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This has been bothering me for a while, and yet I\u2019ve hesitated to write about it because to do so properly requires gathering a lot more data than I have, or have access to.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve concluded that perhaps I can shed a bit of my frustration if I put a few words down on (virtual) paper.<\/p>\n
Here is the headline of a report in Sunday\u2019s Chicago Tribune<\/em>, which consists of teachers\u2019 comments about returning to classrooms:\u00a0 \u201c\u2018I\u2019m scared.\u00a0 I want to do my job, but I don\u2019t want to die.'\u201d\u00a0 (Oddly, it was posted online<\/a> nearly a week prior, on July 26.)<\/p>\n Here are some excerpts:<\/p>\n \u201cI am sleepless because the justifications for full, half, or partial in-person learning do not, to me, counterbalance any modicum of risk of fatality or life-long health complications, however slight the chances and however few the affected.\u201d\u00a0 Jason Jaffe, social Studies department chair at Glenbard East High School in Lombard<\/p>\n \u201cIf one person gets sick, that\u2019s it. Honestly, blood is on CPS\u2019 hands if that happens.\u201d Linda Perales, special education teacher at Corkery Elementary School.<\/p>\n \u201cI hear many people express concern that students will be behind academically and behind in social emotional skills. Behind who? All of the other students who haven\u2019t been able to have a normal school experience because of this virus? Behind the arbitrary benchmarks we have set for them? I have spoken with teachers who have had students miss as much as a year of school due to illness. These teachers have said these students recovered and became successful adults despite their missed time in school. These students who are missing school right now will move past this experience and may even benefit from experiencing this unusual time in history. The greatest education in the world will mean nothing to our students if they are dead.\u201d Angela Grimmer, music and orchestra teacher at Carbondale Elementary School.<\/p>\n \u201cNo matter how much effort schools and teachers put into making schools safe, there\u2019s still going to be loss of lives and exposure to a virus that, if it doesn\u2019t kill you, can result in permanent damage to your organs. No amount of loss of learning or socialization is worth this.\u201d\u00a0 Rebecca Courtade first grade teacher at Stone Academy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n In other words, over and over again, teachers express the conviction that students will catch up eventually, and any learning loss that occurs is better than the risk of any deaths that might come to pass as a result of kids being inside a school building \u2014 but this standard, \u201ceven one death is unacceptable,\u201d is one that, if we truly followed it, would oblige us to cancel school each year due to the seasonal flu.<\/p>\n Here are some other reports:<\/p>\n At the Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, \u201cVoices from the Pandemic, \u2018I\u2019m sorry, but it\u2019s a fantasy\u2019\u201d \u2014 a school district superintendent in rural Arizona worries about covid in his schools.<\/p>\n More than a quarter of our students live with grandparents. These kids could very easily catch this virus, spread it and bring it back home. It\u2019s not safe. There\u2019s no way it can be safe.<\/p>\n If you think anything else, I\u2019m sorry, but it\u2019s a fantasy. Kids will get sick, or worse. Family members will die. Teachers will die.<\/p>\n Mrs. Byrd did everything right. She followed all the protocols. If there\u2019s such a thing as a safe, controlled environment inside a classroom during a pandemic, that was it. We had three teachers sharing a room so they could teach a virtual summer school. They were so careful. This was back in June, when cases here were starting to spike. The kids were at home, but the teachers wanted to be together in the classroom so they could team up on the new technology. I thought that was a good idea. It\u2019s a big room. They could watch and learn from each other. Mrs. Byrd was a master teacher. She\u2019d been here since 1982, and she was always coming up with creative ideas. They delivered care packages to the elementary students so they could sprout beans for something hands-on at home, and then the teachers all took turns in front of the camera. All three of them wore masks. They checked their temperatures. They taught on their own devices and didn\u2019t share anything, not even a pencil.