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Should Schools Reopen this Fall?

Austen Fletcher of the Fleccas Talks YouTube channel introduced us to a real hero, Dr. Simone Gold and he was instrumental in bringing her and the White Coat Summit to Washington DC.

While at the Summit, Austen spoke with pediatrician, Dr. Bob Hamilton of Santa Monica, CA about reopening schools this fall and the conversation turned to the teacher’s unions that are currently holding America’s children and their families hostage, with their Antifa-like demands, such as defunding the police.

Myself, as someone whose wonderful grandmother was a Pennsylvania Public School teacher for 30 years, to see how today’s teacher’s unions have morphed into these rabid saboteurs of our society, on par with Anthony Fauci and Big Pharma in their societal devastation, it’s really disheartening.

Apparently, there has been a longterm Marxist infiltration not only of higher education but at the K-12 level, as well. Thirteen of twenty Antifa rioters arrested in Portland a couple of weeks ago were public school teachers!

We learn that there are other solutions to this impasse besides homeschooling, although I do have a friend who had already been doing so with her son, to spare him from some of the nefarious initiatives that had been introduced into the public school system in recent years.

This unannounced Bolshevik teacher’s strike may end up being a blessing in disguise.

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TRANSCRIPT

Austen Fletcher: You’re here at the White Coat Summit in DC and your message [is] about the children; how they’re affected by COVID…It’s a big controversy, whether school should be open or not…Are children at risk of catching COVID, getting sick from it and are they at risk of being potential spreaders of COVID?

Dr. Bob Hamilton: Well, the the good news, Austen is that kids, in general are handling this infection remarkably well. Yes, they are getting infected, absolutely. They can get infected but the kids who are getting infected are really minimally symptomatic. Many of them are asymptomatic, completely and the number of children who have actually needed to be hospitalized is really like 1% or 2% of all the kids who get it and of those children who need to be hospitalized, very rarely are they actually passing from this infection.

So, the actual morbidity, mortality rate is about one-fifth of one percent of all the children who get it are actually dying of it…The number is about 36 children have died in the US of COVID virus.

Mind you, some of those 36 actually do have comorbidities, as well, so you have to kind of tease out each case, to really know what was the reason for their the passing; of the death of the child. But certainly, this infection is not affecting children like it’s affecting older people.

Austen Fletcher: And when we do speak about that, a lot of times, people say, “Yeah, the children might not be affected but they are at risk of spreading into their teachers or older people in the schools.”

Is there any truth to that and how does it work, when it comes to spreading, either asymptomatically or if they are infected?

Dr. Bob Hamilton: Sure. Well, this is the big question, are children going to be the spreaders that actually drive the infection? The truth is, they’re not. They’re not driving it, at all.

In fact, an amazing quote came out of Scotland recently by a guy named Mark Woolhouse. He said the following – he’s an epidemiologist. He’s also a professor of infectious disease there, in Edinburgh and he said the following.

He said that there has not been one case of a child, a student in a classroom actually giving or transmitting the virus to their teacher – in all of the world. He has not found one case. That is compelling.

And I think that that should be encouraging to our educators and our administrators, that the children are not going to be the ones who actually spread the infection to their teachers.

Certainly, I believe that things should be done to mitigate any potential risk. We can wash hands, we can wear a mask, teachers – definitely, teachers who are high-risk, older teachers, teachers with medical comorbidities, they should be potentially put into a situation where they’re not at risk.

Certainly, dividing up the the day, maybe having morning session, afternoon session, separating the desks. I actually believe in having education outside as much as possible. Kids who are outside don’t don’t pass it hardly, at all.

Certainly, all the things that people are thinking about to help mitigate and reduce the potential of infection are important. We can do that but I think it’s also important to know that kids are not really passing this infection, in any great measure to older people

Austen Fletcher: Absolutely, and when it comes to the closing of the schools in California we’ve already seen it for a few months, now. What are the results of that? How have they been doing with these online classes? Is it as effective and do you think it’s worth the the lockdown?

Dr. Bob Hamilton: I think that everyone would agree, educators would agree that the actual online Zoom learning is not working well. It’s been proven that…many of the major school districts around the country are showing maybe 50%, maybe 60% of kids are actually logging on, on any particular day. That’s unacceptable. It’s like having half the school not going to school.

So, if our goal, in schools is to educate kids, we’re not doing a good job and this is important because, we do need to educate our children. Children who come from disadvantaged homes, part of the way out of their disadvantaged situation is to get educated. If we’re not educating them, we’re not doing our job.

So, the online experiment, if you will from last semester, last spring throughout the country – and really all of the schools around the country shut down, pretty much – really, was somewhat of a miserable failure.

Austen Fletcher: Absolutely, and in order to open schools back up, I know in California, there’s been a list of demands what the teachers and the unions want in order to justify opening schools back up. Does that have anything to do with science and the disease, in your opinion?

Dr. Bob Hamilton: No, not really. I think that when you really look at the the demands of the unions…I will speak about what I know, which is LA Unified School District in Los Angeles. Their union, that represents the majority of the LA Unified school teachers is called the UTLA, which is the United Teachers of Los Angeles…

It isn’t so much the science that is going to get these kids back in school, it’s the demands. If you really want to know the bottom line, it’s money and UTLA is making some major demands of the the school district. They’re talking about another federal bailout, they’re talking about stopping all charter schools, putting what they call a moratorium on them.

Charter schools are schools that function under the umbrella of the LA Unified School District but they’re typically staffed by non-union teachers. So, they want to get rid of all Charter schools. They want to defund the police – and I’m not sure what that has to do with education – they want to make a housing provision for homeless children – and there are homeless children, certainly in all school districts.

Right now, the demands of the UTLA are really significant. They come down to big, big dollars. Very little of that actually has to do with the actual education. Yes, they asked for more PPE for the teachers and staff. Totally agree with that – but when they start talking about defunding the police, my question is, what does that have to do with educating our kids?

Austen Fletcher: Yeah, they’re almost holding them hostage and not gonna let them go back to school unless these demands are met and –

Dr. Bob Hamilton: Truth be told, Austen, the LA teachers are actually on strike. They have a an amazing opportunity to exactly what you said: hold our kids hostage and they’re going to take full advantage of that.

Some good news is that parents back home – and I live in Los Angeles – parents are getting weary, they’re getting tired, they’re disheartened by what is happening and…they’re taking the situation into their own hands and they’re not going to wait for LA Unified School District to get back. They’re going to basically say, “Hey, listen, we have a responsibility, as parents to educate our own children.”

And so, what they’re doing right now – and they’re doing this by the hundreds maybe thousands – is they’re forming what are called “mini-pods”. Educational arrangements, where you have maybe five, ten kids coming together, same-age children, hiring a teacher and then teaching them independently of the school system.

This may be the wave of the future and certainly, if the unions prove to be recalcitrant and not willing to make any amends, this is what people are going to do.

Austen Fletcher: Yeah, in between school and homeschool, you find some like-minded families and get them together, get a tutor you trust that it definitely sounds like the wave of the future.

Dr. Bob Hamilton: It really isn’t homeschooling in the classical sense and I hesitate to mingle the two. Homeschooling is really a family, individually teaching their children, mother or father teaching their children. This is more – I like the name “mini-pod”, it’s actually a cute name.

Basically, it is the idea of people coming together, hiring a teacher, hiring a legitimate teacher and pooling those resources – because it’s not cheap to hire teachers – but pooling the resources of a handful of families, paying that teacher and getting their children educated properly.

Certainly, parents are waking up to the fact that they’re going to have to be the ones, ultimately responsible for teaching their children.

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