While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One Foot
July 8, 2020
So now it appears that we are at some kind of a point in this pandemic when we are supposed to open the schools. The politicians know that the virus tends to be more fatal in older people so they can’t really say ‘Let everyone visit the nursing homes.’ No one wants be seen as forcing grandma to get sick. So why schools? The absurd logic seems to be that children may get sick but they can fight it off – we hope. And the extension of that seems to be ‘well, only .1% of the children will die….but the parents can go back to work and the economy will keep on trucking!’ Someone tell me I am reading this the wrong way….please.
There have been so many public health emergencies involving children for which every politician and policy-maker can look back on. I remember my father telling me about a camping trip he took when he was 16 or 17 years old. He was telling me that he and a bunch of his ham radio friends were having a good time playing with radio, camping and enjoying meals together. At one meal his friend starting looking ill. Two days later he was in an iron lung being treated for polio. I don’t recall if he made or not. But the point is that in the polio epidemic the nation protected the children and did not force them to expose themselves or their parents or grandparents to a deadly disease that ‘only has a mortality rate of 1%’ – which by the way seems to be a made-up number.
Both Canada and United States worked feverishly to protect the children from polio, lead paint, asbestos, etc. Schools were closed until the problem could be rectified. Children were protected. Now, if schools are forced to open, simply put, children will not be protected.
The politicians are telling us that, well, yes they will be okay. They will all wear masks and they won’t get near each other and the classrooms will have plenty of social distancing. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry upon hearing this. What seems clear is that the brilliant minds coming up with this plan really have no idea how education works or, more importantly, how childhood works! The tragedy will happen when the children start getting sick and, God forbid, dying. The enthusiastic politicians will be caught in a bind of their own making: apologize and therefore open themselves up to negligent homicide lawsuits or, at the very least, being known forever as a murderous conspirator for the sake of the economy or defend their position that they were doing the very best they could to keep the economy going which means, simply, someone has to be sacrificed. We already sacrificed the old people. So maybe it’s time to sacrifice the children???!!!!!
If we were reading such a story in high school we would have discussions about such a dystopian society. We would silently assure ourselves that it would never happen here. And we would be wrong. It is happening here and as children get sick our politicians will say ‘woe is me’ with mostly crocodile tears, as my mom used to call it.
This behaviour is on the same continuum as the intentional ignorance of the real numbers. I can almost hear the governors of the states that won’t report COVID-19 deaths as putting their fingers in their ears and saying, ‘blah, blah, blah, I can’t hear you, blah, blah, blah! Unfortunately, I take no pleasure in knowing how they will be remembered.
It is said that in times of crisis a person’s true character comes out. The same can be said of the national response. Those in positions of power have ignored numbers. They have intentionally misrepresented the truth. And have basically said, ‘We aren’t going to tell you what to do.’ And, Americans being what we are, will do what we want to do. We will go into the bars, drink too much and then get into our cars and drive drunk and exponentially increase the chances of killing someone innocent or ourselves. Only this time we are not intoxicated with alcohol but rather a virus. But the two are the same thing.
In the Middle Ages, Jews were kept in ghettos so they could not live among the Gentiles. It was the Church’s way of keeping out the ‘Jewish parasite’ from infecting the population. (By the way, this is exactly the language used in the Middle Ages). As a result, when the bubonic plague arrived from time to time, the Jews were protected by the wall the town made to keep them isolated. It was not uncommon for some Jewish communities in Europe to be relatively unscathed. It was an unintentional blessing of being holed up in the ghetto.
Today there is a different kind of ghetto only the effects are completely reversed. There are too many people who remain the ghetto of ignorance and self-interest at the expense of everyone else. They don’t have a care for anyone else. They pretend it’s all just going to go away. They claim it’s still a hoax. You’ve seen all the videos and heard all the speeches of the blissfully uninformed and the experts at sticking their fingers in their ears and ‘blah, blah, blahing’ it away.
As a nation we have failed. And not only have we failed in the pandemic response. We have morally failed. For when we care more about our own self-interest than the lives of our children, we have descended into the pit. It will take generations of critical self-reflection to even begin to emerge. America needs a Yom Kippur beginning right now.
