The system proclaims: “Everybody back to school. Do not let your child fall behind. The schools are safe.”
The Wrong Direction
CHICAGO, IL — During this pandemic, the spread of an aggressive Delta variant COVID-19 virus among unvaccinated, teachers, staff, and students assures needless illness or death. Old school buildings lack adequate ventilation, located in underserved communities with overcrowded classes. Many parents are front-line workers who cannot survive without going to their jobs, running the risk of bringing COVID into the home.
Masked students remove their masks to eat. Experts warn that eating indoors can be dangerous, even for vaccinated people in high-risk areas. Currently, no states are at low-or medium-risk levels.
School Mitigations Not Taken
- Masking: There is inadequate education about what kind of mask is effective to block the virus. Cloth masks are least effective. There must be at least three layers of cloth. Swap them for surgical grade masks, and the amount of safe time one can spend in a room with someone with COVID skyrockets to full two hours.
Masks with exhalation valves do not slow disease spread. “The valves allow air to leave the mask without filtering it, defeating its purpose,” said Matthew Staymates from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
- Testing: Many children have not been tested for COVID-19. Since many children who are infected do not show symptoms, the extent of infections and their spread among children remain unknown.
- Contact tracing: an essential public health tool for controlling infectious disease outbreaks, it can break chains of transmission through rapid identification, isolation, clinical care of cases, and providing supported quarantine of contacts. However, with the decimation of public health departments, there are insufficient contact tracers.
- School systems do not have accessible options for online learning for students, especially for students under 12 years of age, for whom there is currently no vaccine.
- Many teenagers in at-risk communities who are eligible have not been vaccinated, mainly due to lack of access.
The Outlook
Vaccines save lives, but they will not stop the spread of the Delta variant on their own. Masks reduce transmission and save lives. Masks are not enough, and we should expect at least 24,000 COVID-19 deaths from the current wave.
It is biologically impossible to continue to test our children and assume safety. “A new study showed that persons infected with the Delta variant had produced around 1,000 times more copies of the virus by the time they tested positive,” said Dr Jorge A Caballero. From what we know about Delta and long-COVID in children (symptoms extending beyond 12 weeks from initial onset), it is immoral to send unvaccinated kids, teachers, and staff into classrooms. “School reopening plans that hinge on universal mask mandates and frequent testing are doomed to fail.”
Since August 5, 2021, nearly 4.3 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic. Almost 94,000 cases were added the past week in the US, a continuing substantial increase. Child cases have steadily increased since the beginning of July, cited the American Academy of Pediatrics Weekly Report on COVID & Children.
The People’s Response Network to COVID-19 says, “Nobody back to school. Do not let your child get sick. The schools are unsafe. Everybody get vaccinated.”
Kathy Powers is a lifetime Chicagoan. At 50, Kathy speaks out as the voice of the people. She became a revolutionary activist whose lifelong fight raises unheard voices. She is the Health Care Desk on the People’s Tribune Editorial Board.
