Op-Ed: Let’s talk about COVID mitigation in our schools

Oct. 22, 2022  |  By Life LeGeros 

Community means being there for each other particularly when times are tough, and especially for the sake of our most vulnerable members. 

Community means being honest with each other: bringing experience and evidence to our conversations so that we can find a way forward together. 

I’ve been bringing up COVID-19 with friends and acquaintances lately. After initial hesitancy to share their views, I’ve heard from plenty of people who are worried about the “you do you” spirit of our society’s current approach to COVID. I’m pleasantly surprised by the widespread silent yearning for a return to the principles of caring for each other that characterized Vermont’s pandemic response not too long ago. 

So let’s start talking about COVID again. 

Regardless of messaging across much of our society, our local communities don’t have to pretend the pandemic is over. Risk continues to persist and will likely grow in the coming months, so we should re-normalize thinking through personal and social exposure together. We can and should choose to center the voices of those who are most vulnerable because our systems too often fail them: community members who are living in poverty, of the global majority, immunocompromised, etc. From family and social systems to schools and towns, we can and should create evidence-based plans to protect each other from COVID’s worst impacts. 

Because the worst impacts of COVID are severe. According to national data, an average of about four hundred people per day have died in our country since the Omicron surge bottomed out in April. That’s nearly the equivalent death toll of a 9/11 attack every week. That’s 70,000 deaths in the last six months during a relatively quiet part of the pandemic. This is a death rate more than triple that of the worst flu seasons on record. This is not the flu and the pandemic is not over.

The game changer for me is long COVID, which some experts are calling the greatest mass disabling event in human history. It is characterized by a wide range of potentially permanent symptoms across an array of bodily systems, including brain fog, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, persistent fatigue, and depression. We are only beginning to understand its widespread impacts, but the emerging data is sobering: up to four million American workers are out of the workforce due to long COVID, contributing to a national labor shortage. About 5% of Vermonters report ongoing long COVID symptoms - that’s over 30,000 people in our state who are currently suffering, three months or more after a COVID infection, with no way to know when or whether they will recover. Some of those people are fully vaccinated, previously healthy, and had asymptomatic cases. This is not the flu and long COVID may very well represent a secondary pandemic.

Schools are charged with caring for some of our most vulnerable and precious community members. Unfortunately, due to the minimalist approach recommended by Vermont’s education and health agencies, our schools are doing very little to protect students and staff. In stark contrast to just a few months ago, most schools in our state aren’t systematically collecting transmission data, enthusiastically encouraging vaccination, nor proactively offering information or resources such as masks and tests. 

As a community we should reassess whether dropping almost all mitigation measures makes sense. We do not have to follow the state’s lead on treating COVID-19 like a taboo subject. Quite the opposite, in fact. Within a broader context of denialism and misinformation, it is more important than ever for our local actions to be reasonable and realistic.

The reality is another COVID wave is coming. And though Vermont’s approach was relatively robust in the early days of the pandemic, our state’s current recommendations for community protections are weaker than those of surrounding states and the federal government. 

Although it doesn’t go far enough in my personal opinion, the guidance for schools from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a reasonable moderate point of comparison to Vermont’s extreme minimalist approach. In addition to air quality measures and vaccinations, CDC asks schools to have a plan, tied to levels of transmission and outbreaks, for how and when to deploy measures such as testing and masking. This is common sense and should be the bare minimum: we should temporarily use more tools during COVID waves in order to keep our schools open, minimize illness interruptions for students, guard against educator burnout, and decrease spread in our communities. 

I know that it is unpleasant to think about, but with the winter wave looming, it is time for us to figure out a better way forward. If you are skeptical of the severity of COVID, please consider the evidence about the ongoing social harms of the pandemic and the individual risks of long COVID. If you are aware but have relaxed your vigilance recently, take note of the impending winter wave and get a plan in place. And if you are worried about the pandemic and our society’s increasingly indifferent response to it, don’t give up hope on the possibility of a better local approach during this crucial moment.

I encourage everybody to engage their family, friends, and neighbors to think about what a responsible middle ground between lockdowns and letting it rip might look like. And if you find others who want stronger consideration and action, as I have, then take your collective concerns to your School Board and other government officials.

Those of you who are entrusted with formal authority of any kind, please do what you can in your sphere of influence to move us back toward a reasonable approach. Our communities deserve bold and transparent leadership now and for the tough times ahead to empower us to care for each other and center those who are most vulnerable.

Ignoring COVID won’t make it go away. But together we can find the right balance between acceptable risk and caring for each other as a community. We owe it to our children, our schools, and each other.

Duxbury resident Life LeGeros is a member of the Harwood Unified Union School Board. His commentary is written and submitted as an individual and the views expressed here should not be assumed to be those of any organization with which he is affiliated.