Coronavirus Chronicles — The Many Factors in School Reopening

This is not the place for tracing the history of all the fallacious assumptions about COVID-19, but there certainly seem to be a lot of them. People used to think that its contagious droplets would not travel very far, or linger in the air for very long. Now, it appears that the droplets are more tiny than we can imagine, can travel farther than anyone had supposed, and hang around for a discouragingly long time.

At first, people believed, against all reason, that children possessed something close to immunity to the novel coronavirus. Then the evidence started to come in. Kids get it too, sometimes in sudden and dramatic form. Sometimes it appears mild, with a cruelly false recovery followed by “long haul” effects. There is a dawning awareness that when it comes to children’s safety, complacency is not our friend. The bottom line here is, whatever kids get, obese kids get it worse.

Okay! We’re concerned!

So, what do we do? For starters, suggests journalist Derek Thompson, we might think twice before being impressed by the words “deep cleaning” in relation to buildings and transport systems, which would include schools and buses.

In “Hygiene Theater is a Huge Waste of Time,” for The Atlantic, he explains. First, fomite transmission, or catching the virus from contact with surfaces, is not that big of a deal. While deep-cleaning the subways every night sounds great, it does more harm to the citizens than good. The evidence for surface transmission is so paltry as to be almost absent. (But we’re talking about COVID-19 here. There are still plenty of other things to catch, and people should still wash their hands thoroughly and often, just on general principles.)

Hospitals need regular deep-cleaning; in schools it probably does not help in this particular case, and is very likely to pull resources and energy away from other precautions that might make more sense. Like over-reliance on taking people’s temperatures, obsessive cleaning is perceived by some to be less of a preventative measure and more of an empty ritual.

The author sought information from microbiology professor Emanuel Goldman of Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, who takes into account not only financial reality but the “prevention fatigue” factor that enervates people:

They’re exhausted by all the information we’re throwing at them. We have to communicate priorities clearly; otherwise, they’ll be overloaded.

At a time when returning to school will require herculean efforts from teachers and extraordinary ingenuity from administrators to keep kids safely distanced, setting aside entire days to clean surfaces would be a pitiful waste of time and scarce local tax revenue.

My point is not to relax, but rather to focus on what matters and what works. Masks, social distancing, and moving activities outdoors. That’s it. That’s how we protect ourselves. That’s how we beat this thing.

Lest we forget, schools have more than one item on their agenda. In many places, school is where kids get not only high-standard nutrition, but any nutrition at all.

Economically comfortable Americans have no real grasp of what it means to be food-insecure, and others have no understanding of how much obesity is caused by kids filling up on cheap and over-processed pretend-food. Frederick M. Hess wrote,

America’s schools are a primary source of food for millions of students in the free- and reduced-price lunch program. As the massive national database compiled by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Nat Malkus shows, within two weeks of schools’ being closed, more than 80 percent of them were providing some type of meal service, and 30 percent were delivering meals to kids.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Hygiene Theater Is a Huge Waste of Time,” TheAtlantic.com, 07/27/20
Source: “COVID-19 Took Away Public Education. Will We Miss It?,” NationalReview.com, 04/05/20
Image by Sam Sherratt/CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Factorial Multiplicity

The term “multifactorial” has been used before, in reference to the bewildering number of discoveries that have been made about obesity. Childhood Obesity News has used it often. An influential factor might exert only a tiny effect on the body, and contribute only a fractional number to the obesity statistics.

But so many things are accused of being responsible, in mysterious ways, for encouraging the body to create and hold onto fat cells. The “obesity villains” file holds so very many suspects, at least a portion of them must be guilty. If a grooming product contains a chemical that somehow causes an eight-ounce weight gain over a year, so what? It’s no big deal, right? But what if it turns out to be true that eating from plastic dishes makes people fat? Now, the person is carrying around an extra pound.

In the obesity field, hundreds of minor-league obesity villains have been proposed, and some have been proven. As a thought experiment, suppose that a person’s environment only holds 20 of those mini-factors, The average amount of weight each one puts on a person is eight ounces. Multiplied by 20, that’s 10 pounds a year of weight gain that is totally unconnected with nutrition or even bare sustenance.

Whether in an individual or a population, the annoying tiny effects tend to pile on until collectively they pose a serious threat to health. There is also the synergy aspect to contend with. Two seemingly minor-league obesity villains can team up and do some real damage.

The coronavirus connection

Information about the novel coronavirus comes at us thick and fast, and a lot of it has to do with factors. Age is a factor, but in different countries, things go on that might make age a much less meaningful factor — or even more significant than previously believed. Some precepts are true in one place but not a hundred miles down the road, or not among people with different colored skin. How the virus acts and how humans react turns out to be multifactorial, and people should probably know more about that before reopening schools.

