Can we at least stop being disingenuous and call Ontario’s premature decision to return to in-person learning what it really is? For it is not about kids' mental health. It’s about two other things altogether.
First, it is about pandering to the modern-day parent that has forgotten or never knew, what responsible parenting is all about. Did all those episodes of The Waltons have no impact at all?
Second, it is about making the conscious decision that allowing more ICU admissions and Covid deaths is an acceptable trade-off between having to babysit our kids for a few more weeks to help flatten the curve and taking away a percentage of the population’s ability to breathe. Literally.
This is not to say that in-person learning is not important and that shelving it for a period of time does not present real challenges.
It does.
But we do it every summer for a couple of months and no one seems the worse for wear. If having the kids off from school for any period of time plays such havoc with their mental health, should we not be considering a 12 month school year?
Or would that have mental repercussions on that ever-so-delicate and a narrow swath of the working population, teachers, with such stressful jobs that require 2+ months off for the summer to recuperate?
Thank goodness healthcare and other frontline workers who every day put their own lives at risk to keep us safe are not so fragile.
Make no mistake, at the very moment kids, will return to school, Covid counts are rising and achieving new daily records across the board; cases, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths.
Make no further mistake, sending millions of students back to the classroom at a time when Omicron transmissibility is still increasing, not decreasing, will result in the mathematical certainty that more people will die than if we extended our patience for just another few weeks as global modelling reliably forecasts Omicron’s demise.
On the other side of this coin one could argue that additional ICU admissions and deaths will disproportionately (~70%) be among the unvaccinated with an even darker side “serves’em right!” However, the primary argument is on behalf of the other ~30% who will arrive there through no fault of their own.
But that’s okay, we made the conscious decision that not all lives matter.
Besides, most of those will be felt in private by the fewer number of families and loved ones preselected by our own indifference.
Contrast that against what pollsters are telling our government might happen come election time if we, God forbid, force parents to be parents just a few moments longer.
Goodnight John boy!
