who can do these tests so testing is easy here, the government covers the costs. It's pretty quick. You can get it within hours or the latest by the next day, so that works really well and it's a huge asset as you said, that's absolutely true.

Since the school year started and Germany is a federal country just like the United States and some states started already almost a month ago in early August. Of course, they immediately reported a bunch of cases of infection like that Berlin school you cited, but they don't necessarily close the whole schools. What they do now is they try to isolate the kids who have been in touch with the person who was infected and then they send them home. Maybe they send the whole class home, but they try not to close, not to shut down the entire school and that seems to be working fine.

Of course, they do a lot of testing immediately and the tests come back quickly, and so on so that is definitely is an asset and it's probably required. Other countries in Europe don't necessarily have that capacity that Germany has because Germany has that legacy of having these laboratories that, for example, don't exist in the United Kingdom. Britain also had a huge problem with scaling up the testing capacity simply because they didn't have enough labs. They had to fly out the tests at one point to other countries to process them and get them back into the country. Everyone's got their own struggle and definitely it is a great advantage if you can test quickly and provide results quickly.

I think that capacity is being developed everywhere, but, obviously, it's not as good in some places as it could be. In Germany, however, I think they're learning to live with the virus. Initially, when the school year started when the first infections showed up, they closed two schools, three schools even in the first week, and then they realized it's not necessary, it's a bit of an overkill because when one kid gets infected, it doesn't really necessarily pass on the disease, the infection to too many other kids. They now are trying to test and trace, isolate a classroom, perhaps isolate the people who were in touch with the infected person and that appears to be working well.

It's a trial and error process. For example, in Bavaria, which is a big state in Germany, they introduced today, they announced they will introduce universal masking in all of the high schools. This will not be required in elementary schools for the smaller kids because they think smaller kids won't be putting up with masks, they're too young, but the teenagers, they will have to wear masks and in some cases, they'll have to wear masks in the classroom during the teaching.

Brian: Interesting.

Bojan: That's quite a challenge. You're talking about hours and hours of kids wearing masks. We'll see how that works, but they want to play it safe there, so the local authority decided that's the way to go for them.

Brian: That suggests something that I want to ask you about after our break. We have to take a short break and when we come back, we'll finish up with Bojan Pancevski, Wall Street Journal Germany correspondent. We'll see if we have some relevant phone calls to take. I'll ask you about Sweden, which never locked down. It's going for the herd immunity model and mass experiment, but the most surprising line to me in your article was about how Sweden, which never closed its schools isn't seeing a big outbreak as a result of students either, and also about this outbreak of anti-mask protests in Europe.

I thought that was an American thing and you had that big incident in Berlin with 38,000 people estimated by the BBC in an anti-mask protest and turning ugly with a Far-Right Faction even trying to storm the parliament building. We will do all of that when we continue with Bojan Pancevski from the Wall Street Journal right after this.

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Brian Lehrer in WNYC with Bojan Pancevski from the Wall Street journal in Germany, so little time and so many things I'd like to get to. Let's go to at least one call and hear Ellen in Northern Manhattan who has a friend who's a school nurse in France. Hi, Ellen, real quick. Hey.

Ellen: Sure, Brian. They went back to school today. They actually had had a little bow at this at the end of the term for a week or so, they had school. I don't know why exactly they decided to do that. I'll know in a little while how it went but she wasn't apprehensive about it. There seems to be still maybe a mask shortage, maybe a little test shortage. I don’t know, but they are having [crosstalk].

Brian: All right, so day one and they are charging in. Bojan, in your article, I'm reading from your article, in Sweden, which kept daycares and schools open throughout the pandemic, a government study found this had no measurable effect on the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. How can that be? Because we're seeing that schools that reopen here, in some cases, are having outbreaks, some colleges for example have already had to shut down.

Bojan: Yess, well, this was referring to elementary school like Luke Schools, like I said, for the younger kids, and the high schools are a different story. The high schools, basically, you have to think of adolescents, teenagers, they're like adults, there's no difference between an adult person and a person in a high school, they will transmit the disease just the same way. We have seen major, major outbreaks. For example, in Israel, there was a huge outbreak in a Jerusalem high school, I think, with Tel Aviv high school as well.

They were spreading through the community like wildfire. We’re talking about the younger kids.

Which I think policymakers, here in Europe at least, they had the most problem with keeping closed kindergartens and elementary schools because we're talking about kids under the age of 12 who can't really take care of themselves so that means that one of the parents at least has to stay at home if the school is closed, or the kindergarten is closed. That was a huge strain on society, on the workforce. In some cases, you have single parents and the parent, the mother, for example, can't really take a long break from work or work from home. Not everyone can work from home, and then when they do get to work from home, they have two little kids like jumping up and down. It's quite difficult, right?

Brian: I know. Everybody I know knows that one too well. We have one minute left. Just give me a quick thought on these anti-mask and full reopening protests in Europe, 10,000 people in London the other day, 38,000 in Berlin. It turned ugly when the Far-Right Faction tried to storm the parliament building. I thought Europe was mostly immune from the virus denial and right-wing conspiracy theory mongering that has become so prominent here. We have 30 seconds.

Bojan: Yes, well, we import some fashions from the United States. It takes a while, but they eventually arrive and they're in full swing now. It's a very odd coalition of conspiracy theorists, Far-Right activists, but also Left-Wing people, spiritual, weird bunch. It's a very diverse mix of groups who are just anti-establishment, maybe that's the thing they have in common, and they all subscribe to these wild conspiracy theories and they think masks are bad for you and so on.

Brian: Largely US import though, is that what you're saying?

Bojan: I think it would appear so, at least it started first in the United States, and then it spread. I think they're watching this stuff on the internet.

Brian: Bojan Pancevski covering Germany for the Wall Street Journal. Thank you for coming on with us on short notice today, we really, really appreciate it.

Bojan: Sure thing. My pleasure.

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