James Veverka: Opening schools in midst of a public health crisis is very risky

To The Daily Sun,

Those who pushed for a rushed economic reopening weren't thinking. A June 2 letter written by Russ Wiles, who has also attacked masks and vaccinations in the past, was titled, "Resume normal lives; we cannot afford to wait another minute". On that day, the U.S. reported 19,941 cases. The totals on June 2 were 1.8 million cases and 106,000 deaths. We are now approaching 3.5 million cases and nearly 135,000 have died. The daily case rate has tripled since June 2, to over 60,000 in six of the last eight days. Hospitals are running out of staff, supplies, and beds in Florida, California, Texas, and Arizona. Thirty-six states now have mask mandates. Walmart and Kroger are mandating masks in all stores starting on Monday.

The peak period in April had a seven-day average of around 30,000 cases a day, peaking around 38,000. The seven-day average is now around 62,000 cases a day. These increases are due to the reckless and thoughtless economic reopening by people who couldn't wait a minute to resume normal lives and the ignorance and arrogance of those that smugly refuse to practice vital precautionary guidelines to defeat the virus. They enable the virus in the Trump Pandemic.

The same irrationalities are apparent regarding those regarding rushing in-person school re-openings. Mr. Wiles now has a letter titled, "Letting the kids go back to school is the sane thing to do". No, it's not. That's insane. It's no more rational than calling for the resumption of normal lives on June 2. He also hypes up Hydroxychloroquine, using a Henry Ford Health study which runs contrary to just about every other study done. What he doesn't tell you is that the study was a "retrospective observational cohort study.. Basically, those look at archived data and are highly prone to biases. Due to the inherent biases of retrospective observational studies, they can only present hints and possibilities, not hard fast findings.

Mr. Wiles also claims, "more studies have come out which continue to show that children rarely if ever infect adults". What the studies say so far, and we still are groping in the dark with this virus, is that the younger the child, the less susceptible they are to infection, death, and the chance of transmission. K-12 students range from five to late teens so what goes for a five-year-old doesn't go for someone 18. A room full of juniors and seniors is basically a room full of young adults who are more likely to get infected and transmit the disease than a kindergartener. So let's be careful with blanket assessments that don't present the whole story. Furthermore, last Friday the American Academy of Pediatrics reversed course and said it was no longer confident that opening schools in the middle of a public health crisis is the best option for children. Duh! We should all be thankful that a lot of schools are ignoring Trump. He has little power and they know it.

James Veverka

Tilton