White House adviser and son-in-law of the president Jared Kushner has said he will “absolutely” send his children back to school when classes reopen, despite widespread concerns that in-person learning puts children, faculty and their families at risk from Covid-19.
The Trump administration has pushed for schools across the country to reopen, despite the concerns. One public school district in Arizona was forced to cancel plans to reopen on Monday after more than 100 teachers and other staff members called in sick.
In its latest guidance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the number and rate of coronavirus cases in children had risen “steadily” from March to July, but the true number of cases remains unknown due to a lack of testing.
However, Kushner, a member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday morning that he had no concerns about his children returning to class “because children have a six times higher chance to die from the flu than from the coronavirus, so based on the data I’ve seen I don’t believe that’s a risk.”
Kushner has three children with Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.
“This virus impacts different people at different rates,” he said. “Our school’s not opening back up five days a week, I wish they would but we absolutely will be sending our kids back.”
In its guidance update, the CDC said school closures could have contributed to initially low rates of cases in children early in the pandemic.
“This may explain the low incidence in children compared with adults,” the agency said. “Comparing trends in pediatric infections before and after the return to in-person school and other activities may provide additional understanding about infections in children.”
Kushner also defended the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic as “aggressive,” even as daily deaths reached 1,500 last week, and commonly exceed 1,000 per day, comparable to May’s mortality rates. Covid-19 has left almost 170,000 people dead in the US and more than 5.3m cases have been reported across the country, the highest tally in the world.
“Most importantly, the president’s really advanced the use of a lot of therapeutics, which is bringing the case fatality rate down better,” he added.
In fact, Trump has been widely criticized for promoting the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine despite mounting evidence that it doesn’t work for coronavirus patients. Trump also stunned public health experts by suggesting people could receive injections of disinfectant to cure the coronavirus, a notion described as “dangerous” and “jaw-dropping”.
During an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, Chicago’s Democratic mayor Lori Lightfoot pointed out that school reopening not only poses a problem for children but for adults too.
“It is not just the students themselves,” Lightfoot said. “It is the entire eco-system of the school. You’ve got teachers, you’ve got principals, and you’ve got staff.” She said that many staff in schools are over 60, making them “a vulnerable population.”
She added that the federal response to Covid-19 had made the pandemic in the US worse. “The White House fighting, the CDC, the HHS hijacking reporting processes, we still don’t have a federal mask policy. The chaos at the federal level has not been helpful to anyone, not Chicago, Illinois, or states across the country,” Lightfoot said.
The Link LonkAugust 17, 2020 at 04:00AM
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/16/jared-kushner-children-school-covid-19-ivanka-trump
Jared Kushner will 'absolutely' send his children to school despite Covid-19 risks - The Guardian
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