It would be nice if U.S. Governors had access to information from the CDC when making some of the heavy-handed decisions they come down with that adversely affect millions of people. Oh, wait, they actually do have the info available, which means they simply choose to ignore it.
Case in point, the announcement made Thursday by CDD Director Robert Redfield that K-12 schools should remain open because their data shows that schools are among the “safest places” kids can be in protecting them from the pandemic.” He then added that attempts to close schools are nothing more than an “emotional response.”
This announcement comes on the heels of the decision in New York City to close all public schools indefinitely. And in other states, including California, where over four months into a school year all the teaching has been done with distance learning. Schools haven’t been open since March. Clearly, Governors like Gavin Newsom of California are simply ignoring this information. “Today, there’s extensive data that we have—we’ve gathered over the last two to three months—that confirm that K-12 schools can operate with face-to-face learning and they can do it safely and they can do it responsibly,” Redfield said. “The infections that we’ve identified in schools when they’ve been evaluated were not acquired in schools. They were actually acquired in the community and in the household.”
Redfield made the point the biggest threat for transmission of coronavirus is from small family gatherings, not from kids being in school. “The truth is, for kids K-12, one of the safest places they can be, from our perspective, is to remain in school, and it’s really important that following the data, making sure we don’t make emotional decisions about what to close and what not to close, and I’m here to say clearly the data strongly supports that K-12 schools—as well as institutes of higher learning—really are not where we’re having our challenges.”
For Governors who constantly preach messages they are following the science and the data, we’ll soon learn if they actually mean it or are pushing some alternate agenda.
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