My mother just recieved an e-mail regarding a re-opening survey for Wilson County Schools in North Carolina. While I understand the academic reasoning, for health reasoning it's extremely unsafe and could lead to numerous lives lost in the county.

https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-archive-901fb467cbaf5cd519be2247f0e3983c

This article points out that as schools have begun to re-open, cases amongst teens and children have increased dramatically, from 2% of COVID cases in April to nearly 10%. This may not affect many children and teens directly, due to them being lower risk than other categories, but that's not the main concern I wish to bring up. That main concern is that teens and children spread the virus. Not amongst themselves, but amongst the community at large. I personally know several people who are high risk for COVID, and if I were to catch it I would have almost than 2 weeks of time to spread the virus before becoming symptomatic.

https://www.wilsonnc.org/Home/Components/News/News/254/16

This article shows how North Carolina has implemented a COVID-19 county alert system, which color codes community spread levels into three categories: Yellow (significant community spread), Orange (substantial community spread), and Red (critical community spread). Please note that the scale starts with "significant spread". Wilson County, the county in which Wilson County Schools is operated, is in Red, meaning critical community spread. The article then goes about to talk about how this doesn't mean the community is doing poorly in its response, which is just factually incorrect. The school board clearly does not care about the safety of the community in this re-opening, and is only concerned with its public image of success, which I can go on a rant about how poorly the Wilson County School Board has handled education over the past half-decade.

I don't have the exact figures on this, but while watching the school board hearings in late July on school opening, even a half-on half-off schedule would require millions of new revenue. In a county with over 22% of the county living below the poverty line, I highly doubt Wilson County would be able to muster the funds for a safe-reopening, especially if we don't even have the funds to repave roads downtown or fix dilapidated school buildings.

Wilson County Schools also wants to re-open during Flu Season. I shouldn't have to tell anyone why the Flu and COVID going around is a bad thing, but for the sake of clarity I will.

https://www.mdlinx.com/article/what-will-the-2020-2021-flu-season-look-like/v5TAfqq0ZGINSrHffCDV2

The major concern brought up by this article is that a combination of both the flu and COVID could lead not only to more infections, but also muddled testing as both the Flu and COVID have very similar symptoms, only with COVID having increased severity. These combined are bound to lead to much higher death counts, and younger age groups being more susceptible to aggravated symptoms, as interactions between viruses can lead to more threatening mutations. Our hospitals are already packed to the brim, and adding more in will only increase preventable deaths.

Our school system states that they care about our future, and that they want to educate us to the best of their ability, and I respect that, even if they fail to meet those year in and year out, but we won't have a future to care about if we're forced into those education death camps.