We had been getting those emails, increasingly frequent before break. Now they just post the numbers on the website and you have to check. A new post for each day with the new count for the day.
Being out caused a blow up. Likewise, as some have suggested break should have been longer, that likely would have just caused a bigger blow up as more people traveled and interacted with people they don't normally interact with.
If we want to create a circuit breaker type action, we would need people to stay home, stop interacting with external groups, and wait out the incubation time. A planned virtual week might have done that, or people might have just done virtual from far flung locations. Last year, everyone got good at that. There's no easy answer, and even those type of mini isolations needs lots of planning and support. It's not like everyone could just take an extra week off for a staycation. Even if we found a way to encourage them to stay.
The at school mitigations (masks, ventilation, lots and lots of ventilation, space, school testing) probably work just as well at slowing spread as trying to get everyone to isolate for a week.
