A New Adventure

Back to school in a coronavirus world

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Many parents are struggling with the idea of sending their children to school this year in our new coronavirus world. Alternatives include home-schooling, hiring private tutors or signing up for virtual learning.

My children are all over 25 so I don’t have to make this decision. But if I did, I would not be worried to send them back into the classroom.

President Donald Trump has been pushing for children to be back in school this fall. “We’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools,” said President Trump, during an education roundtable at the White House in early July.

In an interview, last week on Fox & Friends Trump said that children don’t get the coronavirus much and when they do it’s not as severe. He said they are almost immune.

That became big news after Twitter suspended the Trump campaign account because it had posted a tweet from the interview. Twitter claimed this was false information.

CNN ran a story on May 21st of this year with the headline “Children have fewer coronavirus receptors in their noses, study finds.”

Was that spreading false information?

Here’s a headline that ran in the Mercury News last month, “Coronavirus: Why kids aren’t the germbags, and grownups are.” 

Are they also spreading false information?

I can understand what all the hysteria is about. Anyone who has ever had children in school knows how fast germs spread in the classroom. But, before jumping to conclusions we need to look at what doctors say and what scientific studies show.

According to a commentary in the journal Pediatrics — as reported last month in the Mercury News — “The evidence suggests that children are less likely to become infected, less likely to develop severe disease and less likely to transmit the virus to other children and adults,” said co-author and pediatrician Dr. William Raszka Jr. of the University of Vermont School of Medicine. “It is wildly different from (the) flu.”

Each week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updates a chart showing deaths from COVID-19 sorted by age group. Since they have been keeping track, 270 deaths have been listed in the 0-24 age group. This was as of Aug. 1.

That is approximately 10.4 per week and would equate to 540 over for a year.

On another page on their website, the CDC gives the total COVID-19 deaths for children ages 0 to 18. That number is only 76.

Interestingly the CDC estimates the number of children who die from the regular flu each year to be close to 600. They say it’s “relatively rare” for children to die from the flu.

These numbers show that the seasonal flu is currently four times more deadly to children under 18 than the coronavirus.

Maybe you are concerned about COVID-19 being brought home by your children or transmitted to teachers.

A study conducted in late April in northern France found that infected “children did not spread the infection to other students or to teachers or other staff at the schools.”

Of course, if your child has underlying health issues it would be wise to keep them away from anyone, including holding them out of school. A good example is my wife’s nephew — a doctor in Jefferson City. He has a child who was born with a heart problem.

Those who think it’s too dangerous for children to return to school never mention the consequences of keeping children out of the classroom. This includes an increase in child abuse, poor nutrition, interrupted learning, plus increased exposure to violence.

The bottom line is this. If you want to protect your children, never place them in a car. The number one cause of death for children and adolescents year after year is car accidents. The total for 2016 was 4,074. That is over 78 per week.

Why was Trump’s Twitter account censored? It may have something to do with politics. The Twitter employee who announced why the Trump campaign account was suspended just happens to be Tim Murtaugh, the former press secretary for Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

If you would like to check my sources, including the numbers from the CDC, they will be posted on our website with my column.