Thread by @saradannerdukic

Since so many feel compelled to bring up car ride and swimming analogies when it comes to risk, great: let’s go with it.

You see, in both these scenarios, parents mitigate risk with layered strategies.

We get our children car seats and boosters; we make them wear their seatbelts; we avoid hazardous conditions; we buy cars with safety features; we rear face them until their spines and neck muscles are more developed; we drive carefully.

We supervise our kids at the pool; we get them US Coast Guard-approved flotation devices; we make sure they know how to swim; we make sure there are lifeguards; they’re not allowed on water slides until they’re tall enough.

With school and the Delta variant, many parents are being asked to be okay with removing these layers of protection. Some schools have nothing; some schools are mandating masks and doing nothing else. Some schools are doing everything they can.

It’s like being told you have to send your kid to the pool every day, but they’ll be in the deep end with only a pool noodle. Or that there will be 30 minutes daily where your kid will have to go without a flotation device.

It’s like being told your kid will be riding in a car in heavy rain all day long, and that for 30 minutes each day she’ll have her seatbelt off. Or that she’ll have her seatbelt on but the road will be full of drunk drivers and texters.

I don’t fault the teachers for this. They’re doing all that they can. One teacher told me that it’s like building a road while driving a race car down it.

We need a vaccine for our kids. We need clear policies that take Delta into account.

Opening windows is free, yet many districts (including mine) haven’t adopted this as part of their strategy.

Antigen tests are cheap and plentiful, yet it’s not even being discussed as a way of spending the billions of our tax dollars flowing into schools for the purpose of COVID mitigation.

Better masks (ie KN95) are also now plentiful, and a low-tech way of mitigating risk, but somehow our tax dollars aren’t going towards this either.

We need more than crossed fingers. We have all the tools we need - we just have to decide whether our children are worth it.

We want our kids in school. We understand that they need to be in school. But dammit, do everything in your f*cking power to protect them. Make it so that we can look them in the eye and honestly tell them that we think they'll be okay because the school is doing x, y & z.

Because right now, most of us can't do that. And it's f*cking eating us alive.