We’re in trouble when the COVID-19 death of a Middleton school staffer is a ‘hiccup’

Since when did we become so cavalier about the death of a fellow human being?

After it was revealed at a Middleton school board meeting this week that a staff member had died of COVID-19 and an elementary schoolteacher had contracted COVID-19 and was not well, and another teacher was in quarantine, one school board member showed a shocking lack of empathy.

“We can’t run and hide,” Middleton school board member Derek Moore said. “I know we have cases, but we cannot decide not to move forward. There are going to be hiccups in the road.”

Since when did someone’s death become a “hiccup”?

Coronavirus is deadly and highly contagious. What about that do people still not understand by now? We need to drop the machismo act (“we can’t run and hide”) surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, especially for these public officials, like school board members and health district board members who are tasked with making crucial decisions about public safety.

Of course, we’ve seen this cavalier attitude throughout the pandemic, as some have suggested that “only” the elderly and those with underlying health conditions are being killed by the virus, as if we should simply accept that those folks are going to die, so the rest of us might as well get on with our lives.

It’s no surprise, then, that the United States has more than 200,000 deaths from the disease.

It should be noted, as well, that the coronavirus continues to be highly unpredictable in who is affected and who is not.

We don’t expect to have no deaths from COVID-19. That would be unattainable. But we can reduce the number of deaths by taking certain actions that stop the spread of the virus. We should not callously throw up our hands and accept that “some people are just going to die.”

Making these difficult decisions is the responsibility of our public officials. Unfortunately, far too many of them are not living up to that responsibility.

Even with the death of a staff member and a teacher “not doing well,” Middleton board members considered moving kindergarten through fifth-graders to morning and afternoon schedules, so that students could go to school every day, but in smaller groups.

We are also hearing reports of schools having “mask breaks,” allowing students to take their masks off in the classroom for short periods of time, which defeats the whole purpose of wearing masks to begin with.

Middleton is in Canyon County, where wearing a mask is only a recommendation, per the Southwest District Health board, including Canyon County Commissioner Tom Dale.

We recognize these school board members are between a rock and a hard place, knowing that some of their students don’t have devices or access to the internet. But safety needs to be the top priority. If there is an outbreak in your school, the safest thing to do is move back to holding classes remotely before someone else dies.

Other schools have done it, such as North Star Charter School, which made the wise decision to send everyone home before it became a disaster.

These public officials need to commit themselves to fighting the virus rather than pretending it simply doesn’t exist, isn’t lethal or is somehow a hoax.

Think about the school your kids go to. Now think about which staff member there you’re OK with dying. The lunch lady? The janitor? The front desk secretary? Which person’s life is expendable so the rest of us can “move forward” and go back to normal?

Which teacher is it OK to send to the ICU, fighting for breath on a ventilator?

We’re just rolling the dice. The coronavirus didn’t go anywhere. It didn’t magically disappear. It didn’t become less lethal, less sneaky, less contagious. It’s the same virus we had in March, and we still don’t have a vaccine.

School and health officials need to take this more seriously before things get worse. A good first step is not looking at someone’s death or grave illness as a “hiccup.”

This story was originally published September 24, 2020 at 1:31 PM.