Back to school, year 4 of the pandemic, still no clean air. Public health has failed our kids. They're relying on parents, teachers & advocates to demand clean, biohazard free air in schools

My piece in today's Indo👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/tess-finch-lee-children-are-not-immune-to-covid-so-we-must-pull-out-all-the-stops-to-protect-them/a1528932453.html

Excerpts:

"Professor Breda Smyth appeared on RTÉ, reassuring us the pandemic’s over.

Fact check: The World Health Organisation (WHO) said in May that Covid-19 was no longer a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, stressing: “This does not mean the pandemic itself is over.”

"In March 2022, Italy’s Marche region installed mechanical ventilation in some schools, reducing Covid infections in classrooms by 82pc. Last February, neuroscientist and long-Covid specialist Dr Claire Taylor tweeted: “We can reduce Covid infections in classrooms by 82pc and we’ve done nothing, just letting children get infected and re-infected. How is this not a safeguarding issue?”

She said: “Education is important. Health is also important. It’s possible to do both.”

A peer-reviewed study in The Lancet unequivocally evidenced that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne, yet our chief medical officer’s advice to prevent an inhaled virus is: “Wash your hands.”

"Current vaccines alone aren’t enough. Neither they nor infections confer lasting immunity. They don’t effectively prevent long-Covid, risks of which are similar for children as adults and increase with every reinfection.

Why does Prof Smyth not address how long-Covid is described by scientists as a “mass disabling event”?

"I’ve called for the same protections in schools every year since. I’ve been a children’s rights advocate my whole life and never imagined that trying to protect children from repeated, forced, infections with a level-three biohazard known to cumulatively harm them would be deemed controversial.

Platforming ‘experts’ pathologising compassion and rational fear isn’t helping. Fear is a self-preserving emotion, enabling us to detect and react to hazards, crucial for survival. Fear and anxiety drive adaptive behaviours, aimed at escaping the source of danger. Fear avoidance leads to denialism, which is irrational. It involves the refusal to accept an empirically verifiable reality: the pandemic is not over".

Public health must step up for our children. They’re relying on parents, teachers and advocates to demand their right to safe education and clean, biohazard free air in school".