<
https://www.salon.com/2024/10/06/for-kids-with-long-covid-back-to-school-often-means-not-returning-at-all/>
"In January 2022, Jennifer Robertson’s now 11-year-old son, Fergus, developed
long COVID, a condition in which the symptoms of COVID-19 linger for months or
even years. Due to his symptoms, he missed nearly six weeks of school after his
first infection. He’d be in and out of the classroom for the rest of the school
year.
Robertson never knew how her son would feel day to day. After three months of
daily fever spikes, red eyes, and chest pains, the family pulled him out of
their school to be homeschooled for a year. There was hope when he returned to
in-person school last year at a private, and more flexible, school.
But then he caught the virus, again. This year, as many kids returned to
school, Fergus returned to home education. Robertson told
Salon in a phone
interview that this is to “both to catch him up on things that he needed help
with or missed and to try to avoid the non-stop repeat infections that come
from school."
But additionally, the lack of COVID-19 precautions in schools is a deterring
factor to sending him in-person. “We feel we will never heal from this as long
as schools have no ventilation, open windows, air purifiers, and policies that
children and staff can come to school while actively positive with COVID,"
Robertson said, adding that she and her family feel “forgotten” as the 2024
school year begins.
“The days, months, and years are rolling by with no precautions from school,”
Robertson elaborated. “All the while more children join families like ours
every day, due to complete and utter negligence from those around us and the
authorities who have the power to change things for the better.”
Robertson and her family are based in the United Kingdom, but the lack of
coronavirus protections in educational settings follow an international trend.
In 2022, schools across the United States started to relax their masking
policies, making them “optional.” Today, seeing a kid wearing a mask in class
is a rarity."
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: October 10, 2024
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-113718299
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
