It appears that many school boards will be meeting this week to make decisions about protocols for school openings including my own school district.

And when big meetings occur, social media and email campaigns start up in full force and not all of the opinions out there are based on valid information and much seems to be laced with emotional appeals.

Since the end of the last traditional school year, we have seen an increase in the “Delta” variant of the Covid 19 virus. It’s more contagious, more powerful, less discriminatory in whom it infects as far as age is concerned, and especially lethal against those who are not vaccinated.

It’s still summer which is supposedly the time of year where communicable sicknesses are least transmitted. “Cold & Flu” season comes after the traditional school year starts when people stay indoors longer and congregate in more confined areas.

We are seeing an increase in “breakthrough” infections.

Many hospital systems are starting to require all of their employees to get vaccinated.

Universities are doing the same.

The CDC even issued this yesterday:

This teacher does not know many people who want a repeat of what happened last school year, but masking helped curb the spread of the virus. We have a vaccine that has shown to work well, but when so many choose not to get the vaccine who could and many who claim that masking is too much of an action to commit to, then people need to make decisions.

We can have as much data on a dashboard as we want presented in as many ways as possible, and we can have numbers of those who have died and been hospitalized equally reported. What doesn’t get reported is that having masking and getting vaccines has saved lives and saved people from getting really sick.

We are not out of this pandemic. The more we try and wish it away, the more variants are created and the more we have to make decisions in which each choice is unpopular.

Please school board member, put science over politics.