The fact is, school is the axle on which our Capitalist societies turn. There are a lot of parents out there who need childcare in order to work full-time. When those parents disappear because they’re at home with the kids, things get sticky in a lot of places.
The public sector not-a-mandate seems to have quietly fizzled at the same time that the Ministry of Education has reaffirmed its commitment to bringing the lower Forms and Standard 5s back out to school early next month.
In a society in which people cared about each other, preparing to live with a deadly virus would mean doing what’s necessary to protect each other from it. A society founded in common sense would recognise that individuals can’t prosper if society collapses.
Omission just gives fearmongers a chance to wrap their sensationalism around a tiny kernel of truth, putting the authorities on the back foot and undermining their efforts to do what needs to be done.
Hidden behind the air of “welp, we tried”, is an alarming shift towards returning to business as usual without ensuring that the most vulnerable members of our population are properly protected.
How does one account for the strange dissonance in telling parents that their unvaccinated children couldn’t attend in-person school while also failing to ask teachers if they’d been vaccinated?