CDC Director: Schools are actually ‘one of the safest places’ kids can be
While Democrat governors and mayors, often at the urging of teachers unions, are shutting down public schools because of COVID, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that based on extensive data, these educational institutions should stay open. “K through 12 schools can operate with face-to-face learning, and they can do it safely and responsibly,” CDC Director Robert Redfield declared on Thursday at a White House coronavirus briefing.
“The infections that we’ve identified in schools, when they’ve been evaluated, were not acquired in schools. They were actually acquired in the community and in the household,” he added. Redfield emphasized that decisions should be data-driven rather than based on the emotionalism of the moment.
Dr. Redfield claimed that small family gatherings, pose the biggest threat for spreading the infection in the form of what he described as a silent epidemic, because people in those settings get “comfortable” and remove their face masks
Redfield went on record to offer this good news for many parents and their offspring:
“The truth is, for kids K-12, one of the safest places they can be, from our perspective, is to remain in school, and it’s really important that, following the data, making sure we don’t make emotional decisions about what to close and what not to close,”
“And I’m here to say clearly the data strongly supports that K-12 schools — as well as institutes of higher learning — really are not where we’re having our challenges.”
“It would be counterproductive from my point of view, from a public health point of view, just in containing the epidemic, if there was an emotional response, to say, ‘Let’s close the schools.'”
Watch the video clip below and draw your own conclusions:
He recalled that the CDC advised against closing schools in the spring based on limited data. Further data gathering since then provides even more justification for this assessment, he said.
Many school systems have adopted distance learning or a hybrid approach with varying effectiveness.
Parenthetically, far-left Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who earlier this month flouted his own stringent COVID restrictions by attending maskless a crowded, indoor dinner party, reportedly sends his own kids to private schools, which have opened for in-person learning, while many of the public school districts throughout the state are shut down.
His kids can learn in person. But yours can’t.
He can celebrate birthday parties. But you can’t.
He can dine on a $350 meal at one California’s fanciest restaurants during the worst recession in generations. But you definitely can’t.
Can you believe this? I can’t. https://t.co/lmRBWh9rpS
— Kevin Faulconer (@Kevin_Faulconer) November 14, 2020
Current CDC guidelines recommend that anyone over age 2 should wear a mask in public and when they mingle with those who don’t live in their immediate household. The agency cautions that masks don’t serve as a substitute for social distancing, however.
The findings of a preliminary study in Denmark of about 6,000 adults divided into a mask-wearing and non-mask-wearing groups, released this week “found face masks provide the wearer with only limited protection against COVID-19 infection,” Reuters reported. The authors underscored, however, that facial coverings in widespread use could provide some protection against getting the virus.
