Children have returned to schools across the country even if doing so is not entirely safe and the so-called adults in charge of many states and school systems have done everything they can to ensure it will never be safe.
Governors such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have waged a legal war against schools that try to mandate masks and governors in some states have tried to ban mask mandates altogether.
The result is an explosion of coronavirus infections among children.
As of Sept. 9, nearly 5.3 million children had been diagnosed with Covid-19, representing 15.5 percent of all cases, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. More than 243,000 cases were reported from Sept. 2 to Sept 9., the second-highest number of child cases in a week since the beginning of the pandemic, representing nearly 29 percent of the weekly reported cases, according to AAP. The highest number of cases was just one week prior, with 251,781 new cases. The AAP reported that after declining in early summer, “child cases have increased exponentially, with nearly 500,000 cases in the past 2 weeks.”
It's complicated for working parents who've sent their children back to school because they have no other choice. Child care is prohibitively expensive and Congress will not be approving any more aid.
But the same cannot be said for conservative school and government officials who are gambling with the health and lives of school children for political reasons. Republicans have opposed basic safety measures for purely ideological reasons, not scientific reasons, and the well-being of children or anyone else for that matter is a distant second thought.
Kids may not be dying from coronavirus infections at the same rate as older adults, but some of them are and we don't know what their infections could mean for them years from now or later in life.
Don't vote for people who want you and your kids dead.