If I were a school teacher, I’d feel immensely relieved that Gov. Laura Kelly has postponed the opening of public schools until after Labor Day. 
My son, Tim, a former teacher, has expressed concerns about lost learning time and the effect of being out of school for so long on kids, especially those who live in poverty. And that’s real.
But you can’t learn much if you’re sick, or worried about getting sick, or getting your parents or grandparents sick, or if your teachers are worried about themselves or their families getting sick.
Schools need to be safe. Can we get there in eight weeks?
According to health officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, if Americans began wearing face masks in force, we could get on top of the COVID-19 pandemic in two months.
“If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now I think in four, six, eight weeks we could bring this epidemic under control,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the CDC, in an interview with the Journal of American Medical Association.
And that’s as a country.
Here in Kansas, it would seem the challenge would be far less great.
But yet, our numbers are terrible.
As of Friday, almost 22,000 have tested positive for COVID-19. That’s double the number from one month ago. It took us four months to get to 10,000 cases. And just an additional four weeks to double that.
So no, things are not under control.
Because adults react far more adversely to the virus than children, I worry about teachers, administrators and staff being forced to return to school prematurely.
In an article in the Dallas Morning News, one teacher said, “Schools can’t even control lice, so how the heck do you expect them to control this?”
The close confines of classrooms — especially in our antiquated buildings — make it nigh impossible to socially distance.
And kids aren’t out of the woods if they contract the virus. Doctors now worry about potential lifelong damage to children — especially their lungs — who contract the virus, even those who are asymptomatic.
