To the members of the school board and district leadership:
Compared to my prior email last week, the pandemic environment and data from all the major medical forecasting groups like UT Southwestern does not show any signs of improvement. It is of considerable bewilderment to me as both a physician and an LISD parent that you are continuing on a course that no single expert in this pandemic considers wise and in the interests of preventing a widespread Delta variant outbreak in our schools.
Pediatric hospitalizations nationwide have been increased 27% compared to last week. Pediatric ICU bed availability in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex is next to nothing and unprecedented in this pandemic.
From the many parents groups I am involved in, there is a feeling of obstructionism and in some cases, outright dismissiveness on the part of the school board and district leadership.
I reiterate again, as a physician who has worked in COVID surges, as a physician who has evaluated and tested children for COVID, and as a physician who has spent the better part of my lifetime steeped in science and data, walk back from the precipice you are marching our children towards for unfathomable reasons.
I could not have been more stark or explicit in my warnings of the storm to come when I spoke before the school board and district leadership at the previous board meeting.
You only need to see the news stories coming out from school districts across Texas and the rest of the nation to know what is coming. Even the Texas Education Agency is backpedaling some of their initial guidance as thousands of Delta variant infections are occurring among Texas students and their teachers and staff.
Dr. Gregory Poland, MD, director of the Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Division who has studied RNA viruses for 36 years and is one of the world’s pre-eminent authorities on COVID, gave a virtual lecture yesterday and he commented on having in-person learning in the setting of the Delta variant being dominant in the United States with exponential and unmitigated community spread:
“We are doing a huge experiment with our youth. We are taking the most contagious viral variant, not letting them use masks and crowding them together to see what happens.”
Compared to the virus we battled last year, the Delta variant has a nine times higher attack rate in school age children. The assumptions about COVID in children from last year no longer apply. This is a whole new pandemic with a new set of rules with dangerous consequences.
You have us all sitting atop a ticking time bomb of your design.
You are increasing the likelihood of presiding over an adverse event in a student or teacher when they get infected with the Delta variant. What do you plan to tell their families when you have received numerous warnings particularly from physicians like myself?
What do you plan to say to their families when common sense measures have been clearly outlined ahead of time by multiple medical societies like the Texas Academy of Family Practice and the American Academy of Pediatrics?
I hope and pray that the light of humility and the acceptance of the wisdom and expertise of those in the medical community comes to you before that day .
Joseph P. Santiago, MD
Father of a ten year old LISD student too young to be vaccinated.