It's very rare that I agree with anything written by the editorial board of the Daily Dead Fish Wrapper (aka The Oregonian), but even a stopped clock is right twice per day, and today's editorial is one of those times.

Reopen schools this academic year

Pediatricians, mental health professionals, educators and families all agree: Students desperately need to return to in-person instruction. It’s not just the significant educational loss, but also the health, nutritional and social needs that are going unmet with distance learning. States around the country have made in-person school a top priority, providing the resources and direction to keep schools safe and limit spread. Oregon should do the same.

Gov. Kate Brown’s lifting of statewide requirements is a start.

The problem with this supposed "relaxing" of requirements is just a smokescreen, and a joke. The school districts still have to obey the local alphabet bureaucrats (OHA, ODE, county health, etc), and those over-the-top restrictions - such as only being able to be around up to 100 people in a day - limit the school districts (at least those in Multnomah County) to literally having the kids come to school, sit in one classroom for two hours, and then go home and do two more classes via "distance learning" in the afternoon. Oh, and this is only two days per week.

But the state, school districts and employee unions must move from a “should-we-reopen” debate to a “how-do-we-reopen” blueprint, that isn’t contingent on all staff receiving vaccines first. While teachers are identified as the next group to receive vaccines after the current group of health care and long-term care residents, there are too many unknowns on which to pin this urgent need. In addition to Oregon’s slow rollout and uncertain vaccine supply, it’s likely that at least some staff members may decline vaccines for personal reasons and children aren’t yet eligible for vaccines. We cannot lose this school year – or the beginning of next – due to problems that can be solved for now.

Unfortunately, after attending a local school board meeting last week, I can say that the teachers' union and classified staff union couldn't care less about this. I watched as they gave lip service to caring about the kids, but then went on to say that the district should "obey the metrics" and wait until everything is "safe" before getting back into the classroom. These people just don't get it. Judging by statistics, kids driving to school is not perfectly “safe’, and with a 99.997% survivability rate for COVID19 for people under age 20, driving is more dangerous than actually catching it for kids. If we never did anything unless it was perfectly “safe” nobody would ever leave their homes and go outside, and we would never accomplish anything. Thank goodness for people that are willing to take risks and don’t expect everything to be perfectly “safe” before doing anything.

In addition to re-opening schools, the editorial also touched on the ineptitude of Pat and Kate in terms of vaccine rollout:

Step up vaccinations to beat the pandemic

The best news of 2020 was the approval of two vaccines for COVID-19. How quickly and broadly the state is able to vaccinate most of Oregon’s 4 million-plus residents will determine how soon we can get back to some semblance of regular life. While the national supply will play a large factor in determining the pace, the state’s flubbed rollout over the past few weeks reveals a lack of urgency and a failure to act strategically.

Getting shots to Oregonians must be the state’s top priority, balancing considerations of who is most at risk and how to most quickly get the vaccine out. Oregonians cannot afford to see the state bumble its way through distribution the way the state handled its unemployment benefits debacle. Lives and livelihoods are at stake.

The fact that we could have been smart like Sweden and already had herd immunity without vaccines is another issue, but as we've seen, the ineptitude of the OHA annd Kate Brown has caused a loss of vaccinations, the ones that will help get us out from under Kate's thumb.