Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson doesn’t understand what the big deal is about sending children back to school in the fall.
“These kids have got to get back to school,” Parson told a conservative talk radio host. “They’re at the lowest risk possible. And if they do get Covid-19, which they will – and they will when they go to school – they’re not going to the hospitals. They’re not going to have to sit in doctor’s offices. They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.”
Well that seems simple! Except that it overlooks several important things we know about the coronavirus.
Let’s start here: Parson is right that young people (18 and younger) tend to not have severe symptoms if they happen to get the coronavirus. Many are asymptomatic.
The problem is, that’s not the point. Schools weren’t closed early in most states this spring to protect the kids. They were closed to protect the teachers, the administrators and all of the other adults – especially the elderly – that kids came into contact with. Because we know that Covid-19 is highly transmissible – and that the older you are, the more danger the virus poses to you.
And we also have known for a while now that asymptomatic transmission happens. Which means that even if a kid doesn’t show any signs of illness, he or she could have Covid-19 and pass it along to other kids and other adults that they come into contact with. And then those people can pass it on to others. Lots of others.
To that point, a new study out of South Korea suggests that while young children (10 and younger) tend to transmit the virus less well than adults, those 10 to 19 years old spread the virus in ways very similar to adults. Of the study, The New York Times wrote:
The findings suggest that as schools reopen, communities will see clusters of infection take root that include children of all ages, several experts cautioned.
“‘I fear that there has been this sense that kids just won’t get infected or don’t get infected in the same way as adults and that, therefore, they’re almost like a bubbled population,’ said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.”
Missouri has been fully reopened since mid-June (Parsons ordered the state closed in early April). At a press conference last month, Parson was asked whether he believed he bore any responsibility for the rising number of coronavirus cases in the state.
“I don’t know that any one person is responsible for that no more than anybody else standing out here in this hallway,” Parson said. “Do I feel guilty because we have car accidents, and people die every day? No, I don’t feel guilty about that. Each person that gets in those situations, things happen like that in life, they do.”
The seven-day average in cases in Missouri is up to 854, according to The New York Times. It was 238 cases a month ago.
Parson’s push for kids to return to school – he held a press conference earlier this month making clear he believed schools needed to reopen in the fall – gibes with a similar effort by President Donald Trump at the national level.
“Young people have to go to school, and there’s problems when you don’t go to school, too,” Trump told Chris Wallace on Sunday. “And there’s going to be a funding problem because we’re not going to fund – when they don’t open their schools. We’re not going to fund them. We’re not going to give them money if they’re not going to school, if they don’t open.” (Federal dollars account for less than 10% of public school funding.)
As coronavirus continues to rage in the country, the fight over whether to reopen schools grows even more complicated (and it was already pretty damn complicated). Oversimplifying the situation or ignoring known medical realities doesn’t help anyone on any side of the issue. Take a note, Gov. Parson.