Recently, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) rolled out a 9-page checklist for school districts, listing things that, in their judgment, would need to be done before schools could safely be reopened to children. These guidelines, in the words of CNN’s Ana Cabrera, encourage, among other things, “staggered scheduling, a back-up staffing plan, modified seating layouts to allow social distancing, physical barriers and closing of communal spaces.” In a more normal world, the President of the United States, desiring to keep our children safe, and slow the spread of a deadly infectious disease, would read something like this and make it his mission to ensure that every school in America was ready to meet the challenge as laid out by the CDC. That’s not what happened here, though. This morning, Donald Trump attacked the CDC for being “too tough,” and said that he’d withhold funding from any schools that didn’t open up to students at the start of the school year. [As New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pointed out, Trump doesn’t have the authority to do so, but apparently he doesn’t know that.]
Why does Donald Trump, the leader of a country with over 3 million COVID-19 cases and 134,860 already dead, want to push our children back into schools that don’t meet the minimum basic public safety standards? One can only assume it’s because he thinks that it would be good for him, as he heads into this election season. It seems incredibly short sighted to me, given the risk for enormous outbreaks, but, then again, this is also the man that assured us that COVID-19 would just magically disappear, and that hydroxychloroquine would make us all impervious to the disease… Speaking of which, this thread from Dr. Eugene Gu, on why we shouldn’t trust Donald Trump’s judgement on this, was my favorite of the day.
Well, apparently Donald Trump’s bullying worked. According to Vice President Mike Pence, the CDC will be coming out with new guidance for schools next week — guidance which, he inferred, would make it easier for them to open next month. And all of this, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, is playing out as the number of infected in the United States continues to climb. [The newest University of Washington model is projecting 200,000 COVID-19 deaths in United States by November 1.]
When asked what specifically the administration would to do support schools to implement testing and contact tracking protocols, Pence told members of the press, “The plan is to continue to do what we have done from the very beginning“… apparently unaware that what they’d done from the very beginning has given us over 3 million COVID-19 cases and 134,860 dead.
Oh, and Pence, when asked what public health professionals he was conferring with on the reopening our schools, had the following to say. “The best expert I know on this topic is my wife, Karen,” he said.
And yet somehow, in spite all of this, we continue to listen as Trump and his administration officials speak. In spite of the mass graves, and the growing number of cases, we continue to pretend as though this administration is legitimate. It’s completely surreal. One minute this morning, Dr. Deborah Birx was warning against indoor gatherings, given the fact that COVID-19 cases are exploding in places like Texas and Florida, and the very next, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was standing at her side, explaining that we’ll all be sending our kids back into packed classrooms in a month’s time. [“It’s not a matter of if schools reopen,” DeVos said. “It’s simply a matter of how. They must reopen and they must be fully operational.”]
For what it’s worth, Donald Trump seems to think that public health officials in his government are purposely making it difficult for schools to open in order to hurt him. [Everything’s about him.] As he said yesterday on Twitter, “corrupt Joe Biden and the Democrats” are refusing to open schools this fall “for political reasons, not for health reasons.” It’s as though he’s completely incapable of accepting the fact that some people are legitimately concerned about putting an entire generation of Americans into old, poorly ventilated, incredibly overcrowded school buildings during a public health crisis.
And, of course, Trump has no plan to get our schools open safely. He’s not capable of planning, just bullying those who do.
As for our plans here in Michigan, Governor Whitmer just released what she’s calling the MI Safe Schools: Return to School Roadmap, which says, among other things, that schools won’t open for in-person instruction until “the number of new cases and deaths has fallen for a period of time,” and mandates that all teachers and students from 6th to 12th grade, wear masks. Whitmer also issued an executive order recently requiring that all school districts in Michigan submit plans detailing how they they intend to implement her previous mentioned reopening guidelines, and saying that an additional $256 million would be allocated to schools to cover the costs of hand sanitizer, masks, and other related supplies. Is it sufficient? Probably not. But at least we’re having a real dialogue in this state about what’s needed to responsibly open schools, and not just yelling about how “corrupt Joe Biden” wants to keep schools closed to hurt Donald Trump at the polls, which is absolute lunacy.
One last thing…. Here’s my second favorite tweet of the day.
