That sums up the risks and makes you wonder, well, why are we doing this now? So Dr. King, why are we insisting on opening schools in the midst of this pandemic? What’s your perspective as an educator?
Dr. King:
After the last 18 months, uh, we realized that kids need to be in school for many reasons, right? It’s the best learning environment for kids, for social, emotional issues that our kids have suffered this past 18 months. They need to be around their peers. They need to be around trusted adults. Um, you know, the pandemic has weighed heavy on them, so it is important for students to be back in school. And I think that we’ve learned over the last 18 months, how the mitigation strategies can work when you enforce them in your schools. I know in the state that I work in, the state legislator has passed the law, that all schools in the state of Virginia, um, are required to offer five days of in-person learning for parents who want it. So it’s really difficult for schools to stand up. What we did last year, which was a hybrid model that weighed heavy on teacher workload. We weren’t ready for that. And so we were determined to open safely this year, using the mitigation strategies that we learned, like I said, over the last 18 months. And because we know it’s important to get students back in school.
BDO – Dr. Mel:
And you mentioned mitigation strategies. Can you mention some of the ones that your school district, um, has done?
Dr. King:
We require that everybody inside the school building where masks, we recommend that when kids are out in the playground that they wear masks, but we don’t mandate it outside. We are still having children wash their hands regularly. We have hand sanitizer all over our schools and, to the greatest extent possible to continue to maintain three feet and six feet distancing, six feet without your mask, when they’re in the cafeteria and three feet, when they’re in the classroom. So we’re using those mitigation strategies and for the most part they’re working, it doesn’t mean that we’re not without COVID in our schools, because we definitely have cases of children having COVID and adults in our schools. But as large as the district that I work in is, we really still have low cases compared to the number of students that we have in our district. So I truly believe that vaccinations work because at our high school and middle school levels, we see lower cases than we do at our elementary schools where children are not vaccinated.
BDO – Dr. Mel:
Dr. Alondra, what do you think about the Pfizer announcement today about the vaccine being safe and effective for children age five to 11… if those are approved, do you think that they should be mandated for that age group?
Dr. Hancock:
That’s an excellent question. You know, the first question that I would ask is really being able to critically analyze the data so that we can delay parental concerns I’ve received at least seven or eight text messages just today asking what is the risk of myocarditus in the five to 11 year old group, as you guys likely know, we did not discover an elevated risk of myocarditis in the adolescent population until the vaccine was made available to the general public. And so that’s the first question that I need to answer for my parents before I can say whether or not a vaccine like COVID is mandated clearly in the pediatric population. There are a ton of vaccines that are already mandated before a child can enter into and then continue in school. So vaccine mandates in the pediatric space are nothing new. We now see a bouncy mandate for the HPV vaccine.
Watch the rest of the Facebook Live at https://www.facebook.com/BlackDoctor.org