Tamara Hew-Butler, associate professor of Exercise & Sports Science in the College of Education, quoted in The Daily Beast, "Wacky Texas COVID rules push mom to home-school for second year in a row”
The Daily Beast, 8/9
Wacky Texas COVID rules push mom to home-school for second year in a row
By Pilar Melendez
In Texas, elementary schools are required by law to notify parents within 48 hours if a student in their child’s class becomes aware they have head lice, and provide Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations on how to treat and prevent the infestation. But last week, the Texas Education Agency announced that the same practice will not apply to positive cases of the novel coronavirus—despite the mass surge of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the Lone Star State fueled by low vaccination numbers and the highly transmissible Delta variant. Adding to the chaos, of course, is that most elementary school children are under the age of 12, and therefore not yet eligible for one of the three vaccines available in the United States. Tamara Hew-Butler, an associate professor at Wayne State University and a member of the American Physiological Society, told The Daily Beast that for children under the age of 12, mask use is the best protection they have against the virus. “Equally frightening is the possibility that even those children and adults who develop ‘mild’ symptoms from COVID-19 (vaccinated or unvaccinated) can develop the debilitating consequences of long COVID, for which there remains no cure,” she said. “If the end goal is to prevent the spread of COVID-19, getting sick, becoming hospitalized and/or dying from COVID-19, then no, Governor Abbott’s push to make mask-wearing optional inside classrooms is not safe and only perpetuates COVID-19 spread,” Hew-Butler added.