As my youngest grandson’s first birthday approached, and a Zoom birthday party was being planned, I was scrambling around trying to think of something I could order on-line that would make him (and his parents) happy and be small enough I would be willing to pay for express shipping. Yes, I had failed to pay attention when my wife kept reminding me that if I was going to send something, I need to do it last week. Sigh. How about candy? Well, I am not a fan of adding sugar to a kid’s diet, so that was out.   How about chewy vitamins?  They would maybe do some good health-wise, and maybe dodge or reduce the sugar bullet. As a father of four, and grandfather of a growing number, and a retired pediatric healthcare administrator, I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to protect children.  So I went online to try to figure out what kids’ vitamin would be a good choice.  I also looked up safety – and everything I learned was bad.

During the last two “pre-covid” school years, Rowan County was the only county in America where both the K-12 school system and the community college both scored in the top ten in the nation for their on-line teaching capability.  Rowan/Salisbury schools and its 20,000 students is one of the most advanced on-line public school systems in the country, ranked in the digital top 10 large K-12 school systems in America over several years for its digital technical infrastructure and teachers trained in electronic teaching, and because of the school systems success in ensuring that the students have access to the Internet through widespread installation of electronic equipment that allow all students throughout the district to connect to the school system. (1)

A fierce disorganized debate is raging as our country approaches the time schools traditionally open. Millions of citizens afraid of suffering lifelong damage to their health from the virus are trying to stay home, wearing face masks if they go out, and otherwise avoid being in large groups. There is tension between this group and the folks who desperately want life to go back to something resembling normal with schools in session. Other millions find themselves in the middle, unsure what to do. For many, it feels like the ship is in danger of sinking, and people are looking around for life rafts should they be needed.

We are at war with COVID-19.  What is surprising is that the casualty reports are leaving an entire group out.  When we talk about the war on COVID-19, the casualty reports talk about “infected”, “deaths” and “recovered” – but no “wounded”.   Think back to how the casualties of war are stated. In the Vietnam War, there were 3.4 million United States military in Southeast Asia.  47,434 died in combat, and 303,644 were wounded ⁽¹⁾.  In many cases those that were wounded lost arms or legs, or suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and endured lifelong health issues.  To this day the publicly available websites all show them as having been wounded. The same is not true when recording casualties in our war with COVID-19.   As crazy as it sounds, once a patient who was infected with COVID-19 and is added to the state and national data bases, they are automatically moved to the “recovered” column within a month ⁽²⁾. This is terribly misleading to the American public as they try to plan ahead.