Parents in New York just want the COVID reason from public schools

Make it make sense. That’s all parents want.

Two weeks ago, New York City changed its quarantine rules for public schools. New rules from the city’s education ministry state that “we will no longer close an entire classroom when there is a positive case. Vaccinated and unvaccinated students who wear face covers and have maintained a distance of at least three feet from a student who tests positive will not be considered close contacts and will not need to be quarantined. “

Yet I have received an avalanche of emails from parents reporting that their schools are still closing entire classes.

As it turns out, these quarantine rules only apply when a student becomes ill. When a teacher tests positive, the entire class still needs to be quarantined. It makes sense because – wait, no, that doesn’t make sense.

Teachers must now be vaccinated. So only people vaccinated in an elementary school class can force quarantine of the whole class?

The school-focused Chalkbeat website speculates the reason. “In doing so, city officials said they were following [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines, which call on students to self-quarantine whenever they are within six feet of an infected adult. (The city’s interpretation of this rule assumes that each student will have approached within six feet of their teacher.) ”

In response to which parents cry, tear their clothes and cry “Why?” ” To the sky.

The best part is that the six or three foot rules were completely arbitrary to begin with. Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb admitted in September that the six-foot rule was based on “old flu studies,” which looked at the droplets, not the aerosols through which COVID spreads .

Yet 19 months after the start of this pandemic, we are still destroying education based on this naughty rule of thumb.

Children are always forced to be three feet apart, even during recess, even outdoors, while being masked. It’s crazy.

Last April, speaking of hiding outdoors, national virus guru Anthony Fauci said, “It makes good sense to know that the risk when you are outdoors, as we have always said, is extremely low. ” However, we do not use common sense when it comes to children.

Gotham’s public schools also continue to do unnecessary random COVID testing. Each week, they test 10 percent of children whose parents have signed the test consent form. Why a parent would give consent is a mystery. False positives are not uncommon: testify to the false positives that recently rocked “The View”.

A false positive in a school means a real disruption. Any child who has interacted with the possibly positive child inside the three-foot magic barrier will also be quarantined.

It’s also not like it makes an iota of difference. The chance of randomly selecting a student who happens to be positive but has no symptoms is extremely unlikely. It is a waste of time and money. It’s just more COVID safety theater, and we shouldn’t put kids through that.

And again, for the thousandth time, we have known since last spring that children are at a tiny risk of contracting the virus and transmit it at a much lower rate than adults.

Then there is the absurd health form that parents have to fill out every morning certifying that their child has not had COVID-like symptoms or been exposed to someone with COVID.

It might seem like a small thing, but anyone who has ever had to get a child, or three, out at the morning time can attest that a few extra minutes to fill out an entirely unnecessary form can cause rabies.

But remember, New Yorkers: we pay for it. They work for us. We can’t be afraid to say that their COVID protocol house of cards is just that and always has been. It is your children who lost much of last year and who are about to suffer even more this year. Fight for them. Struggle.

Twitter: @Karol