Everyone is carrying around a vast number of assumptions about COVID-19 that may not be accurate or even up to date. Zeroing in on children, Dana G. Smith examines five leading theories about them and the virus. Hopefully this brief summary will not satisfy, but encourage the reader to go read the whole article.

First, the idea has become entrenched that contagion is stymied because children have fewer ACE2 receptors, which are the virus’s favorite place to latch on. While it is tempting to believe that this makes children less efficient at shedding and spreading, this is probably not true in all cases. Smith also writes,

Another possibility is that there is something different in the immune systems of young children that scientists haven’t accounted for yet. As kids age and their bodies go through puberty and look more like adults, they start to respond to the virus more like adults, too. For instance, in countries that have reopened schools, several outbreaks have occurred in high schools, but there have been relatively few cases in elementary schools.

Then, there is a fancy theory that kids’ immune systems are tough enough to habitually deal with the common cold, which is another kind of coronavirus, so COVID-19 is no problem for them. Another suggestion is that children are pretty much socially isolated by parental fiat — but in the shanty towns of Third World cities, this could not be nearly as possible as in the New Jersey suburbs.

In places where only children who seem sick are tested, a lot of positives will be found. In all the excitement, nobody has been particularly eager to test a bunch of asymptomatic children. But apparently there have been places where large numbers of asymptomatic children were tested, just out of curiosity, and shockingly large numbers of them showed positive for COVID-19.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “What’s the Deal With Kids and the Coronavirus: Five Leading Theories,” Medium.com, 08/02/20
Image by Thomas Galvez/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Physical, In-Person, On-Site School

As we have seen, obesity has an intensifying effect. Any problem that children and teenagers ever run into is magnified by also being uncomfortably or dangerously overweight. It’s as if fat cells and COVID-19 have entered into some unholy alliance for mutual aid. Whether the virus succeeds in making everybody stay home, or whether in-person school is attempted, either way, the downsides will hit the obese young people worse.

Sarah Jones wrote for New York magazine:

Kids need real classrooms, trained teachers, and socialization they don’t get at home; the absence of each will harm low-income students the most… But low-income families face daunting obstacles. The pandemic deepens their disadvantages, and eats up whatever equity public schools achieve for their children.

Teachers are afraid these children will fall farther and farther behind.

And, what a coincidence. Disadvantaged, low-income students also have more of a tendency to develop obesity, and so do minority children, and there is often a lot of overlap among these groups.

Caution: Jones’ article about the consequences of various school-related choices could keep a person awake at night.

What is needed?

Kids need trained teachers, sure, and they also need empathetic teachers. A really good teacher figures out how to encourage children for their individual strengths and interests. This is so, so hard to do over a communal video feed, for more than one reason.

Socialization involves more than just learning how to say “please” and “thank you.” For a kid who is different in a non-approved way, like being too heavy, we’re talking about the development of skills. Some kids figure out how to deflect negativity with humor. Some learn how to play a musical instrument, or fix people’s computers, to earn forgiveness for being fat.

Author Shayla R. Griffin, Ph.D., discusses Dr. Fauci’s recommendations to make schools safe:

Low Covid-19 rates in the community;
Regular testing of all school personnel and students;
Robust contact tracing;
Mandatory mask usage of all students, starting from the moment they board the school bus; and
PPE for all educators, including masks, goggles or face shields, gloves, and “coverall” clothing that is easy to take off once the school day is over.

Not to be negative, but trying to convince a class of young children to wear their masks properly all day seems like a fool’s errand. That challenge alone will defeat many teachers. Where will the masks come from? Somebody needs to pay for them, and it probably will not be the families, not when many families can’t even afford to feed their kids breakfast. When even doctors, nurses, and other health-care personnel can’t get enough masks, how is this going to work out for school children?

And what about the teachers? Who will pay for their personal protective equipment, and for their hospital bills if they catch the virus? Fortunately, that question has been answered. Schools are having today’s equivalent of the old time school Bake Sale. Griffin says:

Many districts have already been doing public fundraisers for PPE donations, which raises concerns about whether or not we will actually have enough masks, goggles, gloves, and sanitizer for all students and staff.

But speaking of money, a stern reminder comes from Noah Rothman, who not only emphasizes that financially solid citizens are upset, but that America as a country seems to have given up on any notion that school opportunities should be equal:

[T]he indefinite postponement of in-person education is an abrogation of the social contract. Those who sought out their districts and pay property taxes commensurate with the services they pursued are being told they are out of luck. And they’re not entitled to a refund.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “America’s Teachers Face an Impossible Choice,” NYMag.com, 07/17/20
Source: “Schools Aren’t Opening. We Have to Pay Parents to Stay Home with Their Kids,” Medium.com, 07/29/20
Source: “The Coming Showdown over Schooling,” CommentaryMagazine.com, 07/13/20
Image by Alexander Ellisson/CC BY 2.0