These days there is much back and forth about a lot of “coronavirus things”. Are masks effective, or not worth the extra effort? Does it make sense to continue quarantining, or are we just delaying the inevitable? Can herd immunity be achieved, or is that a pie-in-the-sky daydream? Is it time for the kids to go back to school, or is it too soon?
If you ask Dr. Sanjay Gupta about that last one, he’ll tell you that for him it’s too soon. As a well-respected senior medical corresponded at CNN, this father of three girls has looked at the numbers, and it’s a “no”. For now, anyway. (1)
Not Time For Back To School, Yet
What are some of his reasons, and are they worth considering for your own family? It all comes down to numbers and science. The cold, hard facts are just not there yet. We don’t know enough.
Well into the summer of 2020, with the COVID-19 outbreak still unfolding before us in real-time, we are all watching the science of it unfold too. Though one of the biggest complaints from people seems to be “there is so much conflicting information”, this is how science works. It is hypothesis and study, rinse and repeat, until some real and verifiable facts begin to emerge. What we’re witnessing right now is the “let’s see what this drug regimen/idea might do” phase of scientific understanding. Relatively speaking, we still know very little. It’s too soon because there are just not enough facts yet.
Free-Range Children? Not Lately.
In a piece he wrote for CNN in August of 2020, Dr. Gupta mentions that the working understanding with COVID and children has so far been that they do not get as sick and do not spread it as readily as adults do. (1) He references a study out of South Korea which looked at kids ages 10-19. The study demonstrated quite easily that this age group does spread the virus just as readily as adults. (2)
Within that study, he noted that children younger than 10 years did not contribute significantly to the spread, which is strange, given what super-spreaders of germs children are known to be. In fact, the study indicated less than 30 positive cases in kids younger than 10 years of age. The contact tracing data, reviewing nearly 60,000 contacts in the study, showed a mere 237 from children under 10.
It may be that it seems young children are more impervious to the virus, simply because they have been home all these months.
The Great Back To School Experiment
Are you struggling with whether to send your kids back to school? For Dr. Gupta and family, it’s just not time yet. But as you might expect, their decisions are being made on the data that’s available… the cold, hard facts. When we use the facts as guidelines in our decision-making, it becomes a little easier to remove some of the “but I miss my friends” emotion around it, and focus on what the right answer is for everyone.
Every school district in the country has developed its own set of guidelines for reopening, and if you’re trying to plan your next move, this may be a good place to start. Do their intended protocols put your mind at ease? Why or why not?
By answering this one question, you may be able to put the focus squarely on what matters, and make the right decision for you and your family.
