Reopening schools isn’t a quiz with right answers
Back to school, back to the balancing act between risk and reward — and the trade-offs between infection and isolation.
Closing schools gave us time to take stock of viral transmission — and the new variants transiting into Ontario. Now students are slowly emerging from winter hibernation with infection rates declining — and long-term realities sinking in.
One year after COVID-19 changed our world, the only certainty is that there are no certainties. There is only risk tolerance — and rhetoric tolerance.
Despite the early promise of vaccines, the promise remains unfulfilled for most. How can students and parents survive the virus, and navigate the variants, with the vaccine so far off?
There is no right answer. Only the reality of risk.
Last summer, critics and pundits warned the sky was falling when it wasn’t. Last September, they clamoured for school closings when, in retrospect, community susceptibility was low and student vulnerability was even lower.
Some of the same critics who demanded schools be made airtight (figuratively speaking) dismissed the importance of sealing off our airports. Students were largely spared the virus, while airports became vectors for the new variants.
We can still do more to make our schools safer, but there will never be no peril. We need to differentiate between overall risk and individual reality.
The empirical evidence of recent months suggests our youngest students are more protected, older students less so. Distancing between desks matters, but masking and ventilating matter more (best achieved by opening windows, even in winter, and closing up jackets; windowless classrooms need a better fix).
COVID-19 is a moving target, so we must adapt. A year ago, we were told to forget masks, wash our hands faithfully and clean countertops relentlessly to kill infectious fomites lurking everywhere.
Today we know that masks are our first line of defence, whereas fomites are no longer front and centre. Daily disinfection might be overkill compared to the life-saving benefit of masks for students who, younger than the rest of us, will be last in line for vaccines.
As for the growing impatience of grown-ups over delayed injections, how fast we forget the two obstacles experts predicted last year: first, the medical challenge of discovering a durable antidote to a shapeshifting coronavirus; and second, the logistical roadblocks to manufacturing and distributing the vaccine across national borders.
All these predictions are proving all too true: Mutations are weakening our miracle cures, and bottlenecks are wreaking havoc with our supply lines.
It’s tempting to blame the federal government for not procuring a bigger supply (even if our per capita buy is the world’s largest), nor securing earlier delivery dates (easier said than done). What leverage did Canada have to jump to the front of the global queue, lacking any domestic capacity or international clout in a global zero sum game (more for us means less for others)?
We may think ourselves wiser but we are not mightier than our American friends. Slow to the draw on medicare and masks, they are still the biggest gunslingers on the planet in terms of vaccine production and consumption.
Premier Doug Ford wagging his finger at the PM or stamping his feet at delinquent suppliers won’t deliver the doses we need. That said, Ontario has largely avoided the excesses and contradictions of others. New York’s Andrew Cuomo, once hailed (by me) as an articulate and agile leader, has sparked an exodus of experts tired of being overruled. And B.C., erstwhile darling of epidemiologists, only this month got around to making masks mandatory in schools, long after Ontario made them compulsory (though Ford ducked when it came to making them mandatory for adults, fobbing that off on municipalities).
Which brings us back, all these months later, to where the pandemic began — when it got off to a false start. Unless and until vaccines put an end to COVID-19, masks remain the be-all and end-all.
There were mixed messages about masks a year ago, when our top federal experts wrongly waved them off, but their messaging remains almost as muddled today. Where is the authoritative federal or provincial guidance on how best to protect ourselves, parents and students alike, with the best possible masks?
At the end of the day, after all this time, we need more elucidation, not bloviation.
We were told that premium N95 masks (respirators) are best left for health workers who need them most, which makes sense. But the rest of us have yet to receive clear messages on proven alternatives, such as KN95 masks (similar but uncertified from China) that could fill a gap for those on the front lines who also need protection, or anyone in the line of fire — be it a teacher in a classroom or a cashier in a supermarket.
There is talk of doubling up masks, without going back to first principles about what type or brand truly works best and is certified to be reliable. All the evidence tells us that two people wearing highly effective masks can dramatically reduce the risk of transmission.
Merely telling people, belatedly, to double up — without specifying which masks meet minimal standards — is too little, too late. As we send students back to school, a year after COVID-19 emerged here, the wait for a vaccine won’t end anytime soon — so why are we waiting for the best possible masks to keep us alive until then?