Tuesday, 6 June 2023

6) Expert advice on reopening schools defies rights and puts children at risk

This from January 2022: https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/expert-advice-on-reopening-schools-defies-rights-and-puts-children-at-risk/41219699.html

"Justifying giving schools the go-ahead to reopen, Dr Holohan tweeted: “The Irish and international experience of the pandemic continues to give us reason to believe that schools are a lower-risk environment for the transmission of Covid-19.

Wrong. The WHO and ECDC agree that risk in schools is only lowered with ventilation, masks, contact tracing, testing and low community transmission. Dr Holohan has doggedly resisted these scientifically proven school protections".

"Instead, Ireland is reopening the most overcrowded schools in Europe with the highest infection rates in the EU (which could be 80,000 cases a day) with hand-sanitiser and open windows as our children’s primary defence against the highly infectious Omicron.

The rest of Dr Holohan’s tweet read: “The majority of children who are infected experience a mild form of this disease.”

It’s deeply concerning that the man responsible for the country’s public health advice is apparently normalising the mass infection of children, which for some may not be mild and could result in hospitalisation, long Covid and possibly death".

"The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) states that the best interests of the child must be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children (Article 3) and that all the rights guaranteed by the UNCRC must be available to all children without discrimination (Article 2).

Enshrined within the convention is the right to access education, safety, health and life. Ms Foley’s failure to provide airborne mitigations disproportionately impacts disabled and immunocompromised children (or children within immunocompromised families), denying them the right to safely access education.

"Every child has a right to be educated in a safe environment".

"We have solutions, but they’re not being implemented.”


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