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“The school It reopens regularly on September 14, “said the prime minister. Giuseppe Conte at a press conference at Palazzo Chigi. But he would have done better to tell the truth, the whole truth: the schools are trying to restart on the 14th, but they will not be able to do it in all of Italy.
READ ALSO School, Conte: «Everything is ready» But parents and principals disagree
In fact, the real situation is this. Friuli Venezia Giulia and almost all the Southern Regions (6 of 8) have already decided to postpone the reopening, mainly until after the September 21 elections. As for the other Regions, some schools will start, others will not: Regions and Municipalities can authorize individual schools to postpone leaving, and are already doing so when school leaders believe there are no conditions to reopen immediately.
The reasons for the delay are basically three: uncovered chairs (like every year), construction works not finished or still without the necessary certifications, non-delivery of the desks, originally scheduled for September 8, and now postponed for the end of October.
Could it have been done differently?
If we take into account that the schools have been closed since March, and that in mid-May it was already known that they would not reopen before September, the answer is yes, at least with regard to the delivery of desks. It was enough to make the announcement in May, as suggested by some producers from the end of April, instead of waiting for July 20 (more than 4 months after the closing of schools!).
Regarding the appointments of teachers, I cannot believe that, with the full powers that this government has granted, there is no way to cover the majority of the chairs, if only for the fact that the shortage of teachers, in the To the extent that it creates administrative and organizational chaos, it is also a potential risk factor.
Can we at least say that the reopening, where it will take place, will be “safe”?
This is difficult to establish in advance, although the fact that the prime minister has already got down to business, saying that no outbreak is attributable to deficiencies in government action, is not particularly encouraging. It is obvious that, as he used to say to his son Niccolò, “if something happens at school, it is not because father worked badly.” But the question is not whether there will be cases of Covid in the school (this is true, and it is perfectly normal, unfortunately), but whether there will be few or many, if there could have been many fewer with different policy options, and if the conditions are to effectively manage the cases that will certainly exist, many or few. The case of Israel, which just in these days – the first country in the world – has announced the return to confinement, should teach something: if Israel has to close again, it is fundamentally because it has done everything wrong at school, since time of reopening, up to size. of classes, errors in the ventilation of the premises (based on air conditioners).
Well, on the security side, the outlook is far from reassuring, for two reasons. The first is that the measures adopted are quite weak, especially when compared with those of several European countries, which establish precise rules on the frequency of ventilation of the premises, greater spacing (1.5 meters or 2), strict restrictions on the size of the classes (from 10 to 20 children, depending on the country). Not to mention the impossibility of ensuring adequate distance in transportation: considering children who go to the same school as “family” is a find worthy of a Player; a linguistic stunt the government had to resort to because for months and months it had taken care of other things and, as of August 27, there was no more time to foresee otherwise, first of all by strengthening local public transport. One wonders: what is the use of clumsily groping to ensure distance at school, with the ridiculous rule of the subway between “mouth rhymes”, if before and after entering school -for lack of a bus- the children forced to meet on public transport?
But there is also another set of reasons, strictly sanitary, that cannot leave us alone. Since mid-June, when the epidemic showed clear signs of raising its head (a fact initially reported by few, but progressively recognized by all), nothing has been done to reverse the trend, and much has been done to prolong it as far as possible. if possible, the time when people can have fun, tourism will catch its breath and the virus will settle among us; until the final decision to keep the nightclubs open also in August, despite the disasters caused by the crazy summer, had become clear to everyone. Well, all these choices and omissions (especially turning a blind eye to discos and nightlife) have produced a predictable and predictable result: increasing the number of infected people and, with it, the risk that any person, child , teacher or family, get the virus.
While hypocritically proclaiming that school was a “top priority” and that “not an hour of class was to be missed,” the risk of contagion, which was minimized at the beginning of the summer, was allowed to rise inexorably again.
But how long? Where we are today
It is difficult to give an accurate estimate, but the order of magnitude is clear. Compared to the lows reached in early summer, the number of deaths has almost tripled and the number of people admitted to intensive care has quadrupled. As for the number of infected, it is likely that it has increased even more, because the average age has dropped drastically, and the younger the infected population, the lower the probability of an intensive care hospitalization or death. The deceased and those hospitalized in intensive care return, even for reasons other than those of March and April, to be only the tip of the iceberg of the infection.
In short, I believe that the number of infected has multiplied by at least five, but I would not be surprised if some less prudent epidemiologist colleague posed the hypothesis that they have multiplied by ten.
Therefore, claiming that the school reopens “safely” is simply a lie. No, between July and August, the choice of those who govern us was not to take advantage of the summer to further reduce the circulation of the virus and get schools to reopen in conditions of maximum security (a policy repeatedly invoked by Professor Crisanti, and not only his ). The choice was to compensate the Italians for the confinement by giving them a summer without rules, although it was well known that this would make going back to school less safe.
Now that the omelette is done, now that it is clear that many schools will not be able to guarantee a safe restart, now that the specter of a return to distance education becomes more and more threatening, I would like to at least, on behalf of many parents , ask something. , minimal but necessary: if a student is confined to the Covid room and sent home because of suspicion, can you at least guarantee the swab (and communication of the result) within 48 hours?
Yes, because not all parents have noticed it yet, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the protocols and procedures that gives families this guarantee. It does not pay to download an operation (temperature measurement) in families that the school cannot provide, our politicians and experts have foreseen that, in case of suspicion of Covid, the parents should recover the child and keep contacting a doctor, who at turn will decide. As if you didn’t know this is the problem, in many realities: there is no guarantee that the doctor will return home for a visit, there is no guarantee that someone will swab immediately, there is no guarantee that the result will be communicated promptly, and instead get lost in the maze of e-mail bureaucracy, digitized and faceless healthcare.
Unfortunately, this is what happened in the terrible months of the first wave. Can we ask you not to happen again?
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