Education is a strange business. It’s been so since and maybe even before the Lyceum. It’s a very strange business today, especially in the realm of distance learning foisted upon schools by fear of a virus, that fear, by the way, embedded in the minds of “educators.” Most of the world’s children appear to have recently gone through a non-contact school year with the threat as of August, 2021, of their repeating the impersonal learning environment. It’s been a year that introduced every student to a new kind of math.
Now, you might ask, “What choice do we have in closing schools?” In answering that, some suggest that no valid evidence exists that COVID variants negatively affect children the way the initial outbreak affected the elderly. As of this writing, CDC data indicate that 343,631 elderly over the age of 75 succumbed to the deadly pandemic, whereas 406 children up to age 18 succumbed. * The data also show that COVID appears to have killed 124,868 working-age adults (ages 19-64), a group that would encompass most, if not all, teachers’ ages. Obviously, the numbers favor caution and instill fear, as we have seen anecdotally by impassioned pleas for distance learning made by representatives of teachers’ unions.
Numbers are easy to manipulate, but those 406 pediatric deaths are hard to dismiss—if they are accurate. The numbers do not indicate those children who had co-morbidities. And the numbers do not put the deaths in the context of annual deaths by the flu. During the flu season in 2018-2019, for example, 179 children died from the flu according to the CDC. ** Here’s a CDC count for some twenty-first century years:
Number of Pediatric Flu Deaths in the U.S. from 2003 to 2016:
2003 152
2004 39
2005 61
2006 68
2007 88
2008 132
2009 282
2010 123
2011 37
2012 171
2013 111
2014 148
2015 85
2016 110
What should I say here? That a single death is tragic and that parents, relatives, and friends who lost those children suffered a great personal tragedy? Of course, they suffered. But we need to put COVID in the context of the flu to see whether or not educators are acting more in their own interest than in the interests of children and doing so with a new math. Among children ages 0-4, COVID has been blamed for 124 deaths. For school-age children (up to 18), the CDC says the disease has claimed 282 lives.
Let’s assume that the data have not been fudged for political and economic purposes though there have been reports that hospitals might have in some instances reported any death in which the person had COVID as a COVID death. But that anecdotal information could be misinformation. Regardless, mistaken diagnoses are not beyond possibility, especially during the peak infections that overwhelmed hospital facilities and staff. But the focus here is on the educational system, supposedly run by the wisest of the wise, the highly educated, the people whom Aristotle would have been proud to teach.
At what number of deaths does one determine a school shut-down is necessary? Obviously, education officials didn’t believe that 282 pediatric flu deaths in 2009 warranted a shut-down. I’ll go redundant here and point out that COVID caused 282 pediatric deaths among school-age children, the same number of deaths caused by the flu in 2009. And if you look at the table above, you’ll note that other flu-fatality numbers over 100 did not cause educators to shut their schools for their concerns over children’s health. So, the question then arises about the purpose of all the shut-downs.
I suppose that the teachers had legitimate concerns about their own susceptibility to the virus. If so, then one has to ask a question begged by the flu data. If the data are correct and 124,868 working-age adults succumbed to COVID, what are we to do with the number of flu deaths estimated by the CDC for the pre-COVID years? For example, the CDC estimates that 51,000 flu-caused deaths occurred in 2014-2015 and 61,000 died in 2017-2018. And as for those flu-driven hospitalizations, 2017-2018 saw 810,000. *** Were these not numbers of concern?
Again, if any death is tragic, then 282 deaths of school-age children regardless of the name of the disease should be a significant cause of shut-down. And 61,000 adult deaths by flu should warrant a serious shut-down consideration. Is there a difference between “Miss So-n-So, the third-grade teacher, died of the flu today” and “Miss So-n-So, the third-grade teacher, died of COVID today”? Weren’t those flu deaths in 2017-2018 a matter of concern to the point of fear? Where were the education spokespeople? Where were the government officials? Where, oh where, were the media?
As I have said repeatedly, this is not a practice life. That fact should elicit in us an elimination of unnecessary risk on the negative side and an adoption of a goal-oriented life on the positive side. But this life occurs on a risky planet with organisms doing what they can to survive, organisms like bacteria and viruses. Life makes both conscious and unconscious efforts to continue as long as possible in a finite world even though the inevitability of its end comes for all the living. And in the world of conscious beings like us, balancing acceptable risks against goals is a task of reasoning in the absence of emotion.
Education is a strange business indeed. Its underlying premise in the non-theocratic societies is the fulfillment of Homo sapiens sapiens self-designated description. Education purports to impart both knowledge that enhances wisdom, to exult the status of the individual and, thus, by extension, the populace. But so much of what educators do is merely arbitrary and emotional. So much is driven by ideology in the absence of fact or deductive reasoning.
I guess I would simply ask educators to do the math—you know, the old fashioned math in which 282 equals 282.
Notes:
*CDC. Provisional COVID-19 Deaths: Focus on Ages 0-18 Years. Online at https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-on-Ages-0-18-Yea/nr4s-juj3 Accessed August 2, 2021.
