Very little is known about COVID-19 that what is known does not constitute a firm basis of knowledge. Everyday knowledge must be accepted and be ready to be dumped immediately. So, when Donald Trump accuses Dr. Fauci of discouraging the use of mask one time and at another time encouraging it, he is showing his inability to learn in the environment of the coronavirus.
Can kids carry the virus without being affected by the virus? How can children be safely returned to school and back home safely? Safe for the people at home and the teachers at school?
In some of the advanced democracies of the world, children access nutritious food and medication at school. So, for children from deprived homes it is always better for the child to return to school. In many cases, the parents cannot return to work unless the children return to school.
Yet, given the devious ways of COVID-19 children returning home at the end of the day carry back home to their grandparents possibilities of the deadly virus. How then can the president force children back to school when such enforcement does not rest with the president?
There has been another question asked but not answered by the return to work and to school. Should workers go back to their livelihood or go back to life? Can the return to livelihood lead to the loss of life?
Conditions are laid out for returning children to school. The overall condition of the population must be in tune with the overall condition that the children are returning to. Unable to ensure the stable condition for the return of the children, the authorities claim the conditions for school return are too harsh for the children. The relevant authorities promise to come back next week with less stringent conditions. So that when the return to school fails, who would the authorities blame? The kids?
The way things are turning out generally, adults, who should know better in the present circumstances do not know. And they do not understand how to show examples to the young. Take the simple matter of wearing masks to protect others from contamination, becomes a macho issue. Only a weakling politician will be seen wearing a mask. How stupid can an adult person be?
There are illogicalities as well. COVID-19 allows an elderly person to turn reason on its head and use his top of his head to match up and down the yard. Children are difficult to manage especially when adults do not live by examples. Wear masks to protect others. The president does not. Keep social distance. The president does not obey these orders. There is a general break down of order and nothing works, as it should. In no time at all the kids who should be taking lessons from adults are dishing it out with authority.
All over the world, latest in Australia, recently opened systems have just been shut up because of renewed spike of the corona virus. Across the United States of America, governors are answering the president back, saying that he did not have the powers he is claiming for himself.
A few days ago, the president of Mexico visited the president of USA in Washington DC for a ceremony to mark a commercial success. Canada, Mexico and the USA are to be involved in the ceremony. The presidents of USA and Mexico do not wear masks in public. The prime minister of Canada does not joke with the wearing of masks in public. So, the prime minister politely turned down the invitation to attend the ceremony.
What is of interest for those who care to take note is how everyone in the service of the president learns to speak with forked tongues, like the snake. “Do you agree with the president when he says, and you say…?” There is no disagreement, merely the president providing strong leadership. “But the president says he does not agree with the scientific world as far as that is concerned…”
Now, we must not read too much into ongoing discussions among the staff of the president. Sometimes, it is believed that only out and out big players go out of their way to disagree with the president and call it quits. John Bolton for example. Or the niece of the president, Dr. Mary Trump.
While the president is threatening to pressure the governors and the mayors to open the schools, the staff of the president are emphasising the need for our children to go back to school. After all there is a limit to how much they can bully governors and mayors to open up the schools. So, when a journalist asks why the president would thread to withhold money from any governor who refuses to reopen for the school year, the president staff would soft pedal on such threats while emphasizing the gesture of the president.
It is going to be difficult how an outright winner can emerge from these skirmishes. Between the threats of the president and the softly-softly of his staff, no winner will emerge. The staff would humiliate themselves to absolve their principle from the folly he had sunk himself into. Or else, the sheer shame of losing face would force him to compromise and join his staff to do the right thing.
Some science would be found to justify the compromise that is needed to take the story forward the way and manner the president likes the story to go.
Left to themselves and left to the schools which would need to double up for two or three streams to function let sleeping dogs lie. How do you squeeze forty pupils into three times the room they need for proper social standing? You can pray that any of the various vaccine are ready to roll. Or else the malaria drug should go forward and do his worst. Or else the cleaning utensil can decide to clean everything in its path and let’s be done with it. Let the kids and COVID-19 contend. May the better medicine prevail!
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