Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Why Not Educate ?

I just read a front page article in my local Sunday “newspaper” that in a way infuriated me. The piece was titled, “Many Families of Color Wary of Return to School.” With that title, I initially optimistically had thought that there was going to be some educating of those who are reluctant to return their kids to school. Educate them as to what the statistics are as far as kids getting Covid at school and then bringing it home. Wrong! No such stats, and therefore no educating of anyone.

I also thought that there would be some encouraging stats on how impressively well kids do when they are exposed to and come down with the virus. Oops, wrong again! No such stats were presented, and thus no educating of the readers.

I also erroneously assumed that it would be pointed out that it is the poorer families, mainly those of color, whose kids are disproportionately adversely effected by being forced to do Zoom school. In fact this was mentioned at the end of the article, but was pooh-poohed in a quote from the CEO of the Chicano Federation, who went off on a non-related tangent about discrepancies in education that existed long before Covid. True as far as educational discrepancies in the past, but not related to the subject matter at hand.

Next were the individual stories from parents concerning their fears of getting sick from Covid. Interestingly members of a few of these families had already had Covid and had recovered. This would have been the perfect opportunity to educate these families (as well as all of the readers) that their chance of getting Covid a second time is minuscule. Again no such attempt to educate.

The final disappointing straw that broke the back of the non-education scenario involved the vaccine. The author comprehensively noted the Covid stats in San Diego County for Hispanics, Blacks, and Whites. It is certainly true that the Hispanic population has had a higher percent of the county’s Covid cases (56%), and a higher percent of the county’s Covid related deaths (43%) compared to the percent of Latinos (38%) living in the county. However, while Latinos make up 38% of the population, they have only received 17% of the vaccinations. Why is that? Perhaps another perfect time to educate the readers, especially the Hispanic readers, on how safe and effective these various vaccines are at preventing Covid, and even more so at preventing Covid-related hospitalizations and Covid deaths. But no . . . another education fumble. 

Parenthetically, perhaps this would have been the perfect opportunity for the same CEO of the Chicano Federation, Nancy Maldonado, to spread the vaccine-safety and vaccine-effectiveness word to Chicanos, and maybe demonstrate that by receiving her vaccine with a fanfare of publicity.

To me, without question this pandemic has had devastating effects on many families of color, but now is the time to educate these families so that their kids can get back to school. Publicize the statistics that should help overcome their Covid-school fears. Why do I not see anything like this in our newspapers?

3/10/21

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