“Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

Update to my post “Better to Be Too Scared of Those Classrooms than Not Scared Enough”

As I predicted, the decisions have been made and unmade, as schools have opened, closed, planned new openings, backtracked, planned virtual instruction, at first for a few weeks and then for the semester. Many teachers and parents are getting psychological whiplash from managing rapid changes.

Cases in children are exploding. Children now make up at least 1 in 11 of reported U.S. coronavirus cases. (NPR: Children now make up at least 1 in 11 of all reported U.S. coronavirus cases.) That nonsense about how children didn’t get COVID-19 and didn’t spread it? Over one million children have tested positive by now. And my now-sick vet is home with his sick teen-age children and wife, the virus having travelled home with an elementary school child. Of course, sick kids spread the virus. Sick kids give us colds, pink-eye, the flu, strep throat, and even the occasional parasite. In what universe did the idea that COVID-19 would not be spread by children somehow arise? That level of craziness crosses the bridge from wishful thinking straight into delusional psychopathy.

People are getting sick from our open schools. People’s family and then sometimes extended family, neighbors and coworkers are getting sick. The unluckiest people are dying. See https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/educators-weve-lost-to-the-coronavirus.html. Viruses exist to cross from one person to another, and every high school and middle school passing period is a potential superspreader event. Elementary schools may be more manageable, but parent-readers will remember the many hygiene struggles from those times. French fry that fell in the dog’s water anyone? Why not? Teacher-readers have cleaned the boogers off from inside and under those desks.

One intimidating fact that should not get lost. “An estimated 10% of people diagnosed with COVID-19 go on to experience prolonged symptoms, according to the British Medical Journal. That translates into over a million Americans who could potentially experience debilitating symptoms long after they’ve recovered from the infection.” (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/number-covid-19-long-haulers-survivors-experiencing-lasting/story?id=74281070   November 18, 2020 by Ashley Schwartz-Lavares, Erielle Reshef, Lauren Pearle, and Haley Yamada)

This disease does not always pass in a few days or even weeks. Many long haulers had mild cases, too, and were never hospitalized or, in some cases, even tested. These people are still struggling as much as eight months after their illness. Extreme fatigue is common, along with breathlessness, memory problems and unusual heartbeats. Autoimmune, kidney and blood sugar problems are also seen. COVID-19 has disabled many long haulers. It has made many who recovered sicker than they have ever been in their lives.

Yet somehow a significant portion of the population is still debating masks. Who are these people? Research by medical experts suggests masks are helpful. There’s NO reputable research to the contrary. For advice on masks: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover-guidance.html is one place to start. The CDC recommends that everyone in public should wear a mask. The WHO now suggests the same.

Mask confusion is understandable. In the beginning, the U.S. government, the CDC and the WHO did not immediately tell the public to put on masks. It’s necessary to understand that we had a potentially lethal shortage of masks at that time. As the toilet paper, sanitary wipes and other daily essential products flew off the shelves, these groups were afraid of a run on masks that could leave health care workers without essential supplies. In a number of regions, those fears came true. Masks were being rationed, worn long past established safe times, and sprayed with germ-killing chemicals. We did run out of masks. The WHO only advised masks for all in early June. But the research is in now — and it supports putting a barrier over our mouths and noses.

Masks are not leg shackles. They are not 50 pound backpacks. They should never have become political statements. They are face coverings made of cloth, a melt-blown polymer such as polypropylene, or other synthetic plastic fibers. They often contain additional filter materials. If the first mask doesn’t work, there’s another, better mask out there, I promise any anti-mask readers.

Let’s totally forget the research for a moment. We can bypass that research. Here are stats from the world coronavirus cases and death totals. Yes, these totals will not be entirely accurate –  just as more than 150,000,000 votes cannot be cast without occasional pockmarks and errors. Let’s assume the totals are reasonably accurate, while not flawless. We can still take in the big picture.

Let’s compare the United States to Japan. The United States has 254,413 deaths to Japans 1,930. That’s no typo. Yes the U.S. is bigger, so let’s factor that in: The total U.S. population is 331,648,064. The current population of Japan is 126,327,379. Japan’s total population then is 38% of the population of the United States – Japan has slightly more than 1/3 the people that the U.S. does. So let’s say Japan should have only 38% of the death total that the U.S. has, since it has 38% of the people. What is 38% of the U.S. death total? That would be a total of 96,908 deaths  —  not remotely in the same league as that 1,903. Except that number of fatalities is just silly because the caseloads are so different. Forget deaths. Let’s look at cases: 11,910,858 for the U.S. versus 128,285 for Japan. The number of Japanese CASES is 1% of the number of U.S. cases — when, if all factors were equal, we would assume that number would be nearly 40% of the U.S. cases. Thirty-eight percent of U.S. cases would be 4,526,126. That’ so far from the actual 128,285 cases that the mind boggles. Either we did something gruesomely wrong, they did something spectacularly right, or some combination of the two.

