In an appearance on MSNBC on Tuesday, Dr. Sudip Bose, an emergency room doctor from Odessa, Texas, told MSNBC’s told Chuck Todd that “it is time to open our economy now.” His plan, as he explained to Todd, was to do a phased opening, and he promoted the idea that kids should be purposely exposed as a way to jump-start herd immunity.
“I think the best-case scenario is you open things up in a calculated manner based on numbers and facts, not feelings,” Bose said. “And let it go through. And the best-case scenario, it may go through our kids first.”
After the appearance was first reported on Raw Story, Bose offered to clarify his remarks by issuing the following statement (which only enforced the fact that he’s an uninformed fool): “Basically, the concept is this,” the statement read. “Herd immunity will likely happen before a cure. Safest way to do this is possibly to open schools. Kids are nearly 100% protected (get minor illness in most cases). They give it to their younger parents (who are presumably healthy and most do ok). In Italy, the kids interacted with grandparents more due to culture—leading to increased deaths.”
Let’s put a pin in that grandparent remark. The idea of exposing kids because they’re basically immune has been floated by more than one so-called expert. Open the schools! All those young people! All that immunity! Sounds like a great idea, right?
Well, no, actually.
The problem that jumps off the page for this 62-year-old substitute teacher is this: Kids don’t go to school alone. Spoiler alert—there is a teacher in every classroom! And let’s not forget the administrative personnel at those schools, all of whom are older than 12. From my first-hand experience, I can tell you that many of the men and women who fill administrative positions, including office managers, bus drivers, lunchroom attendants, and custodians, are 55-plus, and many of them are grandparents.
Back to the teachers. Most teachers in the United States, 77% according to Education Week, are women; and according to The National Center for Education Statistics, nearly 20% of those are age 55 or older. So the idea that you can expose school-aged children and not impact others is pure bunk.
Speaking of bunk, what about this notion that young people are basically immune? Recall that Dr. Bose’s plan is to infect kids, who would in turn infect their young parents, who—due to their youth—are also basically immune. In a recent article published in The Atlantic, Kerry Kennedy Meltzer, a resident physician specializing in Internal medicine in New York City, says Americans in their 20s and 30s—no matter how healthy and invincible they feel—need to understand how dangerous this virus can be. But can children be infected with the novel coronavirus?
A recent BBC report gives a one-word answer: “Yes.” The article points out that, just as with adults, children exposed to the coronavirus can be infected with it and display signs of COVID-19. The BBC also quotes Andrew Pollard, professor of pediatric infection and immunity at the University of Oxford. “At the beginning of the pandemic, it was thought that children are not getting infected with the coronavirus, but now it is clear that the amount of infection in children is the same as in adults.”
So, to all of those who would open the schools and purposely expose children to the coronavirus, a few comments: First, kids are not immune. Second, schools are populated by more than just kids. And third, young parents are not immune.
So stop it already, before you get us all killed.
This post has been updated with a correction in the stated percentage of teachers who are age 55+ in paragraph 4. Your humble scribe begs your forgiveness.