government

We Don’t Need More ADVICE on How to Safely Reopen Schools. We Need RULES.

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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is full of advice about Covid-19.

It’s safe to do this. It’s not safe to do that.

But we don’t need advice. We need rules.

This week the CDC changed its advice to all staff, students and teachers when schools reopen. Instead of wearing masks in schools only when unvaccinated, people should wear masks regardless of whether they’ve been vaccinated or not.

This is necessary to protect children who aren’t eligible for the vaccine and slow the spread of new more infectious variants of the virus, representatives said.

The problem is that too many Americans don’t listen to advice – especially if it goes against their beliefs.

And there are a significant number of Americans who believe whatever crazy nonsense talk radio, Fox News or their savior Donald Trump tell them.

Immunologists talking about infectious disease just don’t rate.

So these people aren’t going to listen to the CDC’s advice.

That presents real problems both for them and for us.

First of all, they’re literally killing themselves.

More than 99% of people who die from Covid-19 these days are unvaccinated, and they make up almost the same percentage of recent hospitalizations.

CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky calls this a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”, but they aren’t the only ones paying for it.

We all are.

The Covid-19 pandemic would be effectively over in the United States if everyone who was eligible for the vaccine had received it.

About 56% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, but in many places — especially in rural areas — the number is under 20% despite widespread availability of the drug.

As a result, cases of Covid-19 are on the rise again in most of the United States. In fact, this country leads the world in the daily average number of new infections, accounting for one in every nine cases reported worldwide each day.

The majority of these new cases are the more infectious delta variant, a version of the virus that could jump start cases even among the vaccinated.

And the reason the virus had a chance to mutate and become more resistant to our existing treatments was a ready supply of easy hosts – anti-vaxxers who refused to protect themselves and now have put the rest of the country back at risk.

Their ignorance and selfishness has put all of us in danger.

That makes me mad, and not just at the anti-vaxxers.

I’m mad at the federal government.

You could have done something about this. You SHOULD have done something, but you didn’t.

The Trump’s administration badly bungled the initial stages of the pandemic with late and inadequate international travel bans, failure to use federal authority to supply Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), failure to require mandatory universal paid sick leave for those unable to work due to the virus, and failure to mandate standards for the health and safety of workers.

In contrast, President Joe Biden’s administration has done better in making the vaccine readily available, but still failed to fix many of the problems it inherited and still continually neglecting to mandate anything.

“Hey, Buddy, why don’t you try this?” – is NOT good enough!

We need – “Do this OR ELSE!”

You can’t just make the vaccine available and hope people are smart enough to take it.

They aren’t. Not in America.

Not after decades of allowing lies and disinformation to infect the airwaves. In the name of freedom we’ve let Fox News and the former President poison the minds of admittedly easily lead citizens until their ignorance impacts all of us.

And the antidote to such disinformation – a robust public education system – has been stolen from too many Americans by decades of under funding, rampant school privatization and high stakes testing.

What we need now is to make vaccines a prerequisite to participate in all kinds of social congress – shopping, dinning at restaurants, movies, sporting events, schools, etc. But our government -our FEDERAL government – won’t do that.

Instead it’s a never ending cycle of passing the buck – that’s been our lawmakers response whether Republican or Democrat – to this crisis.

Authority is left it up to the states, who often refuse to allow safety precautions to be regulated or passed the decision on to someone else until it’s being made separately by every minor representative, podunk flunky and school director this side of Mayberry.

What a disgrace!

And here we are again.

The experts are telling us what we should do in the best interests of keeping our children safe. But the federal government refuses to back it up with its full authority.

Just advice. No rules.

Will people be required to wear masks in public schools?

Maybe.

It all depends on what local officials somewhere down the line decide.

In my home state of Pennsylvania, Democratic Governor Tom Wolf announced yesterday that he is not even considering a statewide mask mandate as Coronavirus cases surge nor will he require masks in schools.

Wolf said his strategy to fight the spread of COVID-19 is the vaccine, itself, – the masking mandate was for when there was no vaccine.

