School closures will be happening, whether the politicians want to admit it or not. Day care will be closed for the same reasons.

It doesn’t matter what the politicians want; they want to keep the schools open. Yeah, that’s not going to work out when covid is sweeping through schools and staff. Who’s going to be doing the teaching if teachers are out sick? We already have glimpses of this with staff shortages in many districts around the nation.

When enough staff are sick, they’ll have no choice but to go remote. Instead of preemptively shutting schools for two weeks, we’re going to see this slow motion train wreck because too many think the economy matters more than public health, when public health is essential to the economy. They’ve got it bass-ackward.

We continue prioritizing showing up to school for in person learning more than making sure that people remain safe in schools. Kids get covid too, and the long term consequences aren’t totally understood, but you know who else is in the schools?

Adults - many of whom are not young and can have one or more risk factors. Do their lives not matter? Apparently, not as much as you think.

What do the closures do for parents with kids? If you’re already WFH, you have to deal with your kid learning remote. If you’re unable to work remote, it becomes a financial hardship. That’s the thing that politicians are leaning into when they want to keep schools open. Mind you, spreading covid far and wide means that you’re overburdening the teachers, spreading covid throughout the community (as kids spread it to the adults and vice versa), and hospitals get overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.

That’s the thing. All too many people are claiming that omicron is mild. Mild compared to what? If you’re vaccinated, mild might mean the worst cold of your life and prolonged side effects for weeks or months later.

If you’re not vaccinated, you could end up in the ER. If you’re in need of an ER, it isn’t mild. All those ER visits add up to additional strain on an already hamstrung health care delivery system facing significant absences due to covid among staff. That delays care for everyone trying to get diagnosed, admitted, and cared for in the appropriate setting. That adds to the mortality rate overall as more cases and fewer doctors means worsening care.

So yeah, mask up, vaccinate, and prepare for more bad jobu in coming weeks.