Parents Are Running Out of Covid-19 Options

Is it any wonder some parents are getting their kids vaxxed early?

People on the coasts or in the Midwest rarely realize just how early school starts down here in the South. It starts super early. In Athens, Georgia, where I live, our fourth grader and second grader went back to school on August 4: They’ve already gotten two weeks in. Just like in 2020, schools in the South are the guinea pigs for the rest of the country in the great “how do you educate children in a pandemic?” laboratory experiment. You can forgive parents for not being grateful for the privilege.

Predictably, there have already been outbreaks in schools across the country because of the Delta variant, which, by all accounts, seems to be more transmittable among children than the original virus. This has led to more hospitalizations and more deaths among children than there were last year, though it is still worth pointing out that the percentages are still vanishingly small. For months, child advocates, as well as the CDC (and teachers’ unions), have been arguing for children to be back in-person for school full-time. They still are. But there is no question that Delta has complicated the question. That’s particularly true in school districts that don’t have mask mandates, or districts that want to but aren’t allowed because of…