As public schools reopen across the United States, there is more at stake than transportation and teaching. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued guidelines for schools reopening as the Covid19 pandemic remains a threat to public health and human life.
The delta variant of the corona virus is rampaging through populations around the world. In the United States, a number of states are experiencing frightening new outbreaks of Covid19. Some jurisdictions are reporting infections among a most unexpected population: young children. The initial manifestation of this virus struck especially hard in elderly populations. As a result of that danger, the elderly have become the largest demographic of the vaccinated.
Young children have only recently been seriously endangered by the virus, which seemed to prefer older populations. The vaccines that have slowed the spread of this disease and have given confidence to vaccinated older residents. The vaccines are still not approved for children under twelve.
As schools reopen, local school boards are deciding whether to follow CDC guidelines urging that face masks be required for students and staff in hopes of preventing a surge in Covid infections. Officials are deciding whether to require masks in K-12 schools or to follow the anti-vaxx activists who have never trusted vaccines despite the history of successful and miraculous vaccines such as polio, smallpox and influenza. The Covid vaccines could join this esteemed crowd if only the holdouts will stop blocking people from getting the vaccine because of conspiracy theories and outright lies about the safety and success of the Covid19 vaccines.
In North Carolina, school districts that have withheld support for the vaccine among the entire population are rejecting proposals that all students and staff wear face masks until the virus is brought under control. Citing "freedom," some school officials prefer making face masks optional as a matter of personal choice. The Wilson County school board has narrowly approved a mask requirement for all students.
The freedom the anti-mask crowd prefers is the freedom to let young children die. They are too young to be vaccinated, and thereby are helpless against the the spread of the virus. Yes, the children can wear their own masks under the optional mask proposal, but they cannot force others to wear masks. What the anti-vaxxers are overlooking is the virus' ability to leap from one child or adult to another, person, even an asymptomatic patient. One unmasked student could infect an entire classroom, and those children could take the virus home with them and infect family, neighbors and others. The best hope for all children and staff is to have everyone wear a mask, thwarting the virus' natural hunt for unprotected victims until enough of the population is vaccinated to produce "herd immunity," when the virus runs out of vulnerable people.
Until then, a "masks optional" policy is is not freedom; it is homicide. Don't make school a death trap.
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