“People have the ability, each individual to make the decision to get a vaccine,” Wolf says. “If they do, that’s the protection.”

Meanwhile, Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald says he’d consider a mask mandate if infections were worse in the county, an area that includes the City of Pittsburgh. Though he suggests schools follow CDC advice, he’s not about to make that decision for them.

So it will be left to local school directors to decide what to do. Probably most of them will allow masks in school but not require them.

It’s a terrible situation with an incredible lack of leadership, but I get it.

School board directors do not have the power of the bully pulpit. They don’t have the power of Chief County Executives, Governors or the President.

If people challenge their decisions (as they probably would) that requires district finances for lengthy court battles and uncomfortable political confrontations for re-election.

None of these folks should have to make these kinds of life and death decisions.

That’s what the President is for. It’s what US Congress is for.

The buck has to stop somewhere. Right!?

But the matter has become so politicized and our representatives so spineless that our entire system hangs by a thread.

What if the federal government mandates masks and certain states or districts don’t listen?

Will its take the national guard to come in and enforce the mandate?

There was a time when lawmakers had the courage to do things like that – to legislate what was in the best interests of society and darn the consequences.

But today’s lawmakers do not have the courage to govern.

And once again, we’re paying for it.

Our society has failed to protect us. It barely functions anymore.

So get set for another rock ‘em sock ‘em school year where kids and adults will get sick.

In the few years since we discovered Covid-19, young children have rarely gotten as sick from the virus as adults. However, that is changing. Infections have increased this summer as the delta variant spread until approximately 4.1 million children have been diagnosed with the disease resulting in about 18,000 hospitalizations and more than 350 deaths. 

Add to that the facts that only 30% of kids ages 12 to 17 have been vaccinated, younger children are not eligible for the vaccine and probably won’t be until the end of the year at the earliest.

It’s a recipe for disaster.

The Delta variant is 225% more contagious, contains 1,000% higher viral loads from earlier variants, and hits those levels in just 3 ½ days. Delta has a stronger bond to ACE-2 receptors in nasal passages and lung cells.  

Vaccinated people can get infected if exposed to large enough viral loads.  Unvaccinated kids could easily have those high viral loads. This means that everyone is a possible link in the chain of transmission. 

But it’s not inevitable.

There is something we could do about it if we act now.

No more mere advice!

Pass some laws, make some rules to keep everyone as safe as possible and finally end this pandemic!

It just takes courage and common sense – two things in short supply in today’s United States.

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The Government Should Make Unvaccinated Students & Staff Mask Up in Schools

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As a classroom teacher, I cannot enforce safety protocols in my school all by myself.

I can’t make students and coworkers wear masks.

I can’t require people to show me their medical records to determine with any degree of certainty who is and is not fully vaccinated.

But when it comes to Covid-19, the federal government is again throwing up its hands and leaving all safety protocols to small town government officials, local school directors, and schmucks like me.


The result is a patchwork of inconsistent and inadequate safety directives that put far too many at risk.

Here we go again.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidelines Friday that it is safe for public schools to open for in-person learning so long as unvaccinated students and staff wear masks and an attempt is made to keep people 3 feet apart.

Children and adults who are fully vaccinated do not need to wear masks, according to the CDC.

However, these are all just suggestions.

There are no laws backing them up.

There is no federal mandate that anyone wear masks, that anyone prove their vaccination status or ANYTHING!

And as many parts of the world are battling new and more virulent strains of Covid-19 and some of the worst such as the Delta Variant are even beginning to show up on our shores, I want to know WHY.

Why is our government abrogating its responsibility to keep us safe?

It’s not like lawmakers aren’t already dedicated to protecting us in other ways.

The federal government has strict regulations to keep our foods and medicines safe. It has regulations to keep our motor vehicles and buildings safe. It even has specific regulations about which other vaccines children must have before they can enter the public school system.

Why is Covid-19 any different?

The government won’t let you drive without putting on a seat belt, it regulates your speed on the highway, and it won’t let you smoke a cigarette in a public place.

Why won’t it do the same kind of thing with Covid-19?

