By an 83% majority, the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union overwhelmingly voted, based on COVID-19 concerns, to keep schools closed when the year begins in August. Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) officially ratified this majority opinion from the union by indefinitely suspending in-class learning in favor of a continuation of remote instruction. But do parents agree -- and are their legitimate concerns being figured into the calculus?
Although 22 European Union nations have sent children back to school and restored classes without any rise in COVID-19 infection rates and little to no risk for pupils, teachers, and families, California is opting for an abundance of caution. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) even joined President Donald Trump to “strongly advocate” reopening schools this fall, stating that “all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.” But in the Golden State, this entreaty fell on deaf ears.
Pushback on the president’s initiative was swift -- and routine. Naturally, the media began to amplify stories on how deadly COVID-19 is, even though there has been an 11-week decline in Coronavirus mortality in the United States. The usual suspects at the Hair-on-Fire Networks highlighted the dangers to young people, which are close to nonexistent. According to Stanford University’s disease prevention chairman Dr. John Ioannidis, the COVID-19 fatality rate for those under the age of 45 is “almost zero,” and “between the ages of 45 and 70, it’s somewhere between 0.05% and 0.3%.”
Efforts to counter-argue this stark scientific truth typically advance the idea that who we’re really trying to protect is the teachers. But they could all be tested before the first day of school, or could opt-out, or could be reassigned to out-of-classroom positions if they are in a high-risk category, such as immuno-compromised or elderly.
Failing that straw man, often invoked is the insistence that vulnerable family members need to be protected. This begs the question as to why we didn’t raise an extinction-level alarm about these folks during every terrible flu season for the last hundred years, especially when regular flu is far more deadly for children than COVID-19.
What do Parents Say?
Adrift in this sea of mainstream media misinformation, we should ask California parents what they think about the joint decision of their governor and UTLA to keep schools closed. After all, since their tax dollars pay the salaries of Newsom and every educator in the state, it follows that parents’ opinions should be part of the decision-making. Interestingly, a recent poll revealed that just one in five parents want schools to remain closed. This puts Newsom and UTLA at odds with the expressed interests of the constituents they serve.
One irate progressive parent from San Francisco wrote a shatteringly sarcastic op-ed that has gone viral, castigating California leadership for the decision to keep schools shuttered:
“As a dual-working family that expects to have our incomes cut in half after one of us has to tell a boss we’re only able to work either zero or three days per week next year in the midst of a global recession, we’re extremely thankful that you figured out how to require only one of us to lose our job, rather than both of us. Of course, there’s no hard feelings because we understand that as our duly elected representatives and the people hired by them, you are obviously powerless to make alternative choices, like those made by the leaders of Florida, Texas, Australia, and France, who have all decided to reopen their schools completely next year.”
Most galling of all for this anonymous parent was that the failure of leadership in California means he/she is living the waking nightmare of siding with President Trump about the reopening of schools against the heroes of the resistance.
The outsized burdens borne by parents over these last terrible months seem not to have been part of the calculus of California leadership’s decision. Untold numbers of families lost jobs, income, and homes and still bravely soldiered through, doing as they were told. They took on additional unpaid, part-time jobs as de facto teachers during the brave new world of remote learning. And parents of students with special needs were tasked with having to somehow corral essential support services for their children, including language and speech, occupational therapy, and adaptive physical education -- or try their best to provide these interventions themselves.
Some polls reflect the trepidation of many parents about sending children back to school, but can you blame them? The incessant daily drumbeat of doom by the mainstream media will continue unabated until the abomination that was the result of the 2016 election is overturned on Nov. 3, and harried parents have little time, energy, or inclination to seek out the truth that exposes these lies for the false flags they are.
A Media Myth
We obediently flattened the curve way back in April, and that was just a signal to the media to quickly move the goalposts. Like Lucy Van Pelt endlessly tricking Charlie Brown into kicking a football with which he’ll never connect, the media will Groundhog Day us again and again into believing this flu-like virus is, in fact, the black plague -- and we may never know the truth.
But at least the president has a sense of humor about it. He sent out a video clip of a flummoxed mainstream media anchor flabbergasted that all five of the pediatricians he was interviewing were in favor of reopening schools. Guests will most certainly be thoroughly vetted in the future and read the on-air manifesto in the green room so that such an embarrassing breach of protocol never happens again.
But buried deep in all the bad news is a seedling of hope. When an on-air propaganda segment implodes because the guests won’t spout approved talking points, and when a progressive parent from San Francisco agrees with the Orange Scourge, something elemental is at work. Will finally waking up to the truth become the new “woke”?
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Read more from Pennel Bird.
