Commentary: Reopen Delaware schools, encourage vaccinations

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It should tell us something, I suppose, that Delaware and Gov. John Carney are just about the last to completely open up as a result of the COVID-19 virus.

Even California and New York, with their nutty governors, opened up before we did in Delaware.

In fact, we have Delaware school superintendents talking about opening with some hybrid system in the fall, meaning that some kids will be in school, some will be at home. This, despite children being less likely to contract COVID-19, and when they do, it can be a mild illness.

It was understandable to close schools as one of the first responses to the pandemic, because all or most epidemics in the past struck children first or most severely. But before long, we found out that this one didn’t work that way. This one struck the elderly or the immunocompromised first and most severely — so severely that many died and even more were hospitalized, sometimes for long periods and sometimes on a respirator for lengthy periods.

Meanwhile, the children were sent home. Schools organized instruction via the internet. While it is true that this generation’s children often will stay focused on a screen for long periods, nonetheless this didn’t prove to be a very good way to teach. Even if you could keep a 6-year-old glued to a laptop for classes, there was no sure way to take attendance or to keep a kid in the class if he/she wandered off without parental supervision.

That meant that parents had to stay home, if they weren’t already. But if they were an essential worker — which could be anything from an emergency room nurse to a checker in a supermarket — they were required to work. But they couldn’t because their children were home.

But worse, there might not be a computer for every child in the household, nor Wi-Fi. What to do? Some of those kids lost learning time. Will they catch up? This is child abuse by the government.

Some European schools, and others, stayed open with no ill effect. But you know all this. You know that small businesses were wrecked when governors closed them down flat. We know of a hair salon that got a $5,000 fine for remaining open.

Countless government officials kept saying, “Follow the science.” That was hard because “the science” kept changing its mind. At first, masks were discouraged. Then, they were mandated. All along, the lockdowns and closures were supposed to be because we couldn’t overwhelm the medical system. In other words, we couldn’t overwhelm the hospitals.

True, there were a couple instances of that in big cities. And while hospitals did have a challenge in spring 2020, most coped well, albeit in challenging situations. Now, at this writing Delaware has 26 persons hospitalized with COVID-19 statewide.

Which gets us to the future. Already, we are being warned of big trouble on the horizon with some variant or mutation of variant D. The Delta variant emerged in India, is now common in Great Britain and has been found in the United States. By all accounts, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are effective against it. But, oh, no, this isn’t good enough.

It isn’t good enough because not enough people are vaccinated. It would seem that this is cause to require those of us who have been vaccinated for a long time already to mask back up, keep our social distance, forget about eating in a restaurant and skip our favorite concerts because they will be canceled.

Some questions emerge here:

  • When do we begin to hold people who refuse the vaccine accountable for their own decisions? When does it become their fault when they get sick? Or when do we begin to require vaccination to do certain things? This has long been the rule in schools, where vaccinations for measles and mumps, for heaven’s sake, have long been required.
  • When do we take back our lives from the power-mad governors? There’s a big difference between red-state and blue-state governors in this regard. Early on, Govs. Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California were held in high regard. Now, they’re under siege. Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida were derided for “Neanderthal thinking” (President Joe Biden’s phrase). Now, they’re examples of fine governance.

It’s all about the power, baby.

Reid K. Beveridge has covered politics in Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Delaware and Washington, D.C. He now resides in Milton.

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