Parents alone can’t protect kids
Four days into the school year we received an urgent message from our kiddo’s preschool: Please pick up your child immediately, the entire classroom was exposed to COVID-19. My heart sank, and I broke into tears. I’m a doctor and data scientist who has been on the forefront of COVID-19 research since the pandemic’s infancy. After 17 months of sourcing and analyzing COVID-19 data that helped shape national, state and local policy — despite my best effort to keep all kids safe — my own child had been exposed to a life-threatening virus. And it only took four days.
I felt that I failed as a parent, even though I knew I had done everything within my power to keep her safe. The pain is still raw, and my eyes are welling up as I write this. It’s an overwhelming combination of frustration, fear and reluctant acceptance.
But it’s hard not to feel frustrated when your family does everything within its power to stay safe, while knowing that you’ve been set up to fail.
The hard truth is that delta variant changed the game — but California failed to update its back-to-school playbook. Instead, state and local public health officials seemed to clock out the moment that COVID-19 vaccinations were authorized for children ages 12 and older.
Those of us with younger children were left to fend for ourselves.
Public health policies predicated on individual responsibility aren’t public health at all. Lotteries, giveaways and stern recommendations — that’s not how public health is supposed to respond to a pandemic that has claimed the life of someone in California every 11 minutes in 2021. When the health and wellness of individual persons is inextricably tied to that of their community, public health officials are not supposed to endorse over-the-top reopening celebrations where the case rate was trending upward for over a week.
By time of California’s grand June 15 reopening, back when Gov. Gavin Newsom was hanging out with the Transformers at Universal Studios to mark the occasion, I’d seen enough to fear the delta variant. Data from the United Kingdom, Israel and Australia sent a clear and unmistakable warning: the U.S. was about to have a major COVID-19 resurgence. We simply didn’t have enough people fully vaccinated.
By June 15, we already knew that one unvaccinated teacher could expose dozens of children to a virus known to cause grave illness, long-term disability and death. By August, there was evidence showing that delta variant could spread through vaccinated persons. This meant that even fully vaccinated persons (including parents, siblings and teachers) could inadvertently expose unvaccinated children to the coronavirus. Parents should have been warned that delta variant posed a real and present danger to all unvaccinated children. Instead, they were led to believe that it was safe to return to theme parks — and to schools.
My wife and I were almost certainly more aware than most of these risks. And yet we knew that there was no way for two adults and a dog to socialize a child on our own. Kids need to learn how to build relationships and compromise. Young kids especially are genetically programmed to want to run, climb and explore. Their immune systems need to learn how to fight nonlethal and non-debilitating viruses, like the common cold.
That didn’t make it any easier to accept the fact that we would be risking our child’s health in order to fulfill these basic needs. But we reluctantly accepted that we had no choice but to find a way to make it work.
We resolved to do everything within our power to minimize the risk of exposure. We bought high-filtration masks for the entire family and we donated HEPA filters to the school. We declined invitations to small gatherings with close friends and family. And it still only took days after school reopened to confirm what data from around the world had been telling us for months: It wasn’t enough.
The only way to make schools safe for all children is to require COVID-19 vaccinations for all eligible staff and students.
Persons with delta variant can be infectious to others 18-36 hours before they test positive. That’s why delta variant surged in the Los Angeles Unified School District despite requiring weekly testing. An outbreak in a Marin County elementary school that made national headlines prompted vaccination requirements for teachers and staff. Now that most teachers in the state are partially or fully vaccinated, it’s evident that this still isn’t enough. Even for a doctor and COVID expert like myself, the harsh reality is that there’s only so much one person, one family or one school can do.
Nearly two weeks after my kid’s exposure at school, I finally got a full night’s sleep when the test results came back negative. I nearly cried tears of relief, but quickly realized that this was just the beginning. Until my child is eligible to be vaccinated, each day will be filled with frustration and fear. Each school day is a calculated risk.
As individuals, we have no way of knowing what level of risk is acceptable to others in our community. Until younger children are eligible to get vaccinated, the health of nearly 6 million California kids under the age of 12 hinges on every other person doing the right thing.
That thought keeps me up most nights. Each day is a struggle, but there’s hope.
There’s hope in data showing pediatric cases decreasing as more eligible children are vaccinated. To those parents who have vaccinated their eligible children: Thank you for giving our family hope that our child may stay healthy long enough to pay it forward.