Walter Suza: COVID-19 is making common sense not so common in America

“I sometimes agree with you and sometimes don't, but you usually make me think, and that is a good thing,” a reader wrote in response to my column about bans on face-mask requirements. 

I am grateful my writing is eliciting thinking. 

This reader also wrote: “I have not really heard about any children dying of Covid in the Ames area or even Iowa. ... Maybe we need a little more perspective about mandating millions of children wear masks when their risk is not so great in the big picture.”  

We must not rest on our laurels that Iowa has seen only a handful of child COVID-19 deaths. The number should’ve been zero. 

We shouldn’t need more deaths to justify the use of face masks in schools. What we need is to pay attention to the number of young Iowans infected with the virus, which is likely more than 40,000. 

But why be alarmed when, as the reader put it, “Yes, they get sick, but not so often do they die”?

First, kids not dying from COVID-19 misses a crucial point. Even if someone who catches COVID-19 survives, they might infect someone else who might end up dead.

When dealing with infectious diseases such as COVID-19, we need to pay attention to an important number: The R-naught value, which is the average number of persons that can be infected by someone carrying, in this case, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. That upper estimate for that number is 3 for the original strain, but the maximum is considered 7 with the more contagious delta variant circulating around the world. 

Even though a child might succumb to COVID-19 rarely, children have the potential to increase the rate of infections if mitigation measures such as face masks and physical distancing are ignored. This means that children and adults with compromised immunity, vaccinated but older teachers, and people with health concerns such as diabetes are in greater danger.

Surely, we don’t want to be the parents who send a child to school unmasked and risk others' lives.

But we might be the parents with children who wear a face mask to school, wash their hands regularly, and try to maintain physical distance in crowded spaces. Yet the classroom environment, with a large number of unmasked and unvaccinated kids, creates the perfect storm for infections. Our children, who have tried all they can to keep themselves and others safe, might still get infected. That means they might pose a threat to their own parents. Parents who get infected could die.  

The reader doubts whether face masks work: “And can the masks be doing more harm in other ways than good? I wonder also, is my own mask really doing much good? Common sense says it should, but does science back up the common sense!”

Yes, there is ample science showing that masks help reduce the spread of COVID-19. So common sense is to wear face masks to make it harder for the virus to spread in our communities. 

“I’m a college professor, not a Covid guinea pig,” lamented Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history and Italian studies at New York University in an opinion piece at CNN.com.  

But common sense is not common anymore, and several states, including Iowa, have banned schools from requiring masks, leaving colleges to release statements such as “masks encouraged,” “vaccines encouraged” and “physical distance encouraged.” 

Unfortunately, many college students ignore the encouragement. 

The vaccination rate has also remained too low in Iowa, only 51% of Iowans, including those not eligible. This translates to hundreds of thousands of people not being vaccinated, and sadly, 80% of Iowans hospitalized for COVID-19 are unvaccinated. 

The consequences extend beyond those who are sick; they extend to our health care workers who are stretched thin to care for the sick. Beds are also limited in ICUs because of the surge, meaning that other patients needing urgent care may not find a bed in our hospitals.

“You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it,” read a tweet from the FDA in an attempt to discourage people from using ivermectin, a drug used more often for cows and horses than for humans that can induce nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, low blood pressure, hives, dizziness, seizures and even death. Some pharmacists report shortages of the drug.

Common sense is not to ingest a drug for deworming livestock to treat COVID-19. Common sense is to get vaccinated, wear face masks, wash hands and stay physically distanced from each other.

Walter Suza of Ames, Iowa, writes frequently on the intersections of spirituality, anti-racism and social justice. He can be contacted at wsuza2020@gmail.com.