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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGOP candidate wants kids back in school just like in the 'pre vaccine era'
By Dan Desai Martin -May 13, 2020 5:33 PM
Former Rep. Claudia Tenney is demanding that schools reopen in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
A Republican congressional candidate has suggested that children go back to school during the coronavirus pandemic based on the fact that children attended school before vaccines were invented.
"Children have a greater ability to develop immunities to this virus based on the evidence we have so far," Claudia Tenney, a former member of Congress who is running for the seat she held in New York's 22nd Congressional District, tweeted on Tuesday. "A cautious approach to returning to school is essential. Children attended school in the pre vaccine era for over a century."
Tenney's suggestion ignores data on mortality rates prior to the invention of vaccines and on the effectiveness of vaccines, as well as warnings from the nation's top infectious disease expert.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes, with regard to the incidence of various infectious diseases before vaccines were available, that hundreds died from measles every year; 15,000 Americans died of diphtheria in 1921 alone; and in 1964-1965, 2,000 babies died of rubella during an epidemic that infected 12.5 million people in the United States.
https://americanindependent.com/claudia-tenney-coronavirus-children-schools-vaccines-gop-congress-covid-19/
Some in the media should be demanding and asking if this .......... ( fill in the blank) has any medical records that show she did not get vaccines when she had to go into public school or private one for that matter.............to be able to protect the other children that she was running around with.................
SoonerPride
(12,286 posts)fuck them I guess.
OrlandoDem2
(2,064 posts)There are many faculty and staff who are in the at-risk category due to age or other physical conditions.
Plus, many kids go home to families where someone else is at risk.
In short, schools are Petrie dishes and we need parents and the public demand innovative schedules that allow for physical distancing....whether that means alternating days of attendance, double sessions each day, or something else. Im not opposed to opening schools if done safely.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,271 posts)kids pass colds and other bugs around to other kids and their teachers and bring them home to their families. It's bad enough for the more minor diseases but this one kills people.
tblue37
(64,979 posts)Parents won't want to play Russian Roulette with their kid's lives.
OrlandoDem2
(2,064 posts)Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)but we normally don't sit around and think of it that way. Was there some news update that said we are immortal except if we get COVID-19? People act like people dying is something new. It always happens and it always will. I'm not going to raise my children to be scared of everything. Teach them to live in fear of the world so they never do anything, but they decrease their odds of dying. Simply existing is all that matters, right? Forget the arts, education, work, sports. Just exist for as long as possible and sit around and watch tv. Is that what life is all about now? Just surviving blows.
ProfessorGAC
(64,413 posts)In retirement, I sub science & math, 7-12. There's no way to avoid contact in a school, absent a spacesuit.
The 11 schools where I work has, I'm estimating, 40+% of the staff at 45 or older.
And, at 63, I don't know how excited I'd be about helping out if the staff is dropping like flies.
These people talk without thinking it through. They don't even think it through to the capacity of their feeble minds.
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)but your chances of death from any cause also increase with age. I figure that from our Maine stats. Maine has the oldest population and they've pretty much only been giving COVID-19 tests to people 60+ around here, so our stats are pretty concentrated with older people. Doesn't sound like dropping like flies really. Being older than 45 is not usually the point they would use for increased risk. It is older than 60.
ProfessorGAC
(64,413 posts)There's a 0.8% of getting killed in a car crash.
If that were 5x higher, would we call it dropping like flies?
I would.
ProfessorGAC
(64,413 posts)...the probability of high viral loading in a school leading to higher impact?
I didn't think so!
You played around with a couple numbers and drew conclusions apropos of nothing.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,271 posts)Yes, they did. And some of them died of measles, diphtheria and polio.
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)but seems like plenty of them survived. This planet is teeming with people.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,271 posts)that a lot of other kids survived and the planet is teeming with people? Or would you rather there had been a vaccine so your kid could have been one of the people the planet is teeming with?
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)Yes, I would have to find a way to be OK with it. Life is never without risk and we cannot control who dies and when they die. My kid could contract this particular illness in a whole bunch of other circumstances for that matter, not just school. I can't stop shopping. We can't sit around being miserable and fixated on death. Sure, it would have been better if there was a vaccine, but everything can't be on hold for a vaccine.
dawg day
(7,947 posts)suggests that it can cause serious and lasting damage to a scary percentage of kids.
