Vaccinations are a key ingredient to reopening schools safely, and this is the administration taking the steps to ramp up vaccinations for educators, which is great news for everyone who wants in-school learning,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement.
Ending the pandemic has been at the forefront of President Biden’s first 100 days, and was his priority during the presidential campaign.
His focus has resulted in decreased cases and deaths since January, but the nation’s numbers are currently at a standstill as the COVID variants have come into the country.
Oddly enough despite the reported standstill, several states, with high African American populations, such as Texas and Mississippi, have made decisions to re-open and loosen the Federal Governments guidelines designed to stop the spread of the virus.
The rush to reopen may backfire and cause a viral increase this spring, much like what was seen after Thanksgiving gatherings last year. It may be interesting to note this reopening, particularly in Texas, comes on the heels of the recent storm that exacerbated the financial distress caused by the original mishandling of fighting the COVID virus.
Surely these states aren’t placing finance above health as they abandon precautions designed to re-open businesses safely. In fact, these states seem to be doing just that. Perhaps they should allow the increased vaccine rollout and the mask wearing support a cautious re-opening.
President Biden and his administration are working diligently to repair a year- long unprecedented experience of health and financial crisis.
As Biden stated, when asked by reporters when he thought the nation would return to normal “My hope is by this time next year, we’re going to be back to normal,” while acknowledging he had been “cautioned” not to offer such predictions, because of the uncertainty of the virus.