Worst case scenario if kids miss school because of the dangers of covid: A lot of kids, perhaps even most, need to repeat a grade. (something a number of kids struggling in school already do)
Worst case scenario if we force kids to school amid a deadly pandemic: A lot of kids with long term disabilities, “brain fog” and/or permanent brain damage permanently hampering their ability to learn. And possible death.
Even Masks are probably not that helpful in a school situation. Masks help reduce exposure for brief contacts while social distancing. All the data about effectiveness is about 5-10 minute exposure times. The longer the contact lasts, the higher the risk goes, and the less helpful the mask is. Kids would be in the classroom all damn day. The masks won’t help shit if there’s a contagious classmate in the room. There’s lots of time for exposure to guarantee every child has a high level of exposure.
Oh, there’s lots of data on the importance of ventilation and air turnover as well, which no one is doing anything about which would make this situation less dire. Masks are not ideal, nor perfect, but they help. At this moment, that’s the best we can hope for, and there are people bound and determined to make sure even that minimal effort does not happen.
It’s profoundly frustrating to me that, even this far into the pandemic, almost no schools are even considering moving more learning activities outside, weather permitting. They’re hyper focused on hand sanitizer and deep cleaning in the classroom, which may make a tiny difference but nowhere near the effect that outdoor learning would have, and in many locations the weather would allow for outdoor schooling most days of the year. It’s a respiratory virus; hand sanitizer can only do so much!
While it made sense initially when we thought surface and fomite transmission might be a major factor, at this point, with more knowledge, it is purely performative. It might make people feel safer, but it actually does virtually nothing in regard to covid. Now, I am not against cleaning, and there are certainly other childhood illnesses, particularly GI type illnesses, in which this can make a difference, but pretending that we are preventing covid this way is just deluding ourselves.
