On Thursday, President Donald Trump continued to push for schools to reopen as fall approaches, regardless of the state of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, adding that keeping schools closed “is also causing death.”
Trump called on Democrats to work with Republicans to pass the latest coronavirus relief bill, which currently includes $ 105 billion to help schools reopen for in-person learning in the fall. The Democratic leadership has criticized the bill for omitting key aid measures that Democrats included in the $ 3 billion aid package they approved in May.
In his call to reopen schools, Trump reiterated that the risk of Covid-19 patients becoming seriously ill and dying from the disease decreases with age. However, an underlying disease like diabetes and obesity increases the risk of dying from Covid-19 in patients of all ages, including the very young, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert. Children in the United States have been previously infected with Covid-19 and some have been hospitalized and even died.
“The younger his age, the lower the risk,” Trump said Thursday at a White House press conference. “We have to remember that there is another side to this. Keeping them out of school and keeping the job closed is also causing death. Economic damage, but it is causing death for different reasons, but death. Probably more deaths.”
The president also noted that if some state or local officials decide not to reopen schools, he believes that school funds should be reallocated to parents. Earlier this month, Trump made a similar threat that he could withhold federal funds from schools that do not resume classes in person this fall.
“We say that if a school does not want to open or if a governor does not want to open, perhaps for political reasons and perhaps not, but something is happening, the money should go to the parents, so they can send their children to the school of your choice, “Trump said Thursday. “If schools remain closed, money should follow students so that families have control of decisions about their sons and daughters, about their sons.”
The question of whether to reopen schools in the US this fall has become an imminent problem in recent weeks. Some epidemiologists, including Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, have pointed out that if even a child dies of Covid-19 as a result of the reopening of schools, it would be a tragedy. that must shape politics. Others have warned that even if the risk of serious illness and death is relatively low for children, the role young people play in the spread of the virus is still not clearly understood and may act as carriers causing new outbreaks.
In an article published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard education professor Meira Levinson, along with infectious disease scientist Dr. Muge Cevik and epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, write that the reopening of schools, especially for Elementary students in the United States are both crucial and feasible. However, they add that to do it safely, communities must do everything possible to control outbreaks before schools reopen.
“Any region experiencing moderate, high or increasing levels of community transmission should do everything possible to reduce transmission,” they wrote, adding that other countries have closed nonessential indoor businesses and recreational spaces to control the outbreak. “Such measures, along with the use of universal masks, must now be implemented in the United States if we want to reduce case numbers to safe levels so that elementary schools reopen this fall across the country.”
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