Healthy Kids 2025 Back to School News Letter By Rachelle Kaufman
We know that you all want to have a healthy school year. One that allows kids to perform their best and teachers too! As someone who has spent a number of years studying virus transmission, I’m sharing with you ways to keep the kids healthy and learning.
Section 1: What is airborne?
In 2022, the World Health Organization updated information on how many viruses, including SARS2-COVID spreads to a theory called airborne transmission. This replaced a previous theory called droplet dogma.
Section 2: Knowing this what does and doesn’t work?
Here are the top 3 things that do work to prevent airborne transmission:
1. Encouraging parents to keep sick kids stay at home, even when they fall below official school standards. Viruses are often most contagious early on, before a student develops the level of symptoms that meet school requirements.
2. Wearing a mask, preferably a respirator. Any mask is better than none, but not all masks are the same, which is why many kids still got sick while masking-because the information wasn’t provided early on, on what types of masks work the best.
Cloth-About 40 percent efficient
Blue Surgical-60 percent efficient (they are more for surgeons to prevent splatter and have gaps).
KN95 and N95 or above.-95 percent efficient. N95’s are officially certified-but can be hard to find in sizes that fit kids.
3. Air filtration and ventilation. This could be a long topic, but the general idea is cleaning the air. If you need an air filter for your classroom let me know and I can see what I can do to get you one for free (Priority to my own kids’ classes and cafeteria). Outdoor air is an even better option, especially for eating, etc.
Section 3: What won’t work or works poorly?
1.Washing hands is a good idea to prevent some bacteria and viruses. But it won’t stop respiratory viruses.
2. Relying solely on social distancing doesn’t work well because viruses linger in the air, even when the sick person leaves the area. Example: A sick kid in the cafeteria at 11am leaves virus in the air and infects a kid eating lunch at 1pm, even though the sick kid is long gone.
Section 4: Why is SARS2-COVID different?
This could be a long section, but I will keep it short since we are at almost 2 pages. In short, SARS-2 COVID isn’t just or even primarily an acute respiratory infection. Like HIV it often causes viral persistence, which can take many years and even decades to show up. However, to clarify SARS2-COVID is not HIV. A second clarification, HIV often first presents in the acute phase with flu like symptoms that can include respiratory symptoms.
Section: 5: The general idea: Although needs a little bit of updating.
