My "Groundbreaking" Plan for Back-to-Real-Normal School
Time for a choice and common sense to make a comeback
I have a groundbreaking* plan for getting all schools back to normal.
It’s a plan being used in thousands of places across the U.S. and around the world, and works best when all four parts are implemented at once.
*what we did for decades before the March 2020 fear & panic set in
1. Make masks a choice.
I hope we can agree by now that there’s no basis of any kind for forcing children to cover their faces in order to be in school. At the state level, all but the most politically-recalcitrant Governors have figured this out, even if many county health and school boards have not.
Evidence of negative effects on mental health, cognitive development, and school & classroom environment continues to mount and may very well be the basis for future lawsuits. Efforts to “mask harder” or mandate N95s/KN95s in schools is futile at best, and abusive at worst.
I wish cloth stopped viruses, but it never has & never will. Even the CDC has finally (sort of) admitted as much.
The off-ramp is choice, uncoupled from metrics.
2. Make Vax a Choice.
There is no direct medical benefit of COVID-19 vaccination for 99.99%++ of kids & teens. Vaccines can’t stop transmission, but schools aren’t high-transmission venues anyway, kids are inefficient spreaders, & the vast majority of children have no or low-symptoms when infected.
Vax-induced and so-called “hybrid” immunity have not been shown superior to natural immunity. Parents are free to choose the vaccine for their child, including the associated risks and side effects. (For adolescent boys, this includes increased risk of myocarditis, per U.S. and Hong Kong data.)
But there’s no basis for mandating the shot for kids, or for demanding that others choose it for their children. SARS-CoV-2 presents lower risks of severe outcome than do flu & RSV for various pediatric age groups. In 2020, Covid-19 effectively “stole” deaths from other respiratory pathogens among ages 1-17.
Ideally, a parent would make the decision based on direct medical benefits, not in response to coercion or the promise of a non-medical benefit (i.e., freedom from unethical protocols, getting to go certain places).
But “choice for all” means that motivations will vary.
3. Make sick “actually sick.”
Public health and school officials have sold themselves and parents on the idea that an ethical, moral, or medical obligation results from being “exposed” or “in close contact” with someone who is sick and/or with diagnosed an ailment.
That may make short-term sense in the event of very deadly or more “controllable” pathogens, but not with airborne, seasonal respiratory virus to which exposure is constant and unavoidable. Years-long enslavement to the kinds of protocols typically implemented in localized Ebola outbreaks is destructive. In fact, enforcement of COVID quarantines & isolation guidelines have done probably done more damage to students’ mental health, motivation, attitude toward & trust in school, & beliefs about the virus than any other mitigation.
But you're not sick if you’re not sick.
Sick should mean actually-sick — as in “having symptoms,” versus “testing positive for a virus or viral fragments.” Minor symptoms without a fever, like a stuffy nose, bit-o’-cough, or slight headache don’t need to keep anyone home, regardless of underlying cause.
When actually-sick, the primary reason for staying home is for the sick person’s health and recovery. Self-imprisonment due to paranoia about germ-spreading is unnecessary & psychologically debilitating, especially for kids.
I propose this:
“This” doesn’t make testing companies or e-learning platforms much money, but it’s consistent with guidance for flu and common sense.
No matter what, forcing healthy kids to stay home is wrong. Even more wrong is making unvaccinated not-sick kids stay home while letting vaccinated not-sick kids come to school.
4. End the testing push.
Health departments & schools have got to stop pushing and requiring tests. That includes testing as a condition of being or sports/activities, Test-to-Stay programs, and weekly testing run by or in conjunction with the district.
I’ll take a wild guess and say that 70% of Covid testing in the U.S. right now is linked to some kind of requirement, rather than to a medical need.
Who needs a test? Someone who is actually sick and needs a diagnosis in order to get or receive appropriate treatment.
Most of us have had flu multiple times in our lives, but how many were tested for it? The only test I remember getting as child was for strep throat. Why? To aid the doctor’s diagnosis and confirm the need for a prescribed medication.
So here’s my solution:
Crazy, huh? :)
One lesson of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic is when mass-testing ends, so does the crisis phase. The isolation & quarantine protocols fuel the testing, which is a big reason adopting the flu guidelines for this virus is so critical. More testing has led to more freedom and less COVID nowhere in the world. (If you’re in doubt, see America’s most COVID-myopic, highly-vaccinated colleges.)
Let’s be honest. When the least-vulnerable group is your most-tested, you don’t have a virus problem.
You have a money-power-priorities problem. Big time.
My groundbreaking plan is neither mine nor groundbreaking. It’s simply a reminder of what’s logical and healthy.
It takes courageous, humble leadership to abandon Covid-Centric School and give back to kids the Real-Normal School they deserve.