Epidemic urgings miss target
Again last week most of the coronavirus-related deaths in Connecticut — 70 percent — occurred in nursing homes. What was the policy response?
The teacher unions demanded that all schools terminate in-person classes and convert to “remote learning,” which for many students— those who need schools most — means no learning, and which for most other students means much less learning.
And New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker called for the state to retreat to stricter closure of commerce.
These responses were plainly irrelevant to what has always been the epidemic’s primary threat — to the frail elderly and the chronically ill. With their weaker immune systems and their already strained health, they will be, wherever they are housed, far more vulnerable than children in school or diners in restaurants. But in pursuit of protecting them can the frail elderly and chronically ill be isolated more than they already are without breaking what remains of their connection to their families and their desire to live?
Closing schools, restaurants, and stores won’t change the virus fatality rate in nursing homes. It probably will have little effect on fatalities generally. It will inflict much more damage on education and the sick economy.
Governor Lamont is trying to avoid such a retreat. But how long can he resist the worsening panic and often self-serving clamor, especially when news organizations fan hysteria, portraying what is mainly a threat to nursing home residents as a threat to civilization itself?
While nothing was made of it, the governor’s position got strong support last week from an essay published in The New York Times by two professors at Columbia University — Dr. Donna L. Farber, who teaches immunology and surgery, and Dr. Thomas Connors, who teaches pediatrics. The doctors wrote that separating children from their normal social environment deprives their immune systems of the crucial “training” they get from exposure to infectious organisms.
The doctors wrote: “The longer we need to socially distance our children in the midst of uncontrolled viral spread, the greater the possibility that their immune systems will miss learning important immunological lessons (what’s harmful, what’s not) that we usually acquire during childhood.
“There is already well-justified concern about the impact of prolonged virtual learning on social and intellectual development, especially for elementary and middle-school children. The sooner we can safely restore the normal experiences of childhood, interacting with other children and — paradoxically — with pathogens and diverse microorganisms, the better we can ensure their ability to thrive as adults.”
If those doctors are just Trump crazies, how did they get into Columbia and The Times?