<\/p>\n At first she thought it was a sinus infection. That\u2019s what the doctor told her, but it kept getting worse. I got a call that she\u2019d been rushed to the hospital. Her oxygen was low, and they put her on a ventilator pretty much right away. The other two teachers started feeling sick the same weekend, so they went to get tested. They both had it bad for the next month. Mrs. Byrd\u2019s husband got it and was hospitalized. Her brother got it and passed away. Mrs. Byrd fought for a few weeks until she couldn\u2019t anymore.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve gone over it in my head a thousand times. What precautions did we miss? What more could I have done? I don\u2019t have an answer. These were three responsible adults in an otherwise empty classroom, and they worked hard to protect each other. We still couldn\u2019t control it. That\u2019s what scares me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But Mrs. Byrd did not do \u201ceverything right.\u201d\u00a0 The instruction that we\u2019ve heard over and over again is that you can\u2019t simply assume, if your ailment resembles covid but also something else, that it\u2019s the \u201csomething else\u201d that ails you.\u00a0 You must get tested, and self-isolate until it\u2019s ruled out.\u00a0 If Mrs. Byrd didn\u2019t know that, if her doctor advised her otherwise, if her supervisors shrugged off her illness \u2014 well, it\u2019s not as if Mrs. Byrd failed in some moral sort of way, and it\u2019s probably more correct to say that the people around her, failed her and failed the school.\u00a0 But it remains the case that this is not \u201cproof\u201d that procedures instituted to keep students and teachers safe will fail.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s another story, reported at CNN<\/a>:\u00a0 \u201c260 employees in Georgia school district have tested positive for Covid-19 or been exposed.\u201d\u00a0 But this does not mean that the virus has spread throughout school buildings.\u00a0 The report doesn\u2019t actually state how many of these 260 were infected; a report at WSB \u2013 TV<\/a> indicates that three teachers at one elementary school have tested positive, though it\u2019s unclear if these are the only cases.\u00a0 In any case, it appears that there is a robust contact tracing program in place, though whether these employees were considered \u201cexposed\u201d due to close contact with family members or more remote contacts such as a contact tracing program might capture (e.g., at a church service), isn\u2019t clear.<\/p>\n And we\u2019ve got the report of kids at a summer camp who got infected<\/a> \u2014 but in circumstances far different than what kids would experience at a school taking precautions.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got 36 kids at a high school sports camp in Lake Zurich<\/a> in suburban Chicago who tested positive \u2014 a dramatic headline which is less dramatic when reading the reporting that<\/p>\n Despite the fact that many students were flagged as having symptoms at the camp, officials don\u2019t believe that the camp itself was the culprit being the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were several social gatherings leading up to the start of these camps where students were likely exposed, and we were just coming out of that Fourth of July weekend,\u201d LCHD expert Hannah Goering said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a recipe for a lot of people to potentially be infected.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And, finally, here in Illinois, daycares have been open on a limited basis since late May, and more fully but with capacity restrictions, masking requirements, etc., since late June.\u00a0 Last week I wrote about this separately<\/a>; the state of Illinois doesn\u2019t track any cases of covid transmission in daycares, and if there have been outbreaks despite these precautions, no one seems to care, which suggests that it\u2019s more likely than not, that there haven\u2019t been<\/em>, that even young kids (ages 2 and up) are able to comply with the requirement to wear masks, and that parents\u2019 eagerness to show up to work has not resulted in large numbers of children being dropped off despite symptoms, and infecting others.\u00a0 Why no one seems interested in looking at the experience of daycares as suggestive of what will happen with schools, I don\u2019t know, but I could not find anything.<\/p>\n What does this add up to?<\/p>\n Education is important.\u00a0 Schooling, per se<\/em>, is important and is not replaceable, for most kids, with at-home learning.\u00a0 Schools are working out logistical challenges with \u201cpods,\u201d by rotating kids to have half-full classrooms, and, most importantly, by mandating masks.\u00a0 (And, no, I don\u2019t believe in the claims that \u201ckids will inevitably use their masks as slingshots and blow snot in them, so they\u2019re useless or, worse, germ-ridden.