American exceptionalism is over. It is. We are the stupid country now. I’m not stupid. But you are. Well, at least that’s what I see every single day on social media. No matter what the topic, half the country says the sky is blue and the other half disagrees. And because this is who we’ve become, a large portion of the country will be throwing children into an environment where some will surely die. The country wasn’t this stupid in 1917 – the last time we went through a pandemic of this size – but we sure are this stupid today.
The opportunity to go back to school in this country was lost back in late April. New York was getting its spread under control, California was starting to flatten and Washington state and Michigan were finally determining what worked. Of course, the “red state” governors hadn’t experienced what these four “blue states” had gone through and so many ignored the lessons from the early outbreaks. Absolutely zero foresight. Beaches remained open on holidays. Bars were packed. People refused to wear masks. Then on May 20th, Conservative outlet The National Review published this garbage, Where Does Ron DeSantis Go to Get His Apology? DeSantis is of course the Florida Governor who stood next to Mike Pence on that same day and gave this gem of a press conference. DeSantis was basically bragging that Florida had done an amazing job, the press was wrong that Florida would turn into the next New York and the press was rooting for Florida to fail because he was a Republican. DeSantis’s press conference and the National Review article have solidified its place in the Hall of Shame in American lore forever. Florida did become the next New York, surpassing it in total cases in July.
Florida isn’t alone right now. California isn’t doing much better. Texas is a disaster. Arizona might actually be worse than Florida. And this country and its leadership have learned nothing. Send our kids back to school? Are you insane?
Our kids should be back in school this fall. But they can’t go back. Our kids can’t go back to school because our government, the President and even the state governors screwed up everything. There’s so much to say about the country’s response to the virus, I don’t even know where to begin.
Here’s where I’ll start. How can anyone comfortably rely on any information coming from the federal government? Trump is a pathological liar. Trump doesn’t care about your kids. He does care about getting reelected. I literally watched Dr. Birx say yesterday morning on CNN that schools in communities with outbreaks should stay home and educate remotely. But where has this message been? Has Trump said this? Did anyone say this in March when the schools closed early? So that the districts could prepare for the fall? No. This is brand new messaging that of course, Trump undermined the very next day! Trump tweeted the following less than 24 hours after Dr. Birx’s comments, “Cases up because of BIG Testing! Much of our Country is doing very well. Open the Schools!” and in case you were wondering if Dr. Birx was someone you could trust, Trump tweets, “So Crazy Nancy Pelosi said horrible things about Dr. Deborah Birx, going after her because she was too positive on the very good job we are doing on combatting (sic) the China Virus, including Vaccines & Therapeutics. In order to counter Nancy, Deborah took the bait & hit us. Pathetic!”
Perhaps some communities ignored the terrible, and often shifting messaging from the White House or the half measures from the governors. But by and large, the country as a whole proceeded based on hope while ignoring reality.
We’re America after all. We always persevere. We always win. Everything would be fine.
Continuing with the theme of incompetent leadership, Trump tweeted less than a month ago that schools that do not reopen should have their federal funding cut. Think about that. At a time when its OBVIOUS that it’s absolutely necessary to transform education at a rate never done before, the leader of this nation is suggesting that we cut funding to schools. On Earth 2, the correct decision was to cut tens of billions of dollars from our defense budget and repurpose those funds to education to modernize the schools and prepare the teachers and administrators to successfully provide a quality education for the next several decades and certainly through the next outbreak.
If classrooms have a future and I believe they do, then additional funding should have been used to modernize the classroom. For starters, funding should have been appropriated to install HEPA filters and UV lights in the air ducts in every single school. The funding should have been used to build new schools in areas that needed them. We all know that there are hundreds of districts that need to upgrade facilities. Why not now? These new schools would contemplate how to protect kids from this virus, but also potential outbreaks in the future. These new schools should have come with state of the art technology. High speed internet. Laptops or tablets for every student. Remote technology should be included for when outbreaks happened so that the healthy students can continue learning if the school does need to close temporary.
