Schools will be test site for UCP’S ideas on pandemic
Alberta’s pandemic peace has held firm for four months — until this week.
The UCP and NDP have generally agreed on approaches to limiting COVID-19, even as they fight over almost everything else, including the UCP’S agenda to shift the very foundations of government in their ideological direction.
But the Pax Pandemic shattered over UCP plans to reopen schools. The government’s formula and the NDP’S rebuttal could not be more wildly divergent.
The best answers for the schools, students, teachers and parents surely lie somewhere between these two poles.
The UCP plan could prove to be overly optimistic about the low risk of infections and outbreaks among young people.
Serious outbreaks would force school closures and more aggressive measures, not to mention suffering and further education upheaval.
The NDP proposal, on the other hand, is so hugely ambitious ($1 billion total cost!) that it seems impractical. It would be great to limit class sizes to 15 students and hire literally thousands more teachers for the classroom, home learning and sick leave relief. But how on earth can that be accomplished, or even properly begun, in five weeks?
At the heart of this disagreement are opposing views of the virus itself.
The UCP says young children don’t catch the virus much or transmit it effectively.
They point to positive experiences with school openings in countries like Denmark, as well as June openings in B.C. and the Calgary Catholic School District’s in-person summer school.
The absence of infection in reopened Alberta child care is also encouraging, says the UCP.
Because of this assumed resistance to COVID-19, the UCP doesn’t recommend mask-wearing in schools, even though it promotes and even buys them for adults.
(Teachers and students are free to wear masks. Presumably, schools or even school boards could encourage widespread use. But the government apparently won’t help to buy or supply masks.)
The NDP is much more wary of the low-infection claims. Leader Rachel Notley says: “The plan proposed by Jason Kenney risks the health and safety of our children, while also hurting our province’s recovery from the pandemic.”
The Opposition’s presentation includes pictures of school kids at their desks, wearing masks. It calls for “mandatory use of masks in common areas and physical distancing in classrooms.”
The claim that kids don’t transmit effectively is now under challenge from a new study involving 65,000 people in South Korea. Some experts say it’s much more compelling than smaller surveys in Europe and Asia.
The South Korean study found that children under 10 were about half as likely as adults to spread the virus to others.
There could be many reasons, including the fact that little kids exhale less air and sneeze closer to the ground. But for elementary-age children at least, there’s some merit to the UCP assumption of low spread (although nobody claims zero spread).
However, the study makes an alarming finding for young people between 10 and 19. It says they’re even more likely than adults to transmit COVID-19. And those ages, of course, cover every junior high and high school student in Alberta.
The South Korean numbers suggest there should be firmer measures for junior high and high schools than for elementary, although the UCP’S Scenario 1 for reopening makes no distinction.
It has to be said that the UCP does present a serious plan for hygiene, distancing, cohort separation, bus driver protection and many other factors to keep the disease at bay in schools.
If Scenario 1 fails, the government will quickly move to stricter controls with Scenario 2.
Having decided that schools must reopen, the UCP came up with a plan that is arguably practical, in the sense that much of it can be done by the beginning of September.
But still, many parents have serious and legitimate concerns. Personally, I wish the UCP was doing more to mandate masks and limit class sizes.
Many people have started to wonder whether the chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, is uncomfortable with the government’s plan.
In a briefing, she endorsed the decision but was very firm in stating that infections in schools are inevitable.
The NDP demands that Hinshaw “release a report with all of her recommendations to the government regarding school opening ...”
“If the Government wants to give the public certainty that they have adopted all CMOH recommendations exactly as recommended, and regardless of cost, this level of transparency is necessary.”
Mischievous, to be sure, but it’s a good question — how solid is the consensus behind this plan?
The real world will tell us the truth soon enough. Every school will be a laboratory for UCP assumptions.