Tanaka, Koji

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On Medical Experts’ Advice On SchoolsKoji TanakaSchool of PhilosophyResearch School of Social SciencesAustralian National University Draft of 7 May 2020Koji.Tanaka@anu.edu.au Please don’t quote or distributeThe 2019-2020 bushfires made us realise the importance of taking experts’ adviceseriously. We were told retrospectively that Fire Departments in Australia wereraising warning of the danger that the 2019-2020 summer would bring. Theirexperts’ advice, however, wasn’t taken seriously by politicians nor by the media.The media reported only retrospectively that the NSW government did not onlyprepare for the possible bushfires but, in fact, withdrew some of the funding totheir Fire Department. Politicians are, perhaps, not the only ones to be blamed.Media could have played a key role and raised an urgent warning to the public.To be honest, though, even if politicians and/or media did raise the possibility ofhuge bushfires, such a news would have stayed in people’s consciousness only fora very short period of time and after a day or two, it would all be forgotten.3-4 months have passed and things have changed dramatically. The eventsof the 2019-2020 summer are now long forgotten. We have a medical situation,a world-wide pandemic to be precise. COVID-19 (or Coronavirus) has infected3,818,779 people and killed 264,810 people worldwide at the time of writing (ac-cording to worldmeter (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)). One thingthat has changed since the time of bushfires is that politicians, media and the pub-lic are now glued to the medical experts’ advice.One advice medical experts are giving consistently is that schools are safe.Since the beginning of the pandemic, medical experts have told us that schools aresafe. Different politicians reacted differently to this advice. Federal politicians,especially the Prime Minister Scot Morrison, have taken this advice to mean thatschools should remain open. Their stance may be in response to the economicfallout that the closure of schools may bring. If kids have to stay home, theirparents would have to stay home too. Working from home is not much of a prob-lem when you do not have any kids. When you have kids, especially when youhave to home-school them, that’s a totally different proposition. It is a miracle ifany work gets done during the day. And good luck trying to do any work afterhome-schooling and parenting your kids all day. So if we want to have any kindof productivity up and get the economy going somehow, the closure of schools isan obstacle for achieving that, so the politicians seem to argue.However, Australia’s states’ politicians took a different approach. Despite themedical experts’ advice, they moved all teaching online. Each state implementedtheir own strategy but, by and large, students were urged to stay home and par-ents were asked to home-school them by helping their study. Given that the stateseffectively ‘closed’ schools, they now have to come up with a strategy to reopenthem. Federal government’s voice is finally going through to the states’ govern-ments and most states (except Victoria) now have plans to reopen schools in nearfuture if not already. It may be the federal government’s push that has finallyconvinced the states’ government to reopen schools. But it’s really the medicalexperts’ advice that is finally getting the attention of the state governments whohave the jurisdictions over schools.The medical experts’ advice has been that schools are safe. This advice was inplace at the beginning of the pandemic and it has not changed as medical expertsare keen to emphasise. The argument and reasoning behind their advice have notchanged either. Medical experts have presented the same argument throughoutthis time. I am not a medical or health expert. So I can’t say whether their advicewithstand medical and health science’s scrutiny. But, as a logician, I am an experton evaluating arguments. How do medical experts’ argument for their advice farefrom a logician’s perspective? I have to say that their argument as they present itto the public for their advice is rather poor as it is fallacious.In summary form, medical experts present the following argument to justifytheir advice::Premise: There is no evidence that kids transmit COVID-19.Conclusion: Schools are safe.Premise is the reason for the conclusion and the conclusion is what medical ex-perts want us to believe.To evaluate an argument, we have to examine two things: the truth of thepremise(s) and the support the premise(s) may have for the conclusion. The latteris often expressed as the preservation of truth from the premise(s) to the conclu-sion. If any of the premises is false or not true, the argument is said to be unsound.If the premises do not support the conclusion (if the truth of the premises does notguarantee the truth of the conclusion), the argument is said to be invalid. Medicalexperts’ argument is both unsound and invalid.First, about the premise. I have read many articles that claim that kids transmitthe virus. The symptoms are often described as mild, milder than those of adults;nevertheless those articles suggest that kids are not immune from being infectedand transmitting the virus. I am not sure to what extent the premise of the argu-ment is true. But I am not a medical expert. So I don’t pass any judgement on2this. However, in response to a question about the COVID-19 outbreak at MaristCollege in Auckland which had 91 confirmed cases (****to be checked****),Deputy Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth claimed on ABC’s Q+A (aired ****)that he did not know much about the case. Interestingly, he then went onto toclaim that Australia’s medical experts’ advice is based on the studies conductednationally. In particular, there was a school which had 9 confirmed cases and only2 cases could be traced to kids’ transmission (****to be checked****).This highlights two things. (1) A school environment does not necessarily cul-tivate COVID-19. This is what Dr. Coatsworth emphasised and medical expertsin the country seems to be focusing on. But it also suggests something else: (2)kids do get infected and transmit the virus. The probability may be low; yet, itdoesn’t rule out the possibility and, indeed, it demonstrates such possibility. Ifthis is right, the premise of the argument can’t be true. The truth of the premise isruled out by their own claim.Second, even if the premise were true (and so we accepted the premise as itis stated), the conclusion does not follow. All medical experts are entitled to con-clude for the consideration of the argument’s validity is that there is no evidencethat outbreaks would occur in schools. But the fact that there is no evidence doesnot entail that there is evidence of outbreaks not occurring in schools. Whereyou put ‘not’ is very important and putting it in a wrong place results in an in-valid argument. So the premise of the argument does not support the truth of theconclusion. The medical experts’ argument is invalid.Medical experts tend to provide their advice in the context of responding toquestions about the possibility of transmission or outbreak in schools as teachersand parents are concerned about the possibility of being infected. Somehow, theywant to rule out such possibility. But they just can’t do this. All they can do isto put their advice in terms of probability and claim that the risk of transmissionin schools is low. (I believe WHO make such a claim.) If they put it like that,though, whether or not the risk is low enough to reopen schools can’t just be amatter of medical science since individuals have all kinds of considerations theyneed to take into account in order to assess whether the risk is low enough.To be clear, I am actually in favour of reopening schools. As an academic, Ibelieve in the value of education. And I have always emphasised the importanceof face-to-face teaching. Online teaching can supplement face-to-face teachingbut can never replace it. But I can also see that the anxiety people have is le-gitimate and no one should be able to silence them. This is so especially whenthe reason given for medical experts’ advice, the driving force behind the wholeconversation, does not support the advice. We need to approach the reopening ofschools differently.3

On Medical Experts' Advice On Schools

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