For schools that simply needed an update to prepare for education during a pandemic, the funding could have been used again to ensure that every child has a tablet and internet and/or funding to create lunch programs and childcare programs for essential workers.
Essential workers you say. Yeah. “Essential workers.” Mostly low wage earners who have to work because they need money to feed their families and pay the rent. But with no school, who would watch their children?
Again on Earth 2, the federal government would have known that a temporary unemployment benefit program would need to extend past July 31st, given how the curve never flattened. People with objective brains could look back in April at the divisive situation, the protests, refusal to wear masks and the apathetic red state leadership to determine the outbreak would not be resolved by August.
But we lied to ourselves. Because we’re America. And we persevere. And we always win.
The Senior Senator from Texas John Cornyn (R) tweeted in early July, “Are we supposed to pay people not to work” in response to criticism about the UI benefits expiring at the end of the month. THE ANSWER IS YES, SIR. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO PAY PEOPLE NOT TO WORK UNTIL THE VIRUS IS UNDER CONTROL. ONCE THE VIRUS IS CONTAINED, YOU COULD THEN CONSIDER SENDING PEOPLE BACK TO WORK AND CHILDREN BACK TO SCHOOL.
The bulk of the first or second stimulus bill gave billions to businesses in an effort to incentivize them to remain open and not lay off workers. The plan did work as intended for some companies. Others took the money and laid people off anyway.
But incentivizing companies to remain open was the absolute wrong strategy. The right thing to do was first limit who is actually an essential worker. For example, the WWE performing in Florida was not essential. Alcohol is not essential. Anyone who is truly not essential needs to stay home and not work.
Next, the unemployment benefits should have been extended to all workers for the foreseeable future and not with a finite time frame. The GOP claims that people are committing suicide from anxiety and depression. YEAH BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW IF THEY’RE UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS ARE GOING TO EXPIRE! “The cure can’t be worse than the disease” they say. People aren’t contemplating suicide because their kids can’t go to school. They’re depressed and anxious because our leadership failed to make people feel safe by demonstrating a minimal level of competency and empathy.
Secondly, essential workers should have been given the following: 1) Hazardous Work Pay Subsidies 2) Medicare Coverage for the foreseeable future 3) Some kind of life insurance policy in the event they died. OSHA needed to provide real guidance and accountability for those businesses that needed to remain open. None of this happened and OSHA has been completely MIA.
The federal government also should have provided additional money for essential workers to pay for childcare given that the country would never come even remotely close to containing the virus well enough to reopen schools. The repurposed funds could have paid for babysitting while the essential worker puts their health and life on the line so that we can get receive our packages or obtain treatment from our brave healthcare workers.
Remember, a centralized message from the White House would have presumably made people more likely to follow the rules, thus out-of-work adults would be safe, uninfected and available to watch their neighbors kids while the essential worker worked each day. That’s how a community comes together. That’s how a country comes together. But we didn’t do that.
Because we’re America. We’re tough. We persevere. We win. We’re going to take this virus head on. I mean, we have American blood for Pete’s sake. Our awesomeness will destroy the virus.
And now we’re on the third, fourth . . . fifth stimulus bill and we can’t get unemployment insurance benefits extended. Don’t worry though. We can’t feed our families but there’s billions in the Covid bill for F-35s and a new FBI building. A repeal of the SALT tax and a full meal deduction for my business meetings – all to benefit guys like me . . . . a guy who still has his job, works remote and gets paid the same salary as before the pandemic. I don’t need this! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!?!?
And the masks. I can’t write this piece without saying something about masks. For those that think it’s a restriction on your freedoms or its unconstitutional or socialist, you’re an idiot. Secondly, IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT YOU THINK. Aside from just being wrong on the science, every governor in every state in one form or another is not going to allow “things to go back to normal” until the number of cases and the number of deaths drop. The only way to make those numbers drop is to do the same four things that have been beaten into our heads since April despite Trump and apathetic governors: 1) wear a mask 2) stay six feet apart 3) wash your hands and 4) Only go places indoors for a short period of time but make sure you follow steps 1-3 if you have to go indoors for anything. It’s not hard.