Few kids get the virus, but even some of those who had a mild case are getting what looks like an overwhelming immune overload days or weeks later.
But then, these GOPers don't actually care about kids. They don't even care about schools. This is all in slavish obeisance to Trump. He says, "We need to re-open, and start with schools!" and after that, there is no choice for them, apparently. They have to go to obscene lengths to justify and support him.
(And I went to school in the pre-vaccine era. I remember measles sweeping through my little Catholic school. These younger GOPers are fortunate that they didn't have to live through that, thanks to the WHO and CDC and other health organizations that invented the vaccines and got them out to the entire world.)
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)How long do you think it is acceptable for the kids to go with education? Just wondering. I would like my 5th grader back in school in the fall for 6th grade. I'm am very afraid that these kids are going to be lacking skills because they are not going to school. FYI, the home schooling thing doesn't work when the parents have to work. What's your solution there? People need to work to support their families and kids need to be in school so that they can one day do the same thing for their families.
crickets
(25,896 posts)Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)It's sad, but realistically, most kids won't die. Do we deny all children an education because a very few of them might die? It seems that's what we do now.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,271 posts)would you just shrug it off because some kids have to die so others can be educated?
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)It's not that some kids have to die so that others can be educated. People will die anyhow because it is the natural order of things. We can't control everything. It is sad when someone dies, but we have to continue with doing the work of living.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,271 posts)because the GOP (and apparently others who should know better) think it's OK to send kids back to school in the middle of a pandemic. They closed the schools in 1918 because of the Spanish flu; I hope to God we're remembering some of the lessons learned then. But evidently not everybody is getting the message.
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)and not for this long or as long as some people want. It might make sense to close schools in areas that have a big out break, sure, but that really isn't the case of a lot of places in this country. Not every place is NYC. The one size fits all approach to handling this pandemic doesn't make sense.
eppur_se_muova
(36,227 posts)Good old days indeed, that pre-vaccine era.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,271 posts)and when the Salk vaccine became available she made the point that if we didn't want to be in one too we were sure as hell going to get our polio shots, like it or not, no whining about how you don't like shots.
keithbvadu2
(36,362 posts)Dr. Oz just said our children should go back to school because only 2-3% of them would die.
Apr 16
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213297826
Pick any two out of each hundred that you are ok with dying.
Link to tweet
Liberal In Texas
(13,453 posts)crickets
(25,896 posts)that they are willing to sacrifice other people's children. It just boggles the mind.
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)I'm betting a lot of people want their kids back in school. Everyone I talk to does and they are not all Republicans. Talk to some people who have school aged children and find out how they actually feel about it. There are always risks in life, but I don't consider doing normal activities as sacrificing my child. These are just risks we have to take to live in this world. It has always been this way. Christ, in the 80's people just let their kids do whatever and most of us made it to this point. Now society seems to want us to shelter our kids from everything in the world, which is the complete opposite from how we were raised.
crickets
(25,896 posts)it's not their children who would be sitting in a classroom petri dish all day, exposing all of the adults around them, not their kids who will bring those germs home to them and all of their family and all whom they come into contact with, not their kids who will make it impossible for anyone with compromised immunity to shelter in place if they share a home with children, and not their kids who might be in the small percentage who will die if they come down with this illness. These are all other people's kids they are talking about as though they are abstract ideas, not living, breathing people.
There are children who, if they stay home from school, will live. If they go to school, some will die.
Parents who find their kids so inconvenient, who so want their kids out of the house for a while that they are willing to take the chance of letting them die are complete ciphers to me. Of course everybody wants their kids back in school, but let's have that school experience be safe for them. Right now, it is not safe.
When I was a kid no one supervised us for the majority of the day spent out of school. I walked into an unlocked house in the afternoon and had a snack, grabbed the bike and ran around the neighborhood and surrounding woods getting into all sorts of things I shouldn't have. Luckily, there were tetanus shots to make sure random scrapes and rusty nails didn't kill me, and every other vaccination I needed, I had. If you think the eighties were a free for all for kids, the sixties put that in the shade. We didn't even have seat belts. *waves cane*
Today no one would think of leaving the doors unlocked, just as we wouldn't think of having unprotected sex in an era of AIDS, as a society we are a little more wary of the sad fact of kidnappings, and we don't send kids to school without all of their vaccinations.