In terms of preventing deaths, Japan has not beaten us. Japan has crushed us. Japan has defeated · routed · massacred· hammered · thrashed · demolished · shellacked · annihilated us. From https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/30/822491838/coronavirus-world-map-tracking-the-spread-of-the-outbreak:

It’s not like Tokyo doesn’t have international flights. It’s not like Japan lacks population density. On the contrary, one glance at Japan’s tiny landmass and its total population tells us that population density — a risk factor for COVID-19 — is much higher in Japan than in the United States.

So how has Japan ducked this many bullets?

When news of COVID started to trickle out, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, China and Taiwan masked up immediately. Fortunately for these areas, the custom of wearing a mask while ill and going out in a public has a long history. ”That’s because Asians, especially in Japan, China and Taiwan, have worn masks for a host of cultural and environmental reasons, including non-medical ones, since at least the 1950s.” (https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/not-just-coronavirus-asians-have-worn-face-masks-decades) My father visited Japan in the seventies and one memory he carries still was the masked faces on the bullet trains and streets of Tokyo.

The Japanese consider it rude to be sneezing and exposing others to contagions. They also understand the science that explains why masks protect others, They don’t seem to suffer from widespread science denial. Most importantly, Japanese culture doesn’t exalt the idea that one individual’s feelings supersede the rights of just about everyone else around them.

This pandemic never had to be such a debacle. My phone blasted me and the rest of Illinois a couple of days ago to tell us that state activities had been restricted further. That sudden text was a bit wild, but perfectly understandable. Friends all across the country report similar new restrictions. Some areas are even beginning to report toilet paper shortages again.

Unsurprisingly, schools are closing all over the place. Or delaying openings. Or at least shutting down sports.

Because the hospitals are sending out warnings and the tracking numbers don’t look good. North Dakota is now at 100% of hospital capacity and the North Dakota government has issued an order allowing nurses who have tested positive for the virus to continue working as long as they appear asymptomatic. One week ago Friday, there were only nine staffed intensive care beds and 160 staffed inpatient beds available in the entire state. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum finally issued a mask mandate that Friday. In November.

See: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/north-dakota-orders-mask-mandate-business-restrictions-74204949 “North Dakota mandates masks, capacity limits as virus surges” …

Republican Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa just instituted a mask mandate in her state as well, finally responding to overflowing case numbers and limited hospital beds. The article begins, “’I don’t want to do this,’ Gov. Kim Reynolds said, joining a wave of Republican governors issuing new mask orders as her state faces a spiraling hospital crisis.” But she bellied up to the plate, some nine months after the coronavirus began hitting the news, ten or eleven months after it first arrived in the United States — in November.

See: “How Iowa’s Governor Went From Dismissing Mask Mandates to Ordering One Herself” at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/coronavirus-mask-mandate-iowa-reynolds.html.

With all due respect to Governors Reynolds and Burgum, this horse is not only out of the barn in Iowa and North Dakota, it has trotted all the way across the country and back again by now. That horse has circumnavigated the globe while those governors and others stood up for the right of people not to take precautions to protect others. But criminally late is better than never, I suppose. I try very hard not to think about all those grandpas, grandmas and other people who accidentally stepped into that horse’s path.

Eduhonesty: We have lost control of the coronavirus across growing swaths of this country. For those who would say nothing could have been done, I point to Japan and my chart above. I don’t believe we could have entirely avoided this latest wave — viruses spread and multiply. That’s what they do. But whether or not a person infects 1 other person, 2 other people or 5 other people — that matters, especially since the 5 then go out to create the next group of new cases. That’s the detail the anti-mask people ignored.

The coronavirus map has become a sea of red covering most of the country now with no near end in sight: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map. So what’s to be done?

1. WEAR MASKS. Masks don’t protect anyone 100% — but they do provide protection along with other precautions such as social distancing and hand washing. The CDC makes it clear that masks do not substitute for social distancing. I suggest we keep reading the latest official recommendations. And I hate to add this next recommendation, but…
2. SHUT U.S. SCHOOLS IN RED AREAS. Because kids definitely catch this virus — “…as of Sept. 3, there have been 513,415 COVID-19 infections in kids across the U.S. In just the last two weeks, there were 70,630 new pediatric cases, an increase of 16 percent. Six states — Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota — saw the largest increases in new cases.” That was early September. It’s now the latter part of November, and we have gone over one million pediatric cases. Sources: https://people.com/health/more-than-half-million-us-kids-diagnosed-coronavirus/ Julie Mazziotta September 09, 2020, NPR: Children now make up at least 1 in 11 of all reported U.S. coronavirus cases.

The Mazziotta article observes that at least 103 children died from COVID-19 during that time — a tiny, so tiny percentage of the total, but all of them somebody’s baby, all of them children, grandchildren, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and playmates of grieving people.

I am excruciatingly aware of the educational costs involved in closing schools and going online, but I reason it this way: Charles can 100% recover from not learning his Common Core math on schedule, especially if educational leaders adapt the schedule to account for gaps in learning caused by this crisis. He may never recover from the death of his grandfather — especially if he believes he caused his grandfather’s death.