If the CDC is correct that unvaccinated people should wear masks in schools particularly in indoor and crowded settings, then our government should mandate we follow those guidelines.

Period.

“Vaccination is currently the leading public health prevention strategy to end the Covid-19 pandemic. Promoting vaccination can help schools safely return to in-person learning as well as extracurricular activities and sports,” the CDC said in a statement.

Unfortunately, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has been her own worst enemy often garbling the organization’s message to avoid controversy. For instance, she stressed that decisions on safety measures should be put in place locally.

This has often been interpreted as leaving room for fewer safety precautions.

But this goes against Walensky’s other statements that MORE RESTRICTIONS may be necessary, not less.

In areas with low vaccination rates, higher viral spread or with increasing cases of new strains of the virus, she has suggested universal masking and other measures.

Whether this miscommunication is a result of a cowardly Joe Biden administration or Walensky’s own fault, it has hurt the vaccination effort. Instead of meeting the goal of 70% of Americans fully vaccinated by the July 4th holiday, we’re stalled at nearly 50%.

If there were actual mandates about what vaccinated people were allowed to do and those mandates were enforced, it would probably incentivize more people to get the shots.

At very least we should mandate masks at every elementary school in the nation. After all, children 11 or younger aren’t even eligible for the vaccine because it hasn’t been cleared for that age group yet. No need to check medical records. Elementary schools will be filled with the unvaccinated.

But no. Nothing.

It’s not even like these new CDC guidelines are extreme.

They fall well short of safety guidance in other parts of the globe.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for all vaccinated people to continue to wear masks because of increased spread of variants of the virus.

The CDC isn’t going that far because of confidence that the vaccines being used in the US – the ones made by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson – are effective against new variants, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“We know from good studies that the Delta variant is protected against by the vaccines that fundamentally are being used here. And that’s the reason why the CDC feels at this point they should not change their recommendation,” he said.

If the CDC guidelines are sensible and moderate, why won’t the federal government enforce them?

The answer seems to be multifaceted.

First, the vaccine and even Covid-19, itself, have been politicized by the Republican Party.

At this summer’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), participants cheered low vaccination numbers. Though vaccinated, himself, the former President has continually used fear of the vaccine as a tool to rally support.

There may be reluctance among Democrats to let their own political agenda be derailed by bogus cries of tyranny at public safety measures. (Of course given that those efforts already seem to be mostly derailed by reluctance to override the filibuster, this hardly seems to matter.)

Another overriding concern throughout the pandemic has been the economy.

Governmental officials from the federal to the state to the local level have been unwilling to put safety concerns ahead of capitalism. Business interests have repeatedly been prioritized over protections for human life.

In short, keeping schools open to in-person learning is necessary to keep parents working at their jobs. So any safety precautions that could jeopardize keeping the schools open jeopardizes profits.

Without the federal government stepping in, the decision probably will fall to most local school districts.

And this is entirely unfair to school directors. They should not have to make these kinds of life and death decisions.

In most cases, I would expect they’ll pass the buck on to individual teachers, parents and students.

If you want to mask up, you can. If you don’t, you won’t have to do it.

This will make individuals essentially powerless to protect themselves from the virus since wearing a mask doesn’t provide much protection to the wearer – it mostly protects others from the wearer.

And as to 3 feet social distancing, that’s impossible in most school buildings so it will just be ignored.

Like last school year, people will unnecessarily catch the virus.

The question is how much this will affect the national picture.

With schools closed for the summer, infection rates are mostly down. However, that could change in late August and September as they reopen.

If enough people don’t get the vaccine, that increases the chances for new variants of the virus to come into existence. With enough time, they can become resistant to the vaccines we have.

On the other hand, the pandemic could be over.

I fervently hope it is.

I want my classroom to return to normal.

I want to continue to make it better than normal.

But without the government stepping in here, we’re all just engaged in a game of chicken.

A game of chicken with a pandemic.

 

Like this post?  You might want to consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. This helps me continue to keep the blog going and get on with this difficult and challenging work.

Plus you get subscriber only extras!

Just CLICK HERE.

Patreon+Circle

I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!