The best shot
Nobody likes quarantines.
In fact, after almost two years of living through a pandemic, most of us have learned to hate them. People have come to dread the whole concept of being sent home from school or work, especially if they’re not actively sick.
It is understandable, then, that Colby students and parents were deeply upset when yet another round of quarantines were unleashed last week due to the “close contact” rule. In these situations, just one or two cases of COVID can result in a few dozen kids and staff being sent home for 14 days.
This latest wave of quarantines was particularly upsetting for a couple of reasons. First, the school district created some confusion by sending an outdated message to parents in a fifth-grade class whose students had been identified as close contacts. It said they had been quarantined and needed to be picked up from school immediately. This flies in the face of a policy adopted just last month that says the health department will quarantine students and staff, not the district.
Instead, parents should have received a notice that their child had been identified as a close contact and a recommendation to start quarantining. The district is also sending out a four-page letter from the Clark County Health Department, which reminds parents that a self-quarantine is required for anyone who has been identified as a close contact. Talk about mixed messages.
From our view, the district has wanted to avoid being the “bad guy” when it comes to the quarantine issue. District officials are willing to do contact tracing and pass along that information to the health department, but they don’t want to be the ones that pulls the trigger on quarantines. It’s understandable, since that’s not the role of a school district.
Still, the district should not allow any ambiguity to seep in when it comes to close contacts and quarantines. One will always logically follow the other. That was the case until last Friday, when the district convinced the health department to rescind the quarantines of four football players just a few hours before a big game against Edgar.
This was the second reason the latest wave of quarantines was so upsetting. Students had been waiting a year to take on the number-one ranked Wildcats, after a greatly anticipated match-up between the two teams was cancelled last season due to a COVID outbreak in Colby. Not only was every media outlet in the area at the Hornets home field, college recruiters were also watching. This was not a run-of-the-mill game; it had potential lifechanging consequences for some players.
Nevertheless, the way in which school administrators agreed to “revisit” their contact tracing procedures makes us a little queasy. Either the staff did not do a good job of properly contact tracing in the first place or administrators found a dubious way to get their starting football players off the stay-at-home list. Given the stakes involved, it’s hard to blame anyone too harshly for their actions.
We’d like to say that school districts shouldn’t have to bother with contact tracing and quarantining, but that’s not going to stop. The Clark and Marathon county health departments rightfully expect cooperation from the school districts within their jurisdictions. Like it or not, schools are still going to be in the COVID-19 game for the foreseeable future.
One thing that won’t happen again is the county health nurse rescinding a quarantine decision. She made that clear after last Friday’s last-minute decision to remove four names from a list of students whohadbeenquarantined.Infact,shewould like there to be no gap between when the district identifies a close contact and when the quarantine starts. At this point, there is only one way for students to guarantee they won’t get caught in another quarantine trap: get vaccinated. That’s not the most popular opinion around here, but it’s the best safeguard against the dreaded quarantine.
The Tribune-Phonograph editorial board consists of publisher Kris O’Leary and editor Kevin O’Brien
