schools in this country should remain open. going into schools puts us at risk, puts our students and families at risk of contracting the coronavirus. and that s a simple truth of the matter. john: the one thing american taxpayers, joseph, have a difficult time wrestling with. we were sold by congress that if we gave $122 billion in taxpayer money to the states, that would be given to the schools to deal with all of this and now left to say wait a second, what happened to all of that money that these teachers in chicago don t feel safe going back into schools? no question school infrastructure has been neglected for decades and like to see the money spent for better ventilation filtration. but the know-how is there, guidance is there, billions of dollars are there, plenty of time to get it done. and i fully support the biden administration messaging. kids need to be back in school. governor charlie baker from
mercifully and thankfully the risk has been low. hospitalization rate for kids is still 1 in 100,000. the death rate 1 to 2 per million, so thankfully kids are at low risk. the american academy of pediatrics just called this out two weeks ago. they said hospitalizations and death for children is quote, unquote uncommon so we have to balance these risks. we re so focused on covid that we ve ignored all the other risks and harms that we ve seen from kids being out of school for an entire year. how do you get it right? i know you are the king of ventilation? how do you get it right though? what s the key? what s the fix to make sure that they are safe-that they to help them stay open the whole time? yeah, absolutely. ventilation filtration has been key from day one in the pandemic. yelling it out. open the window even a little bit, even in areas that are cold. let s talk about the best tool that we have and that s the advantages own. all kids should be vaccinated who are eligible. s
barriers to, you know, rapid tests in general. we should be sending them free to every household. we should be messaging the importance of high quality masks and also sending those to all households for free. we should also be emphasizing the importance of ventilation filtration and ensuring schools. so there are all of these layers. we call it the swiss cheese layers of addressing the pandemic. they all have holes enthem meaning none of them are perfect. but putting them all together produces an effective strategy against coronavirus. i think obviously mask policies is an area i didn t hear president biden really talk about. he s going to prolong the mask policies for public transportation. but if that s the case, then why not work with governors to reinstitute mask policies at the state level as well?
cdc saying filtration lowers covid cases. one thing i feel is important is we focus like a laser on getting our kids back in school there. are many bad effects of our kids not being in school. table harm to our young people is going to be greater than the harm of covid. what i like what the cdc is doing is laying out options for people. masks are one tool but they re not the only tool. as you mentioned it s ventilation filtration it s your testing. it s your vaccination levels. so we want people to make intelligent choices but most of all we need our kids back in school and college in fall. they were talking to dr. anthony fauci and he was asked about wearing masks in the fall and he said this. well it s conceivable they might be as a matter of fact when you have a fully vaccinated if the children get vaccinated it s conceivable that would wind up being a represents.