Alright back to schools, I do not know how anyone can look at the data and feel its safe to send your children to school. I have seen studies circulating that show that children are either less likely to get infected or less likely to spread the virus than adults. At least that’s what the title of the link says anyway. Here’s one study titled, “COVID-19 Transmission and Children: The Child Is Not to Blame.” Here are some quotes from the study – and keep in mind that the person sharing this on Facebook was sharing the study because she was arguing that children are at low risk of receiving or infecting others with the virus.
- “However, a major question remains unanswered: to what extent are children responsible for SARS-CoV-2 transmission?” The study can’t even answer it’s own central question.
- “On the basis of these data, SARS-CoV-2 transmission in schools may be less important in community transmission than initially feared. This would be another manner by which SARS-CoV-2 differs drastically from influenza, for which school-based transmission is well recognized as a significant driver of epidemic disease and forms the basis for most evidence regarding school closures as public health strategy.” Um hello, school hasn’t been in session since March! Of course, the addresses this, ““Another possibility is that because school closures occurred in most locations along with or before widespread physical distancing orders, most close contacts became limited to households, reducing opportunities for children to become infected in the community and present as index cases.”
So yes, the data indicates that children are by and large not getting sick at the same rates as adults. Why? Because young children aren’t drinking at bars, parents are doing an adequate job overall of following the guidelines when it comes to children and again, schools are not in session. Here’s a study however from the CDC that shows that nearly half of all campers under the age of 17 contracted Covid-19 at a YMCA summer camp in Georgia earlier this summer. The children’s’ rate of infection is consistent with other age demographics that attended the camp. And of course, this camp was outdoors and lasted a couple of days. What happens when you stick these children in an indoor classroom for an entire school year?
Do we actually think that schools are going to make it nine months without a single Covid-19 case? What happens when the first case occurs? The school has to do contact tracing so that means outing the child who tested positive. How will the parents of other children react when the identity of the infected child is revealed? Have we not noticed how MLB baseball reacted when players on the Marlins tested positive? The league shut the Marlins down. Is that how schools will react?
Lastly, I want to talk briefly about Covid deaths. People are putting far too much stock in the low mortality rates and far too less on the potential long term effects on the survivors. A CDC study published ten days ago indicates that one in three survivors have not returned to their normal health. Among the more serious long term effects are permanent damage to the kidneys, heart and lungs. Obviously not enough time has passed for us to have solid, reliable data on this subject. No one truly knows the severity and likelihood of the long term effects. So why would we put our children at risk without knowing this information.? It’s insane!
Even if deaths are the only concern, which it is not but we’ll assume that’s the case for a moment, the mortality rate for children under 11 is .0016%. There are 48 million children under the age of 11 in this country. If one percent of the children under 11 get infected and the mortality rate remains consistent, 768 children die from Covid because we reopen schools this fall.
768 dead kids.
20 died in the Newtown shooting.
14 died in Parkland.
12 in Columbine.
Someone with more influence than I should have written this in April or May. Maybe things would be different. It’s far too late today. And I fully understand that there are families that don’t have a choice. Or that some kids only get good meals if they’re in school. This reality makes me so damn angry and sad. Children will get sick. Some will die. It’s a guarantee.
And by no means is this blog political. It’s common sense.
Again, it’s your kids. I’m not supposed to tell you what to do with your children. But damn it, I will cry and my heart will break when people post pictures of their boys and girls on ventilators or when I read the news from a high school classmate that they lost a child to this virus.
Let’s learn from our mistakes and let’s at least be smart enough not to repeat them. WE’RE AMERICA AFTER ALL. COME ON!
The Reasonable Man Standard 