There is no vaccine for COVID-19. There isn't even an overarching prescribed treatment for the virus right now, because it isn't fully understood yet. Keeping kids home from school during a pandemic isn't "sheltering them from everything in the world," it's just exercising common sense so they don't get needlessly killed.
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)It's already going to be 3 months. Let's make it a year or two. Whatever.
It's not about being inconvenienced. It is about quality of education. The odds are quite good that the kids won't die. People let their kids do riskier things all the time, like play football for example. Parents should be allowed to decide the level of risk they find acceptable. There is risk involved in doing anything.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,271 posts)that they won't bring the virus home to their parents and their vulnerable grandparents - not to mention the teachers and staff in the schools. There's a reason most school districts require measles vaccinations (and measles isn't always a minor disease; it killed a lot of kids before a vaccine was developed), and that reason is that diseases spread like crazy because the kids are close together and they're messy. Their noses run, they don't wash their hands, they touch everything. Schools are Petri dishes. If we don't want measles in schools, why are we OK with covid-19? And some of the kids will die, possibly of Kawasaki's syndrome if not the virus itself.
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)We have to be OK with the best we can do at the time. If we have a vaccine for something, then sure, require it for attendance. We'd have to be OK with measles if we didn't have a vaccine.
bluestarone
(16,720 posts)DISAGREEING with every word your saying!
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,271 posts)Grandma lives with and is an integral part of the family. Sometimes Grandma is raising the kids because the parents can't for some reason. Sometimes Grandma is a necessary babysitter because the family can't afford day care. In my own family my great-nephews' grandmother babysits so my niece can work. You can't just write grandparents out of the picture; many live with the immediate family and see the kids every day if they aren't actually babysitting. They aren't all in nursing homes (which aren't safe either).
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)But that is sometimes. We can't plan for every exception, but schools should be open in the fall for areas with low amount of cases.
obamanut2012
(25,911 posts)struggle4progress
(118,034 posts)obamanut2012
(25,911 posts)wtaf
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,271 posts)to make sure the schools were open for the other kids, because that's what it comes down to. If there's even only a 1% chance of death, and there are 200 kids in a school, two of them will die. Which two? Who's OK with that kind of lottery?
crickets
(25,896 posts)I don't even have kids and don't have to worry about being around them, and I feel so strongly about this that I cannot comprehend the argument to send them back to school. Having children at home 24/7 and the limitations of online learning for younger students are valid issues, true, but sending everyone back to the classroom is just not a good idea.
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)So you don't have to worry about how this affects your kids. You could probably comprehend it if you had kids right now. Again, it should be based on the area, but there's a lot of areas in this country where there are low amounts of cases.
crickets
(25,896 posts)I worry about how it affects everyone's kids, and not just kids in the US.
If I had children, they would be foremost in my mind, obviously, but I would still care about everyone else's children too. I am expressing concerns for other people's children because I care as a society member, I worry about children dying of a disease that could have been avoided because I have empathy for other people.
Education is important, and I understand that you are concerned your child/ren get an education and get a job. I get it. We all get it. You want your kid to go back to school, and if death comes a knockin', well tough tits, death happens. Trust me when I tell you that everyone reading your words understands you loud and clear.
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)so we have to be OK with it. It isn't sacrificing. It is living.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,271 posts)Since everybody dies of something eventually, why don't we just let nature take its course instead of trying to prevent or treat any illness - so if you die, you die? Your kid died? Your spouse? Your mother? Hey, shit happens. People die every day! That's living!
dsc
(52,129 posts)now yes, there are diseases for which we didn't have vaccines but we did close schools for the flu back in 1918, and the only reason we didn't close them for polio is because polio outbreaks occurred in the summer when schools, were wait for it, closed.
GoCubsGo
(32,061 posts)Specifically, in the ward that's tending to the kids with the bizarre COVID-related syndrome. Maker this scumbag scrub their bed pans and do the janitorial work in their room. What a vile woman.
hunter
(38,264 posts)Cancer and heart disease take a back seat.
Viruses and bacteria are the leading cause of death again...
Iggo
(47,487 posts)She wants to make life and death decisions for me and you, and she doesnt even know what time it is.