**Iannelli, Vincent. 5 February 2020. Annual Flu Deaths Among Adults and Children. Verywell online. Based on CDC. https://www.verywellhealth.com/deaths-from-flu-2633829 Accessed August 2, 2021.
Now, you might ask, “What choice do we have in closing schools?” In answering that, some suggest that no valid evidence exists that COVID variants negatively affect children the way the initial outbreak affected the elderly. As of this writing, CDC data indicate that 343,631 elderly over the age of 75 succumbed to the deadly pandemic, whereas 406 children up to age 18 succumbed. * The data also show that COVID appears to have killed 124,868 working-age adults (ages 19-64), a group that would encompass most, if not all, teachers’ ages. Obviously, the numbers favor caution and instill fear, as we have seen anecdotally by impassioned pleas for distance learning made by representatives of teachers’ unions.
Numbers are easy to manipulate, but those 406 pediatric deaths are hard to dismiss—if they are accurate. The numbers do not indicate those children who had co-morbidities. And the numbers do not put the deaths in the context of annual deaths by the flu. During the flu season in 2018-2019, for example, 179 children died from the flu according to the CDC. ** Here’s a CDC count for some twenty-first century years:
Number of Pediatric Flu Deaths in the U.S. from 2003 to 2016:
2003 152
2004 39
2005 61
2006 68
2007 88
2008 132
2009 282
2010 123
2011 37
2012 171
2013 111
2014 148
2015 85
2016 110
What should I say here? That a single death is tragic and that parents, relatives, and friends who lost those children suffered a great personal tragedy? Of course, they suffered. But we need to put COVID in the context of the flu to see whether or not educators are acting more in their own interest than in the interests of children and doing so with a new math. Among children ages 0-4, COVID has been blamed for 124 deaths. For school-age children (up to 18), the CDC says the disease has claimed 282 lives.
Let’s assume that the data have not been fudged for political and economic purposes though there have been reports that hospitals might have in some instances reported any death in which the person had COVID as a COVID death. But that anecdotal information could be misinformation. Regardless, mistaken diagnoses are not beyond possibility, especially during the peak infections that overwhelmed hospital facilities and staff. But the focus here is on the educational system, supposedly run by the wisest of the wise, the highly educated, the people whom Aristotle would have been proud to teach.
At what number of deaths does one determine a school shut-down is necessary? Obviously, education officials didn’t believe that 282 pediatric flu deaths in 2009 warranted a shut-down. I’ll go redundant here and point out that COVID caused 282 pediatric deaths among school-age children, the same number of deaths caused by the flu in 2009. And if you look at the table above, you’ll note that other flu-fatality numbers over 100 did not cause educators to shut their schools for their concerns over children’s health. So, the question then arises about the purpose of all the shut-downs.
I suppose that the teachers had legitimate concerns about their own susceptibility to the virus. If so, then one has to ask a question begged by the flu data. If the data are correct and 124,868 working-age adults succumbed to COVID, what are we to do with the number of flu deaths estimated by the CDC for the pre-COVID years? For example, the CDC estimates that 51,000 flu-caused deaths occurred in 2014-2015 and 61,000 died in 2017-2018. And as for those flu-driven hospitalizations, 2017-2018 saw 810,000. *** Were these not numbers of concern?
Again, if any death is tragic, then 282 deaths of school-age children regardless of the name of the disease should be a significant cause of shut-down. And 61,000 adult deaths by flu should warrant a serious shut-down consideration. Is there a difference between “Miss So-n-So, the third-grade teacher, died of the flu today” and “Miss So-n-So, the third-grade teacher, died of COVID today”? Weren’t those flu deaths in 2017-2018 a matter of concern to the point of fear? Where were the education spokespeople? Where were the government officials? Where, oh where, were the media?
As I have said repeatedly, this is not a practice life. That fact should elicit in us an elimination of unnecessary risk on the negative side and an adoption of a goal-oriented life on the positive side. But this life occurs on a risky planet with organisms doing what they can to survive, organisms like bacteria and viruses. Life makes both conscious and unconscious efforts to continue as long as possible in a finite world even though the inevitability of its end comes for all the living. And in the world of conscious beings like us, balancing acceptable risks against goals is a task of reasoning in the absence of emotion.
Education is a strange business indeed. Its underlying premise in the non-theocratic societies is the fulfillment of Homo sapiens sapiens self-designated description. Education purports to impart both knowledge that enhances wisdom, to exult the status of the individual and, thus, by extension, the populace. But so much of what educators do is merely arbitrary and emotional. So much is driven by ideology in the absence of fact or deductive reasoning.
I guess I would simply ask educators to do the math—you know, the old fashioned math in which 282 equals 282.
Notes:
*CDC. Provisional COVID-19 Deaths: Focus on Ages 0-18 Years. Online at https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-on-Ages-0-18-Yea/nr4s-juj3 Accessed August 2, 2021.
**Iannelli, Vincent. 5 February 2020. Annual Flu Deaths Among Adults and Children. Verywell online. Based on CDC. https://www.verywellhealth.com/deaths-from-flu-2633829 Accessed August 2, 2021.
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