Andy Biggs still putting Trump over Arizona schoolchildren
It’s not so much that Donald Trump cares only about his reelection and not about schoolchildren. It’s that politicians like Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs care only about Trump.
Not our students, or their teachers, or parents, or all the other school personnel, or their families.
Biggs continues spouting the Trump line concerning the reopening of schools, no matter what.
Last Thursday in Washington, D.C., Biggs stood outside the Capitol with nine other members of the House Freedom Caucus (only one of whom could be seen wearing a mask) and said in part, “It would be more harmful to keep children locked out of schools and less harmful and less risky for children to go back to schools. That’s the bottom line. It is as simple as that.” No, it is not.
And Biggs knows it. Or should. Instead he chooses to push Trump’s fantasy of a normal school year, a dangerous and potentially deadly ploy to aide his reelection campaign.
Except the pawns in this particular political chess match are schoolchildren.
Evidence of the danger of the virus and the ignorance of politicians is that one of the Freedom Caucus members at Biggs’ press conference demanding schools open announced that he has tested positive for COVID-19. Rep. Morgan Griffith made the announcement Tuesday.
In Arizona, which Biggs is supposed to represent, nothing about the raging pandemic suggests we should yet reopen schools for in-person classes.
There are simply too many COVID-19 cases and too many unknowns.
Last week, Dr. Rebecca Sunenshine, medical director of disease control for the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, said, “With community-wide transmission at such high levels in Maricopa County right now, it would not be a good idea to put school back in session.”
Arizona lost a lovely first grade teacher over the summer to COVID-19, Kimberley Chavez Lopez Byrd.
When asked about her, President Donald Trump acted as if she did not exist, saying in his unfeeling, nonsensical way, “Schools should be opened. Schools should be opened. Those kids want to go to school. You’re losing a lot of lives by keeping things closed. We saved millions of lives while we did the initial closure.”
Is that how Biggs thinks of her, too? Putting children back into school could stir up the COVID-19 cauldron to a frightening degree. Children seem to be much less vulnerable to the ravages of the virus. But unless we do mass testing of children there is no way to know how many children are asymptomatic carriers. (The mayor of Atlanta and her husband were among those who caught COVID-19 from one of their asymptomatic children.)
The CDC says reopening schools would pose the “highest risk” for the spread of the coronavirus.
It’s not a matter of never reopening classrooms, but when. It’s about being smart. About being patient.
This isn’t a campaign decision. Or shouldn’t be. It’s a life and death decision.
The American Journal of Infection
Control said the lack of symptoms and of testing “makes it not feasible to determine the full extent of infection among children.”
Which means infected children might infect other children, who might infect teachers or school employees, or bring the virus home.
The journal, which was studying the danger to health care workers outside of emergency rooms and hospitals, said, “Despite the fact that COVID-19 rarely caused any severe disease in children, the asymptomatic children might be playing an important role for spreading COVID-19 in healthcare facilities.”
It could be worse in schools. We just don’t know yet.
A community sends someone like Biggs to Congress with the hope that his first priority will be looking out for his constituents back home. All too often, however, Washington, D.C., becomes home, and the constituents are forgotten, even the youngest and most vulnerable of them.
That’s the worst aspect of our government’s failure to deal with the pandemic.
It’s not so much that Donald Trump cares only about reelection and not about school children. It’s that politicians like Biggs care only about Trump.