The last time I checked, 30 education staff, including 21 teachers had died from Covid-19 in the Western Cape.
The same media release from the provincial education department also advised that while 379 learners have tested positive since June the 1st, none of them have died as a result of the infection.
The reasons given are that children are more medically resilient and therefore get over the disease a lot quicker.
According to scientists, they are also a lot less likely to spread the disease, which quite frankly I have trouble believing.
The virus is spread by the droplets that we cough or sneeze into the air around us; or just by talking too dramatically in close proximity to another person.
Why would children’s droplets be exempt from this?
Be that as it may, I continue to advocate extreme caution considering that there’s still so much we simply don’t know.
Which brings me to the fact that we seem to be doing the exact opposite.
I have previously argued that human life is too high a price to pay to get an economy back up and running.
Now I say that the lives of teachers and learners are equally too high a price to pay to get kids back into the classroom.
I am not a scientist, but I like to think that I possess a relatively healthy amount of common sense.
And it appears to me that quite a bit of logic is being ignored or overlooked.
For example, I often hear politicians talk about how children are less susceptible to Covid-19, but they almost always ignore those children’s relatives and guardians.
Since there’s so much we don’t know, it is plausible that while children are less likely to be infected, they may simply be spreaders.
There is no way of knowing how many of those who have already died, were in fact the relatives of learners, who unknowingly took the disease home from school.
There will of course be those who argue against this possibility, but that may be more wishful thinking than actual science.
The fact is, children are not as careful about their health as adults are.
A meme I saw last week says it best: “Those who think children are going to practise social distancing, instead of running around, while jokingly coughing into each other’s faces while shouting ‘you got the Rona’ have never met children before.”
Any parent will tell you that keeping children healthy once they start attending daycare is an impossible task.
And stopping them from bringing those bugs home to mom and dad is equally impossible.
This is the common sense I refer to.
So knowing this, why are we insisting that our kids must return to the classroom?
What is the great rush? I really don’t get it.
In my humble opinion, this is nothing more than ritualistic human sacrifice; offerings to appease a god we call capitalism.
And it truly does concern me that so many of us are okay with it.
It’s almost like politicians have become cult leaders, brainwashing us into a homicidal and suicidal pact to maintain a façade of normalcy.
Whichever it may be, the only question is, how many deaths are enough before the school year is scrapped?
What will the cut-off be? Will 30 be enough? Or is that only today’s number... until we can’t bear to be forced indoors again?