Reopening of schools gambles with the lives of our children
The novel virus SARS-CoV-2 has devastated economies, households and nations, manifesting in still-emerging and entirely unprecedented symptoms, including skin disease, blood clotting, kidney abnormalities, and most distressingly, potentially fatal multi-system inflammatory vasculitis in children.
In the opinion of the chief of critical care at Boston’s Children’s Hospital, physicians are just beginning to describe the connection of this syndrome to COVID-19. Despite that, Premier John Horgan has announced that B.C. schools will reopen on June 1, and is mandating that teachers return to work.
New studies from Oxford and Shenzhen demonstrate that children are just as likely to contract SARS-CoV-2 as adults. Proposed solutions from school boards range from having children practice frequent and proper handwashing procedures, to insisting they maintain a safe distance from one another throughout the entire day.
In my opinion, it is unreasonable and naive to expect children to follow guidelines that adults across North America have demonstrated they themselves cannot follow. And even if children are six feet apart the entire time, their safety is in no way guaranteed. Doctors and researchers are increasingly emphasizing that a key factor in the spread of COVID-19 is the amount of time a group spends together, especially indoors. If children and teachers are kept in classrooms together for hours, without any personal protective equipment whatsoever, the spread of COVID-19 is a near certainty.
I firmly believe that we cannot, in good conscience, reopen our schools at this time, and many parents and teachers seem to agree
— as of May 29, a change.org petition titled “Keep B.C. Schools Closed until Sept. 2020” has garnered over 31,000 signatures. This is no time to gamble with our children’s lives, on what Premier Horgan calls a four-week “dry run.”
Until we have adequate systems, protocols, and data relating to COVID-19, it is neglectful and imprudent to send children to school, and unsettlingly autocratic to force teachers back to work. We are still lacking the fundamental tools needed to properly monitor and control the spread of this disease.
Geraldine Lazaruk, Port Coquitlam
Make seniors a priority
I was watching the news on all networks about the atrocities at the care homes we put our parents and other seniors in. We should all be ashamed of the conditions that they were living in. The care aides should really be held accountable for letting this happen — it was on their watch, they were the front line.
If they were managed by government health, then the health boards need to held accountable also. These atrocious conditions didn’t happen overnight. And why did the families not notice the cleanliness of the rooms, the bedding, and most of all the conditions of the parents who are unable to bathe or look after themselves?
It isn’t rocket science. You can recognize that smell that lingers from not deep-cleaning rooms and personal areas.
Make your seniors a priority, not an obligation.
Barbara Moxin, Campbell River