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s just an excuse.\u00a0 Yes, children can be childish; that\u2019s in the nature of what it means to be a child.\u00a0 But they are also capable of learning what they must take seriously, where the rules are zero-tolerance, and all the more so if teachers and staff make it very clear, to parents and children, that mask misbehavior is grounds for moving a child to remote education.\u00a0 And if you claim that a child must be permitted to remain in the classroom despite mask-slingshotting \u2014 well, than that\u2019s a different kind of brokenness in education.)\u00a0 As long as case counts are reasonably under control, following established metrics around positivity, testing availability, R-naught, etc., students should continue to be educated.<\/p>\n (Tangent on positivity:\u00a0 while, all other things being equal, a low rate of positives is better than a high rate, there are some ways in which that has never made too much sense as an absolute rule.\u00a0 During a time when tests are hard to come by, you\u2019d expect a high positivity rate as tests would be reserved for those with clear symptoms.\u00a0 With tests widely available, you\u2019d expect a lower rate; if people are sent off to be tested solely by virtue of having contact with someone, regardless of symptoms, even lower still.\u00a0 On the other hand, during the summer, when few people have run-of-the-mill colds or flu that could be mistaken for covid, you\u2019d expect a larger proportion of those with symptoms to be those with actual diagnoses, but to have a smaller number of people experiencing symptoms of any kind.)<\/p>\n And, finally, if you can\u2019t have even partial in-person learning now \u2014 then when?\u00a0 Are the \u201cremoters\u201d truly waiting for some insta-test that reveals infections the moment one has been infected, and which is so easily produced that everyone can test themselves on a near-daily basis?\u00a0 The lack of such is not, near as I can tell, a matter of the failure of the Trump administration \u2014 so far as I know, no country in the world has such a test.<\/p>\n Or are they waiting for a vaccine?<\/p>\n Two such vaccines have entered the final stage of testing at the end of July.\u00a0 As the Washington Post<\/em><\/a> reports, \u201cPharmaceutical executives predicted to Congress in July that vaccines might be available as soon as October, or before the end of the year.\u201d\u00a0 (Ironically, at this stage in testing, it\u2019s actually better for there to be higher covid prevalence, for test subjects to be exposed to the virus sufficiently for the pharmas to gather sufficient data on effectiveness.)\u00a0 And one of the principles of the Operation Warp Speed has been for the government to purchase vaccines in advance of test results being in, so that the companies will begin manufacturing them even if they might otherwise turn out to be useless.<\/p>\n So, yes, if we knew that just a couple more months\u2019 wait would be enough, then maybe that would be grounds for delaying in-person instruction.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s incredibly optimistic.\u00a0 It may take well into 2021 before a vaccine is available to the general public.\u00a0 And even then, people will worry about possible unknown long-term side effects.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, Biden has raised the concern<\/a> that Trump would play politics with vaccines \u2014 that is, inappropriately approving a vaccine in advance of the election \u2014 statements that the \u201cTrump War Room\u201d twitter account<\/a> questioned as \u201cspreading conspiracy theories and undermining the public\u2019s confidence in a vaccine.\u201d\u00a0 Would Democrats reject a pre-November vaccine?\u00a0 And if a vaccine is approved in early 2021, would other issues come into play \u2014 delays due to the insistence that distribution be done in a socially-just manner (and, yes, it\u2019s reasonable to say that those most in need should have first dibs, but not that several months should be lost due to putting in place committees and mechanisms to ensure this happens).\u00a0 So, taking all this into account, we simply cannot stay locked down for this length of time.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This has been bothering me for a while, and yet I\u2019ve hesitated to write about it because to do so properly requires gathering a lot more data than I have, or have access to.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve concluded that perhaps I can shed a bit of my frustration if I put a few words down on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1418,1421],"class_list":["post-17317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19"],"yoast_head":"\n