Summary

As Swamy said, one important thing to remember is that risk exists on a spectrum. As Brookline moves forward in returning to some form of post COVID-19 life, it is imperative that everyone understands and recognizes risks and listens to the data being presented.

After immense research from a variety of well-versed doctors and scientists in the community, many agree that as a town, we are ready to take this next step. In-school transmission remains low, and learning in-person has been proven to be vital to the development of students.

“We are not seeing evidence of transmission here or in other schools, and school settings do not seem to be any active vector of disease transmission,” Mason said.

Gacioch said that it is paramount to understand that no risk is ever zero, and that we will never achieve perfection. The conservative approach that the town has followed has allowed room to make mistakes and learn from them.

“We’ve got a lot of margin built in for error here,” Gacioch said. “Everybody can take a little breath and say, even if it wasn’t perfect yesterday, or it wasn’t perfect last week, we’re still pretty safe.”