Thinking about kids being used in societal experiments

Our daughter Lesley shared an email from the Littleton Public Schools, where we have two granddaughters attending Arapahoe HS, and here is the most relevant portion of the message.

What this means for LPS:

• Beginning Saturday, February 5, 2022, there will no longer be a public health order requiring masks in schools and public indoor spaces in Adams and Arapahoe counties.
• LPS will continue to follow the guidance of local health experts.
• Beginning Saturday, February 5, 2022, masks are optional for people of all ages regardless of vaccination status (students, employees, parents and visitors) inside our schools both during and outside of the school day. Parents will decide whether or not their children will wear a mask in school. Masks continue to be recommended.
• The federal law that requires all students and staff, regardless of vaccination status, to wear a mask on school buses is still in place.
• KN95 masks and surgical masks continue to be available in every school.
• All other layered and overlapping health strategies such as increased cleaning and improved ventilation will remain in place. Parents should continue to keep their children home from school if they are demonstrating symptoms of illness. Parents should continue to report illness and COVID exposures using the form on your school’s website.
• COVID testing remains available at our district testing site. Schools will receive a limited supply of home tests for symptomatic students as well.
• Schools will develop plans to support the individual health needs of students. Parents should contact the school health office to initiate this process.

No surprise. There will be some associated problems, certainly.

I do admire the clarity of most of the bullet points as they seem to anticipate most questions parents will have. After two years of the pandemic, the district SHOULD be quite familiar with almost every point of view and argument. A persuasive essay writer needs to spend considerable time anticipating counter-arguments, for instance.

I did read an interesting argument for dropping SOMETHING (masks or vaccine requirements, since social distancing has already been ignored by most). That writer chose masks since the vaccines (with boosters) really make the crucial difference. The argument is that there are diminishing returns to a constant state of emergency.

A constant state of emergency leads to frustration and a feeling that we are "stuck" without an end game.

What is missing, of course, are effective levers to get the anti-vaxxers to bow to society's need for protection. The only other strategy seems to be to let pretty much everyone get infected (like the old chicken pox parties) until the combination of "natural" immunity and vaccinations reduces the virus to the same levels as the common cold and the flu. That seems like using a large hammer on a smaller nail, but it can work if we, as a society, have the stomach to advocate for many more serious illnesses and deaths.

i saw today that the U.S. has the highest number of deaths from Covid of any wealthy country (four times as large a percentage as Germany, for instance) and that much of that can be attributed to not enough of the elderly being boosted. Perhaps a tolerance for lots of death is just part of the American DNA. But that question is for another day.

I found that last bullet point in the LPS list to be so vague as to be pointless, but perhaps there are further plans that will define the process and the ways to "support the individual health needs of students."

We should all be concerned about students (and families) who are immunocompromised and who now face some difficult choices. It is difficult to imagine too many students at Arapahoe HS continuing to wear a mask, particularly if they have been vaccinated. The vulnerable will be even more vulnerable.

The removal of masks while vaccination rates are still spotty strikes me as an experiment with live humans, most of whom did not volunteer to be part of the experiment. On the other hand, sharply accelerating infection rates can prompt officials to reinstate the mask requirements, maybe even for short periods of time. 

No one really knows, and that means most parents can't really breathe a sigh of relief. 

But never-ending masking is not an attractive option.

The winter of our discontent marches on.